Larkin's Letters
Authors: Jax Jillian
Larkin’s Letters
By
Jax Jillian
Copyright © 2015 Jax Jillian
Second Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the expressed written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, events or locales are entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by Drue Hoffman,
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BY
JAX JILLIAN
“It is an absolutely elegantly written story. This exquisitely written debut novel is one you should not pass up.” –
Drue Hoffman, DRC Promotions
“This book was phenomenal, and probably one of the best of this genre I have read in a long time” –
Kayla West, Journey with Books
“
Larkin’s Letters
is a must-read and should be on every person’s reading list.” –
Teri Lloyd, Sportochick’s Musings
“There are no words to say how much this book touched me. Great job and I look forward to reading more stories from this author.” –
Deborah Bean, DRC Promotions Review Team
“This superbly written debut novel is one you should not pass up, even with the sadness it makes you feel.” – Lynn Barret, Sassy Southern Book Affair
“The author's skill at reaching my emotions and keeping me engaged guarantees I will pick up the next book I find with Jax Jillian's name.” –
Laura Roth, Laura’s Interests
For my baby son, Ryan. As you grow through life, may you find true love, catch it, hold onto it, nurture it, and never let it go.
Thank you to my family for supporting me as I embark on this new journey in my life. Your encouragement and love has only made me stronger and has helped me believe that you can do anything if you put your mind to it.
A special thanks to my “test readers”: Ashley Grubb, Rachel Landgrebe, and Colleen Shawinigan. Your input was valuable as I tried to make
Larkin’s Letters
the best it could possibly be.
Table of Contents
The brisk morning air pushed through the screen of the half-opened window. The sun burned through the thin curtains, and the warmth of the rays brushed upon his cheek as he opened his tired eyes. Her ocean-blue eyes stared back at him as he held her close. Her face was a calming sight, and he felt as if all was right with the world as long as she was close to him. She placed her hand on his face as he kissed her nose.
“Hey, blue-eyes.” He kissed her forehead as he greeted her. “All I ask is that you give me today so I can prove to you that I’m your tomorrow.”
“Hi, beautiful-faced boy,” she responded, brushing his cheek with her fingers.
“I love you, Larkin,” he whispered back.
“I left you something on the nightstand.”
“You did? What is it?”
“Just turn over and look,” she pleaded.
He turned over to look, hesitantly, not wanting to look away from her. She always seemed to disappear every time he looked away. A manila envelope lay atop the white rustic nightstand and the word “Ryan” was penned across the front, beckoning him. He glared at the envelope for just a moment before turning back to her, but she was gone.
“Larkin? Larkin?” he desperately cried out for her. “Please, Larkin. Don’t leave me. I’m not ready.” He reached for the pillow that lay next to his head, intact and untouched for the past two months, and pulled it in close to him, craving her scent and yearning for her to come back to him.
Ryan Boone sat on top of the lightning-white sand dune underneath the darkening sky as the sun was starting to set over the New Jersey shoreline. This was the first time he came to this spot since...since...well, he still couldn’t believe what had happened. It was late March 2013, and there was a crisp, chilly breeze in the air. He should have brought a sweatshirt with him, he thought to himself. Wearing only khaki shorts, flip- flops, and a gray Harley Davidson T-shirt adorning his 6’2” muscular frame, he was still used to those warm and sunny California springs. The storm clouds were getting closer and closer. It’s going to be a big one, he thought.
There were about a half-dozen shrieking seagulls circling overhead, but there was something refreshing about the sounds of their screams. It was a familiar sound, one he had grown accustomed to over the past year living here. Ryan threw out some pieces of bread for his old friends. “Sorry, I haven’t been here in a while,” he said.
He looked out into the surrounding unsettled Great Egg Harbor Bay and noticed it was empty. All the boats had docked due to the impending storm, but it was fitting. He didn’t really want anyone around right now. All he wanted was just him and these letters he held in his pocket. As he grasped the envelope and pulled it out, he felt his hands shaking. Why was it so hard? Why couldn’t he just open it? For the past year, he had been as strong as any man could be. But now, this envelope, this piece of paper, was breaking him down.
He stared at the sealed envelope for a moment before placing it back in his pocket. He noticed the corners had slightly folded over, and the blue ink that read “Ryan” on the front had faded a little bit. It had been two months since he got the letters, and it looked like they had been through a war, just like he had been for the past year and a half. They had been constantly in and out of his pocket every day with his every intention of opening them, but he had yet to. Every time he looked at them, he felt sick to his stomach. He began to think about how he got to this place in his life. The last two years had been the best years of his thirty- six-year-old life, but now he was in the darkest place he could ever imagine. He was in hell, he thought, and he couldn’t imagine that a heaven even existed.
