I cried as I wrote an eight page love letter. It was well after midnight, and I had to be up at four to go to work in the morning. My soul was storming because he was gone. Big drops fell on the notebook paper and blurred the lines. I never got a chance to talk to him, and he was gone. He was supposed to become my husband someday. I was secure in that, but I waited too long, and he was gone. This is not how the story was supposed to go. It was so wrong. Another big drop fell onto the page, blurring more lines.

I gathered up the messy pages of pleading, gushing, reasoning prose and grabbed my jacket and went out into the inky raining Greenwood, Seattle night. My feet pattered and splashed their way toward his apartment. I didn’t know exactly where he lived. I kinda knew what he drove. It was a few miles away.

Toby Bleaker . . . Oh, even now I could go on endlessly about how divine that man was, but I’m sure you don’t have any patience for that kind of soppy romantic stuff. Let’s just say that I really liked him. He had his own small business installing and refinishing hardwood floors. I hadn’t seen him at church in two months, but I knew that his business was really keeping him busy so it didn’t bother me, until I realized that business wasn’t the reason for his absence.

The stormy letter writing tantrum followed this revelation. I didn’t think I’d actually send the letter, to what address? Call? I didn’t have a phone, or his number.

I’m crazy. I thought as I walked through the night. I pulled the letter from my pocket and the rain immediately began to soak the places my tears missed. How is this going to survive the night on his windshield? It’ll be mush by morning.

My feet kept walking toward his apartment anyway. I came to the place and I saw a white work van, a bit too far down, and on the wrong side of the street. I looked in the back windows. There were large styrofoam boxes in the back, but no sander or woodworking things. I couldn’t read the labels on the boxes because they were all turned away from me. Maybe it’s supplies of some sort. Maybe the sander and tools are at a job-site somewhere.

I still can’t leave the letter on the van. I decided to just keep walking. Ten blocks, then twenty blocks passed under my feet, until I came to a convenience store that was open. I stopped in and took my “rainy day five” out of my wallet and bought a Coke and a box of sandwich bags. The attendant was a sweet guy, and he patiently listened to me tell of my plight, and smiled with a gentle twinkle of humor glinting in his eyes.

“Good luck,” he blessed me as I left the store.

I put the messy sandwich-bagged eight page love letter under the work van’s wiper blade and walked home with a hopeful spring in my step. He’ll read my letter. He’ll come back. We’ll talk, and live “happily ever after.” It was all going to work out. It had to, this was destiny.

About nine o’clock the next morning I knew he wouldn’t respond. I felt mocked, laughed at, scorned. I also felt a sense of peace because I was letting him go.

Two weeks later I was laying on my couch, fully awake, wondering. Maybe he didn’t respond because my letter was too long and gushy. He’s a dude, he doesn’t want a long soppy love letter. I’ll just write him a short and direct note and try again. I wrote:

Dear Toby,

Please come back. 

I love you.

Paula

I began another rainy late night pilgrimage, prepared with the note in a sandwich bag. When I arrived at his apartment building I found his work van with the sander and carpentry tools in the back. I also found another van across the street. The other van was loaded with styrofoam boxes in the back, and this time I could read the labels:

Albacore Tuna . . .

Sockeye Salmon . . .

Halibut . . .