Mindy tapped her foot impatiently as the elevator ascended. She nervously adjusted the belt at the waist of her coat. It was 7:00 am, far earlier than she usually arrived at the office, but she was hoping to get there before Danny had a chance to sift through his mail.
She let out a sigh as another number finally lit up. One floor at a time, slowly but surely she would arrive. That's how elevators worked, right? They didn't actually take you through a portal to another dimension where Beyoncé was president, and people didn't mail letters they should have just kept to themselves. If only.
Finally the blessed ding sounded, and Mindy flew through the doors before they were completely open. The office was quieter than she was used to. The hum of the air conditioner blowing out warmth into the office and the ticking of a clock somewhere were the only things to break the silence.
She tiptoed around the secretaries' desk, feeling a little ridiculous in her trench coat and oversized sunglasses. She'd forgone the fedora, but still felt like the femme fatale in a B-list noir film. It had seemed like the right choice this morning, but now she would be hard pressed to explain her outfit if someone were to burst into the office.
She lifted the sunglasses from her face and settled them on top of her head, picking up stacks of paper and methodically flipping through them. No mail. What the hell, Betsy? This whole situation made Mindy realize she didn't exactly know the inner workings of this office. Did the mail get dropped off here at all? Did Betsy go pick it up at the post office? All she knew was that when she arrived at 9:00 there was a stack of correspondence already on her desk.
She felt her anxiety building. Her stomach flipped and her throat constricted. She bent over and dry heaved. Why the hell did she write that letter? Danny was always telling her that she was too impulsive. She'd been riding the residual feelings that had pooled inside of her when she'd seen the hurt expression on his face and later when she'd watched walk away with the brunette.
The realization that she was losing the closeness generated by their letters sent a wave of disappointment over her. She missed him. He had become her go-to friend, but his letters had been her only window into his life. That's what had prompted her to send the stupid letter.
She shrugged off her coat in frustration, draping it over the back of Betsy's chair. It had been two days since that night, and she had felt confident about her decision at first, coming into work with a little vibration of anticipation in her chest.
She'd found herself staring at Danny with expectancy, ready to face the music. She'd fully expected to walk into work the next day and have him immediately call her into his office for a confrontation. Nothing had happened. The day went by exactly as it always had, her and Danny having a couple normal interactions. Nothing strange, although he did ask her why she kept looking at him like he had something on his face.
The day had passed, and Mindy was afforded an entire night to dwell on the implications of the letter. It was enough to make her edgy the next day, jumping every time someone knocked on her door, glancing up at secretary's desk. Still nothing. If anything Danny was a bit more indifferent to her than usual. He'd been completely engrossed in his work.
Last night she hadn't slept at all. She'd tossed and turned, getting up multiple times to walk in circles around her apartment. The letters, such a reassurance before, were screaming at her from the night stand. She'd angrily snatched them all up and stuffed them in her top drawer.
Now she was determined to find the revelatory scrap and destroy it, but she'd gone through every piece of paper on Betsy's desk and found nothing. She seized her coat and stalked over to her own office, swinging open the door dramatically. It was dark still, the dim light of early morning barely casting a glow across her desk.
She stepped over to her desk and flicked on the lamp. A swift surge of surprise overwhelming her when she saw a solitary envelope sitting on her ink blotter. Completely blank but for her name quickly scrawled across the front of it. She recognized the handwriting immediately. She'd seen it often enough in the passive aggressive notes left on sandwiches in the break room fridge. Danny.
She breathed in tentatively, afraid to make a sound, gingerly reaching forward and laying her fingers on top of the envelope. Without removing her hand she sat down in her chair and stared at it. She was almost afraid to open it.
She never expected him to read her letter and then write back. That had been the unrealistic fantasy. In her head, the ideal outcome had been that she'd write Danny, and he'd write her back, just like he had done when she was away, but they'd stay exactly the same at the office, until one day…
Well she hadn't really gotten that far in her imagination. What did she really expect to come from this? There was a small bit of hope in her, seeing the letter lying on her desk. Maybe he reciprocated her feelings but found it hard to articulate them.
She slipped her finger under one edge of the envelope, tearing across the top and pulling out a solitary page covered in writing. She took a deep breath and began to read.
Danny sat on the edge of his bed buttoning up his dress shirt. It was far too early to be getting ready for work, even for someone as overly punctual as Danny, but he hadn't been able to sleep. He fastened the last button and glanced over to his nightstand. The cause of his insomnia innocently lying there.
He reached over and picked it up, noting the faint scent of lavender that still clung to it. Mindy's hand lotion. The one she applied before she went to bed at night. He'd noticed it standing in her hallway the night he'd followed her home. The familiar scent had wafted over to him, triggering the memory of those nights while she'd been away. He'd never noticed it before she started writing him from Haiti. It permeated every single one of the letters he'd received. She must have written them right before going to bed each night.
He looked down at the hastily scrawled lines that trailed across the stationary. He read it for the tenth time.
Danny,
First of all, how dare you? How dare you turn back into the grumpy old man I knew before? It's really not fair. I mean, you write me all these long and insightful letters like you think you're F. Scott Fitzgerald or something (yeah, I haven't actually read The Great Gatsby, but I did see the movie, so don't start), and then you go and pretend you're still this silently suffering macho man, but you tell me you kept the letters I sent you? I just don't get it. I feel like we developed this deep friendship with our correspondence and it's just slipping away now that I'm back, and every time I try to talk to you about it someone or something interrupts us and we never get around to it.
