YOURS SINCERELY • newtmas au

58 | Newt

Dearest Tommy,

Okay. I'll tell you what I like and what I don't like.

I don't like raisins, especially raisins in cookies, because they'll make you think they're chocolate chips until you bite into it and it's like surPRISE SHANK I'm a raisin cookie.

I don't like mornings, especially cold mornings, and I don't like fancy shoes and fancy clothes and fancy cars and fancy, snobbish klunk in general.

I don't like sports, too. Lacrosse was an exception because Minho wanted to play for the team, and he needed someone to try out with him.

I like socks, pens, watches, detective novels and spy movies. I to like skateboarding, too, but I haven't done much of that lately, not since I broke my leg.

I like cats, not dogs. Foxes, I like, too. I like sneezing on dandelions during spring, and I like model airplanes. I'd like to become a pilot one day.

And I'd like a tattoo of a lizard on my ankle—a Newt.

I like you, Tommy. I like your fancy slippers, your fancy monkey pajamas. I like that you took the whole bloody journey to my house. I also like that you memorized my address by heart.

I liked it when you said, “Rapunzel, let down your hair!” when I opened my window and saw you.

I like the way you giggled when you were drunk, and I like the way I had to say, “What?” every time you said something because it always came out a bit too slurred.

I especially liked it when you took my hand and gave me a nice bear hug—I needed that. My shoulders were too tense then and when you hugged me tightly it felt like a warm blanket had taken away the strain.

I like that you remembered these things.

But I don't like how you didn't remember yourself pulling away, didn't remember yourself leaning in and taking my chin and kissing me on the lips where it felt the coldest.

I like that you did that fast, as if it was kind of inevitable, but still.

I haven't got a girlfriend at the moment. Haven't got a boyfriend, either. If I did, I wouldn't have let you kiss me, Tommy.

I don't think I want a girlfriend or a boyfriend. I've dated three people before and it never worked out. I always feel like I disappear; I always feel like it's just physical and that they never really hear me when I speak.

Last year I was with a guy named Robbie for three months. I thought he was sexy as hell. He's got that smarmy attitude everybody hated and people stared at him wherever we went, which he said he liked, but I was always so pissed about it. Robbie called me his “wild-eyed lost boy,” and the more he said it the more wild and the more lost I got.

In the end I broke up with him because I was turning into this angry person all the time—like I knew that was what he liked aboit me, and I couldn't ever smile and be stupid which is aldo what I like to be.

Plus, I started thinking that “wild-eyed lost boy” made me sound like a horse.

So, see, I always start to act like someone I'm not.

I like you, Tommy, I really do, but now that I've thought of it, I just want to keep writing letters. It's the only way I can stay honest to myself.

Yours sincerely,
Newt