THE LAST LETTER

Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 28 // 𝑀𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠

"What do you think you're doing?" I whisper harshly and she just smiles at me. Fuck! Right! I haven't told her we need to break up. I need to tell her sooner. So, I just push past her and take my seat in between Tyler and Zach thinking at least this way, she would stay away from me. And she does just that. She frowns at me and gets back to the girls. After spending a few hours together with everyone, talking about college and football, I decide to go back and I bid adieu to the rest of the group and get up to leave.

"It was nice to see you after so long Luke," Matt says giving me a friendly hug and I hug him back, "I missed you too dude." and then I leave the house. I still don't feel like going home after that so I keep driving around the city, relishing the memories. I drive past my school, the cafe we friends used to hang out at, the mall I used to come shopping with Rachel and finally I come across the Italian restaurant, the same one where Rachel and I were supposed to dine together. I bring my car to halt and reach for my back pocket to remove the membership card that shows the name Al Fresco along with the expiry date as Seventeenth December Twenty Seventeen (17/12/2017)

The gift card Rachel gave me for Christmas was a membership of three years but I haven't even been to a single dinner at this restaurant in the past two years. I sit in my car, staring at the card in my hand, hesitating for a while if I should use the card at least once before it expires. And then I finally decide to go inside thinking Rachel saved and bought this card for me so that I could be here one day. I couldn't just let it go to waste. I park my mom's truck in the parking lot and make my way inside Al Fresco.

I swipe the card on the counter as they verify it and show me to my table. "Sir, is your date coming along?" The server asks me and I shake my head, looking around. I see various couples sitting a couple of steps away from me and that's when I realize why the server asked me such a question. It was a couples card and I was sitting in a couples section, alone. Embarrassment and hurt wash over me as I take my seat reluctantly.

Later, the server serves various dishes to me, dinner enough for two people. He gives me a serving of lasagna, a pasta salad, soup, meatballs, spaghetti, ravioli, as he stays a few feet away from me. I start eating the food and love how flavourful the soup is with all the fresh herbs and vegetables. The pasta salad tastes amazing and so does the lasagna. I taste a little from all the dishes, going for the cheesecake at the end and it instantly melts inside my mouth. I swallow the lump in my throat and a teardrop slips down my eyes. The food is delicious just like I know I was meant to avoid this dinner because it was exactly like I expected it to be all those years ago but I'm not. I'm not enjoying this because this was supposed to be our thing, not my thing. I harshly wipe the tears away and walk out of the restaurant without eating another bite and leaving a tip for the server.

I drive straight to the downtown bar and grab a few bottles of vodka and make my way to the abandoned house. When I push open the door, I see the whole place is covered in dust, the mini chairs, the wooden table, everything. I clean a small portion of the floor with the broom sitting across the wooden walls and sit down with the vodka bottles. This is probably my last day in this place, in our safe haven and I am using that one day in drowning myself in alcohol because I don't have that one person with whom I want to share my last moments here. I drink all by myself all night long and go back home at around two.

.

.

The next morning I wake with a massive headache in my head, as I sit up, clutching my head in a tight grip. That's when I remember something, It was the day of the auction.