THE NOTE

by

Rickey R. Mallory

I looked at the note one more time and decided I needed a drink, bad. There weren’t any bars in this part of town though, and Amy didn’t like me drinking at home around the kids. I took the next exit off the freeway and noticed a place I hadn’t seen before, although I’d been down this street plenty of times. I wasn’t in the habit of looking for bars, though, so I guess I could have missed it.

It didn’t look new. In fact it looked a lot like the old bar that used to sit on the edge of town, back when I was a kid. The sleazy bar that nice folks didn’t admit was there, where sleazy girls that nice folks didn’t admit existed hung out.

I thought all this while I pulled up in front of the door. Still clutching the note, I locked my car and went inside. The inside was a lot like that old bar too. Like it and yet different. The old bar burned just about the time Billy Joe left town, and anyhow I’d only ever peeked in the doorway, so maybe I didn’t remember it as well as I thought. But if I hadn’t seen that bar burn down, I’d swear this was it.

Standing still, waiting for my eyes to adapt to the darkness, I rubbed my fingers over the note and regret washed over me like stepping out into midday heat in August. I shook my head and picked my way past the tables to the bar.

"Hello, sir," the bartender greeted me. Even with those two words I could tell he was Irish. Something about his R’s. I nodded, glancing quickly at him.

I did a double take. He smiled blandly, pleasantly, but one eyebrow was cocked just enough to make me feel like he knew all about me. It wasn’t a totally unpleasant feeling. Odd, but not unpleasant.

"Whiskey, water back," I said, and looked down at the note.

He set a fine crystal glass in front of me.

"So, is that a love letter?" His slightly lilting voice pulled me back to the present.

I snorted. "Not likely."

"Ah."

That’s all he said, but I suddenly had an urge to talk to him, a perfect stranger and a bartender to boot, about Billy Joe and Buddy, about the three of us. I shrugged the sensation away. I just wanted a drink. If I needed to talk, I could call Brother Mason at the church.

I picked up the glass. It was likely the finest glass I’d ever held, and when the whiskey touched my tongue, I knew it was the finest whiskey I’d ever tasted. "What brand is this?" I asked. "I didn’t call a brand."

"No, you didn’t." The bartender’s face still seemed bland, but his eyes flashed with something I might have called understanding if I’d been inclined to call it anything. I wasn’t, so I ducked my head. "Good house brand."

"It’s not the house brand,"

I sighed in irritation. "Then what the hell did you --" by that time I’d met the bartender’s eyes again and the look in them stopped me cold.

Damn. I didn’t want somebody understanding how I felt. "Look, bud," I started.

"My name’s Val," he said, smiling a million dollar smile and holding out his hand.

"I don’t mean to be rude or anything . . . Val, but I just want a drink, okay? I didn’t just split with my wife, or get fired, or lose a friend –" I stopped, or rather my voice did. Damn.

"Lose a friend?" Val tossed a towel over one shoulder and turned up a glass, filling it from the same bottle he’d used to pour my drink.

I tossed back the best whiskey I’d ever tasted just like it was two dollar rotgut, and Val filled my glass again. "He wasn’t a friend. He was, we were, you know, kids together. That’s all."

Val nodded toward the note. "What happened?"

"He died."

"Hurts?"

A burst of laughter came from a dark corner of the bar where a poker game was in progress. I glanced over, distracted. Just then a beautiful redhead came up to Val. She too had a towel slung over one shoulder. That plus the tray she held told me she worked in the bar. Brilliant detective work, I thought wryly.

"Val, I need two more whisky sours, and . . . ." she stopped cold and stared at the bottle on the bar in front of me, then up at the wall. I followed her glance and saw for the first time that the entire left wall behind the bar was covered with glass shelves, and the shelves were filled with bottles, cut crystal, mouth-blown like the one in front of me, plain old dusty jars. There were a notable few empty spots, but basically the shelves were filled with the strangest and most beautiful mix of bottles I’d ever seen anywhere.

". . . and another beer for the loud mouth over there," she continued after a beat.

Val smiled at her and if the smile he gave his customers was a million dollar smile, then the one he reserved for the help was the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes version. Obviously, the bartender was sweet on the barmaid.

I savored my second glass of whiskey while he filled her order. Then after shooting me a look that spoke volumes in a language I didn’t know, the young woman hefted her tray and headed for the poker table.

