Dear Krista

The floor around the metal wastebasket is littered with balled-up sheets of paper, each representing a failure to put his thoughts onto paper and, worse yet, fold those into an envelope and airmail them to Krista. The words he needs to write will devastate her.

He’s been at it all night. A fancy Montblanc pen and a pile of tissue-thin airmail stationery rest on the ink blotter that protects the fancy carved wooden desk he sits at. His legs feel cramped in the kneehole of the secretaire his mother normally uses. It’s late. She and his father are fast asleep upstairs. Neither of them knows what happened earlier today—what’s been happening over the past few months.

And now Krista needs to know. “Dear Krista,” he writes, then stares at the two words. Each of the discarded letters also started this way.

She is dear, his Krista. Well, not his Krista anymore. Not once she reads this letter.

He struggles to continue. “Sherrie says hi.” Todd slams his fist on the page, the side of his hand smudging the ink. “Dammit!” he shouts before he can catch himself. As he balls up the sheet of paper, a light goes on in the upstairs hallway.

“Todd? Darling, is that you?”

He can picture his mother, hair in rollers with a net over them to keep them from escaping in the night. The lapels of her soft pink silk wrapper clutched in one hand. Matching pink slippers on her feet.

“Mother. Go back to bed. I’m fine.” The last thing he wants is for her to come downstairs and make a fuss over the mess he’s making and then poking her nose into his business. He needs to do this on his own.

“You’re sure, dear?” He can hear the sleepiness in her voice.

“I’m sure, Mother. Good night.”

The light snaps off. Todd blows out a sigh of relief before taking a long sip from the warm can of beer that sits on the desk. That’s what he gets for screwing up Krista’s life. He gets warm beer and a meddling mother.

Sighing, he starts again. “Krista, by the time you get this, Sherrie and I will be married.” He stares at the words he just wrote, a warm beer burp rising in his throat.

He swallows hard several times before taking another gulp of beer. He’s had enough Coors tonight to ensure a serious hangover in the morning. Nothing less than he deserves, though. It’s justifiable self-punishment.

Rising from the dainty chair his mother looks so elegant sitting on, Todd fetches himself another couple of cans of beer from the kitchen. They’re technically his dad’s. But, as his mother often reminds his father, Todd still lives here and can have whatever he wants. And tonight Todd wants beer. Lots of it.

The stupid thing is that try as he might, he can’t get drunk. He is not drunk enough to write the words he needs to write. Instead, he just feels sick.

Jamming his legs back into the tiny kneehole of the desk, Todd picks up the pen, twirling it between his fingers before continuing.

“She’s pregnant, Krista. Your sister. I know. You’ll hate me. Hate her. Maybe just me. And I want to blame you for all of it. For leaving me and her. Why did you have to go to Paris? Why couldn’t you have just stayed? I know you wanted to have fun before you went to college but we both know that you weren’t going to be in college long. Not when we promised that we’d be married as soon as you turned nineteen.”

The words flow from his pen. When he throws it down to stare at what he’s just written, Todd has to reach quickly for the waste basket, the nausea rising so suddenly he thought he would throw up right there.

He doesn’t. The nausea subsides. He drinks more beer and ponders what else to say. What else can he say? Sorry for breaking your heart, Krista, but I fell for your sister.

He did fall for Sherrie. It wasn’t his fault though. Sherrie practically threw herself at him every time they saw each other after Krista left. In retrospect, she was already doing it before Krista left. He was just too dumb to see it. And when it happened often enough, he was too dumb to fend her off. And now this.

Finishing the can and reaching for another, Todd continues writing. “Don’t hate her. Just hate me. I didn’t want you to leave. But you did and I was stupid enough to be lonely. It just—happened. You’re crying right now. Or screaming at me. Go ahead. Scream at me. I deserve it.”

Todd turns to the next page, although he feels pretty much out of words at this point.

“So that’s it. Mom and Dad don’t know. Your folks don’t know anything. We’ll have to cross state lines, because Sherrie’s underage. Then we’ll come back here to face the aftermath. Maybe my folks will help us get a place.”

He’s confessing to his former fiancée all the things he’s held inside. He wants to tell Krista more. How scared he is of the future. A wife. A baby.

“I’m sorry, Krista. More than I can say. Love, Todd.”

Before he can change his mind, Todd hastily stuffs the pages into the envelope he’s already prepared. The taste of the glue on his tongue is sour.

After placing the letter in the mail basket, Todd heads upstairs. Tonight will be the last night he ever spends in his childhood bed.

Tomorrow, everything changes.


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942 words

Prompt: Tomorrow, December 7 is Letter Writing Day. Write a story or poem about someone trying to write a letter to someone else.