Dearest Philip,

I don't know why your phone isn't getting connected or why you still haven't cleared the pending voice messages. It's very unlike you.

Speaking of unlike, I've written this letter which I've given to your folks and also shared a copy with John, in case you contact him. John did inform me that your training was rigorous and that you'd talked to him before leaving and going in deep. I don't know what he meant and I barely cared.

All I cared was to talk to you and to tell you, I was wrong. I assumed you to be the bad guy, the man who broke my trust. You didn't Philip, you never did. You always came through for me.

Every day since I arrived at Three Aces, you have helped me in a way that nobody else had.

I wanted to tell you, you helped me become a confident, charismatic (your charm rubbed on me) girl. You helped me speak my mind and put myself out there in both food and the world.

You, my love, helped me understand, love doesn't mean only smiles and rosy stuff. It also meant heard labor, fighting for one another and sometimes giving up on the love to let it consume you; destroy you so that you relive, rebirth and rediscover the meaning of the word - True love.

My folks told me everything. They told me of your intentions and their meddling.

Don't worry, they are doing fine. No limbs removed, no blood drawn.

You took the fall for them. You took their wrong upon your shoulders when it wasn't even asked of you.

I am sorry, Philip, deeply and terribly for not believing you. For not knowing you well enough to understand, you'd never hurt me even in your worst dreams.

I know I did wrong, Philip.

Please give me a chance, one last to make it alright. To mend us. We were never broken, just bent. Let me straighten us up. Here I am, bent on my knees, hands wrapped together over this letter, telling you how much I love you.

You have been my sun. Always have, always will. I'll always revolve around you, my life would always find its grounding roots, rotating around you.

Even if you don't want me, I would cherish you, with all my heart, all my life.

After all, how can the earth not...

Your and only your

Drama Queen

~

I sat in front of the parchment, watching the paper drink up the glistening ink. This was my redemption letter. The letter that could make or break the deal.

After a whole week of radio silence from Philip, I couldn't take it anymore. My insides melted every day when I couldn't contact him. My mind nagged me to contact him. I wanted to tell him, how much I was wrong. How much I regretted losing him.

It ached to my marrow, every day that passed without talking to Philip. Though I claimed to love Philip, I didn't give him a chance.

"Are you done?" Mrs. Fernandez's voice floated through the kitchen before she emerged.

In my desperate attempt to do over, I drove to Philip's parent's house.

"Done," I whispered to the paper, fluttering it around.

I smiled but the disconsolate state of my heart continued. I was aching in places I didn't know existed in my body. I was desperate beyond redemption. Without hope. Rudderless, I floated into the dark, inky sea of guilt-induced despair.

"Can I look?" Mrs. Fernandez stood across the table from where I sat. She wanted to read what I wrote. "Only if you want to..." She comforted me of my privacy.

"Don't worry. You can read it after I go," I said, shifting my weight on my legs. As uncomfortable as it was, I had sent a copy to John and another here, with Philip's mom. "You have to anyways read it if Philip calls you."

In my not-so-fine-incident of drunk dialing John and Sasha, they came up with this plan. To write my heart and narrate it when Philip called.

With Philip's morning and nightly greetings ceasing to greet me and his device deciding to ghost my number, this was my only option.

It was not the most comfortable of the choices I had but hey, I was a beggar. I couldn't be picky about my preferences. In fact, a part of me was relieved when Philip's mom agreed to do a dramatic rendition of my letter over the call.

Truth be told, I wanted to write more. Pour my heart out but given that the letter was more for public reading, I had to keep it PG-13. More like Fitzgerald PG 13.

Mrs. Fernandez took the letter and without looking, neatly folded it twice, gently sliding it beneath the paperweight. She then turned to me, holding me in her arm cage.

"I'm so sorry that he is putting you through this," she said, her eyes displaying a genuine concern over my condition. I shrugged.

My thoughts taunted me. I deserved it for putting that poor man through hell.

"If Philip calls me, I'll give him an earful," she confirmed.

There was so much confidence in her words, believing in the words of a stranger than her own son. I assumed Philip didn't tell him about the breakup.

