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It falls onto the floor when Bitty is moving a box from a large pile to an even larger pile. He didn’t even notice it at first, it took stepping on it to even realize that something had fallen out of place. Lifting his foot and hoping to God he didn’t step on something important, Bitty recognized the blue envelope almost immediately.
“My,” Bitty said as he bent to pick it up, he turned the envelope over in his hands and recognized his messy scrawl from a 7th grader, “it has been a while, hasn’t it?”
No one was in the room to hear him, Jack was outside talking to the movers about where to put the second fridge (because of course, they needed a second fridge, Bitty was already planning his persuasive speech where he convinces Jack to get a third). He checked the box he had just moved and, yeah, it’s the box of old mementos that his mother had sent up before their big move into the new house. He and Jack had been looking for ages and the perfect house seemed to go for sale just before they made an offer on one they were willing to compromise on. The location was great, the kitchen was beautiful, and there was plenty of room for their family to grow. It was just a family of three now with Bitty, Jack, and their orange tabby Marmalade (who was sulking in a closet somewhere), but they had plans.
Bitty slips his thumb under the lip of the envelope, ready to open it after so many years, when he heard Jack tell the movers that they could put the couch wherever for now and that simply wouldn’t do so Bitty set the envelope on their kitchen table and headed out to give everyone a talking to.
Much later, when the biggest pieces of furniture are where they should be and the boxes were in the rooms they belonged in, Bitty fell into bed with a huff. Moving was always exhausting but he couldn’t shake the feeling of excitement about his first home. They, meaning mostly Eric, were planning a housewarming party and all their friends would come and enjoy the space together. Bitty was already planning the menu and he was sure it was going to be as good as the Kegsters at Samwell minus the near alcohol poisoning experiences.
He rolled over and stretched out on the king sized bed, taking advantage of the fact that Jack was downstairs, putting the last of his books on the shelf before heading up. He closed his eyes for a few minutes but was woken up with a light ‘pat’ to his face. Bitty opened an eye to see blue and he sat up, the envelope dropping to his chest.
“That was in the kitchen with your name on it, fanmail maybe, eh?” Jack said as he grabbed a towel from one of the boxes in their room.
“You’re a very rude mailman,” Bitty said as he picked it up and shot a look at Jack, though there was no anger there, only the usual love and bemusement. He gets a laugh from Jack in response but then his darling fiancé is in the bathroom to shower away the day’s stress. Bitty doesn’t blame him, he ditched Jack’s book shelving venture to shower earlier.
Left alone with the envelope, Bitty sighs and sits cross-legged at the center of his bed. He remembered the day that he first saw this envelope. It was the day before winter break in 7th grade and his teacher no doubt was just looking for something to fill the time for a bunch of rowdy 12-year-olds who wanted to leave already.
“What you’re going to do,” Ms. Coppel had instructed, “is write a letter to your future self. So y’all are twelve now so why don’t you think about ten years in the future. Ten whole years! Y’all will be 21… 22, that’s perfect. Talk about what you now know, what you hope you know when you read it later...Just have fun with it, okay? Draw a picture if you want.”
12-year-old Bitty had taken the task very seriously, and he was happy to have something to do between the start of the period and early release. He didn’t have many friends in his English class so he appreciated the work. He’d even had to ask Ms. Coppel for extra paper because he’d written so much!
25-year-old Bitty smiled at the memory of it, just a couple years off of when he was supposed to read it. A few years late wouldn’t be so bad… what had he even written? Lord. Almost a decade and a half ago…
With a deep breath, Bitty opened the envelope, which gave way very easily because of its age, and he started reading:
HEY ERIC!!!!
Wow, your 22, hows that feel? That feels pretty old to me right now but I guess maybe I’ll feel different later!! I'm in 7th grade right now and if you forgot our English teacher was named Ms. Coppel. Do you still hate reading a lot? I do right now, its not fun and its hard to focus! Sometimes I’ll just start thinking about being out on the ice. OH!!! Do we still figure skate? I sure hope we do its so fun. We’ve been doing so good I hope you’re still on the ice, I’ve got a competition next week and woah! It’s gonna be fun. I hope you have lots of fun right now.
Do you have a lot of friends? Right now I just have Anna and Riley but Coach says I should have more guy friends. I dont know. Sometimes I just feel really lonely sometimes around them. I hope you never feel that because it stinks. The boys are so mean here, I made the mistake about talking about figure skating to them and they think its girly. And… you remember what happened. It’s not fun. Mama and Coach didnt even notice because those boys lied about where I was and… has anything like that happened again? I’m so scared its going to happen again.
