The night of our class reunion, he cornered me in front of the bathroom sink, his voice so hoarse it sounded like it might shatter. "Let me hold you for a while."
I had waited for this man, and I had hated him. Back then, he pushed me away with a single "We're not right for each other." I turned around and married someone else, locking those twenty years away at the bottom of a box. I thought I'd long since moved on.
But his wife stopped me and said, "He's kept you hidden in his heart for twenty years."
In his car was a journal. On the title page, in his handwriting, were the words: "She said she wanted to record the days we spent together. I don't think she'll write more than three pages, so I'd better do it myself."
He said, "Every page I wrote during the years you were gone was about you."
The answer I'd waited twenty years for had been hidden in the twenty years he spent alone.
I still haven't decided whether I should open it.