I guess this is a roundabout way to say that I miss you. I miss the letters. I still have all of yours too. I'm going through friend withdrawals, Danny. I find myself rereading them late at night before I go to bed, and I have to stop and ask myself, "What the hell am I doing?" because it's the kind of thing that a lovesick high schooler would do. I shouldn't have to reread your letters to feel close to you again. If we're really friends, I should be able to call you when I want to talk, but I can't, because I don't know if we really are friends, and it pisses me off.
Tonight was the worst, too. I saw those pictures, and I was so jealous of Christina (I mean really, I never knew you had it in you to be so vulnerable) and so mad at her and all of her pretentious friends. I was mad at Jason and Brendan and all those people who were looking down their noses at me, but you were right there, standing beside me, at my side. Tonight was the first time I'd even seen glimmer of the closeness we'd shared through our letters, but it disappeared shortly after.
And that woman… I know I told you to go with her, but there's always been this little part of me that has thought people could read my mind if I just thought hard enough, and I was mentally screaming at you. I didn't want to have to tell you to stay. I wanted you to choose our friendship over a one night stand. I wanted you to pick me, and you didn't. What surprised me was the feeling I got watching you walk away. I was jealous. Jealous of a tall, sort of attractive, probably much older than me, brunette. I mean, look at me, I have no need to be jealous. I'm hot, ok, and not just that "hey, you're curvy, rappers must like you" kind of hot, but legitimately hot to people of all creeds and cultures. I was jealous because you were walking away with her and not me.
And it's not because I'm some lonely spinster jumping at the person standing nearest to me, ok. Jason actually tracked me down on the way home. He apologized, and he wants to continue dating. The only thing is, I don't know if I'm interested at all. You were right, he treated me badly, talked down to me, and I don't know why I felt the need to prove myself to him, or to any guy for that matter, but it's how it has always been. You're the only person I've ever known who sees my faults as something merely on the surface. You know who I am deep down, underneath them all.
I'm rambling here. I know you don't like that, but I'm ramping up to something. I have to build up to it because it genuinely terrifies me. What if our ability to be close friends is indicative of something else? What is this between us? I've never had a guy friend like you. I've never felt jealous when one of my friends went off with someone else. Danny, I'm starting to think there may be something else here, and if there's any chance that you've felt it too, well, I have to know.
Mindy.
P.S. If I'm totally off base here, let's just say that I had as much to drink as you tonight, and you can disregard this letter.
P.P.S. Who am I kidding? I had one glass of champagne and a corn dog on the way home. I'm as sober as a nun.
Danny laughed to himself. The letter was exactly the kind of thing he expected from her. He was actually surprised when most of the letters he'd received from her while in Haiti turned out to be so short and to the point. Only a few of them slipped into her normal cadence.
He refolded the paper and slipped inside the drawer of his nightstand, tucking it in beside the others. She wasn't the only one who reread the letters at night. He'd been doing it since she'd gotten back. One particularly rough night had been the very day she'd arrived back home. He'd been crushed when she'd announced her engagement to Casey, and he'd felt ridiculous about it.
He'd come home that night and reread all of them, looking for any indication that something like that was coming. He'd found nothing. In fact, the last dozen or so letters didn't even mention the pastor. Danny had deluded himself into believing that it wasn't working out. He'd finished off an expensive bottle of scotch and fallen asleep with the letters strewn across his bed. Christina had been off at some art show in the city, leaving him alone in Jersey.
Her almost-wedding had been a tough one too. It had been the last moment he'd opened up to her. It was beginning to be a ridiculous pattern. He'd open up to her, say something reassuring, and then she'd just smile and tell him she wanted to be with another person. So after that night he'd stopped. No more softly spoken words by open windows.
Mindy had broken off the engagement, but still Danny felt gun-shy around her. She'd never shown any interest in him, and he had begun to think that whatever he was feeling because of her letters wasn't real in some way. This latest one had his palms sweaty and a giddy bloom of hope expanding in his chest.
It had been on the very top of the stack of mail sitting on his desk when he'd arrived at the office. He'd immediately recognized the handwriting, and a frown of confusion spread across his features when he looked at the return address. "Ms. Pad Thai."
As he'd sat at his desk and read it, he became immediately thankful that he'd come to work early. His absolute inability to lie about anything would have made an encounter with Mindy terribly awkward, and at first he had no clue how to respond.
It took him an entire day to write her a letter in response, and yet another one to screw up the courage to leave it on her desk after she left. He'd found himself marching over to her office on multiple occasions, ready to just confront her outright, but something stopped him. There were many times with Mindy when he became flustered and tongue tied. He hadn't wanted this to be one of them. Taking the time to compose a letter was exactly what he'd needed in order to tell her how he really felt. It was almost as if she knew that.
Now, a strange calm settled over him. He'd been nervous all night, but it wasn't a fearful nervousness. It was a curious feeling of anticipation. He wanted the day to come as quickly as possible. He wanted her to read his letter, and he wanted to see the expression on her face when she realized what she meant to him. The only downside was, most of the office would be there to witness it, and while he was open to Mindy being in his life, he didn't really care for the nosiness of everyone else.
He rose from the bed, retrieving his jacket from the closet. It was early yet, but he couldn't wait around here any longer. He needed to get out of his apartment and get the day started. He headed out the door, a lightness carrying him on his way. She was right, there really was something here.