Play the Love Away

Cole Mackenzie

Elise woke up with a start this morning. The room was illuminated by the sun seeping through the windows, making the gold paint on her walls shimmer with love. It was barely sunrise, the sun only tipping over the horizon as she groaned and fell back onto her mattress. She opened her eyes and huffed at her ceiling, then slid out of the warmth of her bed.

She threw on a robe and brushed through her hair quickly before opening her door and leaving her bedroom. She glanced into Michael's room which her father and she had left untouched. She lumbered down the stairs and found her father working with some breakfast beside him on the dining room table.

He caught her eye and put down the newspaper, "Good morning, Elise. You're up early." She groaned again as he laughed loudly and asked Mrs. Adley to make some breakfast for his tired and groggy daughter. She thanked them and opened the front door which yanked her awake with the cold air but warm breeze as spring was almost here.

She ran down the porch steps and grabbed the mail from today as she went through each envelope, hoping to find one from Gilbert but to no luck, there was none.

The other girls had invited Elise to play some imagination this morning but she had declined, wanting to spend a calming day at home with her father. Although she did accept an invitation to the story club that afternoon.

She got ready and spent most of her day practicing and reading before she waved goodbye to her father and walked outside with her notebook and pen.

"'...but I've been thinking of you since we reconnected last year. If you could find it in your heart to respond, it would mean the world to me. You are a special man. Yours, Jeannie.' Have you ever heard anything more romantic?"

Elise hadn't really been listening so she looked up in confusion. She had been buried in her new story of two younglings that realize they're in love too late. Too late to go back from leaving one another. She hoped that maybe a certain someone would have a magical way of reading her mind and do something about her wishes. But he didn't and so nobody magically appeared.

"What does it mean?" Ruby asked as she leaned in over her abandoned story on her lap. Anne smiled, "Don't you see? A widow, who believes her days of love are behind her, is suddenly reacquainted with the kindest, most wonderful man, who she knew in school, only to discover that he has lived his whole life without the bliss of true love."

Elise didn't like what Anne was doing. She loved her best friend, no doubt, but this was a total invasion of privacy, something that Mathew had clearly never wanted anyone to see.

Ruby stared into the ceiling as she daydreamed aloud, "They knew each other in school? Why, Gilbert and I knew each other in school." That was her tipping point.

She stood up from her chair and pushed her writing to the side as she ripped the letter out of Anne's hands, folding it and placing it back into the envelope, finally putting into Anne's basket. "Anne, I understand that you're interested but you need to return that to him-" "But-" "No buts. Anne, it isn't your place to snoop around Mathew's private things. Imagine if you had someone that you might've loved and someone read your secret letters. You wouldn't be quiet happy, now would you?"

The red head almost shrunk into her seat but Elise could see that her mind was still whirring, trying to find a plan to bring the two adults together. Sometimes, there was nothing she could do to stop Anne's quizzical quests.

~~~

Gilbert couldn't stop thinking about the letter.

Even as Sebastian passed a drink to him from the bartender, there was a feeling in the back of his mind that made him want to write back so desperately, but at the same time, he wanted to avoid having to explain himself at all costs. "Blythe, you ready? One rum, one babash," his friend said as Gilbert picked up the glass of orangey pinkish drink. He took a sip and winced, "Ooh! Oof. You sure that's not gonna kill you?"