Part of a writing prompt

Surprise letter. Give me 500 words.

I didn’t really have to ask how she got my email address. It’s not hard. Damn thing is all over the web because I put it there. When you’re a real-estate agent, you want people to be able to contact you. So I put it out, and put it out, and the crumbs I got back I ate like I was starving.

GREETINGS. That was the subject line from a name I didn’t recognize. Not exactly unusual. In my line of work you get a lot of strangers crossing your threshold in every way. I wasn’t always comfortable with it, the meet-and-greet, the hail-fellow-well-met. I’d considered switching careers, but to what? I was born to do this, that’s what my father kept telling me. Then again, he was the Real Estate Duke of Santa Barbara. Me, I couldn’t even sell in Goleta. That was why I was 29, pressing up hard against 30, and still living in their back cottage. Yes, I know what they say about Millennials. I didn’t want to be that Millennial.

They say that a character has to want something. Ground them in that desire. That’s what makes a character believable. I’m here to tell you that’s bullshit. And I’ll tell you another thing: It’s way worse not to want something than to want it with everything that is you. It’s way worse to press your nose against that glass, looking in on life’s snow globe. How do you like that metaphor?

Yeah. Me neither.

I was sitting at Santa Barbara Roasting Company when the message showed up. Jack Johnson was playing on the stereo because Jack Johnson always plays on the stereo around here. He was in my major at UC Santa Barbara, film studies. I don’t remember much about him other than he always had a guitar. And look at him now. That’s where wanting gets you.

Right before it landed, I was watching a family. They all seemed to be doing work of some sort: three of them gathered around one table, mom and dad and younger brother, and then older sister off to the side with her turquoise-cased Mac Air. I was thinking about Steffy. Steffy, who had my heart whether or not she was interested in keeping it. Steffy, who took my love until it bored her and then wouldn’t let me give it to her any more.

Steffy, who was getting married the following week. I didn’t know that because she told me, God knows. Girl practically put an emotional restraining order on me when we broke up. She wouldn’t even give me her forwarding address when she moved out. Just blocked me on email, and phone, and Facebook and Twitter and probably even on sites that I wasn’t even on. Pinterest. Can you even block someone on Pinterest? If you could, then I’m sure she did.

Times my body screamed for her. Times my mind wrapped itself around thin air, talked to no one but itself. Times I reached out and touched thin air, nothing less and certainly nothing more.