in which the girl he thought he loved returns and she's ready to try one more time.
ONE MORE
MINIMINTER
SIDEMEN
DEATHLIES 2016
*please read book one first
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FOUR
"Hey," Cal greets as he walks through the front door of the sidemen house.
"Hi," Simon responds, but his mind is thinking about ideas for a video they could do together.
"I- uh." Cal looks down at the crisp white envelope in his hands, twisting it over and holding it up for Simon to take. He does. He turns it over and over in his fingers before he suddenly freezes, recognising the handwriting. Whoever wrote this, he knew them well. "I'll let you read it alone whilst I set up my stuff."
Simon nods and Cal exits the kitchen. Simon, without looking up from his name on the envelope, pulls out a stool and sits. Hunched over the table, he racks his brain for who it could be from, but then it clicks and he has to put the letter down for a moment and remember to breathe. He never took his eyes off his name scrawled in golden ink across the front of the envelope. She'd taken the time and the effort to make it presentable.
Simon inhales sharply when he opens the letter as if, when he opened it, something was going to jump from within and rip his heart out. That was ridiculous. He knew it was. But there was something about knowing that it was from her that made his throat dry and his ribs feel as if they were crushing his insides.
Steadily, he unfolds the paper and begins to read. It hurt to read that she thought he hated her. He couldn't hate her even if he tried, and he had tried too hard. It was written exactly how she used to speak to him: intellectually and proudly. Dallas had always seemed that little bit posh, even if she didn't like to think so herself. It was in the way she spoke more than anything, but that didn't seem to matter when her smile could reach her eyes when she laughed.
Dallas goes on to apologise and Simon can't help but wonder how long she'd been thinking about writing this letter. It seemed like she had almost too much to say to fit into one letter and he wondered how much she'd left out.
Simon's jaw hit the breakfast bar when he read that she was back in the UK. It meant she wasn't far from him and suddenly there was an ache in his body to go to her, to tell her that he forgave her and that everything was ok. But he couldn't because not everything was ok. He couldn't forgive her so easily because it felt like a betrayal when she'd left him behind all those years ago and now she was back and ready to apologise? If he was completely and utterly honest with himself, it felt too late.
His heart sank at seven simple words: "I'm pretty sure I loved you too".
He couldn't understand why she would say that now. Why not say it back then in the heat of their short lived romance? Saying it now was too late, as harsh as that was to think.
