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My dearest Richie,
I am writing this in the middle of a summer that refuses to end, the kind where the air feels thick and everything moves slower than it should. It’s 1995, which only matters because it explains why I’m writing instead of speaking, why these words feel safer on paper than anywhere near my mouth. I keep thinking that if I don’t do this now, I never will. Because of that, I know that it will stay lodged inside me, unfinished, for the rest of my life. I don’t know where you are when you read this, or if you ever will, but I can picture you so clearly it almost feels like you’re still standing in front of me. I remember the heat rising off of the pavement when we stood too close, the way you laughed like nothing ahead of you could ever really hurt.
I loved you in a way I didn’t know how to name. It wasn’t anything I’d seen in movies or heard in songs. It was quieter than that, something that settled in my hands and my throat, something I never figured out how to put down. Loving you felt like standing at the edge of something huge and knowing I didn’t have it in me to step forward. You talked about leaving like it was already settled, like the future had claimed you, and I listened the way you listen when you know you’re falling behind. You wanted motion, risk, a life that opened up and made room for you to breathe. I wanted to stay where things were familiar and safe, even if that meant slowly suffocating. I don’t blame you for wanting more. I don’t really blame myself either, though I probably should.
There are moments I go back to again and again, things so small they’d sound ridiculous if I tried to explain them to anyone else. The way your knee touched mine and neither of us moved away. The way your voice softened when it was just us, like you trusted the quiet not to turn against you. That night in the car with the windows down, the radio low, sweat sticking our shirts to our backs, when for a brief second I thought maybe this could be enough, maybe I could live inside that “almost”. But “almost” is a brutal thing. “Almost” keeps you close without ever letting you arrive.
I am afraid in ways I don’t know how to explain without sounding weak. I am afraid of being seen too clearly, of what would happen if I reached for you and someone noticed. I am afraid of my mother, of this town, of the way people look at you when you don’t fit cleanly into what they expect. You move through that fear like it’s just weather, something inconvenient but temporary. I admired that more than I ever said. I envied it. I think part of why I loved you is because you were everything I couldn’t make myself become.
If things were different, if I were different, this letter wouldn’t need to exist. Maybe I’d be writing to tell you when I’d see you again instead of explaining why I can’t follow. But the lives we want are pulling us in opposite directions. Mine stays close to silence and compromise. Yours stretches forward, wide and open, like it always belonged to you. I would only slow you down. I would turn certainty into doubt, and you deserve better than that. You deserve a life that doesn’t have to shrink itself just to keep going.
Still, I need you to know this. What we had mattered. What I felt was real, even if I never let it fully live. You changed me, even if I never left this place. Somewhere inside me there will always be the version of myself who stood beside you in the summer of 1995 and almost told the truth. I don’t know if this letter is an apology, or a confession, or just proof that I existed here and loved you the only way I knew how.
Wherever you end up, I hope the road treats you gently. I hope you find someone who meets you without flinching, who says your name out loud, who chooses you without hesitation. I’ll carry you with me in quieter ways, in songs I can’t explain, in the way summer still tightens my chest. This is goodbye, I think, or as close as I can get.
~ Eddie