"It was my fault," I muttered. He had suffered long enough without me adding more resentment with his mother too judging him wrongly. "I broke up with him due to a misunderstanding."

"Still," Mrs. Fernandez sighed. Her grip over my shoulder tightened and her milky white eyes brightened up to their original charcoal grey coloring. "He loves you. I can see that. I'm a mother and I can read my son. And with that knowledge, I'm telling you that he should have known better than to let you go."

"Even when I blamed him for someone else's fault?" I asked. I was sure her opinion would now change and she would admonish my acerbic temper.

When she sighed deeply, I thought she was about to burn me with her wrath for torturing her son. My steps moved backwards.

"Four times," she straightened her position, curling her arms to her sides. "Sasha broke up with John four times. Four times my son was in the wrong. Four times, John had called me up. Four fucking times, when I had to toss him into the fire of my anger, telling him my girl was right. Sasha was right to fight and leave when she asked him to take therapy and he didn't. She was not his punching bag. That girl had suffered enough."

I didn't know what caught my attention. A grown woman swearing or calling her daughter-in-law, her girl, and scolding her son for being wrong.

"My John, God bless him, is a saint but he also has his tantrums and anger which Sasha suffered on end." She huffed, un-creasing her temples with her thumb and index finger. "Their last breakup happened when I asked her to leave. John was dilly-dallying a proposal. He was scared. What's there to be scared of, if you love someone?"

Old school women like Mrs. Fernandez, I assumed were stuck in their ways. But I was wrong.

She was a breath of fresh air. She was one of those strong women who was not scared to accept that her sons could be wrong.

I was working with John to know which breakup she was referring to. Sasha had broken up with John and left Roseville, thinking he would never marry her. John learnt and understood the hard way, how his fears almost made him lose the love of his life.

I presumed that to be the reason Philip first came to Roseville when John planned on proposing. He was ensuring his brother didn't do anything stupid anymore.

"So when my second son let go of the best thing that happened to him, how can I sit silent?" Mrs. Fernandez said, tossing her apron that hung on her waist on a couch and landing into another plush ottoman. "Philip is clearly on the wrong."

"But Philip thought-"

"No, Daisy. When you love someone you fight for them. You fight hard - blood and sweat together and ensure that the last ounce of your life is given away for that. You don't leave mid-battle. You don't hoist the parley flag. You die but you don't surrender. Because if you surrender my dear, that's just as ordinary as any day when you give up." Wisdom shone in her eyes. "Love isn't giving up. It's a struggle. It's hard. Bone crushing and soul-wrenching. But also, it's worth all the fights, all the feuds in the world. It's worth every last breath in your body."

There it was. Her bone-crushing, soul-wrenching truth. Stated as if she was singing a song.

Her words flashed light on the coward way in which I too behaved. I wasn't fighting anything like a battle. I was not even picking up my finger to contact Philip. I was cowering away from anything uncomfortable, shielding myself from further hurt.

Rejection was a poison I didn't want to consume so I traded easier routes, asking others to build defense walls for me.

Mrs. Fernandez's words may have been for Philip, who wasn't available to gather her pearls of wisdom. But I did.

I imbibed all her words in me, percolating them beneath layers of my skin and deep into every cell. I was ready to fight it out. Fight for love.

If I could retain Philip in my heart since eighteen - reliving his memories of that one day we met till I met him again to realize I was in love - then I needed to prove to him I wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't putting my sword down.

"Are you staying?" Mrs. Fernandez looked up at me. I was bubbling with newfound energy, brimming from every inch of my skin.

"No. Please read the letter if he calls. I have something on my mind."

I ran out before she could counter me, forcing me to stay back for a little chat. But her words had fired up the burnt-out furnace in me. I was ready to break the barricade deployed to keep Philip and his thoughts away.

After all, if I didn't fight for him and our love, it wasn't worth calling it love. Isn't it?

~

It breaks my heart to make Daisy suffer. She has gone through enough.

Do you think her quest to contact Daisy will end soon?

Or will the suffering continue.

Let me know in the comments ;)