“I never thought of it like that.” Awe colored my voice as sadness intertwined itself with my words. “I’m sorry.” And I was so incredibly sorry, but I was still hurt. So if now was the time he was going toopen, I had to take advantage. “Did you ever think of me? I mean, you just up and left without any explanation. I couldn’t even get in touch with you. I had no clue what happened.” There were so many nights I lay awake, envisioning the worst-case scenarios, letting horrid images run through my head. Choking those words down, I managed a simple, “Why didn’t you want to talk to me?”
Without anynotice, he spun out of his seat and kneeled before me, grabbing both of my hands in his. “Please don’t think for one second I didn’t want to talk to you. Every damn night I wanted to call you.”
“Then why?” I begged. “Why didn’t you? I would have—”
He shook his head and I struggled to make sense of it all. “That’s what I just said,” he explained, squeezing my hands. “It had nothing to do withyou.Ineeded to take care ofmeand figure outmylife.”
In my hot-headed annoyance, I focused on the wrong words. “Nothing to do with me,” I scoffed. “Fucking figures.” Shoving our joined hands to the side, I stood from my chair. “Then it’s a damn shame because everything I was feeling back then was all about you. But I guessIjust didn’t matter to you.” Ruining our final night together wasthe last thing on my mind, but still somehow, I’d managed to do exactly that.
It took every ounce of energy for me not to turn around to see if he’d followed me. I knew running away from someone to show them how it felt was probably the dumbest thing on earth, yet here I was, sitting in his living room, staring at the black screen of the television, pretending as if I wasn’t looking out of thecorner of my eye to see the sliding glass doors moved.
And when they did, I crossed my arms over my chest tighter, and actually huffed.
He walked toward me, stopping only to put our glasses on the kitchen counter. I didn’t even bother to turn toward him when he sat down next to me. He flopped back on the couch and let out a long sigh before saying, “You’re being unreasonable.”
“Right,I’mtheunreasonable one right now.”
Good comeback, Quinn. Real original.
“Maybe I’m not explaining it clearly enough,” he said, sounding as if he was completely blindsided by my reaction.
“Oh, no,” I spat, letting the sarcasm hang heavily between us. “I heard you loud and clear. It had nothing to do with me. Everything to do with you.” The silence stretched and the anger brewed. My nerves had gottenthe best of me and I could no longer sit still. Pacing behind the couch, I found it impossible to put my emotions to words. But finally, I asked, “But why? Why did you leave in the first place? What happened that night?” It was so alive and vivid in my memories, the night he left may as well have happened last week. “What was so bad that you had to leave and never come back?” My rage was boilingso hot I didn’t even think twice about breaking the promise I’d made never to ask about what happened.
Resting his elbows on his thighs, he leaned forward and cupped his head in his hands. He muttered something in between his fingers, but I couldn’t make out a single word of it. “You’re going to need to speak up,” I snapped.
“I can’t tell you that.”
Shock and frustration raced through my veins.“What?” I demanded. All the years of pent-up anger had shown up at the worst possible time, but there was no holding my tongue.
He stood, faced me, and simply repeated, “I said I can’t tell you.”
All the pain and hurt from all these years, and all he could say was he couldn’t tell me.
“That’s bullshit, Ry, and you know it,” I seethed as I walked past him.
“Where are you going?” he asked asmy foot hovered above the first step.
I contemplated telling him that it was none of his business, but it was his house. And as much as I hated him right now, I couldn’t be that sulky. “To bed. To sleep. I need some time alone.”
When I reached the top of the stairs, I didn’t turn around to look back at him. Instead of going into his room, I continued down the hall to the guest room, where Ihadn’t slept since I first arrived here.
Later, as I lay in bed, all alone, I wondered where the hell it all went wrong. Then my mind wandered to why the hell I’d even come here. What had I thought was going to happen? I was just going to show up and somehow we would go back to who we were?
I couldn’t help but laugh at myself thinking about how ridiculous the entire thing had been. And the moreI reflected on what he had said, that it had been about him, the more I realized he was right. In all our time apart, I was always so fiercely focused on what happened to him and where he was, wondering if he was okay, I never gave myself the chance to be livid. Concern and longing always overrode the darker emotions and maybe it was good at first, staying calm and cool on the off chance thathe magically showed up out of nowhere.
But as the years carried on, I became numb. And if I were to believe everything I’d seen in my time here and everything he said tonight, he’d come alive.
Wasn’t that the fucking definition of irony?
The longer I lay there, the more I realized I needed not to be an ass about all of this if I hoped to get to the bottom of it all. There were far more effectiveways for me to deal with my feelings while still letting Ryan sort through his. As I closed my eyes, I remembered how his looked when he said he couldn’t tell me why he’d left.
He was hurting.
How shitty was it of me to blow up at him when it was clearly something so significant he couldn’t even stay at home?
Having talked myself out of my funk enough to try and make up with him, I walked toRyan’s room, hoping he wouldn’t be too mad.
Except he wasn’t there.
I walked downstairs and was surprised not to see him in the living room. Maybe he was outside, letting the water wash away the evening.
Yet, he wasn’t there either.
Stumped, I walked back into the kitchen and saw a note next to the empty whiskey glasses he’d left on the counter earlier.
I’m sorry. For everything.
The onlyreaction I could muster was laughter. “He fucking left,” I said to myself. “It’s his house andheleft.” I kept laughing because I didn’t know what else to do. I laughed as I poured a hefty glass of whiskey. I laughed in between sips. Hell, I laughed my way through another three glasses.
And as I dozed off to a broken and drunk slumber, all I kept holding onto was the fact that he’d eventuallyhave to come home.
