I run my fingers over the label, feeling the old slashes where Macon’s handwriting all but carved out my name in ink. The date on the stamp has me pausing. “You sent this to me the week after . . .”

“After the prom,” he finishes, raw and tight. “Yes.”

I eye the package anew as if it might truly be a bomb. But Macon is leaning toward me, the lines of his body tense as if he’s bracing himself. He wants this badly.

With shaking hands, I slowly pull apart the paper.

Macon’s harsh voice cuts through the silence. “I thought you were the one who returned it.”

Pausing, I lift my eyes to his. “Would it have mattered if you knew it hadn’t been me?”

“I would like to think I would have delivered it in person, had I known someone hid it from you. But I was an immature prick at seventeen. I can’t say for certain what I would have done.”

My hand smooths over the box.

“Open it,” he says. “Please.”

The old packing paper crackles under my hands. Inside is an envelope, my name printed on it in big block letters, and a slim robin’s-egg-blue box. My breath catches because I know the color of that box. The words Tiffany & Co. are embossed in black on the front. Curiosity has me itching to open it, see what’s inside. But the letter calls to me in a stronger voice—in his voice.

Carefully, I set the box on the table and open the letter.

Macon’s handwriting isn’t pretty—some letters are crammed together with frustrated impatience while others pull wide as if unraveling. The ink is dark, words etched into the paper with determined force. For a long moment, I simply hold the ruled paper, so obviously sheared from one of his old school notebooks.

I’m afraid to read it. But Macon’s dark eyes are upon me, waiting. His hands curl into fists. I give him a quick, weak smile as if to say, I’m going in. It’s okay; I won’t run.

And then I turn my attention to the page. Instantly his voice is in my head, that slow butter-and-honey drawl that used to work like burrs upon my skin but now sinks into my heart and makes it beat both harder and stronger.

Delilah,

My mother once told me that if you have something truly important to say, write it in a letter. Not an email or text or typed out. But to put pen to paper. A person’s handwriting, the places they press harder on the page, the blots and errors in the ink, show their soul. Put your thoughts in a letter, and the receiver has a record of it forever, not just a memory but something they can pull out and touch when they need a reminder.