Leni,

I've been staring at this blank page for hours, trying to find the right words.

I'm not good at this like you are.

My thoughts come out messy and tangled, but I'm going to try anyway. I know you're probably reading this feeling confused, hurt—maybe all of it at once.

I don't blame you.

But stay with me, okay?

There was one summer way back, I was fifteen and you were eleven. Do you remember when I was trying to learn "Iris" and you were sitting cross-legged on my bed, pretending to read.

I kept messing up the chords because I was nervous, but you just sat there, patiently, smiling. After that night, I spent weeks practicing when you weren't around, fumbling through those chords until my fingers bled.

I wanted to learn it because it was your favorite. But also because at fifteen, that song said everything I couldn't.

I didn't know how to tell you what you meant to me. How you saw all the parts of me I tried to hide. How you made me want to be seen.

But the song could.

Music is supposed to make sense. It's math and patterns, structure and rules. But then there are these moments—these perfect, unexplainable moments—when two notes shouldn't work together, but they do. They create something that breaks all the rules but sounds exactly right.

That's what we are. We're that impossible harmony.

Look under your bed.

There's a box and inside is a CD I made you—track 18 says everything I wish I could tell you face to face.

I guess some things are easier to say through music. At least that's how it's always been for us.

Nora, you've always been the song I can't get out of my head. Because you’ve been my favorite everything for as long as I can remember. When everything in my head gets too loud, when all I hear is noise, you're the melody that cuts through it all. You hear the music in me even when I'm out of tune. You make me want to be better. To be the person you somehow believe I am.

You're my muse, Leni.

Not just for the songs I'll one day write—though every single one will probably be about you in some way—but for who I want to be. You inspire the best parts of me, the parts I didn't even know existed.

Go to London.

Chase those dreams you've had since you were a kid. Write those stories that live in your head. Show the world what I've always seen in you. Do it all so one day I can say ‘told you so.’

I'll find my way back to you when I'm someone who deserves the way you look at me.

I know I have no right to ask anything of you. But maybe think of this like one of those long instrumental breaks in your favorite songs—the ones that feel like they're taking you somewhere new, but always lead you back to the melody you know by heart.

Please don't hate me. (Though I wouldn’t blame you if you did.)

N.

P.S. That first story you ever wrote, about Daisy and Archer? It's still my favorite. Always will be.