“Nothing.”
“Vi, I know that look. You’re holding something in.” He sits in the chair across from me and leans in, now at eye level with me. He didn’t say it, but the expression on his face was clear.No more avoiding this.
“I don’t know if I can talk about this Mason. I only managed to keep myself together after spending all last year building myself back up — piece by piece. I don’t have it in me to do that again.” I bring my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them as if to stop my heart from being ripped out.
A pained look covers his face. “Violet, I never meant to hurt you this badly. I thought I was doing the right thing. The guys were teasing me all weekend about how I wasn’t a relationship guy, and it’s not like I could deny it. Right before Monroe left, she warned me not to hurt you. Warned me to protect your heart with everything because that’s what you deserved. And that’s what I thought I was doing. I was in my head and scared that I wouldn’t be what you deserved. Scared that I would hurt the most important person in my life. When you came into the room, tears in your eyes, thinking I had lied to you, I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle knowing I had caused those tears. So I decided to end things before they ever really started. I thought I was protecting you.”
“And I wasn’t adult enough to take that risk myself? You just decided it was best to walk away rather than letting me choose to trust you?”
“I can’t say with certainty that it was the right thing, but itfelt like it at the time. And even now, I think I still feel that way. I have always cared about you. I have always loved you; there will never be a moment where I don’t. But I hurt a lot of people that I loved while I was injured, and a part of me is glad you weren’t a casualty in that disaster.“ He takes a breath, and it looks like the first real breath he’s taken since we ran into each other.
“Violet, I feel like an entire piece of my heart has been ripped out these last three years. Being shut out killed me. I never thought that it would come so easy for you.”
“You think it was easy for me?”
“Wasn’t it?” His eyes lock with mine, glassy as if holding back tears.
“Letting you go was one of the hardest things I’d ever done,” I confess.
“Then why did you do it?”
I suck in a deep breath. If he was able to bare himself to me like this, despite how much it was hurting him, couldn’t I do the same? “I was in a rough headspace when I came to Chicago. I had just seen my dad, and he said some awful things. How he never wanted me, how I ruined his life, how no one would ever love me. As much as I wanted to shrug off his words…they kept playing in my head. Especially the ones about how no one would ever love me.”
Mason surges forward a bit and then sits back down like he was about to walk out the door and annihilate the man and then thought better of it.
“We had that amazing night together, and I thought,‘This is it. I’ve finally found someone who wants me’.But then you pushed me away and I, well, I meant it when I said I would come back. Please know that I did. I was healing and focusing on myself, and then suddenly, a week of not talking to you went by, then a month. And it hurt like hell to ignore you, more than I can put into words. But I thought I was protecting myself. So, I shut you out, and eventually, getting out of bed wasn’t so painful.You thought losing me would hurt too much, so you didn’t even try. I thought being your friend while mourning what we could have been would end me, so I just didn’t.”
“I really thought I was doing the right thing Violet. I’m so sorry.”
I move my head up to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry too. For cutting you out of my life. You didn’t deserve that.”
He hesitates for a moment. “So uhm— how are you? How is school?” Mason laughs at his own attempt to lighten the mood. His attempt to bring us back to normalcy is sweet, though heavier than he could have known.
“I’m…still healing. I had a particularly rough first year. I almost dropped out actually.” I’ve never said those words out loud to anyone. Not even my mom or Monroe knew the full extent of how bad things had been. How close I had come to giving up on my dreams.
Concern covers Mason’s face. “Are you serious? What happened?”
I rehash the entire tragedy that was my first year of grad school. I’ve only scratched the surface when I see the anger start to build in Mason’s eyes. When I tell him about the time my old mentor essentially alluded I was a diversity hire, rage fills his eyes and I watch his hands open and close into fists.
When I finish recounting how she took credit for my whole project and published it without me, Mason just stares at me in disbelief. “Jesus Violet. I can’t believe all the shit you had to go through.”
“As the saying goes ‘Don’t meet your heroes.’” I roll my eyes.
“You’re not still working with her, are you?”
“No. No. After I found out about her publishing my work, I finally snapped. I set up a meeting with the chair of our department and disclosed all the events that went down. The good news was I had already shared multiple drafts of that same paper with other professors for their feedback, so they were able to vouch for me. The department asked her to reach out to thejournal and have me added to the article as an author, which she did. Reluctantly. I joined Bethany’s lab after that. And things started to finally turn around for me.”
Mason rubs his thumb in soothing circles on the back of my hand. “I wish I could’ve been there for you.”
“It wasn’t just you I shut out that year. My mom, Monroe. I couldn’t face anyone. I just felt like I was being so…ungrateful. Like so many people would give anything at a chance to chase their dreams and here I was, living mine and miserable about it. I spent my whole first year being ripped apart day by day and not even realizing it until I couldn’t recognize myself anymore. It took me a whole year to regroup and feel grateful again. That was the only thing I could focus on. And if I’m being honest there are still some days where I find myself unable to let go of all the hurt.”
“I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.”
I shrug, ready to take my heart off my sleeve and put it back in my chest. I gesture to him, hoping to redirect the conversation. “I’m not the only one with shit worth moping over. I was so sorry to see that you had to medically retire.”
“Yeah, thanks. I went through a similar thing, deep down wanting to reach out to people but not being able to bring myself to do it. At the time it felt easier to shut them out than to have to deal with their pity.”
We sit in silence for a while, just holding hands and reflecting. I had always defaulted to putting up walls when I got hurt, but I never considered that my own defense mechanism could also hurt me. In an effort to protect ourselves from pain, here sat two very damaged, lonely, people.
