"So why didn't you Bobby?" my dad asks.
His voice betrays his concern. Barely a month has passed since I arrived here in DC and already I am searching for greener pastures. A few short weeks calling the District my home yet again, and I am regretting my decision more than ever.
"Well...'" I stammer, "the job in Boston would probably have been a better fit professionally and..." My voice trails off, not by conscious effort but because the memory of a face I have not seen in so long suddenly fills my mind's eye. "I should have moved to Boston because...it's just that....that...that's where...."
"That's where she lives," my dad finally interjects, finishing my thoughts with a confession that I struggle to admit.
"Yeah dad...that's where Ornela lives."
"So why didn't you take the job in Boston and move up there if you want to be with her?" he asks.
I see your face. I see you waving goodbye. "Because she doesn't want me there dad. She doesn't want me in her city...she doesn't want me in her life."
"I see," he says. For several moments he says nothing more, letting the silence of our phone call pass the somber moments before adding, "You never know Bobby. Life has a funny way of working things out for the best when you least expect it. Maybe the reason you two needed to be apart for so long was to realize just how special what you had really was. You and Ornela might end up together after all. Never give up hope."
Our phone call ends and I look back out my window to see the full moon hanging in the barren night sky, alighting the roads north that lead all the way to Boston, all the way to a girl who I think about even now...and miss very much.
Ornela, four months ago when you kissed me in your car at Logan airport, you gave me the most precious of gifts...hope. Even though we were saying goodbye, I thought that we would only be apart for perhaps a month or two before our feelings for one another led us to start talking again and eventually reconcile. I thought that before winter had passed, we would share at least one more night shared together in Boston and that, perhaps, you would even ask me to move to the city to be with you. Never did I imagine that after all this time we would still be apart, for I have always thought that we would eventually be together. Even after I told you goodbye three years ago, deep down I still believed that our story was not really over, that somehow we would find each other again and never let go. I believed that, despite everything, we would make things work...we would end up together, but for the first time in my life I am beginning to lose hope.
Do you want me to stop Ornela? I know that you still read my journal...I have always known that -- it is the reason I believed you still had feelings for me, and the reason I believed we would someday be together again. But now I no longer know what to believe. Do you want me to stop writing my letters to you? Do you want me to let you go? All I want is to try, just one last time, to have a real relationship with you. I just want to hold you in your bed, talk to you about what is going on in your life, and fall asleep in each other's arms...and I want to do these things every day. That is all I have really wanted since the moment I sent you my first letter over a year ago.
I care about you so much Ornela, more than you will probably ever truly understand, and I just want for us to be a part of each other's lives again.
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In my last letter I told you that I would not do this again, but I would like to invite you to my home in DC this weekend. Once before, in April 2011, you traveled from Boston to DC to visit me for just one night. We spent all night in that hotel bedroom talking and holding each other close. Four years have passed since we saw each other in DC. Four months have passed since we saw each other at all. Ornela, can we see each other this weekend?
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