Seven Letters

Romance Short Stories · approx. 8 min read · 18+

A class reunion, a drawer full of letters, a reunion. Literary short story. 18+.

Tobias had written me seven letters, between March and September of the year I turned fourteen, and all seven lay, unread, in a shoebox in my mother’s attic. I knew this because she gave them back to me the evening I came from Berlin to visit her.

“You’ll be pleased,” she said. “They’re all still sealed.”

I didn’t open any of them that evening. I didn’t open any the next morning. But Saturday was the class reunion—forty years after graduation, the date had been set for months, and I had agreed out of defiance and curiosity—and on Friday evening, in the hotel room of a small house on Linzergasse, I read them all.

Tobias wasn’t a good letter writer. His sentences were short and sometimes out of order. But he was an honest letter writer. He wrote me what he didn’t dare say when we saw each other every day in class, and the further I read, the more I understood that my memory of him was a fraction of what had actually been.

“Dear Theresa,” the third letter began, “I thought about you all afternoon today. In geography, you tucked your hair behind your left ear, and that was enough to ruin my day.”

I put the letter down. I was fifty-eight. I was a woman who had lived in Berlin for twenty years, co-ran a publishing house, swam three times a week, and had been divorced for eleven years, and tears were streaming down my cheeks because of a letter someone had written over forty years ago.

On Saturday, I went to the Hotel Schwarzer Adler. I saw Tobias immediately. He wasn’t the youngest anymore, but he was the one standing most quietly, in the back room, leaning against a window, with a glass of white wine in his hand. He had more wrinkles and less hair, but he also had the same mouth, the same mouth I remembered from a distant classroom and suddenly saw up close.

“I read them,” I said when I reached him.

“What?”

“The letters.”

He looked at me without blinking, without smiling. He looked at me like someone standing in a bookstore realizing the book they’d been searching for for years is still on the shelf.

“Which ones?”

“All seven.”

He set down the glass. He said nothing. He took my hand and led me out of the hall, past classmates I hadn’t seen in forty years, into the hotel lobby, through the revolving door, onto the street, into the cold Salzburg September air.

“Where are you staying?”

“On Linzergasse.”

We walked in silence. He didn’t hold my hand tightly, but he didn’t let go either. In front of the hotel, he stopped.

“Theresa. I was twenty-eight when I stopped hoping you’d read them. I was forty-five when I stopped hoping I’d see you again. If you come upstairs with me now, it’s not out of pity and not out of curiosity.”

“I’m not coming upstairs with you out of pity.”

“Out of what, then?”

I thought about it. I thought clearly for the first time in hours, in full sentences, instead of in the shock of those seven letters.

“Because in fifty-eight years, no one has ever written me anything truer than you did in your third letter.”

He nodded. We went upstairs.

My room was on the third floor, an old hotel room with a heavy bed and a lamp that glowed too warmly. We didn’t turn on much light. We didn’t undress in a sequence, but in one that almost felt choreographed—as if we had been preparing for it for forty years without knowing.

As the door clicked shut, we stood facing each other. The room was filled with that warm, golden light, casting shadows on her cheeks. I felt my heart hammering against my ribs, a wild, impatient beat. My hands trembled as I reached for her, and my fingers settled on her hips, pulling her close to me. “Theresa,” I whispered, my mouth at her ear, the words a hot breath that made her skin tingle. She smelled of salt and soap, and beneath that, something earthier that reminded me of autumn.

She didn’t answer with words. Instead, she raised her hands, placed them on my chest, and slowly pushed the jacket off my shoulders. It fell to the floor. Then she grabbed the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head. My hands roamed over her back, finding the clasp of her dress, a small, metal challenge. With a practiced click, it gave way, and the dress slid off her shoulders, falling in a soft wave to the carpet. She stood before me in a simple black bra and panties so thin I could see the dark outline beneath.

My breath caught. Forty years I had waited for this sight, and now it was here, more real than any fantasy. My hand moved to her bra, opened that clasp too, and her breasts fell free, heavy and full, the nipples already hard and peaked under my gaze. “My God,” I groaned softly, “you’re even more beautiful than in my memories.” My fingers traced over her skin, drawing gentle circles around her nipples, which grew harder with each touch.

I leaned forward, took her nipple in my mouth, and sucked. It was soft and firm at once, and as my tongue swept over it, she moaned, a low, throaty sound that shot straight to my cock. My other hand wandered lower, over her flat stomach, to the thin fabric of her panties. I felt the heat radiating from them and pressed my palm against it gently. “You’re so wet,” I breathed against her skin, as I pushed the panties aside and slid my fingers through her slick lips. They were smooth and oily, and I felt her open under my touch.

“I want to feel you,” she whispered hoarsely, her voice rough with desire. “I want your cock inside me.” She reached for my belt, her fingers trembling as she undid the buckle. My pants fell to the floor, and my hard cock stood free, swollen and throbbing, the tip already wet with anticipation. She closed her hand around it, and the shock of her touch made me gasp. “So big,” she murmured, “so hard.” Her thumb stroked over the tip, spreading the clear fluid that beaded there.

I couldn’t wait any longer. I grabbed her by the hips and turned her around, pressing her face-down onto the heavy bed. She let it happen, arching her back, presenting her ass to me, the panties still stretched taut across her skin. I pulled them down, over her thighs, past her knees, until they fell away. Her pussy was glistening, wet and open, the lips swollen and parted, inviting me in. I spread her cheeks with both hands, exposing her completely, and leaned down to run my tongue through her slit. She tasted salty and sweet, and she bucked against my mouth as I licked deeper, circling her clit until she was trembling.

“Please,” she gasped, “fuck me. Now.”

I straightened up, positioned my cock at her entrance, and pushed. She was so tight, so hot, and the feeling of her walls closing around me made my eyes roll back. I slid in slowly, inch by inch, until I was buried to the hilt inside her. She let out a long, shuddering moan, her fingers gripping the sheets. I began to move, a steady rhythm, each thrust driving deeper, harder. The bed creaked under us, a counterpoint to our ragged breaths. Her pussy gripped me like a fist, and I could feel her getting wetter, her juices coating my cock as I fucked her.

“Yes,” she cried out, “don’t stop.”

I leaned over her, my chest against her back, my mouth at her ear. “You’re mine,” I growled, “after all these years, you’re finally mine.” I reached under her, found her clit, and rubbed it in time with my thrusts. She came instantly, her body convulsing, her pussy clamping down on me so hard I could barely move. The feeling pushed me over the edge, and I came inside her, a hot, pulsing flood that seemed to go on forever. I collapsed onto her, both of us panting, slick with sweat.

We lay there for a long time, tangled together, the lamp still glowing too warmly. Finally, she turned her head to look at me, her eyes dark and satisfied. “Forty years,” she said, “and it was worth every one.”