I wish I could just be like everyone else sometimes. You figured it out, right? We’re normal? I just don’t want anyone to make me feel bad for what I like. Maybe we like football now. That’d be cool. Coach would be happy about that.
Do you remember that Hana asked us to the Sadie Hawkins dance? It’s all the way in spring and she asked me last week she was real excited. I should’ve been excited too that someone asked me, Hana’s pretty but.. I don’t know. I’d rather be her friend. Maybe I’m wrong though and we really like Hana. Maybe we’re even with her still, that’d be romantic, I guess.
I just want us to be happy. I’m not happy and I think we’re moving soon and.. I don’t know a lot of things. Everything feels weird and I always have a stomach ache really. I wish it wasn’t like this now. I hope next year’s better. I wish that you could tell me its better.
Okay… everyone’s packing up their things so I should too. Have a great day or night and I guess I’ll see me in 10 years. Haha!
Your close friend,
Eric Bittle
Bitty barely gets through reading the letter because he’s ugly crying with tears everywhere, even on the old paper which doesn’t help the already light pencil. He hardly notices that he’s being hugged by Jack who’s wet hair is also dripping onto his shirt. He sniffs and folds up the letter and tucks it back in the envelope before letting himself be held by Jack.
“Who was it from? Handwriting looked young,” Jack says, spying the envelope on the other side of Eric but not reaching for it. He could tell it was too private for him to pry. Eric got fanmail now and again from his vlogs and more recently his cookbook, so it wasn’t odd for Jack to find mail here and there, but this envelope was noticeably different.
“A really sweet kid who had it really rough,” Bitty manages as he picked up the envelope and sees his name on the back of it again, “He tried real hard but it was never enough, it’s like people could smell he was different or something…”
“Are you going to write back?”
“I guess I should, huh? He deserves an answer…”
“I’ll try to go find some tissues for you somewhere, alright bud?” Jack said as he got up from the bed, wary, as if he wasn’t sure if he should be leaving Eric alone.
“I’ll be fine, you worrier, just, go find me something. A tissue, paper towel, anything,” Bitty waves his hand and looks back down at the letter.
He doesn’t get a chance to move before Jack is back with an entire roll of toilet paper and the gesture bubbles a laugh out of Eric because he really can’t believe he’s crying on the first night they’ve moved into their first house together. He wipes his eyes, blows his nose, tosses the tissues on the bedside table to be dealt with in the morning and stretches out on the bed. Wordlessly, he throws his arms up in the air and like magic, Jack Zimmermann appears between them and lays down so he’s blanketing Eric.
“S’been a long day,” Jack mumbles into the fabric of Bitty’s shirt.
“Sure has, another long one tomorrow.” Bitty begins to card his fingers through Jack’s hair and he relishes in the way he feels his fiance relax because of it.
They don’t need to say anything and so they sit in a comfortable silence, Jack’s presence on top of him is grounding enough that Eric doesn’t feel like the world is collapsing in on him anymore. He didn’t think he carried the trauma of seventh grade so closely to his heart but, well, the joke was on him.
He looks over to the far end of the bed, barely visible over Jack, to see the letter set aside for now. Would it be totally silly to write back? He wanted to tell 12-year-old-Eric that it gets tremendously better. Not fast, but it does. He ends up engaged to one of the Alternate Captains on the Providence Falconers, for one. That makes up for a lot of stuff. But that captain also loves him endlessly and is the sweetest person he’s ever known. His videos do well, so well that Bitty has been guest featured on a number of shows. He’s coming up with another cookbook devoted solely to pies which is a dream in of itself. They’ve got a cat, who is still very angry at them but otherwise loves her parents. And they want kids, two or three. Bitty’s life had fallen into place after everything seemed to fall apart first. He wanted to reach back thirteen years and hug himself close to let him know everything but in a way, he was glad for how everything worked out. That doesn’t mean he thought now that it was peachy keen that those boys threw him in that custodial closet, but God, if everything brought him to this moment, with Jack’s breath steadying out as he falls asleep on top of him, with their new house around them, with plans for unpacking and plenty of new house shenanigans tomorrow… well. It was all worth it in the end.
A year later, when Bitty releases his second cookbook, the dedication is to the usual people, his Moomaw, his mother, to Jack for being a willing (and loving!) test subject and one more underneath, to himself in 7th grade, “It gets unbelievably better”.