Regret16 min read
The Post, the Mimosa Tree, and the Letter
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It was one in the morning when Denver sent me the link.
"This yours?" his message read. The link opened like a small black doorway: an anonymous post, titled "When Did You Know the Other Person Didn't Love You?" My thumb hovered. My heart ran to my throat.
I typed one word and sent it: "Yes."
There was a pause, the kind of pause that feels heavier than a reply. Then his reply came.
"Then let's break up."
I stared at my phone. I wanted to answer "Fine" so I could leave with some dignity. My fingers wouldn't obey me. They shook. Tears came and wiped away again. I couldn't type.
The title of the post kept rolling through my head like a dark film. When did I notice he didn't love me anymore? I tried to answer myself.
The first time was the rain.
"I'll send you money for a cab," Denver had said the week before a storm, and then later: "I'll go pick her up." He picked her up — Valentina — and posted a photo, soft yellow street lamps, her smiling into the camera, and him with his arm around her shoulder.
"Thank you, Mr. Lin picked me up. Coffee on him," Valentina wrote, exactly the sort of careless, sweet thing she used to write when she wanted praise.
I remember the color leaving the world then. The image hung in my feed like a tiny bright blade.
I slept badly that night. Dawn came and the truth settled like a stone in my chest. I sent him a message: "If you want to break up, say it to my face."
We had started the relationship face to face. He proposed with words and gestures. Saying it in front of me wasn't a petty demand — it was the only thing that could return me some sense of human decency.
We were all from the same high school. Denver, Valentina, and I: a triangle that had been the neighborhood gossip for years. Valentina had liked Denver for as long as we'd known each other. After high school, I moved away for college. Denver proposed to me at the end of our freshman year. For years I tolerated Valentina's presence because Denver always told me about his meetings with her, in a tone that was supposed to reassure me.
"Emberly," he would say, "I passed Valentina on the way to the library. She asked if I wanted lunch. I didn't go."
"Okay," I'd say, annoyed by the surveillance but secretly comforted.
Over time things shifted. Six months after Valentina moved to our city, the meetings increased. Once at a company dinner, Denver plucked a piece of chive out of his plate and put it on her fork. I went rigid, breath caught. She ate it and smiled: "Thanks, Denver." That was when I first felt the cold.
"You used to tell me everything," I said later that night when we were home. He shrugged, kissed the back of my ear: "She's a client. Be understanding."
I tried. I tried to trust. Then I found a screenshot on his phone. His friend Francisco had sent, "Valentina stuck with him for six years. Now she moved cities for him. Don't let her down." Denver replied, "I know."
I put the screenshot in front of him. He rubbed his forehead, tired.
"Things are work-related," he said. "It’s nothing."
"But why does it feel like something else?" I asked.
He sighed, the kind of breath that carries patience and a little impatience. "If it ever gets to be more, I'll tell you. But it's nothing."
Weeks later he left. I came home early one afternoon and found a moving truck and my things almost gone. He didn't call. He packed. If I hadn't come home — he would have disappeared without a word. When I stood in the doorway, he looked like a man caught.
"Do you want some coffee?" I asked, my voice steady.
"Emberly," he said, folding his hands, "we should break up."
"Why?" The question ripped out of me.
"Like your post says, I don't love you anymore." He said it with a kind of awkward, rehearsed firmness. "We should end clean. Also, delete that post."
"Delete it?" I asked, shocked. "Why would I delete it?"
"Because it's public," he said. "It’ll just make things worse for you."
I felt the room tilt. "Valentina doesn't care about public. Why should I?"
He stood abruptly. "Since when did you become like this?" His voice had a new frost to it. The door slammed, leaving me alone, tight fists and all the space in my chest.
I walked through the next days like someone wearing someone else's skin. I told my parents. My mother came, worried, made soup, held me. We went back to my family's town for half the winter to get away. I began to recover from the sharp edge of the betrayal.
Then there was the reunion. Our classmates planned a mid-winter gathering. "Gallagher is back," Jillian breathed on the phone. "You have to come." Gallagher. The name landed with a strange weight.
"I'm not ready," I said.
"Come," Jillian pressed. "You hate them? Good. Watch this: Gallagher's a legend. He goes to big schools, does whatever he wants. You'll see."
I went to the reunion because part of me wanted to be brave in front of them. I wanted to push that small, scorched ember of dignity back into life.
The room smelled of hot oil and soy. He was in the corner: Gallagher Patel — the one I'd adored in the background of almost every memory. He still had the boyish jaw that made people stare. He'd been away in the capital; now he was back.
