Returned With Notes
romanceEveryoneUnder my 'WHO ARE YOU?' the blue pen wrote: 'Not yet. If I tell you, you'll picture someone, and then I have to live up to the picture.' 'Finish the book with me instead. I only reply to notes. Deal?' Below that, they underlined a sentence in chapter 9 and wrote: 'Start here. Tell me you didn't cry.' I did cry. In 2019. In a laundromat. Deal.
We finish the book one chapter at a time. Their notes get longer. So do mine. Chapter 20, they write: 'You read people the way you read books. Too generous.' Me, under it: 'Nobody's ever accused me of that before.' Then I reach the last page — past 'The End' — and there's a full paragraph in blue, waiting. It starts with: 'Okay. The book is finished, so here's the truth I owe you.'
What happens next?
1 ways forwardThe paragraph says: 'I moved here after everything fell apart and didn't talk to anyone for two months. Then a stranger's margins made me laugh in a public park. I wrote back because your notes sounded like a friend. I'd like to hear one out loud. Bench by the box, any Saturday, 10am. I'll be the one holding OUR book.' It's Thursday. Saturday at 9:41, I'm already on the bench. At 9:52, so are they. Neither of us admits we came early. Both of us keep coming back.