by Ace Gray
Like this it’s easy to believe him. Like nothing I can say or do will ruin us. The whisper of a reminder that’s not true brushes at my ear, my heart, with reality as its company but I ignore the soft sound. Just like I’ve ignored so many other gut feelings to get here.
“I don’t know when I fell out of love with Tanner. Maybe I never was,” I start. “But we were friends and we were good together. We liked so many of the same things and had fun.” I get a little lost in where it all goes from there, but James squeezes my hand, giving me a little direction. “When I was young, that’s what I thought mattered. The friendship. But then…”
We were never bad—not until the very end—but we were never great.
“I came into the picture,” he says softly.
“No.” I shake my head against my comforter. “This was all before.” I sigh. “The friendship started to unravel. We fought about things. Well, he yelled, and I tried to take it. All he did was scream and drink. It was about work, but he couldn’t separate it from our personal life.”
“I hung out with you guys back then.” James props himself up on his elbow and clasps his free hand around our entwined ones. “Tanner was never like that. You guys were never like that.”
“Out we were good, alone… I never felt so alone. I wasn’t enough by myself.” I sigh. “Each incident was some little crack, so little at first I barely noticed, then bigger and more violent. One day, I broke. Completely. Tanner never bothered to put me back together. That was the day it was over.” I blew out a deep breath. “Sometimes I wonder if he even noticed.”
“When was that?”
“Before that night we played cards until three in the morning.”
“You felt broken all that time. When you were smiling, when we were laughing, drinking?” James’ hand falls away.
“You made me feel a little less so for a while.”
“So I was right?” He sits up. “You did love me, and you did need space from me.”
“No.” I sit up to match.
“No, you didn’t love me or no, you didn’t need space?”
“I didn’t need space.” I ball my fists into the comforter beside me.
“Were you going to leave Tanner?”
I can’t bring myself to deny that too.
“So, you had Tanner, you needed me, and you lied to us both?” His quiet anger bubbles beneath his words.
“No.” My words are being twisted and I’m not quite sure the shape of the knot. “I felt abandoned, unloved, unworthy. Each day I wondered how to get out of bed because getting up meant another day of the same. It meant an eternity of the same. An eternity of feeling all those things in the pit of my stomach.”
“So you used me as a diversion?” Hurt flares in James’ voice as he rises from the bed.
“I used you as a goddamned life raft!” I shout then pull my knees to my chest. “I held onto you because you were hope.” I let my head sag against my kneecaps.
“And Tanner found out.” He turns his back to me and tips his head up toward the ceiling.
“When we were packing for the move he found the letters I wrote to you.”
James doesn’t respond, he just sags into the nearest wall and drops his forehead to the wood.
“I came home to find them all laid out on the coffee table in front of him and his boxes packed up against the living room wall. He asked me if they were things I’d written for you like he already knew the answer.”
James still doesn’t say anything. In his silence Tanner’s voice reading those letters echoes, line by line, like boulders falling into the crevasse that James’ absence left inside me.
“He asked me if you knew and I told him that we weren’t speaking. That we hadn’t in a few weeks.” I swallow the jagged ball in my throat. “I think that answer, and the hurt that came with it, was why he left.”
“So I broke his heart too,” James says softly.
“That was me. Or us. I’m not quite sure but he was already packed. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been boxing his things separately from mine from the moment we put the house on the market. All I know is it wasn’t you.”
James’ big hands—the one that were splayed across me less than an hour ago—are propped up against the wall, like he’s clinging to his own version of a life raft.
“Say something,” I beg from my heap on the bed.
“What do you want me to say?”
“That you still feel something for me.” I bite my lip.
He glances back at me and I expect him to comfort me in that way he has since coming to Pyramid Peak. Or to yell. Anger would be appropriate right now. It sure as hell was how Tanner felt about the situation. But I see pain. Pure agony that I recognize from corners of my heart labeled James Larrabee.
I sit up and reach my hand out for him, meaning to fold him into the hug I always wanted when my insides were splintering like that. Because of us. But he closes his eyes, tight, pained, for just a second before striding toward my bedroom door.
“Mina, the problem is that I feel everything for you.”
I stare at the paper in front of me. Words should be pouring out of me.
James walked out.
I’m still in nothing but my t-shirt and orgasm and James is gone. And hurt. I’m the one that hurt him.
How did this get so messed up? How did we trade positions? When did it even happen?
I know the answer. The answer is that I never really believed him when he said he had feelings for me. He couldn’t. I never saw myself worthy of his attention or affection so I never believed my words could really affect him.
How I of all people underestimated the power of words…
I stare at the blank page for seconds, minutes, agonizing heartbeats, wondering what I ruined this time. How badly I razed my own world to the ground. And if I lost him.
If I’ll live through it again.