"What’s the name of this place?" I asked, when I had Val’s attention again.

"Bottles."

I allowed myself a small snort at the apt name. "Haven’t seen it before. Is it new? It doesn’t seem new, in fact it seems familiar, but this area of town has an ordinance against bars," I said.

Val just watched me.

". . . or did the last time I heard," I finished lamely.

"Your friend who died . . ."

"He wasn’t my friend," I snapped, then took another drink. The whiskey was smooth, soothing. "It’s probably been thirty years since I’ve seen him. He ran away from home when we were thirteen, and all I ever heard from him since was a Christmas card now and then." I lay the note on the bar and smoothed the wrinkles my sweaty hands had put in it.

"You mentioned Buddy."

I laughed shortly. "Buddy. Yeah. We still see each other at church when he goes, which isn’t often, and sometimes at a ball game, but that’s about it. He took over the auto repair shop when his uncle died and I work for a law firm in the city, so our paths don’t cross that often."

"And Billy Joe?"

"Bill. His name is – was Bill now. Like I said he . . . ran away."

Val’s smile had never left his face, but it seemed to grow sad. "So what happened to you three?"

I looked at my watch. Surprisingly it wasn’t late at all. In fact, I thought it had been later than this when I left work. I nodded when Val saluted me with the bottle. He poured another shot of golden liquid into the crystal glass.

"What happened to us?" I mused, turning the glass, letting the dim bar lights reflect amber through the whiskey. "Oh man, what a question. How long have you got?" I joked.

Val shrugged and gestured around him. "Forever. It’s slow."

I sighed and let another swallow of exquisite whiskey flow down my throat. Suddenly, it seemed important to share what was pressing so hard on my chest. And who better to share it with than a bartender?

"Back then, the three of us were inseparable. We lived within spitting distance of each other, and from the time we could sneak away and get into trouble we did. Nothing was sacred. We stole cigarettes and booze. One time when we were about eight or so, we set the field behind my house on fire."

Val chuckled appreciatively.

"I never knew what happened to Buddy and Billy Joe, but my daddy made me sit in the middle of the kitchen floor and strike a whole box of matches. He knew how to make the punishment fit the crime. I’ve had a healthy respect for fire ever since, and I never did take up smoking."

"What do you think happened to Billy Joe and Buddy?"

I shrugged. "Who knows. Buddy? Nothing. It was just him and his mom and his two kid sisters, so he was home free. Billy Joe? If his dad was sober enough, he probably got the crap beaten out of him, and if his dad was drunk, well," I laughed without humor, "he probably got the crap beaten out of him."

"Sounds like both Billy Joe and Buddy had it rough."

I glanced up at him. "Billy Joe, yeah. His old man was meaner’n a snake. And if you were from down here, you’d know that in the South when somebody says somebody’s mean . . . well, suffice it to say it’s in the truest sense of the word." I twirled the glass. "Buddy, though, hell, he did whatever he wanted to. His dad died when he was young, and his mother had all she could do to keep food on the table. Buddy had it easy."

"The three of you got into trouble on a regular basis?"

"Hah. Well, yeah. But the most daring thing we ever did nobody ever knew about. You know, after you grow up, you think about summer as an idyllic time for kids. No school. No homework. But what I remember, and I’ll bet most people would if they really dug back in their memory, is long, hot, boring days and nights. I guess that’s why Buddy and Billy Joe and me kept getting into trouble."

The bargirl gestured to Val and he nodded at me then stepped over to the other side of the bar. I shut my eyes and rejoiced in excellent whiskey. When Val came back he seemed slightly irritated, but the sense faded almost immediately.

He grinned. "So what was this amazing thing you boys did?"

"Well," I said, "it was when the morphodyke died. You know what a morphodyke is?"

Val shook his head.

"Hermaphrodite is the proper term, but back then, folks said it just like that, ‘morphodyke.’ She’d lived with her brother at the old Branson place for about three years. We were probably eleven, maybe twelve when she died, old enough to be curious. I remember Mama talking about her."

"Her?"

I nodded, staring into my glass. "Her name was Josephine. ‘Never knew Hiram Branson had a sister,’ Mama would say. ‘It’s strange he never mentioned her before.’

"How did people get the idea she was a hermaphrodite?" Val asked, pouring another whiskey for us both.

