For a while, Russell remained the first person I thought about whenever something happened.
Then the letters began to slow down.
One a week became one every two weeks. Eventually, a month could pass before another envelope arrived.
I told myself college was changing him.
The truth was, my life was changing too.
I made new friends. I went on dates. I became busier with my teaching program.
But whenever something truly mattered, I still found myself thinking, I need to tell Russell.
Then, during his second year away, one of his letters mentioned a girl named Marianne.
She was studying nursing.
Russell said she was funny, stubborn, and smart enough to challenge him when he was being difficult. He wrote about her casually, but there was warmth in his words that I recognized immediately.
Near the end of the letter, he added, “I think you’d like her.”
I sat on the floor beside my bed holding that letter for a long time.
That was when the truth finally caught up with me.
I wasn’t simply missing my best friend.
I was in love with him.
Maybe I always had been.
That night, I took out a sheet of paper and began writing.
I told Russell everything.
I told him that I had been foolish, that every date I went on somehow ended with me comparing someone to him, and that I still remembered the promise we had made beneath the bleachers.
By the time I stopped, I had written several pages.
Then I imagined him opening that letter while falling in love with Marianne.
I imagined making him choose.
So I tore the pages into pieces.
If Russell was happy, I told myself, then loving him meant leaving his happiness alone.
For a while, we continued writing.
Then, in the summer of 1986, one final letter arrived.
I knew something was wrong before I even opened it.
Russell normally began his letters with a joke, a complaint, or some ridiculous story.
This one began differently.
Sylvia,
Marianne and I are getting married in August.
I sat at my parents’ kitchen table and stared at the sentence.