He slowly pulled the envelope out again and brought it to his nose, desperately trying to capture any familiar scent from it that would take him back to the happy times when he had never felt so alive. As he brought it down from his face, he started to weep. This was the only thing he had left to hold on to, and he needed to somehow find the courage to open it. He thought about how strong she had been to write these letters, and he felt he owed it to her to be strong enough to read them.
Ryan gathered himself together as the storm clouds drew closer. The sky was darkening, and the hungry seagulls continued to circle overhead. He threw the last of the bread to them. “Sorry, guys, it’s all I have left.” The wind was starting to pick up, and it was biting at his face. The sand was circling around him with each gust. He needed a way to read these letters before the storm came in.
Ryan wiped his tears away from his misty eyes and slowly slid his finger underneath the sealed flap. He pulled the first letter out and took a deep breath as he began to unfold it. He glanced at the top of the page.
To my beautiful-faced boy,
As he read that first line, he began to weep again. After folding the letter back up, he returned it back into his pocket. He didn’t understand how she expected him to do this. He wasn’t strong enough yet, but he knew he needed to be. Just like she was.
As the storm clouds drew closer, lightning was flashing in the distance. Ryan closed his eyes and remembered the times they would dance in the rain. She would twirl her body around, looking up toward the angry sky with her hands in the air. She would drag him to their private beach, and they would dance chest to chest as the wet sand would bond to their bare feet. It was as if they were in their own little world, and nothing else mattered.
The distant thunder startled Ryan out of his memory, and he suddenly remembered why he was there. Larkin’s letters. His hands trembling, he pulled out the letter again and began his journey. He didn’t know where this journey was going to take him, and he could only hope these letters would take him to somewhere better than where he was now.
Letter #1 - March 3, 2011
To my beautiful-faced boy,
Ryan, my dearest Ryan, you always say to me that I am your favorite lullaby. But you know what? You are my favorite lullaby. I don’t need music, and I don’t need sound. I just need your arms around me, and I can sleep through any pain, any sorrow. You called me last night. You couldn’t sleep. If only you had known that I couldn’t sleep either, but I didn’t say anything. You needed me, and I will do anything for you—my best friend.
As always, when you can’t sleep, you call me, and I read to you my work in progress, my debut novel that I have been slaving over these past four months. You are the only one who has read, or I should say listened, to my manuscript. You are the only one who cares. You are the only one who believes in me. But of course you do. You’re my best friend, and that is what best friends do. They believe in each other.
Ryan, you are probably wondering why I am writing to you. I have some news. Bad news. And as you know, I am better at writing my feelings down. I need to practice. I don’t know how I am going to tell you, but maybe if I write it down, it’ll give me the courage to tell you. I don’t want to tell you on the phone. I want to tell you in person, but I don’t know when I will see you again. When will I see you again, Ryan? God, I hope it is soon. I need my best friend. My lullaby.
My dearest Ryan, I have leukemia.
Ryan folded up the letter and placed it in the back of the letters that lay in the crinkled envelope. He had no idea. No idea that his childhood best friend, his wife, Larkin James, had been writing to him this whole time. The sky darkened, and rain started to fall. He quickly sheltered the envelope under his arm as he hurried back to the bay house that he and Larkin had shared.
He placed the envelope down on the kitchen counter next to the bouquet of flowers that had been delivered to him that morning, and he started to prepare a pot of coffee. Every morning since her death, a fresh bouquet of flowers was hand-delivered by Harry Wakefield, the owner of the corner flower shop up the street. She had arranged for Harry to deliver them to Ryan, and he had no idea for how long they would keep coming. Harry, for some reason, wouldn’t tell him. Knowing Larkin, she had had it all planned out. Knowing Larkin, they would keep coming forever.
As the water noisily squirted through the filter into the pot, Ryan took notice of the pictures that were plastered on the refrigerator and the pictures that decorated the walls. Pictures of him and Larkin. Pictures of their wedding day. Pictures of them with her parents. Pictures of them with his best friends—Ian Marsico, Sarah Madison, and Jason Gray. While waiting for the coffee to finish, he pulled a photo album out of the top drawer of the end table in the living room that Larkin had put together about six months ago. There were so many pictures.
Thank God
, he thought. All he had left were pictures. Pictures of their life together starting all the way back to when they were kids living next door to each other in Somers Point, New Jersey.
His thoughts scattered as he maneuvered through the photos, and ultimately, his mind reverted back to the letters. Ian had explained to Ryan that Larkin had asked him to hold on to the letters and give them to him after she died. And Ryan had been unable to open them until now, two months later. He had only read the first one, and he had no idea how he was going to get through all of them. His pain was still fresh. He was mad at himself. He hated himself for what had happened. He had made her a promise, and he broke that promise. For that, he would never forgive himself.
