Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 57 - GOD, I MISS HIM

The morning sun stretched across the curtains in pale gold threads, like it, too, was hesitant to rise. I walked barefoot into the living room, the wooden floor cool against my skin. Claire was in the kitchen stirring a pot of champorado, and my dad sat across from her, reading the paper with his glasses low on his nose. I nodded good morning, my voice still asleep in my throat. Then I saw it, a plain cream envelope resting on the edge of the coffee table. My name on the front. No return address. But the handwriting stopped me. I knew it. Olive. The air around me thinned. I sat down slowly, brushing my fingertips over the paper like it might disappear if I wasn’t careful.

And then I opened it.

---

Betty,

I don’t know if you’ll even read this. But I have to try.

I know we were never friends. I know I never gave you a reason to see me as anything other than someone who hovered near the edges of your life, watching and waiting. I told myself I wasn’t hurting anyone. That I was just invisible.

But I wasn’t invisible. I was cruel.

I watched you. I watched the way James looked at you. I saw the way you lit up a room, even when it was obvious you were barely holding yourself together. And I hated you for it. I envied how you still shined, even in pieces. I wanted what you had. I wanted James to look at me the way he looked at you. I won’t lie. I won’t say “I didn’t mean to.” Because I did. I meant to hurt you. I thought if I could break you down, I’d finally be enough for him. I see now how warped that is, how obsession is a slow rot, and how easy it is to call destruction love when you're desperate to feel anything at all. When James drifted, I grabbed his hand like he was a lifeline. But I wasn’t saving anyone. I was drowning too. And I took you with me. You have every right to hate me. I wouldn’t blame you if you did. But still, I’m writing this because the shame won't let me stay silent anymore.

There’s something about you, Betty. You glow even when it rains. You remind me of a mirrorball, shattered, maybe, but still reflecting everything around you with grace. I resented it once. Now, I respect it.

I don’t expect forgiveness. I just wanted you to hear me say it: I’m sorry.

For everything.

Olive

---

My fingers tightened around the letter as I read the last line. My heart didn’t race. It didn’t break. It simply... thudded quietly in my chest, like it understood. I stared at my wrist. The faint marks, the ones that stayed behind long after the pain had passed. The butterfly bracelet was gone. Lost months ago in the storm, the same night I nearly disappeared with it. I’d dug through the sand until my fingers bled. James found me after the waves had nearly claimed me. But the bracelet never surfaced. It was strange. I’d cried so hard that night for something small. A symbol. A memory.

I thought of Olive, she was never someone I cared about. Never someone I even truly knew. She wasn’t a friend lost, just a shadow that lingered in rooms she never had the right to enter. And yet, here I was, holding her letter in my hand like it mattered. My chest felt tight, but not in the way it used to, not with grief or rage. Just a steady sort of stillness. Like when the storm passes and the ocean finally goes quiet.

I remembered something my dad told me, he said, “The heart is too small to carry both love and hate. You’ll have to choose what stays.” I thought about that now. I didn’t feel love for Olive. I didn’t feel hate either.

I felt distance. Like she belonged to another part of my life entirely. A cold hallway I walked past, but no longer entered. So I folded the letter. Carefully. Not with forgiveness. Not with empathy. Just closure. I slid it back into the envelope and placed it at the bottom of a drawer, under old report cards and receipts I never threw away. There was nothing left to say. She never mattered to me. Not really. But what she did, the hurt she caused, that mattered. It shaped me. And maybe, without knowing it, I’d already let it go.