This Is How It Goes

Chapter Thirty: Change

I pick up the envelope. It has my name on it, Kat in messy handwriting. Not messy as in the writer had little time but writing that reflects a messy mind. I slip my finger underneath the opening and rip. Inside is a letter. The authors script barely legible. S's look like fives and v's look like u's. I begin to read.

Dearest Katarina Elizabeth Ryan,

I think I might be in love with you.

Scrap that, I am in love with you. In every sense of the word. You remind me of why people write letters, songs, poems. All I've wanted to do since I met you is write about you. My hands itch for pen and paper whenever I so much as hear your name. I love you. I love you. I love you.

God that feels good. Not quite as much as having you say the words back. Which I know will never happen because you have a saviour complex. You want to protect everyone. It's a shame you're not very good at it. I don't know why you're like this, maybe it's an older sibling thing, because of your mother.And I don't know if I'll ever find out because whenever I get close to finding out you push me back. You have built four very sturdy walls around yourself, around me and one day they will fall; crushing us both. I don't know if we'll be able to survive that. 

So I'm going to do the both of us a favour and just admit what we both know. I am in love with you. With your smile and that sexy little walk of yours that I can tell you've been practising since you realized it might get you places. I am utterly besotted with your laugh. It fills up the room and never fails to make me grateful for having heard it. I am in love with your horrible sense of direction, the way you speak in paragraphs, your fuzzy sweater with the lambs. I love the curves and crevices of your body. I am in love with you. Just you. 

From the moment I met you I knew I was going to need you in my life. You're my oxygen. And it kills me that you can breathe perfectly fine when I'm not around. I don't expect you to feel the same way. In fact I know you won't. You won't let yourself. But I don't care anymore Kat. I need you to know how I really feel. Or I will drown in this emotion.

Maybe I'll give this to you, maybe I won't. I want to be brave but it's hard when the fallout could be fatal. Promise me it won't be fatal.

If you're going to ignore me again, please give me some warning. Just a heads up would be good. I don't want to ruin this but I understand if my letter makes it awkward. I'm surprised I'm not majoring in awkward. I should really talk to the careers counsellor about that. Do you think she'd help me switch this late in the semester? Anyway, please take this letter with a grain of salt. It isn't asking you for an answer. This letter is simply notifying you of my love for you, Katarina Elizabeth Ryan. Katarina with the long legs, short hair and an even shorter tolerance for ignorance. So this letter will make you happy I guess, you don't have to be ignorant to my feelings anymore. They're on the table. Sweep them aside if you want. But I'd like it if we could stop hiding from what we both already know.

Sincerely the biggest loser you know,

Isaac Hubert Healy

P.s Yes that's right, my middle name is Hubert. Use this as a weapon against me in the future if you so wish.

Slowly I fold the letter up into one neat, little square. Then I reopen it and smooth out the creases, looking at the jumble of words that make up sentences, questions, statements. I've just come from a communications exam and definitions for proxemics and facework and paralanguage are still swimming around in my head. My brain starts analysing his use of ethos, pathos and logos automatically. It's certainly credible, and emotional. He's got my heart clasped in both of his hands, commanding it to listen. As for logical, well that's what scares me most. Because what he's said, almost makes sense.