There's Still A Lot of Things I Need To Say To You

Trigger warning: Mature audiences only. Contains explicit sexual content and death.

She had looked forward to cooking Thanksgiving Dinner, for him and for her entire family, but when he cancelled, because his football game got moved to the following weekend, she was kind of glad she would get him to herself when he visited. She hadn’t been going to football games at her college. Instead she went to rugby games because she was dating one of the players. In her next letter, she asked him if she would be able to see him much when he was in town.

They had broken up 8 months ago, going to different colleges in different states was too hard, but wrote to each other all the time. He wrote that the team would be there all day Sunday, “so I was thinking, if I don't have to do something with the team, and I don't think I will, and your boyfriend doesn't mind, and I hope he won't, why don't we do something. Maybe go to the zoo (hint, hint) or something. I don't really care what we do, to tell you the truth, I'm just looking forward to seeing you again.”

He sent her one more letter before December. In it, he reminisced about when they first met and how they fell in love, and wrote, “ It's funny looking back on those things. Here it is almost two years later and I remember those things like they were yesterday. I've never been or at least felt so close to someone for so long. Looking back on all the things that have happened, all the time that has passed, it seems so short. It's hard for me to remember how many cards and letters have passed between us, how much just writing to you has become a normal part of my life… I was uncertain about seeing you again, maybe you could tell from my letters. I didn't want to come on like everything between us was still the same. I know you've changed. I know you've gone out with a lot of guys since me and I didn't want to pressure you into seeing me. I guess deep inside I really wanted things to be good between us but I was so afraid of trapping you that I didn't even want to ask if they ever could. Then tonight when you said you still had a lot of feelings for me, all those feelings that I was holding back came flooding through and this letter is the result. There's still a lot of things I need to say to you, but this letter just doesn't do justice to what I'm feeling.”

When she read it, she decided to break it off with her rugby boyfriend. It wasn’t fair for her to fall head over heels in love again with her ex-boyfriend during his visit, which was already happening.

She didn’t love him, the rugby player, she didn’t pine for him, she didn’t feel lost without him, and she didn’t worry about whether he was thinking about her or not. He wasn’t passionately in love with her, in fact, he never talked about how he felt.

She thinks now, four decades later, that maybe she didn’t love him because she had wanted someone to ravish her, to love her so much that it seemed like he couldn’t breathe without her. She wanted someone to have unbridled sex with, someone who would write about wanting to suck on her toes and kiss the soft downy hair on her stomach. She didn’t know it yet, but she wanted someone who would explore her body, make her delirious with pleasure, make her feel beautiful and desirable, someone to lose herself in. She wanted to be pushed against a wall, someone who would tear her clothes off, yet be a gentle lover as well. A decade later, with more experience, she would realize that she wanted intimacy that would last for hours, where the rest of the world would dissolve away and wouldn’t matter. That was not him.

That night, she told her rugby boyfriend she didn’t think they should go out anymore, but he didn’t seem to be that upset by it. They talked a bit and cuddled, but then she got a phone call from her ex-boyfriend's older brother. She was confused at first, why would his brother call her? She hadn’t talked to him in a year or so.

It was a brief. He told her that her ex-boyfriend had passed away. He had been on a trip and he died of carbon monoxide poisoning while pulled over under an overpass during a blizzard.

None of it made sense. She just got a letter from him that day telling her how excited he would be to see her. She was making plans for what they would do the coming weekend.

His brother may have told her more, but she doesn’t remember much. She immediately went into shock. All she remembers about the rest of that night is leaving the apartment and walking down the street crying, and then stopping so she could scream at the top of her lungs. She eventually wore herself out, went back to the apartment, went to her bedroom and cried until she fell asleep.

Her second semester of college was mostly a failure on so many levels. She doesn’t remember what classes she took, how well she did on them, or much else.

By the end of the semester, she decided to go back home. She could live with her parents and not have to worry about having enough money to eat or pay rent. She would have to say goodbye to the rugby player, who she still went out with occasionally, but no proclamations of love or any other commitment had ever been made. He was chill. He seemingly had a casual attitude about just about everything and seemed to get great joy out of just about everything.

She wished she could live that way. She felt crushed and worn out and didn’t know when she would feel much joy again, but she would try to make a fresh start nestled in the cocoon of her family.

She could maybe start over, or at least try to salvage what little dreams she had left. She wasn’t broken, just a bit damaged, she told herself, but she would do great things. She knew it. She had to. Someone was watching her from above.