I looked up at him. "You know, I don’t remember. But the day she died, Billy Joe said we had to get into the funeral home and see for ourselves. I remember Buddy was totally against it. ‘Unh-uh!’ he said. I can still see him shaking his head. ‘I ain’t going into no funeral home. There’s dead people there.’ Billy Joe just looked at him. ‘Course there are, stupid,’ he said. Billy Joe was never one to mince words. ‘That’s why they call it a funeral home.’ Buddy turned pale as a ghost at that, but all he did was turn and ask me if I was going. I had butterflies in my stomach, but there was no way I’d let Buddy know that. ‘Sure,’ I said confidently. ‘Just say when.’"

I stopped and stared into my glass, remembering. "Billy Joe planned the whole thing, like he always did. It always amazed me how much he knew about everything. He knew the layout of the funeral home, including where Josephine Branson’s body was. I wish I’d asked him how he knew so much, but at the time I’d have sooner died than admit I didn’t know, so I just nodded sagely and listened, letting Billy Joe choreograph our midnight invasion of the funeral parlor."

"Sounds like quite an adventure," the bartender prompted.

"I had the hardest time sneaking out of the house. I always had the hardest time. What with Billy Joe’s dad usually in a stupor by ten-thirty or so, assuming he didn’t go off mean. When Billy Joe’s dad took mean drunk Billy Joe might miss school for a few days. He usually came back with a black eye or a busted rib or something."

I stopped, remembering, then shook it off. "Buddy’s mom never knew where he was. She was probably grateful when he didn’t eat supper. That’s how poor they were. At my house, everything was totally different. Mom and Dad actually checked on us, and I shared a room with my less than brilliant little brother. He was three years younger than me and a total pain in the ass. It gave him the utmost pleasure to snitch on me. I usually used the excuse of spending the night with Buddy. We met at twelve o’clock at the old train depot.

"Billy Joe had it all planned. He led us through the back alleys to the rear door of the funeral home. ‘Old Martin don’t lock it when there’s a body lying in,’ he explained. ‘Somebody might get a wild hair to come look at their loved one at two a.m. or something.’

The rooms were ice cold, and that gave me the creeps. All I could think was that they kept it cold to preserve the bodies. I was shivering, and I could feel Buddy shaking next to me, but we wouldn’t look at each other. We just followed Billy Joe.

"You know Val, I’ve never been in a quieter place in my life. I remember when Mama died I went over to the funeral home in the middle of the night, because I couldn’t sleep, but that place was a hotbed of activity compared to this night."

I shuddered faintly, remembering. "We snuck through the corridors behind Billy Joe, muscles screaming with tension, hair standing on end, senses tuned to the tiniest noise. If anyone had said ‘boo’ I’d have probably shattered into a million pieces. I expected a dead body to come at me out of the shadows at any second. I was almost twelve years old and fairly smart, but at that moment I believed the dead could walk.

"Billy Joe had a flashlight. He always thought of everything. I tried later to figure out who all the dead people were in there that night, but I never could. I swear to you we must have looked at a dozen dead faces lit by the eerie uneven light of Billy Joe’s flashlight.

"We’d just come out of a room where a little old lady was tucked into baby blue satin when we heard a noise. I almost screamed, but thank God I stopped myself." I stuck my finger in my mouth and talked around it. "I still have a little knot here on my tongue where I bit it. Buddy was practically hyperventilating, but as usual, Billy Joe was cool.

"He put a hand on each of our arms, shushed us, and led us to a closet. We made a lot of noise getting into the closet around the broom and the mop and the plastic bucket, but by some miracle, nobody heard us.

"We left the door cracked open, so when the lights went on we were nearly blinded. It was Hiram Branson, the morphodyke’s brother. He looked awful. His clothes were a mess, his hair was sticking up everywhere and his eyes were red and puffy."

I gestured with the glass. "You know, Val, Hiram was probably no older than I am now, but to us he was old. That’s hard to believe. I remember him as so old.

"So anyhow he walked into the room next to the blue satin lady, and for about thirty minutes, we had to listen to Hiram’s outpouring of grief over his Josie. He cried openly, just like a child. ‘My dearest,’ he wailed. ‘How will I go on without you. I love you. How could you leave me like this?’ The longer it went on, the more uncomfortable I got. Even at almost twelve years old, even in nineteen sixty-eight, there was something inside me that knew this wasn’t a natural reaction of a man who’s lost his sister."

