I hold out the thick envelope to him.

     He stares at it in my hands. "You...wrote me letters?"

     "Yes," I say, my voice just a murmur.

     His gaze meets mine. "Right, so you just wrote to me and decided it wasn't worth sending, then?"

     Exhausted, I say, "They're yours, Cas. You can read them or burn them, it's up to you."

     He purses his lips, glances back down at the envelope then back up at me. His face is open, for once, pain evident among other things. He licks his lips and says, "You got anything harder than peach juice?"

     I sigh. "Yeah, yeah I've got something."

     I walk over to my liquor cabinet, wondering what's Cas's drink of choice. I remember him saying he drank vodka a lot in college. Well, not a lot. But whenever he mentioned drinking it was usually vodka. I don't keep many light liquors, or any, really. I stare into the cabinet. I've got a rum he'll like, I think.

     "Anything's fine," Cas says and his voice is strained. I glance back at him and he's holding the envelope like it's toxic. I grab the rum, walk over to the counter and pull down two shallow glasses. I pour his glass and bring it over to him.

     "Thanks," he says avoiding my gaze. "I'm just gonna..." He nods over to the living room, walking over to the window seat where he curls up and dumps the contents of the envelope. I can't watch him read the letters. I'm actually starting to regret my decision to give it to him now. Maybe I should've waited till the state of emergency was over and given it to him when he was leaving.

     I'm at risk for watching him the whole time and its doing nothing to help my sudden onset chest pain, so I start stress cooking, instead. I had made my own dough yesterday that I was planning to do some personal pizzas with, so I pull that out now and then start prepping the sauce for the Margherita pie. The other will be a garlicky white pie with ricotta and squash.

     Even though I'm immersed in the cooking, I'm still watching Cas, watching the way he cradles the glass to his chest as he reads, leaning against the window. The snow hasn't stopped, coming down thick. You can't really see what's beyond the sidewalk.

     Every so often Cas will laugh, this soft sound that feels like it's traveling through time to me. It's a distant thing. Once both pizzas are in the oven, I have nothing to do so I start cleaning. I move the laundry to the dryer and then grab a bottle of bleach, wiping down all the countertops and the island. I try to limit my glances at Cas to one every twenty minutes but it doesn't quite work. He goes through the phases of emotions, from pensive to anger to sad to laughing and back again. I've forgotten nearly everything I've written in these letters.

     I had poured myself a glass of the rum, too, but hadn't really touched it. Day drinking is not really my thing. Drinking is not really my thing. Cas comes over to fill his glass twice. I'm disinclined to fill it up again, because the last thing I want is him stuck in the house with me drunk. Feels like a recipe for disaster.

     The pizzas are done. I remove them and leave them on the stove top cooling. With my back to Cas, I don't see what happens so much as hear it, hear him hop down from the window seat and storm up the stairs.

     I hesitate before walking over to the window where the discarded letter lays on the floor. I'm nervous, unsure what I could have said that would cause this reaction.

     Cas,

     I have spent a lot of time with myself now. So much time with the things that I've done. That I wonder if I was right — I could not have been right, but was I close to it? Had I been within a margin of error? There are nights now where I lie awake and think about you, about us. And then I wonder if I ever really loved you. Please don't read that the wrong way. Don't take that the wrong way. Because I think this, it's a thought that hits me always suddenly, always without provocation. And then I think, instantly, yes. Yes, I really truly did. Do. Did? Do?

     I think I'll always love you.

     I wonder who I'd be if I wasn't in love with you. Because I don't know and I don't know that I'll ever get to. Why did loving you make me want to, so badly, push you away? To get you away from me? Why did I feel so undeserving?

     I dissect these things with Ashley and it feels like we are never any closer to figuring it out. And in the mean time, I lay in bed unable to sleep. I can't stop thinking about you, can't stop wondering how you're doing, what you've been up to, imagining the kind of person you became, even though I've got no right to know, even though it hurts to remember you.

     You wrote me once. You wrote about an us in an alternate universe, one where we stayed together but you went to USC, still. I want to pose my own alternate universe. One where you didn't leave at all, and I didn't push you away. One where you live here, with me, and we're happy. And I'm deserving of it. And I want it. And I don't feel badly about wanting it.

     I'm running with this thought now. I have a restaurant and you come by after work to eat there, and on weekends we pick up your cousins and take them on adventures, and we visit your grandparents in Florida and you get the worst sunburn that I spend all night rubbing aloe into your back. I'm imagining a life for us because I cannot imagine a life where this isn't an us.

