Only the Moon Watching

Chapter 44: He Cares About Me!

Damn this is awkward to send, I might be too embarrassed to talk about it. If I'm suddenly shy, well, there are at least two reasons why in here, now:

I'd rather compete in the Triwizard Cup instead of the Hunger Games, because again, I'm a nonviolent offender. But even more than that, I'd rather be talking about something different with you. My last note, I told you I do like you, lots. And then you brush it off and try to take us back to the tiny insignificant no-strings attached conversations we were having when we first met.

But there have to be strings attached in jail, Jos. That's how you get kites back and forth: you gotta tie the note to some strings and some spoons and send them up the bowl.

We're supposed to fall for each other. Maybe it's proximity, maybe it's sunk cost fallacy, maybe it's the IKEA effect: having to string a line and go fishing for notes is so much effort it makes you really, really like the contents – you feel like you worked hard to earn the kite, so it matters.

But I want to think these conversations would matter just as much if we were having them in the outside world.

I guess I'm just feeling insecure because my head's not right. There was a problem with my prescription, jail doc got busted for something shady, the replacement couldn't find my forms. I don't know the story but I'm off my ADHD meds again and my mind's just spinning. I read your letters over and over again and wonder which parts of them you mean. My brain's so scattered when I'm like this, so disorganized and muddy and my thoughts are hard to sift through and hold on to but I'm kind of glad this is happening because it's made one thing really clear to me: the only thing I'm sure about is you. I might think five thousand weird-ass random thoughts when I go on an ADHD tangent but the words, "I really like Josephina" feel true.

Even when they're followed by doubt that you like me back, I know I like you. Maybe if I were still on my meds I'd question it or try and stuff it down and be cool. Now I can't. You're not all I think about (like I said, ADHD, I go on some weird tangents) but you're the thing I think about most clearly.

I hope that makes sense to you.

(Maybe next time your other boyfriend Mike visits you can have him slip me some of his medicine? Kidding...) He had ADHD too, you said, but I know he couldn't have felt like I do because when it came down to it he lets the cop bust you. In that moment I'd have been thinking, obsessively, whether I was medicated or not: "I have to protect Jos. I really like her. I have to take the fall for her."

Maybe that was rude, I shouldn't throw him under the bus. I should rewrite this whole thing and take that bit out but I don't have enough focus at the moment to do that! Anyway, I lo–

He had tried to turn the "o" into an "I" but I could still see it.

I like you, Jos. The only thing that matters to me is that you know that. And in the Triwizard tournament, in the under the lake challenge, the person I'd care most about is you.