the brave ones // h.s.

email one - the explanation

suggested song: sunburn by ed sheeran

~~~

It takes a full two days for Eden to muster up the courage to open the emails.

It's not that she doesn't want to. After her conversation with Amenkha, she'd accepted that this was something she'd inevitably have to face. But every time she saw his name on her screen, her thoughts became clouded with memories of their last interaction - the way her heart dropped when she read his article, his face as he watched her go, how it felt to completely implode in the car alone.

One day while Amenkha is out, Eden tells herself enough is enough and parks her butt on the sofa, armed with her computer in her lap and a fierce determination to read.

"You can do it," she whispers as she pulls up her email and scrolls to the first message he sent her. "It's just an email. He's not here, he can't see you react."

Her cursor hovers over the first email sent, still lit up in bold lettering from never being clicked on. She waits a moment, for what she isn't sure, before her finger presses the mouse and a loading screen appears.

from: hstyles@gmail.com
subject: please read

Eden,

I owe you so much more than an apology.

Eden immediately has to stop reading after the first line because her legs are shaking so much the words have begun to blur. She readjusts in her chair and waits until the trembling calms down a bit before trying to read again. A pang shoots through her chest as she takes in his words; she hadn't realized how much she missed his company. Every moment of her waking hours had been dedicated to keeping herself busy to avoid thinking about him as much as possible.

"Pull it together!" she commands herself, patting her cheeks sharply. "Don't you dare cry."

Eden,

I owe you so much more than an apology - I owe you the complete truth. You are allowed to get angry and hate me, but I want you to know what happened and why things occurred the way they did. You deserve that, and you deserve to feel whatever emotions you do.

I have a confession: I read your list the night you found the wedding invite at the hotel. You were asleep and I was feeling restless and nosey, and I saw the list sitting on your bed. What I read was beautiful, Eden, you should know that. I saw how badly you wanted to experience life to the fullest, the good and the difficult, and I'm sorry I took that away from you. I thought I was helping, honestly. I went along with everything the best that I could while trying to also look out for you. In the journey to self-realization, we (meaning people as a whole) tend to get a bit reckless and make rash decisions, and I didn't want your road trip to turn into something cheap when it was actually something pure and wonderful.

I'm so sorry that I went behind your back like that but something tells me you already knew. I slipped up telling Will about the cliff-diving; I wasn't supposed to know that, and you weren't supposed to know that I knew. There were changes in your behaviour that I picked up on after that day but I couldn't say anything, for obvious reasons.

I have another confession: I knew things would play out like this. I meant for them to, as horrid as that sounds, but that doesn't change how guilty I still feel about what I put you through. Item Twelve was to let your heart break and I told myself it was better if I helped you "complete" that item as opposed to someone who could do real damage. So when we had our silly little tiff, I made sure my computer was open for you to read that article.

A complete knob-head move on my part.

I think I underestimated how much pain that was going to cause. Like I said, I took something beautiful away from you and I had no right to. But I felt it was my responsibility to help you complete your list since I went behind your back and read it. Maybe this can help you complete Item Thirteen, too.