     Sincerely,

    Dresden

     I pull myself together and set the letter down, taking the stairs slowly. I pause outside the bathroom door, unsure if I should knock or just go in. I decide to tap lightly, just once, before I push the door open and step inside. Cas is sitting on the floor in front of the shower. I walk over, taking a seat beside him. The lights aren't on, so we're in the near-dark. Still, I'm able to see that he's been crying.

     "That one," he says, voice cracked. "That one was not very nice."

     I don't know what to say. I mean to apologize but I've done that enough times now, I think. It's starting to not bear any weight. Maybe it never did. How do you apologize for wrecking something beautiful?

     Cas drops his head on my shoulder and I let him. When he turns his head to look up at me, I turn mine to look down at him. He slides forward, slots our mouths. I hold him there. Every time we kiss I am amazed by how different it feels. This one, though, feels familiar. Feels like a memory. Feels like coming home after a long trip.

     He is kissing me slowly, the way he used to, the way I remember. I can hear our bated breaths, the condensed air between us, the gasps and huffs. Cas has his hand on my face, cupping my cheek. I reach up and put my hand over his, this tender feeling that cuts deep. He climbs into my lap slowly, tentatively, like treading water for the first time. His other hand touches my face, tips my head back. Cas taking the lead is not a new thing. Cas being gentle is. Cas taking his time is.

     He pulls away, hands still on my face, holding it in place so he can look me in the eye. "Why didn't you send the letters?"

     I swallow, answering quietly, "I thought it was wrong of me to open a line of communication. I thought that it would be unfair to you."

     "Unfair to me?" he repeats but he doesn't sound angry. There's no accusation in it. "Since when do you care about being unfair to me?"

     I say, "You never told me. You never told me that USC wanted your mom to do a fellowship with them. They were offering you and your mom a place."

     He pauses, eyes darting along my face. "How did you find out about that?"

     "Your cousins were coming over one Sunday for dinner and you asked me to clear the dining room table."

     He nods. "Which is where we kept literally all of our mail."

     "Your mom could go with you. Halston and Grace would be on the West Coast. You loved the school, you loved their swim team. There was no reason for you not to go. But then you never bought it up. I waited. I waited weeks and you said nothing about it. Started talking about dorming at state school and — you never even mentioned it."

     He's nodding and his hands are still holding my face so that I'm nodding, too. "I didn't," he says. "Because I didn't care, really. It was a nice gesture of the school and it certainly would've made it easier with my mom there but I just didn't want to be there in the end. Yes, of course you were a factor. I'm not ashamed to admit that. But you weren't the only factor. I wasn't ready to move my life across the country."

     "But you did," I point out.

     Cas looks confused for a moment, like he's thinking everything that's happening and being said through, combing through our conversation to understand it as its happening. "So that was your plan, then? Get me to make the decision to go by taking yourself out of the equation completely?"

     "I didn't think you'd go if we talked about it. I didn't think there was any way to convince you."

     "There wasn't because I didn't want to go. I didn't choose to go. Olivia did. And I went along with it because I had no fight in me. If it hadn't been for her up and making all the arrangements, I would've happily gone to state school, still. I would've stayed here. When did you come back?"

     "After Labor Day," I answer.

     "You weren't even gone a whole month. What would've happened if I hadn't left? Like that was such a gamble. You couldn't have known if I was going to go or not."

     "I know, but I really hoped you would."

     "What would've happened if I hadn't left?" he repeats, quieter this time.

     "I don't know," I whisper back. "This, probably."

     "This?" he asks.

     "Some variation of it, yes. I wouldn't have been able to stay away."

     "Well, you managed to stay away for five years," he points out.

     "Yeah, having three thousand miles between us certainly helped."

     Cas cracks a smile at that. It's almost as brilliant as I remember it. "Five years, three thousand miles, and yet here we are."

     I tap his hands that are still holding my face. "Feel better?"

     "Not really. I feel like I could probably sleep for a thousand years and that still wouldn't be enough."

     I feel that, Cas. I really feel that.

     I drop my hands and he drops his. "Want to take a nap?" I ask him.

    He raises an eyebrow. "Do you want to take a nap?"

     "I could sleep for a thousand years and it still wouldn't be enough," I respond and this time he does smile, fully, giving me all of him.