The humming of the coffeepot had stopped, and the sudden silence was ironically deafening, extracting Ryan out of the trance he had fallen into while looking at the pictures. He closed the album shut and entered back into the kitchen, and, as he prepared himself a cup, the envelope that had been sitting on the counter beckoned him while he endlessly stirred the sugar granules into the coffee.
I can’t do it, Larkin. How do you expect me to do this? I’m not ready. Not yet.
He stared at the envelope until it became a white blur and the word “Ryan” had become out of focus. All he could think of was the first letter he had read and the memory it had unburied. He remembered that night he called her, but he had no idea. No idea that she had wanted to tell him then about her cancer.
Ryan reached for his left ring finger, but nothing was there. He always played with his wedding band. He wasn’t used to the fact that it was no longer there. It was a cold, rainy night in New Orleans in early March 2011, and he was sitting on the balcony of his rented condo watching the rain and listening to the thunder as the lightning lit up the night sky. It was 2:00 a.m., and he was tired. He had just finished filming for the day and had to get up early for another long day of filming. But, unfortunately he couldn’t sleep. Ever since the divorce, he had many sleepless nights. It had been six months, but he still wasn’t quite over it yet. He never thought that he would be here at this point of his life: divorced at thirty-four. He never thought that his marriage would have only lasted for two years. He was not the ladies’ man that the media made him out to be. He was a good man. He loved her, and he tried to make it work. She was the one who didn’t try, but he didn’t care what everyone else thought. He knew the truth about himself, and so did his family and closest friends.
The wind was picking up speed, and the rain was starting to blow sideways. As the puddles started to form on the balcony floor, Ryan made his way inside, slipped off his saturated flip-flops, and turned on the television. Even though he was a professional actor, he never seemed to be too interested in watching TV. He needed to find a way to get some sleep, and he thought maybe the TV, coupled with the sound of the rain thumping against the window, was enough to serenade him to sleep. But not this time. After tossing and turning for almost half an hour, he surrendered to his insomnia, reached for his phone, and made a call to the one person who knew him best, the one person who was always there for him. It was late, but he knew she would answer. She always did.
“Ryan? What’s wrong?” she answered. The sound of her voice was so comforting, so pleasing, he couldn’t help but smile.
“Hey, sweetie. I am so sorry it’s late.” He really was sorry that he woke her, but not sorry to hear her voice.
“No problem. Let me guess. You can’t sleep?” It was
amazing how well she knew him, he thought.
“No,” he said with desperation in his voice.
“All right, hold on, okay?”
“Sure.” He knew what he was holding on for.
Larkin James was Ryan’s best friend since childhood.
T
hey grew up next door to each other, and they had been there for each other for everything, big or little. She was the one person he went to for anything because he knew she would always be there. She was the only one who encouraged him to follow his dream of being an actor when everyone else didn’t, including his family. She made it to every single one of his movie premieres, and she was there at his wedding. She never missed anything that meant something to him. And she never missed one late-night phone call when he couldn’t sleep.
“All right, you still there, Ryan?” she finally said after about three minutes of putting him on hold, but he didn’t mind.
“Of course, I am still here.” He would’ve held for her all night.
“Okay, I’ll pick up where I left off last time, or where at least I think I left off before you fell asleep.
Larkin began to read to Ryan. She was reading him a novel that she was writing called
Jillian’s Touch
. He was the only one that she would let listen to or read the manuscript, or at least that was what she had told him. In fact, she told him he was the only one who knew she was writing a book, well, except for her husband, and he was happy to listen. Like she always encouraged him to follow his dream, he reciprocated. He didn’t only listen because he was her friend. He actually enjoyed the story she was reading to him. He thought it was amazing, and he couldn’t wait for her to finish it so she could hopefully get it published. Larkin wasn’t always the most optimistic person in the world, and she, of course, didn’t think it was that good. But he insisted to her that it was.
“Is that why you fall asleep? Because it’s so good?” she would ask him sarcastically.
“Of course not, Larkin. You know that. I wouldn’t keep calling to hear it if it was bad, would I?” He would try to reassure her, and it was the truth. But most importantly, he would call because Larkin reading the book to him was like her singing him a lullaby.
Jillian led Nathan to the room that would change everything. She was shaking because she wasn’t quite sure how he would react. But she knew she was doing the right thing. At least she hoped she was. As they turned the corner and entered the room, she felt him let go of her hand. She looked at his face and where there used to be a look of love and happiness was now a look of horror and desperation.
The familiarity of her voice always brought him back to his childhood where the two of them were inseparable. They shared some great times growing up, but their career choices—well, mainly his career choice—would eventually break that inseparability, but no matter what, they were still the best of friends.