Hate Mail

by Donna Marchetti

Dear Naomi, I hope you get struck by lightning and die in the middle of your next weather report. Wouldn’t that be ironic? —L

Dear Luca, This must be the tenth time you’ve said that you’re not going to write to me again so I don’t really think I believe you. But just in case I don’t hear from you again, I want you to know that if anyone ever did those things to me, it would be because he’s a shitty person and he doesn’t deserve me. Not the other way around. And if I saw someone treating one of my friends like that, I would kick him in the balls. Love, Naomi

I couldn’t believe that all this time, I had been writing to her. She made the hottest girl at my own high school look like a mushroom in comparison.

“Jesus, Naomi,” he whispers against my lips. “I can’t get enough of you.”

Dear Naomi, Great job on the weather report this morning. Is it weird that it turned me on to see your head floating around the screen without a body? I can’t believe you did that. I guess this means that my last letter didn’t scare you away. I got a call from an old friend the other day. If you go to Georgia again, tell Maxwell I said hi. Who knew you would go that far to find me? You must like me too, or something. Love, Luca

“I fell so hard for you that I couldn’t even enjoy anyone else’s company, because I had already decided that you were the one. I tried to tell myself that I was holding you up on a pedestal, that you couldn’t be as funny, or beautiful, or amazing as I imagined you were. Before I came to Miami, I had convinced myself that I was wrong for thinking I could be in love with someone I had never met. And then I met you in person, and it turns out I was right. Everything that I thought I felt was real. I fell in love with you all over again.”