"Emberly?" he nodded when he saw me. He didn't fanfare. He had a quiet recognition that made my heart trip.
The evening blurred with small talk and dishes. Denver arrived with Valentina, hand in hand. She walked like someone who owed nothing and took everything.
"Hi, Emberly," she said, bright and open. She looked at me as if the shared past we had was a distant weather report. I felt something in me crack.
"How long has it been?" Jillian sniped under her breath.
Francisco, Denver's loud friend, crowed about how courageous Valentina was to chase love. I felt the room hinge toward me. I felt the same tight shame as if I'd been put on display. Then Gallagher stood and said he needed air.
"Want company?" he asked me.
"Okay," I said before I really thought. He walked me out to the rooftop. The city lights murmured below and the sky was indifferent.
"You okay?" he asked gently.
"No," I said. It came out small. I sat down on the low wall and let the tears come. Gallagher surprised me by sitting very close.
He handed me a napkin and then said, "I saw your anonymous post."
"You did?"
He nodded. "And I recognized the school details."
"You remembered the mimosa tree?"
"You always did your homework under it," he said. "You always used to glare at the basketball court when you were supposed to be doing math. I thought you were studying."
I laughed, a shaky sound. "I was watching you play."
"Then why didn't you tell me that?" He sounded annoyed and tender at once.
"I thought you didn't like me." My voice was small. "You told me you didn't."
He looked at me like I'd said something wrong but true. "I didn't. I never got your letter."
That one sentence unlocked a thousand memories. I had written a brave letter in high school to Gallagher and given it to Avery — a mutual friend — to deliver. A failure to deliver had rippled my whole life. The reply I'd received had been cold, official. I believed then that Gallagher didn't feel anything.
"Did Avery give it to me?" Gallagher asked.
My face fell. "No. Avery must have left it with someone. I thought you had said 'no'." The years before Denver felt like somebody else's script.
He sighed. "I never got it. I thought you’d rejected me. I left thinking that was how it was."
On the rooftop he told me how he had come back home. He had a job transfer. He had chosen, quietly, to return. And he had watched me be humiliated from a distance in the reunion. He had been ready to leave again, but not without trying.
"Will you let me try?" he asked. "Really try?"
For reasons I couldn't explain then, I said yes. Later that night we kissed. It was awkward and soft and clear. When I woke the next morning I had the dizzy memory of his hands and the warmth of his coat. He'd left his sweatshirt on my chair. He seemed not angry. He seemed like a man who had been patient.
"Will you take responsibility?" I asked when I saw him next.
He cocked an eyebrow. "What does that mean?"
"That I'm messy, and drunk last night. If it means anything, I will do anything."
"Okay," he said. "Try me."
We stepped into a short, warm beginning. Gallagher was easy: a hand on my back as he guided me through crowded streets, a scarf handed across a table, a message 'Be home safe' at midnight. He was not flashy. He was steady.
Two weeks later, on a quiet night, I told him the truth I had kept building like a secret ledger. I told him about Avery, about the letter that never arrived, and the reply I had accepted too quickly. I told him about Denver and Valentina.
"Avery?" Gallagher frowned. "Why did he say nothing?"
"I don't know," I said. "I always assumed the worst and let it calcify."
"You assumed wrong, Emberly," Gallagher said. "You gave away your chance because someone else decided to be small."
I hated feeling like my own life had been stolen by someone else's smallness. I wanted to fix it. I wanted more than to have a new person — I wanted fairness. There was more than heartbreak in my chest now; there was anger.
"Do you want to make them pay?" Gallagher asked, with that weird half-smile he got when he was thinking something clever.
"That's not why I'm with you," I said.
"I know," he said softly. "But are you done being silent?"
I thought about the anonymous post and the many nights I had sat awake, writing lines that I never posted. Then I remembered the new project Denver and Valentina were launching — an app that sold itself as "find your soulmate." It smelled like irony. A product that made promises about honesty, run by the person who had stolen my letter. It was a joke, but it also had other people’s money wrapped around it.
I logged back into the posting site and removed the anonymity. I reposted the story with names. I attached screenshots — the message from Francisco, a copy of Denver's PR statement about the app, the company’s press photo with Denver and Valentina. I wrote plainly. I used the mimosa tree and the book as proof, because people remember details. I put everything out in the open.
"I don't want to ruin people," I told Gallagher. "I want them to stand where they were comfortable and see the light. If they're decent, they'll apologize. If not, they will fall where they stood."
