Work Text:
C,
Tomorrow you get on a train and I can’t sleep, and it’s not just because of your snoring. Yes, you do snore, stop arguing. I can’t sleep because there’s so many things I want to say to you but I’m still afraid. So, instead I will write them down, and then when you’re gone I’ll post this to you, so you can have these words in my absence.
I don’t think I’m afraid for you anymore. I was worried you would burn your life down for me and then resent me for it, but now I see that you didn’t do it for me, but you did it for yourself and that’s so much better.
I know you think I am the brave one, but you don’t even see how brave you are. You are so much more sure of yourself than the married farm girl that got off the bus in Chicago. Not that I wasn’t a fan of that farm girl, it was so fun to make you blush with just a wink. It still is. I knew from the very first moment I saw you that you were going to be something special, I just didn’t realise how much you would end up meaning to me.
You once told me that no one had ever believed in you like I did, and I find that so hard to fathom, who wouldn’t believe in you? You’re a little weird, sure, but you’re also so many other things, like smart, brave and kind. I guess I have to change my list of things I believe in to Zoology, Astrology, ice cubes, and you. And pizza, I believe in pizza. It’s just so good it feels like it should be illegal. Oh and us, I believe in us.
I wish I wasn’t so scared to tell you exactly how I feel. I wish that when you were talking about our future that I could have told you that I daydream about lying in bed next to you while you go over your game cards, in a house that is all our own. I wish I could have said that when I come home at the end of the day I want to sit down to dinner with you and talk about our days. I wish I could hold your hand at the movies and kiss you in the rain. I wish, I wish, I wish.
I used to think that wishes and dreams weren’t for people like us, until I met you. You showed me what it meant to be hopeful again. You made me realise it was okay to want things. And maybe I can’t look you in the eyes and say it just yet, but what I want is a future with you. I want to spend my Summers on the field, looking at your thighs as you crouch down behind the mound and my Winters, well I don’t really care what we do as long as we do it together. In whatever way we can manage. Maybe it won’t be the life that you dreamt of for yourself, but I promise to try and make it the best life it can be.
I promise from now on I’m going to try and be less afraid. To be as brave as you.
Let’s do this damn thing, let’s swing for the goddamn fences.
I think I’ll wake you up now, because you’re sleeping through our last few hours together and I can think of much better ways for us to spend our time.
Yours,
GG x
Greta,
I’m on the train and we just said goodbye. I watched you out the window until you were too far away to see clearly anymore. It’s lucky I spent the last two days memorising every detail of you, because those memories will carry me all the way through until Christmas.
I never dreamed that I could feel like this, that it could be like how it is in all the stories I’ve read.
I thought that for me, I would only experience love as a kind of fondness, something that started as a friendship and grew into love. I never knew it could be all consuming like this. I never thought that I would have someone who consumed my every waking thought, and my sleeping ones too.
You are like a magnet, the harder I try to fight the pull the more pointless it seems. Even now as the train gets further away I have to fight the urge to get off at the very first stop and come running back into your arms.
I know that we both need this time to ourselves, but it may just be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, leaving you.
These last two days have been a gift and a glimpse into a future that I want so badly my heart aches. I don’t care how hard it is, or will be, I still want this.
My fingers ached to be laced in yours, my lips still feel the ghost of your kiss.
I think a lot about how I almost didn’t get on that train to Chicago all those months ago, and I feel so sorry for that version of me, because she would never have gotten to know you. She would have never gotten to know herself.
You changed my whole life when you introduced me to pizza. Also, when you kissed that first time. I know you don’t believe in luck, but I feel so lucky to be yours.
I’ll be counting the seconds until I see you again.
Love,
C x