Which didn’t explain why he remained here, sitting on the floor of a grungy Laundromat, snapping his green elastic band and clutching a blue ballpoint pen. He’d been staring at the blank piece of notebook paper for three minutes already. He finally wrote:

Dear Rachel:

I’m an ass. It’s all my fault You should hate me.

He paused. Chewed on the end of the pen again. Snapped the band.

Thanks for sending me the letters. Maybe you hate them. Maybe you couldn’t stand to see them anymore. Guess I can’t blame you.

He crossed out words. Tried again. Crossed out more.

I love you.

I loved you. I was wrong. I’m sorry.

I won’t bother you again.

Unless, he thought. But he didn’t write it. He forcefully kept himself from writing it. If she’d wanted to see him, she could’ve done it by now. So take the hint, Aidan, old boy. She didn’t love you. She doesn’t love you. You went to prison for nothing, you pathetic, stupid, miserable sack of shit….

He picked up the pen again.

Please don’t hurt yourself.

Then, almost as an afterthought:

And don’t let Jerry hurt you either. You deserve better. You really, really do.

Sorry I fucked everything up. Have a nice life.

Aidan

He set down the pen. Reread the letter. Debated tearing it to shreds and attempting another bonfire. Held it instead. He wouldn’t send the letter. In group, the exercise was simply to write the note. Teach him empathy and remorse. Which he guess he felt, because his chest was tight, and it was hard to breathe, and he didn’t want to be sitting in the middle of a seedy Laundromat anymore. He wanted to be back in his apartment, curled up with blankets over his head. Someplace he could get lost in the dark and not think about that winter and how good her skin had felt against his, or how much of both of their lives he had destroyed.

God help him, he still loved her. He did. She was the only good thing that had ever happened to him, and she had been his step sister and he was the worst kind of monster in the world and maybe the guys at the shop should beat the snot out of him. Maybe that was the only solution for a jerkoff like him. He was a pervert. No better than Wendell the psychotic flasher. He should be destroyed.

Except, like any pervert, he didn’t really want to die. He just wanted to get through the night and maybe the next day.

So he gathered up his laundry and hailed a cab.

“Home, James,” he told the driver.

Then, sitting in the back seat of the taxi, he tore the letter into tiny, tiny bits, and flung them out the window, watching the night wind carry them away.