"Do this smart," Gallagher said. "Do this clean. Your voice will be louder than anger."
I hit publish at dawn. The post spread faster than I expected. Friends and former classmates shared it. Someone from a popular news group reposted it. It got traction.
Valentina's company's PR team was the first to scramble. There were calls. There were quiet meetings. The app's launch date was set for the next month. Before the launch, I received an unexpected message from the company: "We would like to invite you to the press conference."
I thought they wanted to apologize. I knew better now.
On the morning of the release, the auditorium smelled like fresh paint and expectation. The company's logo shone on a giant screen. Journalists filled the seats. I sat at the back, hands folded tight in my lap. Denver and Valentina walked up to the stage like lovers in a commercial. They smiled as if the world was theirs.
"Welcome everyone," Valentina said, voice bright. "Today we launch the way people will find love online. Our mission is honesty."
My stomach fell through me.
A woman from the floor then raised her hand. She was a reporter I recognized: clear voice, nothing to prove. "Ms. Rodrigues, there are questions in the public domain about company leadership. Will you respond?"
Valentina smiled with practiced calm. "We will respond to anything that is inaccurate. We believe in transparency."
A group of students in the back had printed copies of my post and began to pass them around. The camera panned — live stream, in fact. I felt my heart pound. I stood up.
"Excuse me," I said, my voice a small paper boat in the auditorium sea. I walked toward the stage. The security glanced. I kept walking.
"Miss, you need to stop," a guard said.
I kept walking.
"Avery," I heard Denver whisper, panic slicing his voice, but I kept going. I climbed the steps with a purposeful breath.
I took the microphone from the host's hand and looked up at the audience — faces warm with professional curiosity. On the big screen behind me, the logo pulsed. My voice, when it came, was low and steady.
"Hello," I said. "My name is Emberly Browning. I am here to talk about honesty."
Valentina's smile faltered. Denver's jaw tightened. Cameras zoomed in. People murmured.
"You marketed an app to sell truth," I said to the room. "You promised to help people find sincere love. But the truth is, your leadership used lies to build this product."
Nobody expected a confession in that room, except me. I took a breath and continued.
"When I was a teenager, I wrote a letter to Gallagher Patel. That letter never reached him. It was kept. Someone intercepted it and decided my life for me." I said the names. "The person who took my letter is Denver Hartmann. The person who became his partner for public display is Valentina Rodrigues."
A hush. A slight gasp. The live comment feed started to spike.
"Why would this matter?" Valentina asked, voice pitching higher. "This is personal drama."
"It's the principle," I said. "You're building a product on promises you do not keep. You have to be held accountable. You pushed me aside, and you built a career on sincerity while practicing deception."
"Emberly, this is childish," Denver snapped. He had always been able to hide anger behind a normalized grin. Now the mask slipped.
I walked down the stage and took out my phone. I displayed the screenshot Francisco had sent and the message he wrote urging Denver to not let Valentina's long devotion go in vain. I scrolled to where his reply read: "I know." The audience inhaled.
"Did you tell the board?" someone asked.
"No," Denver said weakly. "It's an old joke. We all laughed. It didn't mean anything."
"Old joke?" a woman in the third row repeated. "He wrote, 'Don't let her down.'"
"That's between friends," Denver tried. "It's private."
I projected the copy of the app manual that listed 'trust' as its core value. The irony tasted like iron.
"Ms. Rodrigues," I said, looking her in the eyes. "Can a woman who climbed into your life because she wanted a man and stayed because he made space for her at his side run a company about love honestly?"
Her face flushed. "This is slander," she said. "We have a lawyer."
Someone in the crowd started filming. Another tapped a comment into Twitter. The live feed lit up with my post's link.
Valentina stood. "This is harassment. We will pursue legal means."
"Will you fire the person involved?" asked a reporter. "Will the board examine how leadership built the brand?"
A man from the stage called security. Two men in suits were at Denver’s side. The CEO stood, lips pale, and said, "We need to investigate these claims immediately."
Within twenty minutes, the mood in the room had changed from celebration to damage control. Board members took calls that looked like they were carrying sentences. Reporters circled like birds.
Valentina begged, "This is a misunderstanding. I—"
Her voice broke in the middle. There were no sympathetic eyes. The audience had seen the contradiction. The live comments were ruthless.
"Please," Denver mouthed toward me. "You can't—"
I held up a hand. "I just want the truth." My voice shook a little, now, but the room listened.
Then the CEO announced a pause in the launch. "We will postpone. There will be an internal review and an independent audit of leadership conduct."
