the eighth slice

As soon as I’d read it, I’d wished I hadn’t.

Dear Oscar,

Just in case you have some idea that you and me could ever be a couple, I thought you would find it useful to know that that’s never, ever going to happen. I’m not into it and you might as well get used to realizing that. Maybe it’s time for you to move on? Stop obsessing about one person and look at possibilities elsewhere. It’s okay being your friend and everything. Stop me if I’m making any assumptions here that I’m wrong about. I just thought I should be clear with you so you can get on with your life and I can get on with mine.

What I’m really saying is that you need to spread your wings.

Adios,

Meg

I lay on my bed then all rigid and tense, letting a thousand cheerless thoughts chase each other around my head. And then I heard a noise. It was Paloma throwing those little bits of plaster—plaster she’d found on Meg’s sill—at my window and asking me about the letter. I wasn’t in the mood to talk about it but Paloma had this way of blinking at me quite slowly, and it made me want to tell her my secrets. And before I knew it, I was confiding in her about how Meg didn’t have any interest in . . . well . . . in me. She listened carefully and she nodded her head a lot and went “uh huh, I see, mm.” She said she had some advice. She said that the only way to respond to a letter like that was to ignore it completely, and to act as if I didn’t care about what it said—as if what it said was totally immaterial and of no consequence to me whatsoever.

“Oscar, you need to let her know that what was in that letter is so irrelevant that you’ve practically forgotten what it says. That’s by far the best way to deal with something like that.”

I reckoned Paloma was doing her best to be wise and honest and helpful and I wanted to take her advice.

“I’d say you’re better off not thinking about that girl. She doesn’t sound too nice,” Paloma said, then, which was Paloma’s own opinion and possibly fine if you’re able to apply logic to a particular situation. But the things I felt about Meg, they didn’t operate, they didn’t even exist, in the logical, rational part of my brain. Paloma might as well have been telling my heart to stop beating, or commanding my blood to stop flowing through my veins.

After Paloma had said good night, an email pinged into my mailbox:

To: Oscar Dunleavy

From: Meg Molony

Subject: Accidental letter—please disregard.

Oscar, I’m really sorry but Paloma’s been in touch and she told me that she dropped a letter from me in(?) to you and yes, it’s from me but you weren’t supposed to get it and you see I never really meant what I said when I wrote it —I wasn’t really thinking. You see, I’m not sure what got into me and not only did I not mean to write it, I definitely never meant for you to get it. It was only a kind of a hypothetical doodle—none of it is really true.

So please disregard. Can you pretend I never wrote it, and that you never read it? Hope that is okay with you. Tell me when you’ve received this email and we can put the whole thing out of our minds.

Meg

From Oscar Dunleavy

To: Meg Molony

Subject: Accidental letter—please disregard

Meg, I was pretty relieved to get your email. And I’m totally fine about forgetting the letter. To be honest, I was kind of baffled when I first read it, so to hear that you never wanted me to read it in the first place makes a lot of sense. Let’s forget it like you suggest. I’m okay with that if you are, and I definitely think it’s the best thing to do.

Oh and, Meg, by the way, if I’ve ever given a wrong impression to you—you know, if I’ve ever tried to imply something about us in the past, you should forget about that too, because I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to send any wrong message, okay? If I’ve given you any reason to think that I think about you in a particular way, then I apologize. I never deliberately would have wanted you to get that impression. Let’s still be friends, though, because, I mean, that’s what we are, isn’t it?

Thanks,

Oscar