Lia wasn’t supposed to see the letters.

Especially not the day before her wedding.

She had woken early, sunlight creeping through the hotel curtains like an unwanted guest. Her bridal suite was quiet. Too quiet. Even her mother hadn’t started the chaos yet.

On the small coffee table near the window sat a brown envelope. No address. No stamps. Just her name.

LIA — in handwriting she hadn’t seen in a decade, but recognized instantly.

Her hand trembled.

Noah.

Her chest tightened like it did whenever she thought of him — which, despite her best efforts, still happened too often. He was her unfinished sentence, her half-played melody.

She opened the envelope slowly, unsure if she was peeling back the past or a wound.

Inside were ten letters.

Each sealed. Dated.

Every single one written on her birthday — July 15th — starting from the year they broke up until now.

Ten years.

She sat. Breathed. And opened the first one.

---

Letter One — July 15, 2015

> Dear Lia,

I don’t know why I’m writing. Maybe I just want to feel like I’m talking to you. Today would’ve been your 26th birthday. I used to plan whole days around it.

You probably hate me. Maybe you should. But I still remember the way you laughed at my terrible French toast. The way you corrected song lyrics mid-sentence. The way your fingertips felt when you traced my spine like I was some ancient poem only you could read.

I’m sorry I left.

— N

---

Lia’s eyes blurred. Her thumb brushed the paper as if touching it might take her back.

They had been together five years. Engaged. Happy — or so she thought.

And then he left. No explanation. No fight. Just a soft goodbye and a broken promise.

Everyone said, “He wasn’t the one if he could walk away like that.”

So she believed them.

She had to.

---

By the time she read the fourth letter, the tears had dried. Now she just felt the ache. The ache of every unanswered question. Every second of silence he’d given her.

Until the seventh letter.

---

Letter Seven — July 15, 2021

> You ever hear that phrase?

“If you love someone, let them go.”

What they don’t say is how it kills you slowly afterward.

Lia, I didn’t leave because I stopped loving you. I left because the doctor told me I had a 40% chance to live. I didn’t want you to waste your life waiting for me to die. I signed the surgery papers the morning after I packed my things.

I didn’t tell you because I knew you'd fight to stay. You always fought for people. And I didn’t want to be another war you had to survive.

The surgery worked. I made it. I should’ve called. But I didn’t know how to be someone worthy of your forgiveness.

I still don’t.

— N

---

She dropped the letter.

The air around her thinned. The walls felt too close.

Her hands were ice. Her heart thundered.

He had cancer. He almost died. He left to spare her.

And he never told her.

Lia looked up as the door opened — her best friend, Ava, walked in holding a coffee and phone.

“You okay?” Ava asked.

Lia didn’t answer. Just held out the seventh letter with shaking fingers.

Ava read. Her mouth fell open. “Holy—Lia. This changes everything.”

“I don’t know what to feel,” Lia whispered. “Angry. Sad. Relieved. Like…he’s been living in my shadow all these years.”

“What are you going to do?”

Lia looked down at the remaining three letters.

---

Letter Ten — July 15, 2024

> I heard you're getting married tomorrow.

I’m not writing to stop you. I just needed you to know — I’ve never loved anyone the way I loved you. I tried. God, I tried. But I still wake up hoping you’re beside me.

You always deserved more than broken timelines and what-ifs.

But if there’s even 1% of you that wonders…

I’ll be at our bookstore tomorrow at 5 p.m. The one with the crooked door and the cranky cat.

I won’t call. I won’t text. This is the last letter I’ll ever send.

If you don’t come, I’ll know you’re truly happy. And I’ll finally let go.

But if you do…

Well. You always said our story needed a better ending.

— Noah

---

Lia stared out the window.

The sky was clear. The town buzzed below — people moving forward, unaware that someone’s whole world had paused.

She looked at her phone. 3:22 p.m.

Her wedding was scheduled for 6.

---

“You don’t have to go,” Ava said gently. “But if you don’t, will you ever stop wondering?”

---

Lia stood up.

She didn’t pack a bag. Didn’t change her clothes.

She just grabbed the letters, slid on her sneakers, and left the hotel.

---

The bookstore was still there.

The crooked door. The cat. The dusty shelves that smelled like forgotten memories.

And Noah.

Sitting on the floor by the poetry section, holding a book she once made fun of him for crying over.

