Letters We Never Sent

Letters We Never Sent The attic smelled like dust and old summers—sun-warmed wood, forgotten cardboard boxes, and the faint sweetness of eucalyptus that drifted in from the trees outside. I hadn’t planned on digging through my childhood home that afternoon, but cleaning out old rooms has a way of pulling you into memories you thought you’d outgrown. I pushed aside a stack of faded school notebooks when something small slid out and landed near my foot—a thin envelope, yellowed at the edges. My name was on it. The handwriting was familiar in a way that made my chest tighten. Aarav. Her handwriting. For a second, the moment didn’t feel real. Tara and I had grown up in neighboring houses, sharing everything from bicycles to secrets we swore we’d never repeat. But time had a way of scattering us like leaves: different schools, different cities, different versions of ourselves. We kept in touch here and there—birthday messages, the occasional late-night call—but the closeness we’d once had lived mostly in nostalgia. I picked up the envelope. It wasn’t sealed. Inside was a lined page torn from a notebook, written in her slightly slanted handwriting. I think I like him. More than I should. But saying it out loud feels like stepping off a cliff. My breath caught. There was no name. No date. Just that single line. But I didn’t need either. It was about me. I knew it the way you know your own reflection. Before I could process the mix of warmth and ache rising inside me, I heard the creak of the attic stairs. “You’re still up here?” a familiar voice called out. I turned, letter still in my hand. Tara was on the steps, brushing dust off her jeans as she came up. She had always moved with this easy confidence, like the world rarely startled her. Even now, after years of growing up in separate worlds, she still looked like the girl who used to race me across the street barefoot. “My mom said you might need help,” she said, stepping fully inside. “She also said you’re terrible at cleaning, which—honestly—is fair.” I swallowed. “Hey. You got here fast.” “I live next door,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “It’s not exactly a road trip.” I tried to smile, but my heartbeat was too loud. The letter felt warm in my hand, like it had been waiting all these years to be found. She noticed it immediately. “What’s that?” she asked, nodding toward my hand. I hesitated. “I… just found it.” She tilted her head, curious. “Can I see?” My instinct was to hide it. But something stopped me. Maybe it was the years of not saying things. Maybe it was the feeling that this moment had been approaching for a long time without either of us realizing. I handed it to her. She unfolded it slowly, brushing her thumb over the worn crease. When her eyes reached the line, I watched her breathe in sharply, as if the air had turned heavier. “Oh,” she whispered. The attic grew quiet. Even the dust seemed to settle around us. “I didn’t know this was here,” she said after a moment, her voice softer. “I… wrote a lot of things I never said.” I sat down on an old trunk, keeping my gaze steady. “Were there more?” She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she walked to a corner of the attic, crouched, and pulled out a small metal box I hadn’t seen in years. The paint on it was chipped, but the tiny sticker of a smiling star was still there—the same sticker she used to collect obsessively. She sat beside me and opened the box. Inside were folded papers, colorful sticky notes, small envelopes, even the torn covers of old diaries. My throat tightened. “These were all mine,” she said, gathering them gently. “I must’ve left them here when I moved out.” I picked up one of the notes. It read: He laughed today at something stupid I said. I wish he knew what that did to me. My chest tightened. Another one said: I think I miss him more when he’s right in front of me. And another: He has no idea, does he? I felt my fingers tremble slightly as I set them down. “Tara…” I said quietly, not sure what to do with the sudden flood of emotions. She bit her lip, a habit she’d never outgrown. “I was young. And scared. You were always so… you. Confident. Friendly. Everyone liked you. I didn’t want to risk losing you by telling the truth.” “Why didn’t you ever send them?” I asked, keeping my voice steady. She gave a small, slightly bitter laugh. “I tried once. Wrote a whole letter. Put it in your mailbox. And then I panicked and stole it back ten minutes later.” I blinked. “Wait. What?” She nodded. “It was the night before you left for college. I almost told you everything. But your whole future was opening up in front of you, and I didn’t want to tie you down to… this.” She lifted one of the papers. “To feelings I wasn’t even sure I could handle myself.” Guilt, tenderness, and something deeper tangled inside me. “Tara,” I said gently, “you should’ve told me. I cared. I cared a lot more than you think.” She looked at me then—really looked. The way she used to when we were kids trying to read each other’s thoughts. “Did you?” she asked quietly. I nodded. “I tried to write my own letters once. Never finished any of them.” She let out a breath, half-relief, half-sadness. “So we were two idiots.” “Basically.” A soft laugh left her. She picked up another letter and unfolded it. This one was longer, written neatly. Maybe someday, when we’re older and braver, we’ll talk about this. Maybe he’ll look at me the way I look at him. Maybe timing won’t always be our enemy. Her voice trembled as she read the last line. “I don’t even remember writing this.” I did something I’d wanted to do for years—I reached for her hand. She didn’t pull away. Her fingers curled around mine instinctively, as though they had been waiting for this exact moment. “Timing isn’t our enemy anymore,” I said softly. She looked down at our hands, then back at me. “You really think that?” “I do. We’re not the kids who were too scared to say things anymore.” She closed her eyes for a second, like she was letting the moment sink into her. “I always imagined reading these letters with someone else,” she admitted quietly. “Like a future partner who’d laugh with me over my silly crush.” “And now?” I asked. She squeezed my hand gently. “Now I’m glad I’m reading them with the boy they were written for.” Warmth spread through my chest, steady and certain. We sat there for a long while, going through the letters one by one, laughing at the clumsy ones, falling silent at the vulnerable ones, letting years of unspoken emotions settle softly between us. By the time we reached the last letter, the sunlight had faded, and the attic was glowing with the soft orange of evening. She placed the final note back in the box, turned toward me, and said in a low, steady voice: “We wasted a lot of time, didn’t we?” “Maybe,” I said. “But we’re here now.” Her smile grew slowly, tenderly, like it belonged to this exact point in our lives. And for the first time in years, it felt like the story we’d left unfinished was finally ready to continue. Not through letters we never sent. But through the ones we would write together from here on.