Val took the towel off his shoulder and polished the bar. "What was it?" he asked quietly.

"I didn’t know then. I was standing there in that broom closet with Buddy’s foot on top of mine and my side wedged up against Billy Joe’s back, listening to a man who was heartbroken, not over the death of a sister, but over the death of a lover. And somehow, somewhere, deep inside me, I knew it. I have never been so totally aware of anyone as I was of Billy Joe and Buddy. I felt like my skin had been flayed off my body and that my brain had been laid open for viewing. I felt exposed, embarrassed, raw. Hiram Branson’s grief was the most intense emotion I had ever witnessed, and it made me hurt, for him and for myself."

Val frowned, and for a moment, I was afraid I’d accidentally stepped too close. But he gestured. "Go on, go on. This is really interesting."

I nodded. I had no clue why I was telling this young bartender a story I’d never shared with anyone in a bar I’d never seen before. I just somehow felt it was right. It was time.

"You know Val, I’ve been lucky. Except for my mother, I’ve never lost anyone really close to me."

Val nodded grimly. "You have been lucky."

I shrugged. "I can still remember the pain I felt for Hiram Branson. I dread it for myself. Someday I will lose someone I love that much -- my wife, one of my children, and I don’t like having the knowledge of how awful it’s going to be."

"You don’t know how awful it’s going to be," Val said vehemently. His eyes sparked with flame for an instant.

"Hey, bud, I’m sorry," I said quickly. "I didn’t mean to upset you."

Val knocked back a glass of whiskey and I heard the bargirl call his name in a warning voice. But he ignored her and so I did too. "So you guys were in the closet?" he asked.

"Yeah. Hiram finally left after what seemed like hours. We unfolded ourselves from that cramped closet. ‘Let’s get out of here before somebody else comes,’ Buddy pleaded. I felt the same way. ‘No.’ Billy Joe was adamant. ‘We’ve got to see her now.’

"I remember Buddy and I looking at each other. We knew exactly what Billy Joe was talking about. Billy Joe’s dad had magazines, so we were quite familiar with the female anatomy, although we weren’t exactly sure what a morphodyke was. But, you can be sure we had discussed all the possibilities at great length. The most popular theory was that she would have nothing at all. She was a strange looking woman, large, with broad shoulders and huge feet, and a rough, almost ugly face. I guess it was her size and her ugliness that started the morphodyke rumors. Besides, any woman that ugly couldn’t have much interesting to look at underneath her clothes, could she?

"But Hiram Branson’s grief lay like a pall over us, along with the unspoken realization that whatever Josephine Branson was, Hiram had loved her more than as a sister.

"Just like usual, Buddy and I let Billy Joe take the lead. We all looked at each other in the dim light, and I guess Billy Joe could see by our faces that neither of us was going to make a move. So he sighed in disgust and turned the flashlight on Josephine Branson."

I shook my head and tossed back another glass of whiskey. "I’m telling you Val, she was the ugliest woman I’d ever seen. Uglier than I’d remembered. They’d powdered her face or something, and she looked worse than dead. Mildred from the beauty shop had done her hair and it was shiny and stiff looking, and she had on a lavender dress with lace at the neck. Billy Joe opened the bottom half of the casket lid. ‘What are you doing?’ I whispered. ‘Well, we got to see,’ he said reasonably.

"I couldn’t look away, I couldn’t move. All I could do was stare at Billy Joe’s hands as he pulled down the satin sheet and pulled up the lavender dress. Slowly, he played the light down the body of the morphodyke, past the bunched up purple material. The eerie circular light came to rest on her genitals, or perhaps at this point I should say his genitals."

Val stopped polishing the wood surface of the bar. He looked up at me, his eyebrows cocked. "His?"

I shook my head affirmatively. "Oh yeah. His. You should have seen the three of us. We jumped three feet off the ground, and Billy Joe dropped the flashlight. ‘Shit!’ he breathed, and started backing away from the casket.

"I finally recovered enough to speak. ‘Billy Joe, get the flashlight!’ I hissed. He just shook his head, backing away, step by step, his face a study in horror. I’d never seen Billy Joe like that. It was as if he’d seen Satan or something. He was totally shocked.

