Hold Your Breath

Six weeks later, as October had rolled around and dragged in its dreary familiarity, Noah stepped off of the bus that circulated around his neighbourhood and walked up to his front door. He sluggishly opened the door and threw his satchel onto the floor.

“Anyone home?” he shouted, hearing his voice resound throughout their unpretentious, colonial home. No answer. He walked into the kitchen and saw upon the table a single letter, personally addressed to him. No return address; no business logo. He looked around in a peculiar fashion, wondering who could possibly have sent it.

He tore open the envelope and immediately spotted the colour of the paper inside, and knew exactly what was inside. He took the letter with him and scuttled upstairs. He cast his mind back to the last week in August, when he had received the first letter through his front door on a strangely stormy morning.

As he closed his bedroom door behind him and sat on his bed, he glanced over at his bedside table, where that letter still resided to forever shame him. Noah understood how terrible he had acted, and had not responded to the letter out of uncharacteristic respect. He sensed how badly confused she must have felt, and he knew in himself that their relationship was never going to succeed, so he had cut his losses and moved on.

He looked back at this new letter in his hands, and felt a slight trepidation in his chest. He took a deep breath, unfolded it and began to read it:

‘Noah,

As I said I would, here’s my first letter from England, and it’ll be the only one I send. I know you didn’t write to me like a part of me hoped you would, but I should learn to refrain from wishful thinking.

I don’t think I’ll ever really get used to Liverpool; my parents thought it would be comforting to move to a new place that was also by the sea, and it’s not terribly far from the hospital where my father transferred to, but it doesn’t compare to Seattle. Not by a long shot.

The parks here don’t have the same feel about them. I lay down in the grass the other day under a lofty birch tree, and tried to picture myself back in Madrona, but I just couldn’t do it. The air is slightly amiss, and the River Mersey can never replace the harbour we used to dream upon down from our beach.

Do you remember how we dreamed of leaving our lives in Holly Park behind and getting a place in New York? You always swore you’d make something of yourself; that your music would take you wherever you wanted. I wish I could have truly believed you, but I always hoped it would. I’m at a new high school, but I have a lot fewer friends here than I did back in Seattle.

Only until after the plane took off that dreadfully damp Saturday morning for my flight here, I began to think whether I had any regrets about our time together; about leaving everyone in Seattle.

When we touched down in Liverpool, I knew my answer. My father led my mother and I through our new, worn-out front door, and when I found my new bedroom to be exactly the way I had left it, my mind hadn’t changed. I looked out into the back garden, where the weeds had waged war on the whole lawn, and a swing set looked forlorn and dejected, in the corner opposite a red timber shed. And I pictured us there. And I told you face to face:

I don’t regret a single minute.

I did enjoy our time together, no matter how it ended. I miss my friends at Garfield High like I’d miss my right hand, but I’m not sorry I came to England, meeting so many new people here has been great. Sure, their mannerisms are different, and they can’t get enough of an outsider rolling into town, but a couple of girls have been really nice to me.

There’s another girl here called Allison too. She’s basically the class valedictorian, but the school system here is different, so she doesn’t get a title. Straight As and long red hair – I hate her already. I think you would too, but then again, I’ve never been a great judge of character.

That last week in Seattle was so awful. I’m glad you didn’t come around thinking, ‘Third time’s a charm!’ It wouldn’t have worked. I spent all my afternoons in Madrona Park, wishing the days away on wild daisies in the woods. It was the one place I knew where no-one would find me for want of trying. However, even in the peace that a blissfully mild August evening could offer, I couldn’t spend a single minute thinking about us. It was too hard; it just made my mind ache.

Getting on a transatlantic flight for twelve hours with no possible privacy forced me to wonder whether I had made the wrong decision; to wonder what it would have been like to still be with you. Like we were attached at the hip; the way we used to be.

And even with all the things we’d said and done, there’s still a part of me that wishes we could take it all back. Turn back the clock and pick up where we left off. When I go to sleep at night, you still pray on my mind from time to time. You’ll always be a fleeting memory, I guess.

Like I told you a month ago, I’d write you to say I was alright, and I am. It’s my ‘Sweet 16’ in two weeks. I didn’t expect you to remember, or to get me anything, but then I don’t expect anything from you anymore.

And I certainly don’t expect you to still be wanting me back after all this. But if by some sad stroke of fate you still want me back, as one last gift to me:

Don’t hold your breath.

Farewell,

Ava.’

Noah sighed tremendously and teased his jet black tresses in a guilty manner. He folded the letter carefully in the same way he had opened it, and neatly slid it back into the envelope. Looking over to his bedside table, he glanced back at the first letter that had brought the curiosity of guilt into his mind for the first time in affairs of the heart.

Then, his eyes traced a path over to the simple table-top mirror that adorned the aged oak desk that seemed terribly out of place next to the rest of his more modern furniture, and saw the pictures of him and the auburn-haired girl that Ava had referred to. Taken in a photo booth, each one a sillier pose than the last, his mind cast itself back through the time he had spent with Allison. He smirked in the most blasé way that had coursed across his face throughout his life in times of new found resolve.

He reached for the first letter Ava had sent him, opened the drawer of the bedside table, and placed both of them inside. Suddenly, he felt a large buzzing in his back trouser pocket. Closing the drawer, he reached in to grab his mobile phone, flipped it open casually, and held it to his right ear.

“Hello?”

“Hey, are you still coming to Madrona with me?”A female voice pleasantly chirped on the line, “I’m just getting the bus there now!”

“I’ll see you there, Lana,” he replied, and hung up immediately. He placed the phone back into his pocket, then with a spirit of indifference, took to his feet, and headed out of his room, closing the door behind him.