Chapter 1

Dear Mark,

By the time you receive this letter I will be long gone, there is nothing keeping me here anymore. I wish to congratulate you on your upcoming nuptials and in the same breath I wish to apologize for not being able to attend. In truth I would love nothing more than to attend and congratulate you but I doubt I could. It would be a lie and I am tired of lying to myself.

How can you see things that i do not, the answer is simple you never looked. For the longest time I thought there was something wrong with me. Recently I realized that there is nothing wrong with me, in fact I am perfect and I need to accept myself before someone else can accept me.

I have loved you for as long as I have known you but still i am nothing to you. Just a friend you jokingly say. You have unwittingly hurt me far more than anyone else I know. Your kindness is cruel and you know it. You enjoy the fact that I am dependent on you. Every time another comes into your life you tell me happily and when they leave you come crying on my shoulder. I let you, that is what i hate most of all.

When i met someone i bring them to you for approval, they never pass your test you always say they aren’t good enough for me and i listen because i know the only one good enough for me is you. You see me and know me better than anyone else but you are the person who never sees me and doesn’t really know me. This is good bye. I am going to look for me and then after that I’m going to find someone for me.

By the time we meet again you will be married and i will be happy. I hope you can understand why i cannot come to your wedding. In all honesty i cannot watch you marry her, you have jokingly asked me to be your best man, i must decline because your cruelty this time has gone too far.  

Before I leave I must confess something drastic. I know about the prank you played on me and I want you to know what it did to me.

 Our last year of high school you invited me to prom. I was ecstatic; I didn’t care if I was only a substitute because your real date couldn’t come. That’s the story you told me anyway. When the night came I ditched my nerdy glasses, straightened my hair and dressed to the nines. I waited for you but you never came. I decided that something must have happened why you didn’t come to get me so I went to prom without you hoping to meet you there. Imagine my shock, outrage and humiliation when I find out that you invited me as a bet. I cried my eyes out when I found out that my best friend had accepted a bet from the basketball team to ask his nerdy friend to the prom and then ditch her. Well its time I told you what happened afterwards.

If you will recall I missed the last weeks of school. My parents told the school I was travelling and looking at colleges, the truth however was that I was on suicide watch in Gareth View Hospital. I had swallowed close to 2 dozen pain killers and then slit my wrists. I didn’t want to live so I made sure to do the job properly. My plan failed though, my younger sister had been at prom and she heard about your prank and decided to come home and check on me. It’s a pity that she found me too early; I was almost on the point of no return. Up to this day I am not sure whether I am happy that I didn’t die or sad that my plan failed.

The marks on my wrist and in my heart will never fade but I will no longer smile when I am not happy. The mask I have worn for years will never grace my face again.

Since you asked me to be your best man I have made a video recording. It contains pictures and scenes of videos from when we were children straight to when we graduated from college. I talk a little and at the end I even manage to wish you the best. You can use it if you want. I really don’t care.

Good bye

With love,

Melisa

Ps. Enclosed is a picture of how I looked that night at prom.

***

He fingered the picture as he read the letter for the thousandth time. It never failed to depress him. All it did was drag bad memories from his past. Ten years had passed since Melisa sent the letter to him. He always thought he was the one closest to her, the one that knew her the best but in reality he hadn’t known a thing about her.

When the letter arrived he couldn’t believe its contents. It came 6 months before his wedding and the moment he finished reading it he had called the Lin residence. Futile as his actions had been. Melisa’s mom coldly informed him that Melisa had taken a trip to Brazil and that they didn’t know how to reach her or when she would be back. He never heard a word from her after that.

Karen had dutifully delivered the tape. When he watched it he realised that even though he knew nothing about her she understood him perfectly. It had, in 10mins summed him up perfectly, all his likes, dislikes and achievements. He had used it at his wedding and he would always regret that.

The one thing Mark had a lot of was regrets. His ex-wife was the second greatest one; the first was that he let Melisa walk out of his life.

The prank he played was forever seared into his memory. At the time it seemed like harmless fun. His team mates from the basketball club had bet him 1000 dollars each to do it. To him it had seemed like a sweet deal, Melisa wouldn’t have minded since she hadn’t planned on going to the prom in the first place. In reality he had carried Jessica, his girlfriend at the time. That night had been a blast but now he only had bitter feelings when he thought back.

Suicide. She’d tried to kill herself. Because of him. She had loved him. Even when he got the letter he hadn’t stopped to think about how he felt about her. It took him five years in a miserable marriage to realise how much he loved and missed her. By then it was way too late.

The Lin’s moved shortly after Melisa left. They wouldn’t take his calls and when he did reach them they wouldn’t give him any information about her. He tried to find her on his own but after 6 months he realised how futile it was. The private investigator he hired hadn’t been able to find any trace of her after she went to Brazil.

He put down her picture and took up the gold embossed card that had come in the mail. It read

Class of 200X

High School Reunion

All are welcome, bring your spouses or come alone. Show who you have become

May 22,20XX, Gareth High Auditorium

There high school reunion was coming up. He was banking everything on it. He prayed that she would come. He doubted she would be the same girl that disappeared from Gareth 10 years ago but he wasn’t the same man anymore. He knew he couldn’t make amends but he still wanted to apologize.

After his divorce he had left Gareth and moved to Washington. It was the first time he was going back, he was anxious to see what awaited him there.

***

A laugh escaped from Melisa’s lips. She now drove through the tiny town of Gareth.  Ten years had passed since she’d left. At the time she’d thought she would never return but when her mother had sent her the invitation for the reunion she realised that she was no longer angry or sad. She could come back and the past would be in the past.

Well most of the past anyway. Mark never left her alone, she found herself thinking about him in the oddest times. Most days she wondered how he was doing but she never let herself dwell.

Melisa ‘Melody’ Lin-Graves had reinvented herself, no she had found herself. She had gone to Brazil when she was 22, fresh out of college and heart broken. The man she loved was marrying his college sweet heart, unwilling to witness it she had set out to find herself. Instead Thomas Graves had found her. 

Thomas had been a 29 year old millionaire who was just as lost as she was. Together they discovered themselves and at the end of the journey they realised they wanted to be more than friends. For the first time in her life she fell in love with someone other than Mark.

She married him the minute they returned to the states. She was happily married for 7 years and then tragedy stuck. Thomas died from brain haemorrhage caused by a tumour. She was devastated after the death of her husband but life continued none the less. Three years later it hurt but not quite as much. She thought of him every day and missed him every day but the constant pain was absent.

After Thomas passed she stepped into his place as CEO of Glades Hathaway. They were a primer Holdings Company, many objected to her assuming the position but they were quickly silenced. She had earned a reputation for being as hard as nails. The job had been a life saver; it gave her a place to vent her pent up anger and frustration.

She couldn’t wait to see what had become of the people she went to high school with. In the year book she was dubbed most likely to die alone, right along with eternal virgin. How things had changed. For her at least, Gareth looked pretty much the same.