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Her laugh.
Again, I pull another one out, and then another, and another.
Her honesty.
Her sense of humor.
Her hair.
Her sweet nature.
Her tender heart.
Her amazing tits.
I laugh at that one. His reasons started getting somewhat explicit at the end.
A throat clearing pulls my attention away from the glass jar and I look over to see Mac leaning against the closet doorway. His muscles are bulging from his t-shirt as he crosses his arms against his chest. He has a small smile playing on his lips as his green eyes watch me intently.
“I can’t believe you kept these,” I tell him, looking back down at the papers sitting in my lap.
“I kept everything that had to do with you and me,” he says softly.
The last day Mac was in school, I brought all the little slips of paper with me to his house. He put them in the glass jar and set it on his nightstand. Each day, when I came over after school, I would walk to the jar and there would be a new paper inside. Even though he wasn’t able to slip them through the slats in my locker, he never stopped writing down reasons he loved me. It was one of the highlights of my day, and I was always curious about what he would come up with next.
“There’s a lot more in here than there was the last time I saw it.”
“That’s because I kept slipping papers in there. Once a week for two years I would write another reason.”
My head jerks up with that, surprised and touched he kept up with the tradition that meant so much to me.
“But why would you do that? Why, when you knew I wouldn’t see them?”
He walks to me and squats down. Reaching forward he cups my cheeks, and I look into his eyes when he says, “Because,although we were no longer together, I never stopped loving you. Those reasons never went away, Pix. And I hoped that one day youwouldsee them.”
I close my eyes and breathe in deeply. I wish so much that I had done things differently, that I had given him time to talk, to explain. So much precious time wasted.
I open my eyes and turn my head to kiss his palm. He leans forward to rest his forehead against my own.
“I’m so sorry I never listened to you. I wish so much that I had, that I hadn’t turned my back on you.”
His breath feathers across my lips when he says, “It doesn’t matter now, Mia. What matters is that you’re here now. That we’re here, together.”
I pull back from him and put the precious papers back in the glass jar and screw the lid back on. Curious at what else is inside, I look in the box again and pull out several photos of Mac and me together. There’s also a bundle of letters tied together by a piece of twine. A little black box catches my attention, and I set the bundle of letters aside.
Looking up at Mac, I see him looking inside at the little black box as well. When his eyes flicker to mine, I see pain and heartache in them. I reach inside and pull the box out. Nervous fingers slowly open it, and I suck in a sharp breath at what I see resting on the bed of black velvet.
“Oh, Mac,” I breathe.
It’s a wide silver ring with the word Pixie carved in calligraphy. There’s a single diamond embedded in the silver on either side of the word. I pull the ring from the box to get a closer look, and I see there are words on the inside as well. I bring it closer, and my heart jumps in my chest.
Mac + Mia = Per sempre e sempreis engraved on the inside of the band. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.
I look up to Mac with tears in my eyes and whisper, “It’s beautiful.”
“I was going to give it to you that night. It was my promise ringto you. I had planned on asking you to marry me after I left the academy and had a steady job.”
A sob escapes my throat at the lost opportunity. At the lost dream.
