I sent a letter to all Brians and Bs in the phone book with your last name who live on the Island. If you don't know who I am, then please ignore me. If you know who I am, then you should send me an email (I don't know your personal email - just your email address when we worked together at The Biotech Company) or call me. I live in Victoria now.

Shannon

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Dear Brian,

I had a dream about you last night. We met up in Langford and you complained about living near the big box stores, and I described how I ended up living in Victoria. In the dream, I didn't tell you everything right, and I thought you might have had the same dream, and I want to set things straight.

Give me a call and maybe we can meet up for a coffee or something.

I hope your wife and daughter are well.

Shannon

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Dear Brian,

I live in Victoria now too, and I don't have any friends here. Daniel is getting upset because I don't have much of a life besides volunteering one morning a week. He threatened to go out with his friend Heather by himself because he's so bored at home, and that really hurt me. I know it was a long time ago that we were friends and coworkers, but maybe we could still be friends without having work in common.

Shannon

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Dear Brian,

How are you doing? Do you enjoy life in Victoria? I suspect you do... I don't think you ever really liked Vancouver that much. It's not your style at all. We should get together sometime and rehash old jokes. I have lots of spare time and you could use me to babysit your daughter. I bet she's a riot. Call me sometime!

"Channon"

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Hey Brian,

Lynn told me that you moved to the island, so I looked you up. Sorry for being creepy.

I'm pretty lonely here, but I'm not sure that we should hang out because I think I loved you more than a friend, even though I knew you were attached. I think I've spent the rest of my life looking for a Brian for myself. My heart swells when I think about how much you could care about someone.

I wanted to meet up, but I didn't really want to bring Daniel right away. Is that weird? Does that mean that I still 'love' you? I'm not sure that I have ever really been able to separate friendship from love. Well, if you think it'd be fun to meet up and that it wouldn't be too weird, and if our partners didn't think that we were having an affair... then I'd be really happy to see you.

Shannon

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Hey Brian,

I heard you moved to the island. Where are you working? I'm unemployed. Maybe you are working for a good company that is looking for someone to fill a position? It would be super fun to work with you again. It was always nice to come in early in the morning and work beside you until everyone else arrived.

Shannon

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Hey Brian,

I have a confession to make: I had a sexual relationship with Grant.

Nobody knows about it as far as I know. Not Lynn, not the Bauer girls. He slept with a co-op girl at his previous company too. He told me that, and I still slept with him. How stupid was I?

There was something so electric about him. He's not a very attractive man, but when I hugged him my body did this weird thing that it has never done with anybody else. I hate him now. Maybe I hated him then too, through veiled lust.

If it makes things any less my responsibility, he seduced me. One evening when I was unlocking my bike in the parking garage he invited me to come to a BBQ at a buddy's place. I had no idea that he would take our 'harmless work flirting' out of the lab. I got really drunk at the BBQ (the host was plying everyone with a serving tray full of shots). Grant said I could sleep on his couch because I was too drunk to ride back to the Endowment Lands. He sort of tucked me into bed and then climbed in beside me and then touched my bare feet with his under the blanket. Then we kissed. I don't remember if we had sex that night. We probably did.

I kept going back to his place. A couple times a week. We had a real conversation about our 'insides' once. I knew that his heart had been irreversibly broken a few years before, but I still tried to get that old heart of his to feel something for me.

He only came to the farm once. He drove me home from a concert downtown (actually I drove his truck because he'd had too much to drink). I showed him the sheep, who were lambing at the time. Jeff was there on Lambing Duty, and the sight of Grant probably broke his heart, and it made me ache too because I wanted to be closer to Jeff, and I knew he was the type to love fully and intensely. We met on the farm one day when we were both volunteering to paint white fences. It would have been a perfect romance. We later had an economics lecture together, and we always sat together and traded notes. We laughed a lot. Not too long ago Jeff added me to his contacts on some stupid internet networking site, and that made me think that he might have loved me too.

Leaving the Biotech Company was made easier because I needed to be away from Grant. I think that's the main reason why I never pushed to get another job there after I travelled in Europe. The affair is such a dirty thing, a thing that I am embarrassed and ashamed by. A lot of the time I feel like I said too much, opened up too much in the lab. That you all saw how immature I was, how dumb I was, and how unprofessional I was. I fear that I am still all of those things.

If after knowing this you still want to meet up give me a call.

Shannon

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Dear Brian,

Do you think that we could still be friends, after all this time?

I live in Victoria now.

How about we do something uncomfortable like all go out for dinner? You and your family and me and my boyfriend (we're common law at this point... and he likes to philosophize when drunk!)

Give me a call sometime.

Shannon

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Dear Brian,

I'm not sure Daniel truly loves me anymore. We sat at the Moka House last night in silence. I looked around at all the other people having so much fun talking together, and I was so envious. I think that we need to talk to more people than just each other. I'm afraid he feels trapped by me. I don't want to mess this up.

Shannon

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Dear Brian,

Want to go for a bike ride and a beer sometime? My Daniel would come too. I live in Victoria now.

Call me!