PS I love you
John Paul sighed loudly, throwing his coat onto the sofa. 'What's up with you?' Carmel asked, noticing her brother's obvious distress. John-Paul opened his mouth, ready to tell her about yet another rough day he'd had at school, but decided against it. He'd done enough whinging. And what he'd end up saying wasn't anything they hadn't already been told a thousand times over.
'It's
nothing' he shrugged. Carmel stood up and grabbed an envelope from
the coffee table, handing it to John-Paul. 'It was pushed through the
door when I got in from work'
John-Paul stared at it. His name
emblazed on the front in black ink. The hand writing all to familiar
to him. He felt his heart race. And a burning crept on his cheeks.
'Go on then - open it' Carmel's voice snapped John-Paul back to
reality, as he remembered he wasn't alone. 'It-It's nothing' he
smiled, tucking the envelope into the back pocket of his jeans like a
treasured secret.
'You sure?' she asked. 'It must be important. Was hand delivered'
'Oh yeh? Who by?' John-Paul asked, hoping she'd say exactly who he wanted her too. She shook her head. 'No idea. I just heard them push it through the letterbox. I was upstairs doing my nails. Couldn't get downstairs in time. These heels'
John-Paul had stopped listening once she'd said she was doing her nails. Once he was certain she'd stoped talking, he smiled at her. 'Thanks' and headed towards his bedroom.
'No problem' he heard Carmel shout after him as he closed his bedroom door and sat on the end of his bed. He produced the envelope from his pocket and ran his fingers across where it said his name, as if, by just touching his handwriting, he could pretend it was him. There. With him.
He hesitated for a moment, not wanting to open it, too afraid of what it would contain. Was it some poison pen letter, stating how much he hated him. How much he'd ruined his life?
A sudden urge swept over him and he ran his fingers under the seal, until the envelope was open completely. Like a hungry tiger, he pulled the folded piece of paper from the envelope and opened it to full length.
With another sigh, he lay back on his bed, and began to read...
--
Dear John-Paul,
I know you hate me right now and I wouldn't be surprised if you'd already ripped this up and thrown it in the bin, but I hope you haven't, because this is the only way I can truly express how I'm feeling.
You know I'm no good with words. And you know I get embarrased easily. So writing a letter seemed the simple option. I would save myself a hell of a lot of embarrassment.
I must have wrote this about 50 times now, each piece of paper is in a crunched up ball by my feet. I chickened out. Nothing I wrote sounded good enough. Sounded real. But now I have to lay it down, I have to be honest.
Over the last few weeks, probably the same as you, I've been a total wreck. 've tried to move on with my life, and put the past behind me. I can do it with fights and regretful words, but I can't do it with my feelings.
I know you think I hate you. I know you think I can't stand to be around you. But you should know that's not true at all. In fact, it's the exact opposite. I do want to be around you. I do want to talk to you, but every time I pluck up the courage, I say or do something that changes my mind and I end up back at square one.
I know I tried once before, and you told me to get lost, which I'm not blaming you for, but I'm not just going to give up. It's been too long now and I'm not sure how much more I can take.
Firstly, I want you to know I never intended to get involved with Sonny. I never inteded to show you up, and I certainly never intended to cause as much pain as I have.
Did I want to hurt you? Yes, I did. Because I was hurting too. I tried forgetting what had happened. Tried pushing all the memories away. The party, The dance-off. But it wasn't that simple.
As it turns out, when your heads a mess, you do crazy things. And my head was a mess. I'd lost my firm grip on the situation. I'd lost sight of what really mattered. And all because I wanted to save face. As it turns out, it was a facade.
Every second after the fight, I thought about it, about how much I'd hurt you, and I hated myself for it.
Secondly, I want you to know I lied. I told you I wanted you to stay out of my life, when in actual fact, I wanted the exact opposite. Because as it turns out, you are my life.
When I told you at the school that I didn't want you to go, I didn't mean it. Not the way you thought I did anyway. You thought I meant I didnt want to lose you as a friend. The reality was, didn't want to lose you full stop.
Because I wasn't sure how I felt. I'd had these feelings that had started messing me up inside. I was confused. Angry. Upset. And I thought about you. And how you felt. And I knew you were huting just as much, but I didn't do anything about it. I was happy to see you suffer, because it meant I wasn't aone.
But now I regret it. Because I know we're both hurting. And I know you hate me for what I did, but believe it or not, I hate myself twice as much.
Every
single night, i close my eyes and I see the scene at the dance off.
The pushing. The way I looked into your eyes and saw the pain you
were suffering.
And that was why I kissed you.
I hoped that in that one kiss, you would realise how I felt. Then I pulled away. I don't know why I did it, but I did.
And now I regret it. Just like I regret everything else that's happened between us.
Most of all, I regret not telling you how I feel. The truth is... I can't get you off my mind. When I think of loving someone, it's you I see. When I kiss someone, it's you I taste. And I try to tell myself it isn't happening, but it's not true.
Because it is happening. And, no matter how confused I am, I know exactly what it means.
It means, John-Paul, That I love you.
So you can pretend this didn't happen, just like I did. And you can rip this up and throw it way. but it won't change the way I feel.
One day, maybe, we can be together. One day, maybe, we can laugh and have fun, just the way we used to. But, until that day comes, I just wanted you to know how I felt.
Be happy, John-Paul. Because nobody deserves it more than you.
From Craig.
PS. I love you xx
---
John-Paul
stared at the letter. He'd been staring for so long that his thumb
had started to rub against the ink, almost rubbing it from the paper.
He scanned the last line. PS. I love you PS. I love you and he
thought back to when Craig had said those words to him at the dance
off.
They had a whole new meaning now, John-Paul knew. And it was
what he wanted. It was what he'd always wanted.
But could he really have a fairy tale ending? Well, that was for him to know...
