Letters of Love (Lessons in Love) (22 page)

Alex looked to the bedside table where her father’s picture had proudly stood. It was now packed away with her other belongings, bound for Woodsdale and ultimately New York. She liked that he came along with her, watching over her in a sense.

“Hey, Heron, not sure if anyone told you
, but we graduated! We need to get out of here!” Ashley shouted cheekily from the hallway.

“Coming!” Alex leant into the hallway and shouted
; her voice carried down to her waiting friend.

Taking one last long look at the room
, Alex sighed but smiled. She’d enjoyed her time at Princeton. She had grown and developed as a person. She was finally the person she wanted to be: ambitious and driven and with amazing, genuine friends.

“I hope I made you proud, Dad,” she whispered to the emptiness
, and then she headed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

“Come on, we’ve got to go,” Ashley declared impatiently. Her father was waiting with her in the hallway, as was Alex’s mother.

Ashley would be returning to Los Angeles for a few days, and Alex to Woodsdale. The next time they’d see each other would be at LAX for their flight out to London, England, in one week’s time.

“I hate good
-byes,” Ashley said emotionally.

“You’ll be seeing each other in a week
.” Ashley’s father laughed.

“A whole week!” Ashley mockingly made a weeping face.

“We’ve got to go now to make our flight,” Ashley’s father urged his daughter to hurry.

“Okay, okay
.” Ashley rolled her eyes at him and went and hugged Alex. “It’s not good-bye, it’s
au revoir
as we’ll be together again soon.”

“For our Europe adventure.” Alex smiled.

“
Oui, oui
,” Ashley quipped, already embodying the European attitude.

“Thank you,” Alex said sincerely, “for everything. I couldn’t have got through these last four years without you.”

“Ditto.” Ashley smiled as her eyes welled up once more. “I refuse to cry again today!” she said, tilting her head and pulling back her tears.

“Daddy, let’s roll
.”

H
er father headed out the door, and Ashley followed, glancing back to wave at Alex.

“Goodbye
, Alexandra, goodbye, Kappa Pi, I knew thee well!” Ashley bowed dramatically at the door before hastily hopping down the driveway to the waiting car, where her father was already behind the wheel, ready to leave.

“Well, we’d best bust a move,” Jackie said, waving to Ashley’s car as it drove away.

“Yeah,” Alex agreed, saddened to be leaving. Saddened to be ending an era.

“Wait until
you see what we’ve done with the place.” Jackie smiled, placing her arm around her daughter and guiding her out of the grand house.

“Andy painted the whole exterior.”

“All of it?” Alex joked, her eyes wide.

“All of it.” Jackie confirmed, her eyes wrinkled with humor.

“I’m actually looking forward to seeing Woodsdale again,” Alex admitted. “It’s been a long time.”  

“Nothing has changed,” Jackie said flippantly. “But then that’s the good thing about home, as much as you may change, it’s always there, the same as ever, waiting for you to return.”

Jackie hailed a taxi and instructed them to take them to the train station, where Andy was already waiting for them.

As the car pulled away from the campus, Alex turned back and watched the familiar buildings drift into the horizon.

“I’m so proud of you, sweetheart,” Jackie said as she patted Alex’s knee.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Oh, before I forget, this came for you, at the trailer. I wasn’t sure when to give it to you.” Jackie reached into her handbag and retrieved a letter in a white envelope, which had Alex’s name and Woodsdale address neatly written on the front.

Alex instantly recognized the penmanship and felt her heart freeze as though it had suddenly been locked in a vice.

“Why did it get sent to the trailer?” she asked, confused.

“I’m not sure, but here
.” Jackie handed Alex the letter.

Alex held the envelope in her hand
; it felt heavy with intent. She wasn’t ready to read it, not yet. She put it in her duffel bag, and it wasn’t until she was on the train, being rocked by the steady movement as she was pulled back to Woodsdale, that she took the letter out and opened it.

Jackie had fallen asleep, leaning against the glass window, the late afternoon sun warming her face and revealing some of her newly acquired wrinkles. Andy was preoccupied with his phone, texting the redhead who he had met at the Kappa Pi house.

Alex gingerly opened the envelope and pulled out the handwritten letter. Settling herself in her seat, she began to read.

Dear Alexandra,

By now you will have graduated from Princeton
, and I am so immensely proud of you. Your degree will guarantee you the bright future you so truly deserve. I hope that you have some comprehension of what you have achieved. Few could accomplish what you have done given your circumstances.

I
haven’t heard from you in so long I almost debated not sending this letter. Clearly you’ve moved on with your life and found someone else, and I’m pleased for you. It’s important that you find happiness, Alex.

Four years is a long time to be apart from someone
, and yet, this time has only served to teach me that my love for you runs much deeper than I could ever have anticipated.

I try
to move on with my life, to think of what we had as something which exists only in the past, but I cannot. You are always in my thoughts, the mark you placed upon me with our love, indelible.

There are some loves which define us, and we carry them with us for the rest of our lives. Ours is one such love, at least it is for me. Maybe you don’t feel the same, and that
’s fine, but I had to tell you how I feel, put my honest feelings out there, or else I’d spend a lifetime wondering what if, and that is no way to live.

So congratulations on graduating. I thought of you today, as I think of you every day. I wish you only success and happiness in your future. But please know that should you return to Woodsdale, or should you wish to return to me, no matter how much time passes
, I will be here, ready and waiting.

