The Spencer Letters

Letter 18.

Dear Spencer,

Home sweet home.

...Or more like home sweet nightmare. Guess what my parents did? They threw me a fucking surprise party, Spence!

All I wanted was a simple dinner with them, Shane, your mom and Harry and they invited half the town to their house! I was not in a festive mood. I was jetlagged and tired and my emotional state has been less than optimal lately, they should've known better than to think my birthday should be that big of a deal. But at the same time, I can't be mad at them because they did it out of love and from their hearts, thinking that we all needed a reason to celebrate.

So... it's official! I am a quarter of a century old. And now I'm exactly as far away from twenty as I am close to thirty. How did I get here? The last 7th of July I can remember clearly, I was turning nineteen! All the birthdays after that are a blur because they went by too fast.

I will remember this one, always, though.

I got back yesterday around noon. With the time difference and the fact that I don't sleep in planes, when my mom dropped me off at The Ace after picking me up from the airport, I said hi to my uncle and the guys, and once they helped me carry upstairs the four suitcases I brought back, I went straight to bed.

When I woke up a few hours later, I went to the hospital to see you. There you were, exactly the same as I left you: quietly asleep, existing still, but not living yet. You have to work a little harder, Duckie, push a little more. I'm beginning to think you're getting too comfortable in that state of not-here-nor-there, I might need to resort to violence to snap you out of it. And yes, this is a threat!

Your mom got there right when I was about to leave, and we stayed out in the hallway chatting for a short while, catching up. She told me Dr. Maynard came back from New York to check on you again. That's when Stephanie showed up. She was doing her rounds and came to see you and your mom, knowing that was around the time Anne gets there from work.

I can tell she didn't expect to run into me, and I had not prepared myself to see her, either. Instinctively, the first thing I did when I saw her was to look at her hand. There was no ring. But she's a nurse, and if she did happen to have an engagement ring on her finger at the beginning of her shift, she might have taken it off and put it away to work more comfortably and to keep it safe.

It made my heart twinge when she thanked me for the billionth time for the dress I made her. She said Harry had absolutely loved it (don't ever want to hear details of what he said when he saw her and how the date night and the "after-party" went) and apparently it was also a hit with all her hospital friends after she showed them pictures of her in it. They wanted her to ask me if I did commissioned work, so I guess she got me customers now? Great! ...as if I wasn't feeling guilty enough already!

As for your brother, well, he did show up at night for our daily drink, even though I was not working and not ready to see him after avoiding him for so long. It wasn't awkward because the bar environment helps the situation: the music, the noise, all the people around us, my uncle's presence. It's when I'm alone with him that I don't know how to act anymore.

The conversation we had about my trip felt more like an interrogation, one that aimed to find out what had happened with Jules. I don't know what his fixation is with Jules, why he hated him so much that he wants to make sure he is one hundred percent out of my life now.

With the excuse of being tired from the trip and still jetlagged, I went upstairs early, and I assume he went home right after. I didn't see him again until the party.

We were supposed to go to my favorite restaurant for a small birthday dinner. My mom called me while I was getting ready to say that my dad had worked late and was going to meet us at the restaurant, and she'd come pick me up so we could ride together. On the way, she pretended to have forgotten her present in the house and asked me to go in with her so she could just give it to me there.