I slide off the bench at my dining room table and reach for the nearest shorts. Then the flip-flops piled by the front door. They snap, snap, snap against my heels as I walk toward Courtney’s house. The soft thwack is the only thing I feel. The rest of me is numb. With loss and fault and blame and guilt.
The door disappears beneath my raised hand a moment before I actually get to knock.
“I told you so,” Courtney says as she crosses her arms and sags against the doorframe.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.” My shoulders deflate anyway.
“That things went bad. He hurt you. You’ve spent the afternoon crying…” She nods in time with each of her possibilities.
“I haven’t shed a tear, I think I’m cried out.”
“What?” She straightens up.
“And I hurt him.”
“What?!”
“Court, I don’t even know how it happened.” I lean forward and rest my forehead against her chest, remembering how James had done the same against my bedroom wall. She wraps her arms around my neck.
“I’ll put on the tea kettle,” she finally says.
Courtney lets me follow her to her kitchen in silence. She lets me trace the tile of the tabletop in her breakfast nook. She even pours a mug and pushes it to me before prompting, “Spill.”
“Well, he fingered me—”
“Stop. If he hurt you during sex I need to grab gin. And you should bother the police or a doctor with that not me.”
“Context,” I answer simply and take a sip, wincing at the heat.
“An orgasm is context?” Her familiar eyebrow quirk settles the part of me that’s been avoiding her. That’s been avoiding saying all of this out loud.
“I let my wall down. Completely.”
“Hence the orgasm.” She nods knowingly.
“He asked me about the letters.”
Courtney winces.
“Then what happened with Tanner.”
“Ouch.”
“Then he walked out,” I finish with a humph.
“He what?” she s
hrieks, almost spilling her tea.
I simply purse my lips and nod. She watches wide-eyed as my nod slows and my eyes drift away from her. The silence isn’t uncomfortable between us but there’s a lot I need to say.
“I guess we’ve kind of been dating since before I saw you in the grocery store—”
“I’m sorry about that by the way,” she interjects.
“Me too.” I give her a half-hearted smile. “It has its moments, Courtney, when it’s so utterly perfect I can float. It’s the conversation I loved, the electricity that sets the hairs at the back of my neck on end, the kisses I fantasized about.”
“Okay…”
“But then it muddies. I can’t trust him. He says something like a jerk-off… Today he told me I’m the one that’s hurting him. That I’m the one dooming us to fail.”
“He said that?” She sits back in her chair, eyebrows about to crawl off her forehead.
“Not those exact words but…yeah.”
She reaches for her mug and threads her hands around it, clutching it in front of her, staring into the light brown of the hot beverage.
“Well, is he right?” she finally asks.
“I dunno.” I shrug before grabbing my mug just like she has.
“I’m guessing that you do know. I’m guessing that you are.” She shoots me a small, sad smile. “That’s why you haven’t been crying.”
I sigh.
“I really do think I love him. Like the real core-shaking love.”
“But?” She hears it on the tip of my tongue.
“But I’m wondering how much of him I really know. What if I’ve romanticized him? Us?” God the thought is a knife to my stomach. What if James Larrabee is just a guy?
“Mina,” she sighs, “I can’t stand how he makes you—insane and insecure—and I think you bring out something scared and territorial in him too.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“Let me finish.” She shoots me a signature look.
“Fine.” I grump again.
“I keep going back and forth as to whether you’re breaking down each other’s walls or just each other. If it’s each other, I’m worried your both gonna burn.”
“If it’s our walls?” I lean my elbow on the table and shove my cheek in my palm.
“Then this could be something really beautiful.”
My phone is resting on top of the silk dress in my suitcase, but I keep willing it to jump. That would mean a text or call. And that text or call could be from James. I mean Courtney has texted me a thousand times since I left her house late last night but each time I’m praying for his name to pop up.
I’ve been praying the same prayer for three years.
After I chuck the only pair of heels I own on top, I grab it and punch in his name just to double check.
There’s nothing new.
But there’s everything old.
His last text asking to talk. My refusal. Then him damning me for feeling something just above. Mine where I stood up for myself and my doomed relationship. And because I’m an emotional cutter already bleeding out today, I scroll up.
Pages of jokes. And fights. And memories.
The thousand slights that made me feel like I needed to walk away. The thousand teases that tempted me to stay. All the reasons I fell for him pummel me, then drag me under. All the reasons I picked myself up and moved on after he walked away, anchor me down.
A single tear rolls down my cheek and splats on the screen before I shove it away and throw my phone back onto the bed.
The thought of texting James doesn’t even cross my mind as I zip my suitcase and haul it out to the car and drive away.
“So how’s the wedding?” Courtney asks, her voice barely audible over the cheesy playlist.
“I should have made you come.” I sigh as I watch one of my friends from high school swirl around in her big white wedding dress.
“Having to work for a living is bullshit.” She laughs. “Otherwise I would have in a heartbeat. Gotta love Washington in the summer.”
“Yeah.”
