After an unhappily married doctor rides his bike into a woman’s car on the day she’s thinking about ending her life, neither one of them has any idea that they’re destined to fall in love. Charlie doesn’t want to go home, so he asks Alison to join him for a drink. What happens next is the best mistake of their lives.
Unsent Letters is a love story told through the eyes of two people who are forever transformed by a chance meeting and a one-night stand that turns into something so much more. However, illicit love is not without its consequences, and life is not without its sacrifices. Will Alison and Charlie find their way back to each other?
This book was previously published.
Friday April 16, 1999
Dear Charlie,
I sometimes pretend you’ve died. It’s the only way I can allow myself to grieve the loss of you without being plagued by what if…and if only…thinking. Isn’t that terrible? The idea of you dead and gone from this world hurts less than the knowledge that you’ve rejected me. And it would be more final. As it is, I labor under the delusion that you’ll show up, unannounced, and beg me to take you back.
You wouldn’t have to beg. I’m yours. Always will be.
I wonder if you’ve truly moved on. If you have, I don’t know how. A part of me would envy you for the capacity to compartmentalize our love away. Another part of me knows that my pain is commensurate with the depth of my love. If I hadn’t been enthralled by every aspect of you, I’d be able to let go. So, I guess, at the end of the day, my suffering is a testament to how much you infiltrated my heart. Perhaps, I should thank you.
Charlie, do you kiss your wife and think of me? I think of you late at night, alone in my bed. I imagine your lips on mine, your hands, the caress of your breath at the nape of my neck as you tickle my ear with your tongue. I spend a lot of time in bed, imagining you and trying to sleep away the reality that you’re gone.
I feel pathetic. I was a whole person before you came into my life, and now, I’ve become fragmented. Why do I feel like nothing, no one, without you? My therapist has been trying to convince me my longing isn’t for you, but for the version of me I was when we were together.
She’s wrong. I miss you. Not just the sex. I miss the deep level of connectedness, the all-pervasive sense of knowing another human being as intimately as I know myself. Then again, if I’d known you as well as I thought I did, I should’ve anticipated your leaving. I should’ve made provisions and put walls around my heart. I did know you, Charlie. Didn’t I?
Remember our telepathic exchanges? I’d look at you and you would know exactly what I was thinking. I feel lost without you. Dead. Is it too much to hope for a resurrection? Maybe not. Our love itself was a miracle. I know. I need to stop being so sentimental. But I can’t seem to censor myself. Emotions pour out of me, like blood from a wound. See, Charlie. Without you, I’m wounded. I know you thought I had it altogether and that she was the one who needed you, but that isn’t true. I need you, Charlie. I want you. More than she ever could.
Come back to me.
Love, Alison
