Toe the Line(86)

“I miss you, too. I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to touch base.” I opened my fridge and grabbed a mozzarella stick. “How are things?”

“Menopause Roz just hit fifty-five-thousand subscribers!”

“Oh my gosh. That’s amazing! It must’ve been your hot flash series.” I chuckled. “I can’t wait to binge all your videos in twenty years.”

“Now stop pretending you’re checking in on little old me and tell me why you’re actually calling.”

“I really am checking on you. I should’ve called you sooner.”

“Well, that’s sweet, but you’re not the least bit interested in Archie boy?”

Archie and I had exchanged some messages over the past two months, but we hadn’t addressed things between us. We were either giving each other space or growing apart. I wasn’t sure which. But I missed him like crazy.

Clearing my throat, I asked, “Have you seen him lately?”

“Actually, I haven’t, honey. He hasn’t come around. The last time he was here to fix something, though, I saw him peek into your old room. He looked sad.”

Like so many things with Archie, that confused me. I hated that he was sad, but why hadn’t he reached out if he felt that way?

“What’s going on over there in New York?” she asked.

“I broke up with Jason for good. I mean, we never got back together, only casually hung out, but I made a final decision.”

“Really…” She sighed. “Well, I’m so sorry.”

I took a bite of my cheese stick—yes, I was eating dairy again. “It’s for the best. I think he had himself convinced he could want a child with me just to keep me. I couldn’t let him go through with something like that when I didn’t truly believe him.” I shook my head. “But that’s not the main reason I couldn’t be with him.” I paused. “I don’t love him.”

“You love Archie,” she said matter-of-factly.

“I do.” I exhaled. “And it sucks.”

“If it’s meant to be, it will be, darling.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I told her. “But seriously, what’s happening out there with you?”

We chatted for a while, and I promised to call more often. Then about a half hour after I got off the phone with Roz, my phone lit up with a text.

Speak of the devil. It was Archie.

My heart came alive at the sight of a photo, followed by a looooong message. I scrolled down before I read it. It had to be the lengthiest text I’d ever received.

My heart raced as I scrolled back up and clicked on the photo. It was a drawing of me, a sketch like the ones he used to create over a decade earlier. He’d drawn me scared before. He’d drawn me focused. He’d drawn me drunk and crazy-looking after massacring a chocolate cake. But he’d never drawn me like this. I looked sad, wearing the pink dress covered in daisies that I’d worn to his wedding. I examined the melancholy expression on my sketched face again. It was the perfect depiction of how I’d felt that day—sad, confused, and desperately in love with a man who’d just married someone else. Ironically, he’d captioned the sketch: Love.

I suddenly felt unsettled, scared of what he’d written. I sat down to read the message. Grabbing a pillow, I hugged it for support.



Archie: This is going to be the rawest thing I’ve ever written, so buckle up. I’m texting it because the next time I see you in person, I might be back to my old blubbering-idiot ways and don’t trust myself to get these words out coherently.

This photo is the last drawing of you I ever created. I drew it on my wedding night. How fucked up is that? I escaped into the bathroom while Mariah was sleeping and drew you—because I had to. I never wanted to forget the look on your face. It was important to me because unfortunately, that was the night I realized you loved me. It was also the night I realized I’d made a huge mistake. If I could go back, I would’ve done so many things differently. I know now that you can’t choose who to love based on what fits into a neat little box.

You tried to hide the fact that you’d been crying that night. But I knew. I felt it. And I’m ashamed to admit that I was in love with you, too, that day. Ashamed only because it never should have been her. It should’ve been you. I knew it not only when I saw the sadness in your eyes, but even when I looked out into the pews at the church and saw you in your pink dress, looking uncomfortable. My heart skipped a beat for you in a way it hadn’t when my bride walked down the aisle. I’d chosen to bury those feelings deep. That was a huge mistake.

The truth is, I’ve loved you since our first summer together. And I can’t say what might have happened if it had ended differently. But I need you to understand that back when I had to take care of my mom after Dad died, it was more important to me to make sure I didn’t hold you back than to admit how I felt. I never wanted you to resent me. You had the whole universe at your fingertips, while I was stuck in California. You had career aspirations and all the freedom in the world. So I made the decision to let you go.

Then life happened. You were with Shane. And then you weren’t. I was with Mariah, and we both know what happened there. Fate and timing were never on our side. And a part of me through all those years believed a false narrative that you were better off without me, which I know now isn’t true. Because you loved me—that’s all that should have mattered. That’s all that does matter.