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thinking. You see, I’m not sure what got into me and not only did I not mean to write it, I definitely never meant for you to get it. It was only a kind of a hypothetical doodle—none of it is really true.
So please disregard. Can you pretend I never wrote it, and that you never read it? Hope that is okay with you. Tell me when you’ve received this email and we can put the whole thing out of our minds.
Meg
From Oscar Dunleavy
To: Meg Molony
Subject: Accidental letter—please disregard
Meg, I was pretty relieved to get your email. And I’m totally fine about forgetting the letter. To be honest, I was kind of baffled when I first read it, so to hear that you never wanted me to read it in the first place makes a lot of sense. Let’s forget it like you suggest. I’m okay with that if you are, and I definitely think it’s the best thing to do.
Oh and, Meg, by the way, if I’ve ever given a wrong impression to you—you know, if I’ve ever tried to imply something about us in the past, you should forget about that too, because I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to send any wrong message, okay? If I’ve given you any reason to thinkthat I think about you in a particular way, then I apologize. I never deliberately would have wanted you to get that impression. Let’s still be friends, though, because, I mean, that’s what we are, isn’t it?
Thanks,
Oscar

the ninth slice

    Once a letter’s been read, you can’t unread it. Maybe I should have been reassured to hear that he was happy to do as I had asked, i.e. put the whole thing out of his mind. But I didn’t feel reassured. I felt brokenhearted, and I felt rejected, and I felt humiliated. I was the one who had told him to ignore the things I’d told him I’d been feeling about him. So why did I feel like the one who’d been slapped in the face? My secret was out. And his feelings for me, or should I say his non-feelings, were as clear as they could be. I guess I should have been glad to have got there first, to take back the things I’d never meant to say in the letter I’d never meant to send. I wasn’t glad at all, though. Whatever the opposite of glad is—that’s what I felt.
    From then on, something went wrong between me and Oscar. Our friendship got so bent out of shape that I wasn’t going to be able to straighten it out. It was never going to be the way it used to be.
Meg,
Fantastic news! I’m getting to know Paloma and it’s great! We have a lot of things in common and loads to talkabout and we sit at the windows like you and I used to, and life hasn’t been nearly as much of a drag as I expected it to be. Will keep you posted.
All the best from your friend,
Oscar
    I got the message.
    I kept on wishing I’d never felt those feelings or written them down or slid them under my mattress where Paloma had found them and sent them anyway. But it was too late now.
    I tried to forget him but I can’t say it was easy. I couldn’t shake him off. He was under my skin and little things he said kept echoing around my head. I dreamed of his face and his funny ways and I imagined I could see his bike, twinkling in the moonlight—and sometimes when I was asleep I dreamed of the smell of his apple tarts, even though when I woke up the smell had always gone.
    And my parents never seemed to stop talking about how beautifully I was adjusting to New Zealand life. They often said—to anyone who’d listen—how good it was that I wasn’t checking Facebook fifty times a day to see what everyone back in Ireland was up to, and how I didn’t even seem to need to email Oscar all the time either. For the record, that turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life.
    I’d never have predicted I would lose touch with him—before, that is, I did. I thought I had my reasons. But it turns out that they weren’t good reasons. It turns out