"‘Billy Joe,’ I entreated. He was the leader, it had all been his idea, but now he was flaking out on us. I looked at Buddy, but he was about to cry. The flashlight had fallen into the corner of the casket, and the light was shining through the satin padding like lights under a swimming pool’s surface. It made Josephine’s ugly face even uglier.

"I finally accepted the fact that Buddy and Billy Joe were useless. So, holding my breath and grimacing, I stuck my hand down into the folds of satin in the casket, praying to God that I wouldn’t touch any part of the creature that lay there, dead and cold, with the flashlight’s light etching its face into my memory like acid. I felt around gingerly until my fingers touched something cold and metallic. With a shuddering sigh of relief I grabbed the flashlight and ran.

"I didn’t know what Billy Joe and Buddy were doing but at that point I didn’t care. All I wanted was to get out of that room and that building as fast as I could. I ran outside into the warm night, shivering as the humid heat hit me after the artificial chill of the funeral home. I dropped the flashlight and never stopped until I got to my house, then reality began to seep into my terrified brain.

"I was supposed to be at Buddy’s house, spending the night. I slept in the front seat of Daddy’s car and went inside the next morning after the paper boy woke me up. I told Mama I was sick and she believed me and put me to bed."

Val smiled appreciatively. "Wow. What a night."

"We never mentioned it. Somehow we knew independently and as a sort of collective consciousness, what a scandal we could make for Hiram Branson if we revealed what we knew. And somehow, we also knew that each of us would never be the same again, after that. Something had happened that night, something that would end . . . ." I couldn’t finish. I fingered the note that lay beside the crystal glass. I shook my head, kind of amazed at my conflicting feelings.

"Tell me what happened that night," Val murmured.

I shrugged irritably. "I told you. We found out the ‘morphodyke’ was nothing but a transvestite, and old Hiram was a queer, a homosexual."

"At least one of you brought something else away from that encounter, didn’t you? Something that eventually affected all of you?"

I tossed back my fourth glass of whiskey, abstractly noticing that I didn’t feel the least bit drunk. Glancing at my watch, I was amazed at how little time had passed. I felt like I’d been in the bar for hours, but according to my watch, it had only been about twenty minutes. I watched the second hand crawl around.

"What happened to Billy Joe?" Val’s voice was quiet, but it was also compelling. So compelling that I wanted to get up and run outside, away from the memories, away from the truth.

"I suppose he’d always known," I said. "At least that was what he said. By some unspoken mutual agreement, the three of us didn’t hang around together any more. Buddy started working with his uncle in the auto repair shop, and I made the junior high football team. But one day Billy Joe came to see me. His dad had gone on a binge and beat the crap out of him again. So he was in pretty bad shape. He came over late one evening and wanted to talk. We went outside and sat on the back steps. Billy Joe sat down carefully, favoring his side and one arm. He had a shiner and his lip was cut where his dad had beaten him. I remember thinking if I was him I’d run away. But I knew at the same time he had nowhere to go.

"He talked about Hiram and Josephine. He seemed fascinated. ‘What difference does it make?’ I asked him. ‘That Josephine person is dead and Hiram’s gone.’ But he wouldn’t leave it alone. Finally he stood up with a soft groan and walked away a few paces, standing with his back to me. ‘Have you ever thought about that?’ he asked me. ‘About what?’ I think I knew what he meant, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it.

"‘About being that way. About being queer.’ ‘No,’ I said, probably too fast. I guess everybody thinks about it at some time, but I was twelve years old, and I couldn’t admit even a passing thought to another kid, especially not Billy Joe, not after what we’d seen together.

"‘Well, I have,’ he said, and his voice wasn’t steady. He turned around and looked at me. ‘I just need to talk to somebody, and you’re always the level-headed one, I figured I could tell you.’ He was looking at me and his eyes were shining like he was going to cry, and I knew I didn’t want to hear what he had to tell me.

"‘I’m pretty sure I’m homosexual,’ he said brokenly. ‘You don’t have to say anything. I just needed to tell somebody, and I knew I could trust you.’"

Val filled my glass again and I tossed it back without a thought.

"He came to you. Beaten by his father, unable to trust anyone else, he came to you."

I grimaced. Val’s words stabbed into me with all the force of bayonets. Stab. Stab. Stab. "Yeah, he came to me."

