Dear Tom,

I have to tell somebody, and you are the only person

No. I scribbled it out and started on a fresh page.

Dear Tom

A proper letter seems funny, doesn’t it? Actual paper and ink—well, Biro. I was going to send you a text, but there’s so much to say, and it feels more natural like this.

I keep thinking about the last time I saw you and how difficult it was. I hate to think you’re sad—and because of me, of all people—when I am so suddenly and unexpectedly happy.

I also want to say how sorry I am for being moody and nightmarish—not so much then—although certainly then—but generally. You’re a good friend to me and Dad, and we take you too much for granted. I don’t know why you’ve put up with us for so long—but I’m glad you have!

I’d been waiting all my life—well, a long time anyway—for you to kiss me in the garden on a summer’s night. So why—why, oh why—when the moment finally came, did it fall flat? I’ve been asking myself this question over and over again, and the answer has occurred to me tonight—which kind of explains why I’m writing this letter.

The fact is—and please don’t take this the wrong way—the fact is that I was unresponsive because I was only half alive. I have been dying inside my old life—and by old life, I mean my life before yesterday; before I came to Byrne Hall—for years, and you are an elemental part of that old life. This sounds mean and insulting, but it’s not supposed to. Nothing is your fault.

I paused and pressed my fingers to my forehead. I was too drunk to be writing letters; I wouldn’t normally gabble like this. My eyelids drooped and I sat still, listening to the soft flicker of my own pulse.

Last night—or this night, whatever you want to call it—when Cory was sketching, I’d lain in a state of perpetual drowsiness, ringed by candles, never fully awake and never quite dropping off. They were some of the strangest hours I’ve ever lived, especially during the long ellipses when neither of us felt the need to speak. Time had seemed to stretch itself, or perhaps it shrank—at any rate it dithered and lost its usual, purposeful, forward-marching beat. There had been spots of yellow light in front of my eyes, which sometimes looked like candles and sometimes looked like stars, and beyond them Cory’s gigantic silhouette, and all the time I was conscious of the sweeping sound of pencil on paper, and the scritch of my hair on the pillow when I adjusted my head, and the rise and fall of our breathing.

“I remember you from one of the wedding parties,” he said at some point. “You were in the garden, by the pond.”

He hadn’t spoken in ages, but I wasn’t startled. Cory’s voice was like the darkness, intrinsic to the night, and I murmured a wordless reply.