He looked older. Softer. Sadder.

But when he looked up and saw her — the whole room exhaled.

Lia didn’t speak.

She just walked over, dropped the letters on his lap, and sat beside him.

For a moment, they said nothing.

Then she whispered, “You absolute idiot.”

Noah smiled — small, broken, and full of hope.

“I know.”

She looked at him, eyes wet. “I’m supposed to be getting married.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know what this means yet. I don’t have answers.”

“I’m not asking for answers,” he said. “Just…a beginning.”

She leaned against him, forehead to his shoulder.

“I hate that I still love you.”

He closed his eyes. “I love that you still love me.”

---

One Month Later

The news of her called-off wedding had spread like wildfire. Everyone had opinions.

But Lia didn’t care.

She was sitting on a park bench, hand in Noah’s, sharing terrible coffee and worse jokes.

And for the first time in a decade, her heart didn’t ache.

It hummed.

Like maybe, just maybe —

this was the ending she was always meant to have.

---

THE END

---

This is the story of how I lost myself and broke a heart. He didn’t deserve it. He loved me in armfuls. He loved me so hard and so fully that he took that love and continued to dump it onto me. Load by load. Until finally, I couldn’t move at all.

We met in college. We met after I had felt my heart ripped out of my chest by the boy I thought would be in my life forever. We met at my own apartment where our friends giggled off to the side, proud of their efforts to hook us up. He didn’t talk to me. He sat on the couch, curled into his ball-cap and his body that was too tall and took up too much space in our little living room.

It took alcohol to open him up. We found ourselves on the same side of a beer pong table. Then we found ourselves talking late into the night. Then we found ourselves in my bed, just sleeping, but still wrapped together in the hope for the future we both pictured.

He didn’t deserve it. He said “yes” to dating me despite the long-distance we were headed for. He bought a plane ticket and he downloaded Skype and we made it work. He wrote love letters. He found a pedestal for me to stand on and he pointed at me to all of his friends and family while saying, “There she is.”

There I was. I was the girl on the pedestal.

I was the girl buried under all the love. The shadow-side of all this smothering love was jealousy. Those same guy friends we shared would text me and he would pout and turn away from me.

“It’s a group text,” I would tell him. The truth. “They aren’t even talking to me.”

It didn’t matter. He threatened to dismantle the pedestal. He threatened to take back the love. The jealousy rose and rose and I was buried and buried until one night it all blew up.

We were at a gala. We wore our best suits and long dresses and we had the makeup and the photo shoots and everything was fine, just fine. I was shoving down all the stifling. I was handling it. Until I reached for the liquor.

I reached for the liquor and the feelings spilled over. I reached for the liquor and I found myself outside in the lobby on the event center with my tongue down the throat of an old fling. I reached for the liquor and I became the bulldozer that flattened the fuck out of that pedestal.

He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve to walk out into that lobby and see his girlfriend — his future, his hopes and dreams, his everything — pressed up against the wall by the exact guy he’d been worried about all along. He was right. He knew he was right. He had known it all along.

There are a cause and effect here. Who’s to blame? Me, ultimately. I am the one who cheated. I am the one who gets to wear the Scarlet A. But it was not me. The person with her mouth on that guy’s mouth was not a person that I knew. It was not something I ever fathomed doing.

I could have made a better choice. I could have ended the relationship months earlier. I could have searched in my soul and realized that this was wrong. That I deserved to be trusted. That I was a person who knew how to love someone well. I did not have to prove that I was not. I could have stepped off the pedestal, rather than abolish it.

But equally true is the idea that his lack of trust pushed me past the point of myself.

Did he cause me to cheat? Absolutely not. But would I even have had the idea to cheat were it not for the endless hours of conversation on the subject? I do not believe so.

We both failed. I failed the most. I fed into the trust issues that had already been lurking underneath the surface. I granted him the baggage that he was already leaning toward. I broke him.

He’s married now. He found the girl that would fit the image of the life he had picked out for himself. I got to move on and pursue my dreams. I got to be a writer. I got to travel the world. I got freedom, and he got his new pedestal.

Honoring what we know in our core will always lead us to the right decision. If I had acknowledged that the relationship was not working earlier on, we would both be better for it. I try to do this more now. I try to listen to that still, small voice that leads me to the right path. It’s the best I can do.

WRITTEN BY Gigi Love