“Bethy.”
I gulp. I wish he wouldn’t call me that. “H-hi,” I stammer.
His eyes skate over the two coffees, the couch, and he gestures jerkily. “Do you want to sit?”
What I want is to run away and hide until he graduates in May. But I sit instead, because I am not a coward—not anymore. Brian hands me the coffee he obviously ordered for me. There’s milk and artificial sweetener on the table.
“Didn’t remember how you take it,” he murmurs.
“Um, milk and sugar.” As Brian gets up to replace the sweeteners with real, diabetes-inducing, pure cane white sugar, I think idly to myself that David always remembers exactly how I take my coffee.
Brian lets a few minutes pass while I fix my coffee and take a few sips. He quietly sips his own, watching me cautiously as if I might run at any moment. And I might.
“You look really pretty, Bethy,” he murmurs.
I look down at my faded boyfriend jeans and loose white T-shirt, a navy blue scarf covering any cleavage that might have shown.
“Thanks,” I say back. “Look—”
“Look—” he says at the exact same time.
We both laugh nervously, and each gesture for the other to go first. “You asked to meet me,” I remind him.
Brian nods. He’s about to begin again, but I cut him off.
“But look, Bri. Brian. I’m not interested in rehashing the past. You’re here now, for better or worse, and I get that we’re going to run into each other. I’m sorry I didn’t respond to you when you showed up at the bar. And the party. I was just kind of in shock, you know? I didn’t know you were here, and then I—I just wasn’t expecting to see you, I guess. But the past is the past, and I don’t have hard feelings, okay?”
Brian stares at me. I guess he’s not used to so many words falling from my mouth so quickly. But he doesn’t know me anymore.
“Well that makes things kinda difficult for me, to be honest.”
I frown at him.
His eyes widen. “No. I didn’t mean…Not that you don’t have hard feelings; that’s a big relief, actually. But I did kinda want to talk about the past.”
I swallow audibly. “I don’t see what good that’ll do,” I admit. “It’s over.”
“But what if it isn’t?”
What?
Brian sighs. “Okay, I don’t want to upset you. That’s not why I’m here. I just want to tell you that I’m sorry. I’m really so fucking sorry, Bethy.” His voice cracks.
“I forgave you a long time ago, Bri.”
Brian nods, but I know him well enough to know he’s not satisfied. “Well, that’s good,” he mutters, nodding vaguely to himself. He stares at me, indecisive, as if he doesn’t know what to say—whether or not to say something.
And I hope he doesn’t. Whatever it is, it can do no good. The only good that can come from this conversation is for us to shake hands and go our separate ways.
But Brian won’t give me that, I can see it even before he rubs his palm over his face and huffs out a frustrated exhale. “Fuck, no, it’s not good, Bethy. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I never deserved you at all. But I need you to know I’m sorry. I’ve spent three years being sorry. And I’ll spend the rest of my life being it, too. I never should have ended us. I was just scared, and I was going away to school, and I thought I wanted different things. You know, freedom. New experiences. But I was young, and stupid, and listening to the wrong people, and it’s the biggest regret of my life.”
My heart races, and I subtly pinch the sensitive skin on the inside of my elbow to make sure I’m not dreaming.
Ow.
Nope, definitely wide awake.
It’s just that I’d imagined this scene so many times—a contrite, sorrowful Brian, full of apologies and regret. But now that it’s sitting before me, I realize it’s just far too little, three years too late. My love for him, if it was ever real in the first place, burned itself out long ago.
