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Nick sat down at his kitchen table staring at the small postcard in front of him, and took another swallow of wine. He usually liked to savor it, enjoying the earthy notes of the rich red he had poured, but he wasn't sure he could even taste it right now.
Why was this small scrap of life from twenty years ago hitting him so hard?
His mind flashed back to when he was eighteen, his senior year in high school—captain of the football team, yet so quiet and reserved when he was off the field. Never too close to anyone, always holding something back.
Charlie had changed that in him though.
An exchange student from England staying with the Vermas, Nick and him had fallen in together almost immediately. Just a month after the school year started he already felt closer to Charlie than he did with Sai, Christian, and Otis—presumably his best friends.
He always looked back on that year with fondness—the year before all his friends split up and went away to college. Nick smiled again, remembering how Charlie had called it “uni”.
Twenty years ago. A lot had happened in those twenty years. He’d gotten married, had a few kids, gotten divorced and rediscovered himself. He had learned some new things about himself in the balance as well.
He had toyed with his identity for a while and never really settled on one that fit. Pan? Queer? Bisexual? It all seemed so definite and fixed. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure where he fit, and even if he fit. And he certainly didn’t have much of a chance to explore it in this small town where he ended up.
So why this crisis now? He had long come to terms with his undefined identity. His thumb brushed over the small, neat handwriting on the post card.
Dear Nick,
I hope everything is good with you. I’m sorry that I haven’t written as much as I said I would. I promise I will start. I am still alive. Are you? I haven’t heard from you. I hope you are taking care of yourself and studying hard.
Don’t you miss me at all?
All my love, Charlie
PS: Please, please, please write me.
Nick dug out his old photo albums and flipped through them. Every picture of him and Charlie showed them touching in some way. Their shoulders, thighs, elbows—casually connected. One of them was always looking at the other even if the other looked towards the camera. Or they both were looking at each other, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings.
Even in the group photos, it was Nick’s arms around Charlie’s shoulders. A sudden flash of scent memory overtook Nick as he remembered the smell of the cream Charlie used in his hair.
They had never talked about girls. Nick had a few disastrous dates that year, but hadn’t been looking. He was perfectly content with just his friends, and he was beginning to realize why.
After the year was up, they had kept in touch sporadically. A few letters. A package Charlie sent with an inadvertent note to someone else.
Nick paused.
Did he still have the note?
At the time, the package had contained some trinkets from a recent vacation and a small note folded into a triangle. Nick had opened it, excited for a letter, but it was clearly written for someone else. Some sweetheart of Charlie’s—a girl he dated perhaps—inadvertently included with his package. He had been filled with second-hand embarrassment and felt bad for reading it, but still poured over the note—sentiments of knowing how hard it is to be the one who leaves, harder than being the one who was left. Lots of flowery prose about loving and leaving and loss.
Nick never told him that the note had been included in his package.
Years went by with little contact, and eventually a wedding invitation came in the mail. Long after Nick forgot the note, forgot the postcards, forgot the package.
And then ten years ago, a simple invite to Charlie and James’s wedding. Right after Nick and Imogen got married. With Imogen pregnant, he could hardly fly to London, but he had sent off a card. And when his first child was born, he had received a package in the mail with a note and small rattle.
They hadn’t talked since. Or written since.
Yet here he was, staring at a 20 year old post card, scrambling and re-evaluating everything.
Because that postcard did not sound platonic. And the note? What if the note was actually for him?
His mind did the same pull and snap of a rubber band as yet another past relationship snapped into place. He’d been through this before—with the football camp counselor, the art instructor, all past relationships that were more than they seemed. Unrecognized as such at the time, but there were clearly deeper feelings.
But Charlie? Had he had a crush on Charlie? Clearly the answer was yes. And had it been reciprocated? His thumb brushed over the text, so carefully printed on the back of the postcard. He turned it over, hoping for a clue, but it was just a map of London.
He doubted he had the note anymore. He remembered the flash of jealousy when he read it, and now felt an overpowering grief.
He swallowed down the last of the wine in his glass, and went to pour himself another, surprised to find that the bottle was empty.
He thought back again to those years so long ago, laying in the back of his pickup truck, shoulders touching, counting the stars in the sky. They were talking about what each wanted from the future. About how they would still meet up someday, even though an ocean separated them.
Don’t you miss me at all?
Please, please, please write me.
The words jumped off the postcard, haunting him. Because he hadn’t. He had moved on. Crushed beyond any rational explanation and sad to be missing his best friend, it had been easiest to just put him out of his mind. Dive into a new school, first dates, new relationships.
Charlie became something protected in his memory. A point in time that he looked on with profound fondness, but surrounded by an ache he could never fully understand.
Perhaps now he knew why it hurt so much.
He thought about ways that they could reconnect. Everyone was findable online these days.
But he also wondered—now that he recognized this for what it was—if he could bear it.
Perhaps it was better instead to leave it as something that could have been, and never know the truth.
Nick placed the wine bottle in the recycling and rinsed the wine glass, placing it in the top rack of the dishwasher. He tucked the postcard into the picture album, closing it and putting it back on the shelf, and took himself to bed.
The work of a teacher starts early in the morning, and his kids will be with him all next week.
Best to not think about it anymore.