Logically, Lilah checked off every box. Smart, kind, beautiful, talented, caring…she had it all. There was nothing wrong with her. I thought there had to be something wrong with me that I couldn’t love her the way I should.
But after just this short time with Jordyn, I realized that as perfect as Lilah was, she wasn’t perfect for me. If I had only owned up to it and been honest, I might have broken her heart, but she would have gotten over that. Instead, I behaved like a coward. Rather than face a break-up scene and lose Lilah and her family, I betrayed her with near-fatal consequences, and I’d still lost them in the most unforgivable way.
When the exit sign on the interstate appears, nerves send a trickle of sweat down my back despite the cool air in the car. I chug a bottle of water and stop myself from turning around and heading back in the opposite direction.
It’s not long after that Apple Maps announces my arrival. I peer through the windshield at the condominium. According to the driver’s license information Max had procured for me, this is Lilah’s current address. She moved from Carlton Springs and is now living just outside downtown Denver. I sit in the parked car for twenty minutes, playing the coward still. I finally force myself out.
As I enter the lobby, someone is exiting. I catch the door. There’s no concierge, no one to stop me, no one to alert Lilah of what’s about to happen.
I take the stairs to the fourth floor, buying more time and working out the nervous energy. I reach unit 415. I’m not ready. I’ll never be ready. Would Lilah be? Fuck, was this even the right thing to do to her?
She’d told me she never wanted to see me again.
I hate you!
She cried. Sobbed. Wailed.It should have been you!
How I wish it had been.
My mind bleeds with the memory. My heart pounds erratically. My arm feels like lead as I slowly lift it and knock. Lilah might not even be home on a Sunday afternoon. I take one breath…two breaths…three. If she doesn’t answer by ten, that’s an omen for me to go, to let it be. Let her be.
I hear the pad of footsteps on five…they pause on seven.
I stand there as motionless as her silence—breathing and counting in my head.
I don’t move or fall apart. I stand rooted in place, staring through the peephole—a distorted, convex image. But I know it’s him. It’s Jay.
My hands shake with more than the occasional tremor I still get in the right one. These shakes are unruly and chaotic. They zig and zag through my body like I’m a human pinball machine.
It’s been four and a half years.
The last time I saw Jay, I hurled ugly, hateful words at him. I couldn’t accept his apology. I couldn’t even stand to look at him.
Jay being a cheater was unthinkable to me. I thought of him as the most loyal and dedicated man I’d ever met. I couldn’t wrap my head around his actions. I couldn’t comprehend how I had opened the door to a woman who claimed to be his soulmate. “I don’t know who you are,” I’d said, thinking she was either mistaken or crazy. “But I’m Jay’s girlfriend.”
She made this noise—a wild, maniacal sound. I didn’t even notice the knife until the sharp, shiny blade was coming at me. I screamed. I tried to block it with my hands…more screaming. I heard Jay on the stairs yelling my name, then I heard nothing…saw nothing.
It wasn’t until days later, after surgery, that I’d awakened in the hospital to learn what had happened to me. I could have died. But it was Jay who saved me. He’d been the one who stopped me from bleeding out. He was my savior and my destroyer. I struggled for years with how to reconcile that.
“I’m sorry for showing up like this.” Jay’s voice on the other side of the door, the once familiar deep, smooth sound, wobbles.
“I…I don’t know if…if I should have come.”
Jay was often hard to read. He didn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve the way I did. But he feels deeply. I know that about him. I also know why he’s here, for some type of closure. I just don’t know why now, after all this time. But whatever his reason, it was better that he waited. Because had it been a year ago or earlier, I would have angrily sent him away or not even answered.
I slide the bolt across and open the door. It’s surreal seeing him up close for the first time after the way we parted. He looks the same but different somehow—a hollower version of himself.
“Lilah.” My name falls from his lips like broken bits of glass.
I loved this man once. I loved him with my whole heart. I also hated him just as much.
He doesn’t move forward, and I don’t invite him in. I make eye contact, but I still haven’t said anything.
“I…I needed to see you.”
“Why?” I make my voice work.
“To…to apologize…to know how you are.” His breath catches. “I’m sorry, Lilah. So fucking sorry. I can’t imagine how trite those words must sound to you. They’re pathetically inadequate.” His voice cracks and trails into silence.