True love does not diminish with time. I know that now.

Yours,

Mark

Alex folded the letter back up and returned it to her duffel bag before stretching out her leg and gently kicking her sleeping mother. It was time to wake up. Woodsdale was the next stop.

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inue reading book 3,
Living With Love
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Alex spotted Ashley gazing out of a window in the departure lounge in LAX and immediately ran up to her. Ashley turned just as Alex approached, and the girls embraced.

“I missed you!” Alex said as they pulled apart, taking in Ashley’s new glow from having spent a few weeks back home in Los Angeles.

“I missed you too, fellow alumni.” Ashley smiled fondly.

“Oh my goodness, yes, can you believe we’ve graduated!” Alex exclaimed.

“Of course I can; we are amazing.” Ashley laughed. “And now we’re off on our well-earned amazing European adventure!”

“I’m excited,” Alex said giddily. It had been years since she’d last been on vacation, back when her father was alive.

“Me too, I can’t wait to soak in the culture, and the men,” Ashley added cheekily.

“When do we board?”

“Any minute now.” Ashley looked back out of the window and pointed to a plane close by to where they were standing.

“That’s our plane.”

“It is?” Alex gazed in awe at the huge metal bird. She’d forgotten just how exciting airplane travel could be.

Over the loudspeaker there was an announcement that the Virgin Atlantic flight to London Heathrow would commence boarding imminently.

“That would be us, old sport,” Ashley said in a terrible English accent.

“Spiffing
.” Alex laughed in an equally terrible attempt at the dialect.

Twelve hours, four films and three airplane
-quality meals later, Alex and Ashley arrived at the first point of call on their European adventure: London, England.

The two girls, wearied from travel, pulled along their now unbearably heavy suitcases as they shuffled out of the arrivals gate. Their pace slowed to a crawl as they approached the sliding glass exit doors and noticed that outside it was raining, heavily.

“Eurgh, rain,” Ashley moaned, pausing to pull up the hood on her sweater over her head. Alex did the same thing and braced herself for the drizzle awaiting them just outside.

“Come on, we just need to get a cab,” Alex rallied her friend with as much enthusiasm as her fatigued body could muster.

“I believe the proper term here is a taxi,” Ashley quipped, her clipped fake accent returning.

“Taxi
, then.” Alex smiled. “We still need to get one to get to our hotel.”

“Okay, okay.”

They bustled out of the airport and hailed a nearby black taxi.

“Oh my God
.” Ashley giggled as they got inside, her energy suddenly renewed. “The taxi looks just like it does in the movies. I feel like I’m Bridget Jones!”

“You girls American?” the taxi driver asked from the front seat in a thick cockney accent.

“What gave us away?” Alex asked drolly.

“Well, welcome to England,” he said in a friendly tone. “I hope you have a lovely time here.”

“Super!” Ashley declared in her own terrible attempt at the accent, which made the driver smile and shake his head.

****

Alex liked London immensely. It was bustling like any other city, but what made it different was the abundance of history littered all around. You couldn’t walk down a road without tripping over some important landmark. It made everywhere seem so interesting and unique.

They were staying in a hotel on the outskirts of the city, which meant that each day they had to traverse the underground system to get to any of their destinations. This presented a problem for Ashley
, who wasn’t accustomed to public transportation.

“Alex, where do we go?” she asked helplessly each morning after they’d planned their day out, handing the map of the underground to her friend whil
e wearing a lost puppy expression.

“Okay, well
, we’re heading for Buckingham Palace,” Alex muttered as she surveyed the map.

“I do hope we get to see the Queen!” Ashley clapped her hands together with excitement.

“So we want to get off here.” Alex pointed at a mark on the map, which meant nothing to Ashley.

“Just follow me
.” Alex smiled, enjoying her role of tour guide. It made her feel important, like an integral part of their adventure rather than just a spectator.

Being surrounded by so many British accents was a complete novelty, especially for Ashley. She had a fondness for British guys, citing that they were so well dressed and well spoken that she couldn’t resist them.

A few times during their traversing of the underground system the girls were asked out for drinks, but they always declined.

“This vacation is a man-free zone,” Ashley would inform them sternly as they sighed with disappointment.

Even though the vacation was meant to be man-free, Alex’s mind was far from devoid of the opposite sex. She kept thinking about Oscar, worrying about how he was doing back in America in the hospital, where he was being kept following his suicide attempt. She wondered if he was getting better and if she’d made the right decision in leaving him there.

“Stop thinking about him,” Ashley would tut whenever she spotted Alex gazing blankly ahead.

“I’m not,” Alex would lie.

“I know you too well, Alex. Stop thinking about Deloitte and focus on now. There will be plenty of time to see him when we
’re back.”

It helped that Ashley knew her so intimately that she could essentially protect Alex from her own inner demons.

But even Ashley didn’t know about the other guy who haunted Alex’s thoughts. The guy who had written her a letter that she simply couldn’t forget.

Mark was back in Woodsdale, teaching and apparently waiting for her. He had said that he’d wait for her forever. The romance of the declaration resonated within Alex even though she tried to resist it. As much as she wanted to stop thinking about both Mark and Oscar and focus on her vacation, she kept thinking about the letter and the promise to wait. It had admittedly blown her away.