Adrian

“Sofia! Get your delectable self in here!” I call from the bedroom.

“One more minute. I promise!” her voice travels down the hallway.

Normally I wouldn’t pressure her so much to finish up her schoolwork, but I just got back from a three day soccer trip in the West Coast and I can’t wait to spend the rest of the evening with her in our bed.

Our bed. It’s been five months since we’ve lived in DC together, but it still sounds incredible every time I think about it.

Also incredible is the fact that Teddy is here lying next to me and I pick him up to look at him. I can’t believe that Sofia has still hung on to him for so long, and as cute as he is, I’m afraid our beloved stuffed animal is starting to see better days. I think I’m gonna have to get her a new one pretty soon.

She definitely makes me wait more than one minute, but once she appears in the bedroom she looks so incredibly beautiful and she’s wearing such a huge smile I forget why I was being so impatient.

My face falls when I see that she’s brought her laptop with her in the room and I’m about to complain about that fact when she says, “Nico wrote to us.”

“Yeah? What did he say?”

She settles down next to me and I wrap my arm around her as she opens up her computer to show me the email. It’s funny because he usually writes to Sofia’s email but addresses both of us as if it were a shared email or something.

I quickly read it and when I look over at her she’s smiling again.

“Who do you think the girl is?” she asks me.

“I don’t know, but he must be serious about her if he wants to bring her here to visit. Especially the way he made it seem so casual. Classic Nico move,” I respond.

“Oh my god, this is so exciting! I can’t believe he’s going to visit, and that he’s actually with someone,” Sofia beams.

I lean over and kiss her temple. I know she misses him a lot more than she lets on, so it’s nice to see her show it instead of hiding it from me. “Honestly, I’m surprised he hasn’t visited sooner.”

“We should tell him to book it around Thanksgiving. That would be perfect. You have off, right?” she says excitedly.

“Yeah, darling. That’s a great idea.”

I had actually been thinking of surprising her with tickets to Madrid during that time, but this works out too. Maybe we can take a mini-trip somewhere nearby while he’s here. A cabin on a lake sounds about nice.

“Okay,” she says and quickly starts to respond to his email.

“Tell him if he doesn’t reveal the identity and exact details of his so-called friend, he can’t come here.”

Sofia laughs and types my words as a PS to the email, before sending it off.

“You know, I’ll never understand why you have so many drafts in your email. Are they notes or something?” I ask her, pointing out the same number 52 next to the Drafts section of her inbox that she’s had for a while.

“Um … kind of,” she blushes and immediately closes her laptop.

“What do you mean?” I ask curiously.

“It’s nothing,” she quickly says, kissing my chest. Her hands travel down my t-shirt and I groan when they slip underneath and touch my stomach.

“I missed you,” she says, before leaning up and kissing me.

I immediately kiss her back, bringing her on top of me and relishing her touch. “I missed you too, Sofia. I swear it’s getting more difficult to leave you every time, even if it’s just for a few days.”

“I know. But then we get to appreciate each other more,” she says before kissing me again.

It isn’t until a few moments later that I realize she’s distracting me from my original question and I roll her underneath me so I can get a good look at her face.

“Baby girl, what are you hiding?”

She squirms underneath me and blushes again. Okay, now I’m dying to know.

“They’re just a bunch of old emails,” she finally admits.

“To who?”

She hesitates for a bit before answering, “To you. I wrote them when I was in London.”

“From when I wrote to you while you were there?”

She nods once.

“But you never wrote back to me,” I say confused.

“I did. I just never sent them. That’s why they’re drafts.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I was afraid of opening up to you and then you finding out the real reason why I left. Even when I wrote them, I never really had the intention of sending them. I guess I wrote them more for myself, almost like a diary of some sort.”

Wow. I can’t believe she actually wrote back to me. All this time I thought she had just blatantly ignored me, but she hadn’t. Of course she hadn’t. I want to beg her to show them to me, but she obviously kept them to herself for a reason.

“You want to see them, don’t you?” she asks.

“Yeah?” I don’t know why I answered that as a question.

“They’re really embarrassing, Adrian. I mean, I haven’t looked at them since I wrote them, but I know for a fact they are.”

“And everything I wrote to you wasn’t? I’m pretty sure I won the award for the cheesiest, most heartbroken, ridiculous person on the planet.”

She laughs. “No, they were actually the sweetest things I’ve ever read.”

“Just one then? Please?” I ask, giving her my best lost puppy face.

“God, Adrian. It isn’t fair when you do that!” she says, pushing me to the side.

I chuckle as she reaches for her laptop and opens it up again. “Just choose one at random,” she says handing me her computer.

“Read it with me,” I say, bringing her to my side.

I click on her drafts folder, and I see a long list of emails, all labeled Adrian (2), Draft. I scroll down a bit until I click on a message from June 10th.

