Cassidy lay her head back on the bathtub and closed her eyes. She tried to think of something else, anything else, but she couldn’t. All her thoughts kept coming back to Alex. Why did he contact her? She made it almost impossible for him to find her, at least she thought she did.
'He must have gone to a lot of trouble to find me,' she said to herself.
She never even considered the possibility of AJ calling her, it took her by surprise. She would have never written the letter, or at least she wouldn’t have said the things she did, had she thought for one second that he would be able to find her, or even want to find her.
'I wonder what he wants from me?' she asked herself. 'Why does he want to meet me?'
She couldn’t believe that she had this opportunity, the opportunity she had dreamt of for such a long time, and she told him no.
'I opened up to him, he knows too much about me now.'
Her head told her she was crazy for feeling the way she did about him. Her heart on the other hand, didn’t want to listen. She saw so many things in him, wonderful things. She felt like she could see deep into his heart. He was in pain, he wasn’t happy with his life, for whatever reason. She wanted to help him, if he would only give her the chance.
'Girl, what is wrong with you,' she scolded herself, 'be realistic for crying out loud.'
Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about him, his voice, his laugh. She hoped he called her back.
'Dream on Cassidy. You were a bitch to him. What reason would he possibly have to call you back.'

AJ sat on his couch, still clutching the phone. He wanted to call Cassidy back, he wanted to know what he did to make her hang up on him.
What was he doing? Why was he acting like this? She told him she didn’t want to meet him, why couldn’t he just accept that?
'There’s got to be a reason she doesn’t want to meet me. What could it be?'
He tried to think of every reason he could. After her letter he would think that she would want to meet him. She obviously had strong feelings for him.
'Women,'he sighed running his hands through his hair. 'What am I getting myself into.'
He knew he should let it go and go on with his life, but he couldn’t. He had to do something to get this out of his system. He didn’t know why he had such strong feelings about this, about HER, without even meeting her.
'What is wrong with me??!' he asked himself. 'This is ridiculous. I don’t need this. She doesn’t want to meet me.'
He looked at her letter one last time and tossed it in the garbage can. As he started to walk away, he glanced back at it laying on top of the garbage. He couldn’t throw it away, it was his only link to Cassidy. If he got rid of the letter, all the feelings he had since he received it - acceptance, honesty, understanding, love – they would all disappear and he would be left the same fenced in, miserable person he was before. He couldn’t have that. As much as it scared him, he liked how Cassidy made him feel. He just wished he could tell her how much her words meant to him.
“She’ll think I’m nuts”, he said, taking the letter out of the garbage can.
He looked over it for the thousandth time. His eyes settled once again on two words that she had written that he associated with her every time her name crossed his mind: unconditional love.
He folded the letter and put it back in his pocket, at least for the time being, unable to let her go.


Chapter 4
Back