I’m supposed to be pushing men away, but that’s the last thing I want to do when it comes to him.
What the hell am I going to do now?
NINETEEN
CAMDEN
Cora: I saw Tara…
Me: Fuck. I’m sorry, Cor. Do you want to talk? What happened?
Cora: No. I just thought you should know.
Me: Are you okay?
Cora: Yeah. It’s been almost thirty years. I should be over this.
Me: But you aren’t. Neither am I. And you’re usually the one saying that it’s okay not to be.
Cora: Ha ha. The student becomes the teacher.
Me: I had a really good teacher.
Cora: You seem…okay. Is it the girl from last week?
Me: It just might be.
Cora: Wow…I didn’t expect you to be so…
Me: Yeah, me neither.
Me: It’s so unexpected. Being this happy. I think I’m finally ready to take something for myself.
Cora: Oh shit. Okay, this is real.
Me: Yeah, I think it is.
Cora: I wish Mom would come to Boston with me. I wish we could spend the holidays with you. I’m so happy for you. And you’re right. It’s okay that this is still hard for me, but I’m happy that you’re allowing yourself to have some joy. You deserve it. And if I haven’t said it, you aren’t to blame. For any of it. Tara, the affair, Dad’s death. It happened to all of us. You’re not to blame.
I don’t respond.As much as I appreciate the sentiment and have done the work in therapy to make peace with the past, she’s wrong. I was to blame for a lot of it. I was too selfish, too much of an asshole, too young and too stupid to care about anyone but myself.
But I’m not that person anymore.
Or at least I’m trying not to be.
And the last thing I’m going to do is waste any more time thinking about Tara. That woman was a terror on my heart. The last time I really let myself think about her was years ago. The last time I saw her. And it did a number on me. Because she was with the daughter that, if given the chance, she would have passed off as mine.
My stomach twists. Back then I had no interest in being a father, and I thank God that I wasn’t tied to that woman for life because of a child.
Though I can’t help but feel bad for her daughter. She got stuck with the two most self-destructive and selfish people I’ve ever met: my ex-best friend and Tara.
When I walked in on my girlfriend with my best friend, it was likemy soul left my body and I was watching the scene play out from overhead. Jeremy had been dating my sister for years. I’d always thought he was a good guy.
And I thought Tara was it for me. The four of us were inseparable.
Apparently they were a little too close.
I squeeze my eyes shut, banishing the thoughts from my brain. More than two and a half decades later, it still hurts. And it still makes it hard to trust people. To let them in.
