Post Office ✓

01 | mailbox

And that was exactly where I found myself now - a fun place to be. Thanks to Rachel's design expertise, she had made the place as homey as if we were in our actual homes. She had tuned it all so finely, even with the nook that I had my doubts of. It had easily become my favorite place to lounge for comfort and indulgence in my imagination, something I avoided like the plague when studying and cramming, but this was the first legitimate break all year and I planned to use every second to its full value.

Hence the reason I was on it when I heard the mail come through the door slot. And like that, all of my complacency had vanished. I had been waiting for the longest time for a membership card to my favorite clothing store, one they said they would bring by this year, and the prospect of shopping seemed quite alluring at the moment, a source of relaxation without letting myself go and getting the right amount of energy.

I got up from my seat, the thought of the mail breezing my mind, the pastel colors of hanging banners advertising my favorite stores, cleaning spoons dipped in sweet gelato. It came back to me in a drove of memories that pulled me forward with magnetic force.

I picked up the envelope however, ripping it open to find a very peculiar letter. I had no recollection of signing up for the New York Times and yet they were asking me to renew my subscription with them in a very wordy letter. A heavy rush of disappointment at the fact that it wasn't my membership card hit me and I was about to discard it in the steel grey wastebasket that sat beside me by the door when my eye caught a detail that was just as peculiar as the envelope itself.

On the front side of it read 'to Blaise Cohen' in small print over the address '751 Oake St. #2156' and I almost dropped the papers to the floor. Not only did that mean he was back from England, but it meant that he was back from England and in the same apartment complex as I was. On the same floor, even, for my room number was 2165. Either he had just moved in or I was really just that blind and inattentive.

I didn't want to find out. I only wanted to know what he was doing here again and whether he would leave again -

Like I had asked so many times before. Only this time, there was a possibility it would be to his face.

♕ ♕ ♕

"Wait, Lottie," Rachel asked in confusion, taking a sip of her coffee. "Let me get this straight. Blaise the Bastard moved in on our floor?"

I winced at her use of the name that she had given him a long time ago. Not because it wasn't fitting - because it was - but because it brought me back to a time where I cried at the mention of his name, even at the pronunciation of the letter 'b' and that was a shameful time for me. I wanted that me, those days, to stay gone along with him yet like history, he was bound to repeat himself.

"He does," I said, the uncertainty in my tone not coming from skepticism but from how I would handle it. Definitely without grace, he and I were far beyond that, but surely I could be civil. The effects of the breakup on me had worn off long before and I was okay again. He wouldn't be able to ruin me like he did that time.

"Well you have to give it to him," Hayley said, not once losing the twinkle in her eye. She wasn't a hopeless romantic, but a hopeful one who still believed that a love lost could find its way back. Her optimism of course was misplaced and misguiding because she was the only one out of the three of us who had been with their boyfriend since senior year and we were sophomores in college now. "Opening someone else's mail is a federal crime and you definitely don't want to be arrested. And Blaise wasn't that horrible - " she backtracked " - he wasn't a bastard, at least. You were at fault in that relationship as well and you know it."