Truth or Dare

Letters and Borrowed Books

                                                                                                                          Lydia

When Charlie and I got home the next morning, our dad was already at work. So as per usual, I went to my room and he went out to the garage to do whatever it is that he did in the garage. It felt good to just lay down on the bed and relax. Even though Wes was a fantastic pillow, sleeping on a crowded couch was still uncomfortable and not the best on your back.

I closed my eyes and laid my head down, but something was under it that wasn’t my pillow.

"What the heck?" I sat up and looked. A envelope. A very fat envelope, with my name in cursive. "Who still rights in cursive?" I muttered, shrugging and ripping it open to find a nice, long letter.

Lydia,

I'm currently sitting here on a train on my way to see you. You don't know I'm coming, at least I assume that Nicole didn’t add telling you into her plan. That would kind of ruin the point of a surprise I guess. This letter is also a part of the plan, but I'll have you know that it was my part of the plan. Your Island Boy isn't all that much of a idiot.

Here's the thing Archer Girl, and you better read all of this and not just skim. Because this is important. The thing is, I think I'm in love with you. No, I do not think, I know. Lydia Isabella Hanson, over the past three years I have fallen in love with you. Very slowly, so slowly I didn’t even know it myself. But I woke up one day and it hurt a bit to see you with Brando. It hurt slightly to see him kiss your cheek in your profile picture, to see pictures of your dances with him. You looked so beautiful in those pictures and all I could see was this amazing girl standing next to a boy who didn’t deserve her.

This was all before you told me about what he would do when you upset him. Before everything. So slowly, very painfully slowly, I fell in love with you. Each day it hurt a bit more to see you with him. To hear your stories about what was going on. The weeks we spent together at camp were ones I looked forward to. Hearing your voice, your laugh, seeing the fire in your eyes, those are all the things I look forward to when I know I'm going to see you. But these are also the things that hurt for me to experience them. Because being with you, hearing your voice and your laugh and seeing your smile, I know you're not mine. Being around you is like when you borrow a good book from someone. You fall in love with the story and the characters and read it as many times as you can before you have to give it back. And you don't notice how much you missed the book until you're sitting there one day and you can't remember that one line or scene or chapter that you loved so much, and you have no way of going back to look it up because it’s not yours.

You, Lydia, are my borrowed book. You are not mine, no matter how much I enjoy you. But I wish you were. I wish with every fiber of my being and all my heart that you were mine. And I hope one day, like that borrowed book, that I could be lucky enough to come across the good fortune of having you.

I know you might be confused right now. I mean, I'm confused and I'm the one writing and feeling these things. I guess since the one explaining is also confused, the confusion can't be help. But let me try, okay? I'm going to try to explain this. And I'm going to start by telling you the things about you that I fell in love with.

The first thing I fell for was your mind. Your witty comebacks and sassy remarks. Your intelligence and how you could so quickly turn a insult into a compliment. Your brilliant, lovely mind is, well, beautiful and lovely. Next came your personality. Again, that sharp wit and tongue, the fight in you that you will never get up. The fact that you could go from defense and on guard to sweet and caring and open. It's truly remarkable Lydia, because you have the rare ability to see past what others think of you to see who you want to be and how to get there. I love and admire your confidence and courage to be who you are and the fight that's inside of you.