"And you’ve kept his secret all these years."

I slammed the crystal glass down onto the counter. A bell-like ring echoed through the bar and for a few seconds, even the raucous poker game silenced. "No!" I shouted, then covered my face with my hands, jabbing my fingers into my hair. "No, I didn’t keep his secret. I betrayed him. I betrayed my friend." My heart clenched like a huge fist in my chest. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

"What did you do?"

"Are you kidding?" I muttered, my voice muffled by my hands. "What’s the worst thing I could have done? I told. I told Buddy. Well, Buddy went crazy, yelling about how Billy Joe had set us up and he was trying to make the town think we were queers. I tried to remind him nobody knew what we’d done, but he wouldn’t shut up. He just kept yelling. Before long it was all over town that Billy Joe was a queer. And Billy Joe disappeared."

Val picked up the note. "And this is the first you’ve heard of him in thirty years?"

I shook my head. "He wrote me that he was all right, and that he didn’t blame me. We’ve kept in touch, you know, Christmas cards, that kind of thing. But that can’t make up for what I did."

Val was silent for so long I finally looked up at him. His blue gaze assessed me. "What is it again you think you did?"

I reached for the note but without seeming to move, Val kept it just out of my grasp. I spread my hands. "I ruined his life. I betrayed his secret. It’s all my fault."

"What’s all your fault?"

I sighed in frustration. "All of it." I nodded toward the note. "Everything. If I’d just kept my mouth shut . . ."

"What?" Val’s voice rose, although nobody in the bar seemed to notice. "If you’d kept your mouth shut what? Billy Joe wouldn’t have been gay? Billy Joe wouldn’t have run away? Billy Joe wouldn’t have died? You’re giving yourself far too much credit." He tossed the note down as if it were trash. "Billy Joe had a lot more problems than just his conflicted sexual feelings. He was an abused child living in a town that didn’t acknowledge things like that. Right?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean didn’t you tell me he came to school with broken bones, with black eyes, with obvious signs of physical abuse?"

"Yeah, but people just thought he got into fights."

"No they didn’t. People knew exactly what was going on. Your parents knew. Your teachers knew." Val shook his head. "Billy Joe had a lot more to escape than one boy’s story which according to the town might or might not have been true. It was probably better for him that he left when he did."

I just shook my head. I’d never completely admitted to myself what I’d done before and now I was steeped in it, wallowing in it . . . my betrayal of someone who trusted me. "I let him down. I caused it."

"Oh get over yourself," Val barked. "Things happen to people. Horrible things. Unspeakable things. And it’s usually not one person’s fault. So stop beating yourself up over –" he stopped, staring at me. After a moment he wiped his hand over his face. I had the odd feeling I was watching someone who was seeing a ghost.

Then, as I looked on in shock, Val picked up the mouthblown decanter from which he’d poured my drinks and turned around and flung it at the door behind the bar. It shattered with a ringing echo that seemed to go on for minutes. He turned back around, gave me a crooked smile and wiped his hands on his towel.

"Now it’s late and you need to get home. Amy has dinner ready."

I just stared at him, but he went back to polishing the bar.

I got up and turned toward the door, oddly enough feeling better than I had in a long time.

"Trey?"

I turned back around.

"Don’t forget your note. Read it again, and this time, pay attention to the words. They were chosen very carefully for you."

I took the paper from Val’s hands and walked out into the growing dusk. I had to use the car light to read the note again.

"Bill passed away today," it said in a flowing script. "He always spoke fondly of you, and several times mentioned he’d like to come back to his home town, but he was never brave enough. He told me to tell you thanks for the cards and the memories. He said you’d know what he meant. If you want to send something, a donation toward a cure for AIDS would be appropriate. I’d like to add my thanks. You were his friend. He loved you." And it was signed "James."

I’ve avoided asking asked myself how Val knew my name, and even odder, my wife’s name. And although I’ve driven back down that street a dozen times since, I’ve never found the bar again. I keep trying though.

Val’s words keep ringing in my ears, ringing with truth and understanding.

"Things happen to people. Horrible things. Unspeakable things. And it’s usually not one person’s fault. So stop beating yourself up over it."

I want to tell Val he was right. Because although his words made all the difference to me, I somehow have the feeling he could benefit from hearing them again himself.

The End