“I loved you. I’ve never been able to feel that way for anyone else. Not even Anna. She was everything I thought I wanted. We both tried. She tried harder. I wanted to give her what she needed. I thought we could make it work, so I asked her to marry me. It was a desperate attempt to fix things. If I couldn’t love this girl, who should be perfect for me, I didn’t think I’d be able to love anyone.”
My gaze never leaves Mira. “I regretted asking Anna to marry me the moment the words were out of my mouth, but I didn’t take them back. I let it drag out for a week, convincing myself it was the right thing to do.”
I lean my head against the back of the couch and close my eyes briefly. “I think she knew how I really felt. She didn’t say it, but…”
For a moment, I’m lost in the past, the burning I haven’t been able to shake these past several months flaming in my chest.
“What do you think?” Anna asked, the last Saturday I saw her. “My friends are organizing it. I’m game if you are.”
Her friends had invited us to river-kayak. Anna wasn’t sporty, but she tried. We’d gone on a few hikes together. She would slip and stumble, and I couldn’t hide my frustration. It wasn’t because she didn’t do well in the outdoors. It was because deep down I wasn’t into us, and my lack of emotion came out in other ways.
“I’ve got papers to grade, but go ahead,” I told her. I’d already begun to pull away. Had been considering how to talk to her about our new engagement and explain I’d made a mistake.
Anna didn’t normally get involved in outdoor trips like this, especially not without me. I’ll never know if she was trying to prove something.
“I think I will,” she said with a mischievous smile.
I smiled back, because she was so gentle and sweet, and I got the sense she wanted to impress me. I didn’t care one way or the other if she went river-kayaking, but I thought it funny she’d do something so out of character.
“Tyler,” Mira says, snapping me out of the horror of that day. “Are you okay?” She scoots closer without touching me.
“No.”
I rub my forehead. I’ve not admitted that to anyone since I returned to Lake Tahoe. I didn’t have to admit it to my friends in Colorado. They already knew I was a mess.
“She did something, this girl I didn’t love but had asked to marry me. I think she thought if she did certain things, I’d grow to love her the way I should.”
I look at Mira, pleading with my eyes, willing her of all people to understand. I don’t blame Mira for what went down in Colorado. But maybe, just maybe, if Mira felt a small fraction of what I did for her—what I still feel for her—she’ll understand why I couldn’t love Anna.
“What happened, Tyler?” Mira’s voice is strong, as if bracing for a truth she knows will be horrific. And it is. It’s so ugly I wake to nightmares of Anna crying beneath the water.
“There was a river, and she was with friends. She wasn’t a kayaker, but she went anyway. Her friends gave her basic training, but the run she did was a class four. Her friends told me later that she’d smiled and said she could do it. They admitted afterward that they’d had doubts.”
I press my fingers to my eyes, trying to block the visions I’ve created in my mind of what happened. “Everything was fine at first. Then Anna went around a boulder with a deep whirlpool. Her kayak flipped, lodged under a notch. She couldn’t get back up.”
I hear Mira’s sharp intake of breath, but I press on. “It was a freak situation. Most people would have coasted through that rough spot. Several of her friends already had. They struggled to free her. They”—I swallow, my throat dry, cracking—“they could reach her hand, but they couldn’t pull her out. The current was too strong. Her straps tangled. She was under for forty minutes without air.”
The images I have of that day, not just the ones I’ve created from what others have said, still haunt me. “I saw her body in the hospital afterward. The ring I’d selected without thought, still on her hand.” The back of my throat burns, along with my eyes, my chest. Damn.
Being in my hometown is supposed to make what happened better. Make this pain and guilt go away. But it hasn’t.
I sense Mira’s hand rest on my shoulder, feel her crawling onto my lap. She curls around me, and I tuck my head against the crook of her neck, breathing in her scent. Moisture I can’t stop from falling from my eyes soaks into her hair.
I don’t know if Anna would have gone on that kayak trip if she hadn’t been trying to impress me. She might have. Her friends seemed to think so when I worried she’d done it for me. They may have said it to make me feel better. I’ll never know. What I know is that Anna died loving someone who didn’t love her back. It’s that guilt that eats at me.
I wipe my eyes and cup my hands on either side of Mira’s face. “I. Am. So. Sorry. For my past in Colorado, without a doubt. But right now, I’m sorry for taking out my guilt on you. I fucked up. I’ve always wanted you, Mira, and when we had sex the other night and it was so amazing, I didn’t think I deserved you. I panicked. I went to a friend’s house to get my head straight. I came right back, but you were gone.”
I deeply regret the way I handled things with Anna, but it’s time I forgive myself. I didn’t love her the way I should have, but there’s no reason I can’t love Mira the way she deserves.
“Did it work?” she asks. “Is your head on straight?”
I puff out a breath. She’s teasing me, trying to lighten the mood, and it helps. “Phil told me to leave you. He’s pretty much the worst friend to ask for advice about a woman. He’s the person who suggested I bring girls home to get you to leave.”
Her eyes widen. “Is that why you did it? You were listening to something a stupid guy said?”
This—just this. Mira giving me a hard time, her warm body in my lap—it makes everything better.
I shrug, a small smile returning to my face. “Eh, it was worth a try.” She squirms indignantly and attempts to get up. “Calm down.” I wrap my arms around her more tightly, holding her close. “I just got you back where I want you. Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through these last few days? Where the hell have you been?”