“What?” She knows the pout in my voice. “Is it raining even though it’s August?”
“No, no, no, it’s not that.”
“It’s James.” It’s her turn to sigh.
“When you sit and watch two people stand up there, so sure and so in love, and you’re just… God, I don’t even know what I am… Let’s just say it sucks.”
“I’m sorry.”
I sputter a laugh.
“I am. You know that I wish you weren’t hurt or confused.”
I nod even though she can’t see it.
“Have you figured out any more about how you feel. Without him nearby to jumble everything up?”
I swallow. Hard.
“I started writing something like wedding vows.”
“Shut the fuck up! When? Why?” The words come out in a singular screeching blob and it takes me a moment to pull them apart. Another to get the courage to answer. Even if it is Courtney.
“I’m alone at a wedding… I started writing it on a cocktail napkin.”
“Oh beebs, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s oka—”
“Could I interest you in a dance?” A big ole manly hand reaches out in front of me, effectively cutting off my phone conversation.
“Did someone just ask you to dance?” Courtney asks through the phone still pressed to my ear. “Do it. Dance with him.”
“I…” am not answering either of them.
“Mina, you have to decide at some point. Use this. Use now.”
“I…” am still stuttering.
“You will not figure it out writing vows to a guy you may not even be speaking to, let alone dating. Don’t even get me started on marriage.”
When I don’t say anything she yells, “Yes,” into the phone then hangs up, leaving three beeps ringing in my ear.
“I guess,” I finally manage as I take the outstretched hand in front of me.
“I’m Gus, are you a friend of the bride or groom?” he asks as he pulls me into a hold against his freshly pressed suit.
My first thought is what James would look like in a suit. I can’t even imagine him wearing a tie. Then I remember it’s my turn to speak.
“I’m Mina and I grew up with the bride.” I can’t help but look over my shoulder at Becca. The look I catch her giving her new husband makes my heart ache. It’s so full of hope and love. It’s the kind of look that makes me swoon. And believe. All over again.
“And you’re here alone?” Gus asks as we move in time with the music.
“Yes I am.”
His hand is heavy on the small of my back.
“Are you single?”
I blink once, twice, at the blunt question. And the words ball in my throat mostly because I don’t have an answer.
“Uh… Well…”
He smiles knowingly. “It’s complicated, huh?”
“And I’m not sure why,” I finish.
“I’ve never understood that phrase, it’s complicated.”
“What do you mean?”
“With someone you love, it should be easy. Complicated is a sign that it’s all wrong.”
I finally look Gus full in the face. He’s pretty. Much closer to the Hollywood version of hot than James could ever be and yet I find myself wishing for a different set of hands holding me. A different and infinitely more gorgeous man holding me.
“I think that love is always complicated. It varies as to whether it’s the getting together, or the staying together but at some point it gets so hard you want to quit,” I say as I shift away from his hold.
“Do you want to quit?” he asks.
“No.” The answer is a visceral reaction to Gus’ question.
He looks a little stung by the vehemence of my words. Surprised by my conviction in the complicated. In James.
Honestly, I am too.
“Thank you for the dance.” I smile at him as I shake his h
old for good and go back to my seat, suddenly a bit more happy all alone.
I smooth out the napkin and pick back up my pen to continue writing.
James where do I even start with the ways I love you? They are such simple things. But when I stack them up, I surprise myself, realizing I love you, body and soul.
The color of your eyes, the shape of your smile, the freckles that dust the bridge of your nose.
The musculature of your forearms, your big callused hands.
The warmth of your skin.
Your hard work, your tireless dedication, and unwavering loyalty.
Your heady intelligence and razor-sharp wit.
Your quiet strength.
Everything about you is so uniquely you. There are infinite words available to describe you, but I can’t. I can’t outside of I love you. Each small piece that makes you, you. Those pieces make you mine.
I promise to love those pieces and cherish what is mine. All of you, not just the convenient pieces or the vulnerable ones but the ones that frustrate me. The ones that hurt.
I don’t expect this—us—to be easy but I promise to wake up every day with this—with us—in my heart. I will give us all the chances that we need. I will work on us. I will stay on the track.
I will love you the way I always should have. I will love you the way you deserve.
My tires screech as I pull into the parking lot at Gold Mine Brewery at exactly 5:01pm. Okay, not really but it took some interesting driving to get me here on time.
On time to tell James…well…everything.
“Hey,” I call when I see him emerge.
He freezes for a second, his eyes rove over me, but then they drift away. And he follows.
“James.” I push out of the driver’s seat.
“What do you want, Mina?” He sighs.
“I want to tell you that I love you. That I’m all in.” I’m beaming, I can feel my smile tugging on my cheeks. Since that moment at the wedding, I’ve been waiting for this.
“You already told me that, Mina.” He grabs his bike from where it’s leaning against the building and throws a leg over.
He might as well have kicked me in the face.