“Hey, are you okay?” He sat up as I walked over. Tension seeped back into his shoulders and straightened his spine.
“No,” I told him honestly.
He jumped to his feet and closed the distance between us. “What’s wrong?”
I swallowed thickly and told him the truth, “I can’t do this anymore, Ben.”
“Do what anymore?”
“Us.”
“Liz…”
“I can’t,” I sobbed. “I can’t be with you. I can’t love you. We have to stop.”
“No, you have to stop.” His voice had turned to rough gravel, dragging across my heart. “How can you say that?After last night?After everything we’ve been through?”
“After everything I’ve been through, you mean!” I struggled to keep my voice low enough so I wouldn’t wake the kids. “I didn’t want this, Ben. I didn’t ask for you to come into my life and make me feel for you. I didn’t ask you to become a part of our lives and take over where my husband left off.”
“Liz, you know that I have never tried to take over Grady’s place or be what he was to you guys. I have never once asked you to ignore or forget him. That isn’t fair.”
I went on like he had never spoken, “And now my kids are asking you to move in with us! You can’t replace their daddy! You can’t just move in and fill this void that he left behind!”
“I have never once tried to do any of that!” he growled at me. “Stop making this into something that it’s not.”
“Then what is it?” I shouted at him. I shook my head and lowered my voice again, “What is it? What is this?”
“This is us, Liz,” he pleaded with me. “This is you and me. We’re figuring it out as we go. Neither of us expected this, but it happened. We need each other. We… We love each other.”
“So what?”I spat cruelly. “Where does that leave us? Where is this going?”
“Liz…”
“You can’t move in with us. So that’s off the table. I will not get married again. So that’s also off the table. We can’t ever be anything more than what we are right now and is that enough for you?”
“No.” His answer was so immediate and forceful that I jumped.
“See!”
“No, I don’t see. Why can’t we move in together, Liz? Why can’t we get married? What in the hell is stopping us?”
“Me!”
“Right!”He took a step closer to me and I felt the vibrations of his anger ripple around me.“You!Butnothing else.Nothing else is standing in our way. So tell me, tell me right now, why you’re putting a stop to this.”
“Because I can’t do this anymore!”I cried. The tears of the day finally fell as my world came crashing down around me for the second time in my life. “I cannot be with you when I miss him so much my body aches from it! I cannot be with you and make a life with you when all I want is for him to come back. I can’t be intimate with you when it’s his hands I imagine touching me, when it’s his body I dream about. I cannot be with you when I will never stop loving him.” I closed my eyes to rid myself of the image of Ben’s broken expression and defeated posture. I couldn’t stand that image of him. My confident, defiant, authoritative neighbor had been crushed because of me. I did that. I destroyed the second man that I loved. “I can’t love you when I love him like this.”
“You mean that?” he rasped. “You’re done trying?”
“I’m done. I have to be done.” I opened my eyes and blinked through the tears. I watched him accept my words, I watched them sink in.
“You don’t have to do this, Liz. We could work through this together. I could share this pain with you and we could get through it.”
I shook my head and delivered the final blow, “You can’t help me, Ben. This ismypain. This ismy grief. There is nothing you can do but let me be.”
He nodded once before gathering his things and leaving. I watched the door close behind him and felt the avalanche of grief cascade over me. My dam of sorrow and sadness ripped open again and I felt the agony of losing someone I loved all over again.
I stumbled to the couch and did not get up for the rest of the night. I couldn’t face my bed again, not after the night I had with Ben. I couldn’t face Grady’s empty side of the bed and come to terms with what I had done.