I watched their faces. Denver's smile had dissolved into something small and frightened. Valentina's cheeks had lost their false glow. Security politely, almost robotically, escorted them toward a back door. People around them slid their phones out and started recording. A chorus of 'shame' was starting to hum under the acoustic space of the auditorium.
Outside the doors a cluster of employees and shareholders gathered. Someone threw a copy of my post at Denver. Another shouted: "How could you do this?" A journalist called his name into a recorder. He tried to answer. Distantly, I could hear Gallagher's voice: "Emberly, are you okay?" He had come without asking why. He stood near the back, calm but present.
"Look at it," a woman said as the couple passed, pointing. "They made a product about love while stealing letters."
Denver's transformation onstage and offstage was a progression you could time with a metronome. First he was stunned, then defensive.
"This is a smear," he said. "You have no right."
"Do you deny taking the letter?" I asked.
His eyes flared. "No. I deny I used it to hurt you. It was a stupid thing back then — we were young. This is an exaggeration."
"Exaggeration?" the reporter laughed. "You built a brand out of promises, and now you're being asked if you can keep yours."
Then he shifted into anger. "You're trying to ruin me."
A handful of interns who had admired the product's mission stood off to the side. Their faces were filled with a mix of betrayal and bewilderment. Some whispered: "If he did that, how many other small things did they do?" The crowd's mood hardened.
Valentina's reaction was different. She had been triumphant a few hours earlier. Now she looked like someone whose fashion armor had been stripped. The studio cameras moved close. She covered her mouth with her hand and tried to speak.
"Valentina," a shareholder asked bluntly, "Did you know?"
"No," she cried out. "I didn't know everything."
"Then how can you run a company that promises honesty?" someone shouted.
"Please," she said, voice raw. "We built this with good intention—"
"Good intention doesn't wash when people are harmed," a man nearby said.
Her expression crumpled. Her shoulders sagged like a curtain. A hush spread, then a low, resentful murmur: "They lied."
That degree of public unmasking moved faster than formal legal process. Within one hour, the board called an emergency meeting and a press release went out: "Effective immediately, Denver Hartmann is placed on leave pending investigation. Ms. Valentina Rodrigues will be reassigned to a regional office pending further review." It was bureaucratic, but the public humiliation had already spread. Social media took the official language and shredded it.
I walked out into the sunlight feeling hollow and oddly released. I had not wanted to destroy people. I had wanted them to be seen. Yet seeing had consequences. People outside the building were chanting: "Honesty! Honest leaders!" A news van pulled up. A reporter thrust a microphone toward Valentina as she stepped into a cab.
"Do you regret anything?" the reporter asked.
Valentina looked at the camera, then at Denver, then away. "I'm... sorry," she said. It was small, too small. She sounded like she was reading it from someone else's script. The cab door shut. The man in the cab looked like someone who had had his world rearranged.
Denver's reaction moved through the stages: smugness, then stunned denial, then a brittle anger that fell away into shame. He tried to argue with a swarm of cameras, then attempted to mobilize friends who tried to spin narratives. That day, I saw him stand taller against the crowd for three minutes, and then his shoulders caved as reality did not buy his performance.
Around me, people recorded and tweeted. There were those who defended me — classmates who sent messages: "You were brave." Others were upset about the spectacle: "Why drag the launch down?" Opinions unfurled into threads. I felt the pressure but also a sorrier freedom.
Later that week, the company issued another statement. "We regret any pain caused. We are taking steps to review staff conduct and ensure leadership aligns with our values." Denver was called into internal hearings. Valentina was moved. HR announced discipline. The app's launch people canceled the joyous launch event that had been prepared. Investors grew quiet.
In the weeks after, I watched as not only their company but their reputations shifted. Investors asked tough questions. Colleagues who admired Denver's polished charm discovered their trust was perhaps misplaced. Valentina's name circulated in the worst way: the woman who stepped into another's relationship during heartbreak. Even old friends who had laughed with Denver at private jokes began to distance themselves.
Punishment had variations. For Denver, it was the professional fall: contract termination, public blame, and the slow emaciation of people who no longer smiled at him at social events. For Valentina, it was exile of sorts: moved to a distant office with less influence, cut off from the inner circle that had helped her rise. For both, it was the sharp sting of people who had once applauded now whispering behind their backs.
One night in a small cafe, I watched Denver walk in. He looked like a man who had lost a costume. For a long moment he sat like a man very cold. Then he saw me and froze.
"Emberly," he said, broken. "Please."
