“Get to the point, Jay,” I threaten him.
“Okay, keep it cool. I was just saying… he likes her and we know him. We know that he’s not the kind of guy who let’s his guard down with women. So much so that for years we thought he seriously might be—”
“Is this commentary strictly necessary?”
“Alright, I just wanted to sum up the situation. We know that Aaron is all integrity and discipline and doesn’t lose his head for a skirt or a long pair of legs. He’s not some son-of-a-bitch who just takes what he wants for his own pleasure… and so, if he now finds himself in this position, it means he feels something for her, because otherwise he would not have risked getting to this point. Aaron has resisted Ciara’s charms as long as he could, but, well, he’s a man and Ciara, boys, is not hard on the eyes.”
“You better watch your mouth!” I step closer to him with the jealousy flowing up from my stomach.
“Don’t you see? You can’t even pretend I’m wrong. You betray yourself.”
“Knock it off, okay?”
“Sure. I’ll get right to the point. Ciara has had a crush on Aaron for as long as anyone around here can remember. Patrick made all of us make that stupid promise and now Aaron has the weight of the world on his shoulders, the pub, the house… He didn’t want anyone to get dragged up into it. I know he’s trying to protect her because she’s young and has her whole future in front of her and he thinks she shouldn’t worry about him and all his shit. Have I left anything out?”
I’m tempted to tell him that I made a conscious decision years ago to make a life for myself but I bite my tongue. It’s not the right moment to provoke another parental discourse.
“More or less.”
“So then… help me understand why at a certain point in the story I can’t seem to make ends meet. Why the fuck did you lead her on like that? Because she’s already seeing your initials on the wedding invitations—if you didn’t want to see her mixed up in your life, if you wanted to keep the distance?”
Because I’m a weak idiot. Because she is sweet and full of life and has the purest soul and I needed all of those things. I yearned for them, wanted to feel them against my skin, at least one time in my life.
“Because I’m an asshole,” is all I say.
The heart of the matter is more or less that.
“By the way, is there anything else you’d like to tell us? Because now would be the moment.”
“No,” I lie. “Everything’s great.”
I’ve become the bullshit king. I’ve been at it for so long with everyone around me. I tell people everything’s going to be alright, that I’ve got it all under control, that life is good and that I’m happy. It almost doesn’t even weigh on me anymore, I’ve gotten so used to it. And yet, lying to her—saying those things—was like tearing my heart out of my chest cavity and handing it over to Hades, the God of the dead. I’ll never be able to forget the disappointment in her eyes. I hurt her in the worst possible way.
And now she’s going to hate me. Even though I begged her not to, I know that she will. And it’s something I need to be ready to accept to keep her away from me.
