Tragically Yours

| 18 |

After giving the letter to the post office-thanks to Ethan's guidance about the procedure on sending a letter-I gave Ethan the letter I'd received last night and let him read it. Once we reached his car outside the post office, that is when he'd finally finished reading it. "How certain are you that whoever sent this letter is the Gail you're trying to reach out to?" He hands me the letter over the car before both of us step inside the car. "What if this person is just a trickster?" Ethan begins verbalizing every possibility that has something to do with the letter. "Or maybe the person who wrote this letter to you is a psychopath and waiting to lure you to be their new victim?"

I shake my head as I fasten my seat belt before facing him. I watch him do the same with his seat belt, "You know what I think, Ethan?"

He turns his head to face me, his eyes widening and wondering my insight about the subject. "What?"

"I think you've been watching too many psychological horrors." My head jerks to face my side of the car and out of the window. I tried my best to convince myself that everything about Ethan's verbalized thoughts of Ethan about the letter isn't true. But I can't seem to shake the feeling that some of his thoughts may be true and not him exaggerating his worry.

A snicker from him enters my ears, all while the car's engine begins to wake. "Don't make fun of my love for psychological horror. They're better than any kind of horror." I smile escapes my lips as I hear him snicker once more. My mind begins to reminisce about that time Ethan and I watched horror movies for Halloween. He kept insisting that psychological horror is better than my preferred horror genre-gore. So, I let him choose which psychological horror he wanted to watch. But of course, he selected to watch the movie version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo since he'd already have the novel version of, and he just wanted to see if the film is better than the book version. Spoiler alert, it wasn't bad nor better than the book. Ethan and I mutually agree that the film was mediocre than reading the actual book. That was a bad example of his idea that psychological horror is better than other horror, but he didn't stop making me watch multiple psychological horror just to prove his point.

When the snicker from him died down, I didn't bother to face him and check, since I didn't want him to see me pondering about the subject earlier. Even though I'm not facing him, I can feel his gaze burning behind me. A sigh came out of him before muttering, "Look, I'm sorry that I've ruined your hope about Gail... But at least that reply letter was something. A sign that someone is living at her childhood house."

Give it to Ethan to have the chance of lighting up the mood. His both optimism and pessimism intrigues me to the point that I want to know how his brain works every day. "Yeah, you're right. At least the reply letter was something." I turn my head to finally face him, and I flash him a small smile. "Whatever happens, though, you'll always be my best friend."

He gives me a sideways glance, "Way to make it cheesy." A howl of laughter came out of my throat while he drove away from his parking spot. "Next stop, the office. And you should probably give Favian a heads-up that you're going to show yourself at work today."

A groan came out of me, and I didn't even realize a groan when he'd suggested that. "Why should I give him a heads-up?"

I see him rolling his eyes while keeping his attention to the road ahead of him. "Because we don't want him to have a sudden heart attack when he sees you showing your ass in the office while you're supposed to be having a vacation."

My lips begin to purse together while I ponder that possibility of happening. "Favian is a healthy man, he can't just have a heart attack after seeing me in the office."

"Healthy or not, you still need to send him a message that you'll show up in the office." He grits his teeth while hissing those words at me.

"Fine, whatever..." I roll my eyes while digging for my phone inside my pocket. "What should I say?"