Before I read what she wrote, I go back up and read my original email to her.

Sofia,

It’s been twenty-three days since you’ve been gone, and I just figured out today that you’re in London. Just getting that small piece of information from Nico was incredibly difficult, and now that I know where you are, I’m not sure if that makes me even angrier at you or relieved to know that at least you’re okay.

Why did you leave? This entire time I’ve been thinking it was because of something I said or I’ve done, and I’m really sorry if that’s the case. I keep thinking back to what it could have been, but I can’t seem to find it. I never meant to pressure you to go out with me. Sometimes I think maybe you needed more time, and other times I think I might have been too late.

I guess I’ve always had this idea of us and what it would be like to be together. It’s strange in a way because I know all these things about you, but most of them are through side conversations with other people, or small things I’ve picked up about you at a distance. But I wish I knew the real you. The you that comes from actually spending time together, from talking face to face, and finding out things directly from you.

If I knew the real you, then I would know why you left. And every day that passes it makes me sadder that I didn’t get to know that person. That I didn’t get to spend more time with you and know what really goes through your head. Because I don’t need to know the real you to confirm that you’re an incredible being. That you’re the most beautiful girl I’ll ever see.

I’ll stop here before I embarrass myself further and confess more things to you that probably shouldn’t be done over an email that will most likely never be read.

But you have to know that I miss you. I never understood what your mere presence did to me until you left, and now I feel like the biggest idiot for taking all those days of stolen moments with you for granted and not telling you how I really felt all along.

Come back. Please come back to me. I’ll be waiting for you until then.

Adrian

I look back at Sofia after I finish reading what I wrote to her almost a year and a half ago, and I feel so incredibly lucky that I now have her by my side. When I wrote that, I never would have imagined things ending up the way they did. That we would actually be together someday.

She has unshed tears in her eyes and she leans in to kiss me. “I’m so glad you waited for me,” she says.

“I’m so glad you came back,” I answer.

“My response probably isn’t very good,” she warns me.

“Whatever it is, I don’t care. I have my response right here in front of me.”

“So you don’t want to read it anymore?” she asks in a hopeful tone.

“No, I still want to. Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” she answers, and I kiss her forehead before I return to the computer to read her email.

Adrian,

I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I left the way that I did. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to say goodbye to you. And I’m sorry I’m not able to give you the reason for leaving.

I hate that you think it’s even a possibility that I left because of you. I wanted to stay because of you. I considered it so many times despite the dire consequences that it would bring. But at the end I wasn’t strong enough to take it anymore. There was no way out of it and things would have turned out a lot worse for me.

I never thought me leaving would affect you. I imagined you would get mad that I stood you up on our date, but I figured you would just move on to the next girl. I never knew you had feelings like this for me, and with each email that you write to me, it makes my decision to leave weigh on me more.

I guess I should have known throughout the years, and looking back there were always little things you would do for me, but I always attributed it to your kind personality and thoughtfulness. Like when you would convince my parents to let me go out with you guys in Marbella or when you offered to give me driving lessons because you knew I was too scared to drive.

I’m scared, Adrian. I wish I could tell you what happened but I can’t. It would wreck my entire family and I can’t do that to them. I can’t risk them getting hurt. Sometimes I have this crazy fantasy that I could confide in you and we would run away together and I would finally feel safe.

But that’s just what it is – a fantasy. The real world doesn’t work like that and the last thing I want to do is drag you into this mess. Because you don’t deserve that. You deserve to be living the college life and going out to parties and hooking up with girls who can give you something that I can’t.

I miss you, too. I always miss you. I think about you all the time and what it would’ve been like to go out on that date with you. And maybe another one if I was lucky. I just know I would have been incredibly happy with you. You made me feel that way every time you came near me, even if it was only for a few stolen moments.

I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I hope I can become brave enough to do it soon. There’s nothing more I want than to see you again and that one day you’ll forgive me.

Sofia

I close her laptop and set it on the night table before turning around to face her. She looks at me hesitantly, and I can tell she’s embarrassed that I read that.

“Come here,” I whisper, drawing her close and aligning her body with mine.

I look into her brilliant green eyes for a long time before capturing her lips. I think about how many times I’ve probably kissed her by now, and even the amount of times I’ve kissed her today, but it will never be enough.

“I know exactly what I would have responded if you had sent that to me,” I tell her.

She looks at me curiously and I reach for her hand to interlace our fingers together before reciting my response to her.

“Sofia. I love you. That’s what I left out in my previous email to you. I don’t need to know the real you to confirm that I’m hopelessly in love with you. And I think you love me too, but you just don’t know it yet. I promise we’ll be together one day. We’ll run away and you’ll be safe. We’ll even get married when the right day comes. And it won’t be a fantasy, but it’ll feel like one because you deserve a happily ever after. I’m on my way. Adrian.”

FIN