We spoke. He started with denials. "I didn't mean—" Then as I recounted memories and the facts, denial gave way to a stammering apology, to pleading. "I'll fix it," he said. "I can make this right."
"You can try," I said. "But you chose the steps that led you here. I did not make you do them."
Tears came into his eyes; for a moment he looked human in the way I had wanted him to be years ago. He tried to touch my hand. I pulled away. A silence took the space.
"You could have told the truth at the start," I said. "You could have said, 'I made a mistake.'"
He bowed his head. "I was afraid."
"A great cost," I said. "It cost me six years."
He flinched. I turned and walked out. The hum of the city felt like a witness.
That part, the punishment, didn't teach me joy. I wasn't a victor standing on a platform of someone else's ruin. I was someone who had reclaimed a part of her life. The satisfaction was sharp and dry.
After those public days, life settled. The app's investors cooled. Valentina's new regional project had fewer resources. Denver's resume was suddenly a door that didn't open. He tried to call. He sent messages that read like confessions: "I was weak. I am sorry. Please answer." I didn't answer. When he showed up in person at the door of my building, I told the doorman to send him away. That rejection felt both petty and necessary.
"Do you feel better?" Jillian asked one night, two months later.
"Sometimes," I said. "Other times I feel like I've traded one kind of pain for another."
"You did right," she said. "People who build brands on lies should have their foundations shaken."
I couldn't argue. But I also couldn't celebrate.
Gallagher stayed. Gallagher listened. He did not parade his patience like a badge. He complimented the small bravery I had in doing my job. He read that book — a shabby edition of a small title I always loved — and helped me find its meaning again. He'd been gentle enough to ask the right questions, and steady enough to wait. We had moments that felt like small rescue. He would order a cup of coffee and then take two sips and say, "I have enough coffee for two." In that phrase, I felt something like home.
"Do you regret it?" he asked one night when we sat under the mimosa tree where I'd once done homework to watch him play.
"Regret what?" I asked.
"Not handing me the letter," he said.
I closed my eyes. The memory of the folded paper felt heavy. "Maybe. But regret is a long-lasting weight."
He took my hand. "Then let's not add more weights."
We started carefully. First slow dinners. Then small trips. He introduced me to his friends. People liked Gallagher; he had a way of making all the knots in a room loosen. I started telling him things: the small humiliations, the nights of crying, the microscopic ways my life had been remade.
"You are not a mess," Gallagher said succinctly. "Your life got messy because of people who make selfish choices. You are not the same as what happened to you."
I let him steady me. When I felt my courage waver, he would be there with a little, quiet push. When I felt petty, he would allow it without shame. Our affection was small and greedy in the best way. He made me laugh at my worst sullen jokes. He made tea when I was fevered with fear over calls from Denver. He read my posts and told me plainly when I sounded too bitter. "Don't let them write your voice," he would say.
A year after the conference, the app had been rebranded and rebuilt with new leadership. The company made a public mea culpa. Denver had a small legal settlement and a public apology that read like a forced exercise. Valentina moved on. The harm had been measured and repaired in the way institutions do repair: slowly, publicly, and with a ledger of reputations altered.
I met Gallagher's parents, who were nothing like the nervous older mothers I imagined; they were warm, totally at ease. My own parents grinned like children and made too much food when I visited. Jillian continued to be loud and loyal. Avery apologized in a letter and admitted what he'd done: a mix of cowardice and fear. He had borne his share of shame in his way, and I accepted that he had been young and small and had done a selfish thing. He asked for forgiveness, and I gave it in a way that kept distance.
Valentina's public humiliation had a strange effect. At first I wanted to be cruel. But with time the edge softened into an understanding that people are complex, and their hurts make them do stupid things. I learned not to wish for their total destruction. I wanted accountability, yes. I wanted a proper recognition of wrong. I didn't want them to rot. Pride and malice had very little to do with growth.
One evening when snow started to fall, Gallagher and I walked to the mimosa tree. The streetlights caught the snow and made it a soft net of light. He held my hand, warm. I reached into my coat and found that the little book — the one he'd once tried to send to me in another life — now sat in my palm. He smiled when he saw it.
"Do you ever think," he said, "what would've happened if you'd gotten that book earlier?"
I thought about the lost years, about the ache that had taught me to be careful. "Yes," I said. "But then I wouldn't have learned this: you stood by me when I needed someone steady. That matters more than any what-if."
Gallagher kissed the top of my head, gentle as a secret. "Then let's make the rest different."
We walked on. The snow softened our footsteps. It felt small and true.
The End
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