Samantha looked back at the clock across the room from her desk. Five minutes to five. She thought that now she would start packing early for the day and began to gather her things. Phone back in her bag, computer monitor unplugged. As usual. “Bye Samantha, have a nice day,” Eden, the woman working next to her, said as she walked past her desk. “Bye, Eden. See you tomorrow.” She gave a few more of the typical goodbyes, most of the time without even realizing she was doing it. After a while, she just came out naturally. Like the walk to the parking lot. Really, she could have driven all the way back to her apartment on the other side of town with her eyes closed. It was not such a difficult journey to make. Only now she is old. She pulled into her parking space outside her compound thirty minutes or so after leaving the office, yawning as she took her things to go inside. From across the parking lot she heard another door slam shut and she looked up to see Chris unloading groceries from her car. , pulling the keys out of her bag as she walked to the wall of the mailroom. She didn’t usually check her mail every day, maybe twice a week (a bad habit she knew she needed to break at some point), but the past few days she’d been hoping for a package that would jog her memory every time it passed. over there. Her.She inserted the key and opened the box, revealing only two pieces of mail, neither large enough to be the package. She sighed, picking up the pieces of paper anyway and closing the door. She reached the elevator doors at the same time as Chris, who was struggling to carry the load of groceries that she had promised to carry up at once. “Why don’t you go up about half at a time?” Samantha asked as the doors opened. “I’m Charlie from one trip. I bring it all at once.” Samantha rolled her eyes. Her self-bestowed nickname of hers didn’t even make sense. Charlie wasn’t her middle name, she had no idea where it came from. “Okay,” she said, pressing the button for the fourth floor, where they both lived. The elevator went through the building and the doors finally opened for them. Samantha walked out before Chris, ignoring thoughts of offering to help the man. She is recently divorced and is looking for a relationship. She didn’t want to give him anything he might take as a sign. She walked through her door and over to his, laughing at the thought of him struggling to get into her apartment. She closed the door behind her and continued to smile at Chris’s curses. She went straight to the freezer and pulled out a bowl of microwaveable teriyaki chicken, tossed it in for the required four minutes, and directed her attention to her cell phone. With no new messages, she opened up social media and scrolled for the next four minutes until her microwave rang. She led him to the small kitchen table and sat down, her eyes taking in the two pieces of mail she had received. “Let’s see what we have here,” she sighed, reaching for the steaming container for the mail. The first was a little pamphlet telling her that she absolutely needed to vote yes on some upcoming legislation. She rolled her eyes and set it aside, telling herself that she would throw it away along with her empty plastic microwaveable container. She turned her attention back to the other, raising an eyebrow as she did so. It was quite a thin envelope. Inside there could be nothing more than a couple of sheets of paper. She turned it over to see the return address, only to find that section of the letter empty. The only two things on her front were a generic stamp and her own sloppy handwriting address. That was it, however. It seemed somewhat odd, but she shrugged and opened it, now curious to see what she would find inside. She pulled out a single sheet of paper, folded in thirds rather badly. She lifted the first flap, then the second flap. She stared at the letter for a minute, puzzled. Because that’s all there was: a single letter. The entire page was filled with a giant capital “L.” After a few moments, he sighed and rolled his eyes. “Oh. brandon.” She took out her phone to send a text to her ex-boyfriend: “Hey, I got your letter. You are also a loser. She logged out of the messaging app and continued to browse the web while she ate dinner. she
she woke up the next morning to the alarm on her phone ringing with the same tone as every morning. She sighed as she got up from the bed, checking her phone instinctively. Brandon had texted her sometime last night. Confused, she opened her message: “What letter?” Ah, that’s right. He had sent her a giant “L” in the mail and she texted him about it last night. It seemed strange that someone would go to such lengths just to be rude, but then again, it was Brandon she was dealing with. However, for a cheapskate like him, spending a dollar to send that was unusual. “The big L you sent me,” she replied. And with that, he was out of her mind as she continued to prepare for the rest of the day.