The Truth About Us

by Megan D. Martin

  I fiddled with the end of my braid. “So what happened? Did they get back together? Did they make it work?”

  She shook her head. “No. They didn’t. They both took different paths, the paths that made the most sense based on who they were, a giraffe and an elephant.”

  “So what’s the end of the story, then?”

  She smiled slyly. “I already told it. They went their own way, Rowan.”

  “Well, what’s the point of that story?”

  “That not everything that seems so perfect is meant to be – no matter how good and amazing the love seemed. Sometimes it’s best to let it go, to go your own way, forge your own path – for you.”

  “Well, that’s exactly what I did, Stace. You know that. You met me right after I set Tyler on his own path.”

  She leaned forward. “I know, but you haven’t really let him go, have you?”

  “Well, yes, I have, I—”

  “Rowan, I’m not trying to upset you, especially today of all days.” She smiled sadly. “You haven’t dated or really thought about dating until recently, and even then, it’s someone closely connected to Tyler. I don’t think that’s a coincidence, do you?”

  “It is a coincidence. You know as well I do that I didn’t know Owen even knew Tyler when I first met him.”

  “Sure. You’re right. But would you have gone out with him, if he hadn’t known Tyler? You’ve been asked out by plenty of dudes in the last year, but you’ve never given any of them a second thought.”

  I knew she had a point. I had been asked out by other guys and I had turned them down.

  “It had nothing to do with Tyler.”

  She gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me. “You went to his work to tell him the truth about what really happened when you split up, Rowan. If you were over it, you would have never done that.”

  “I just don’t like the idea of him hating me. I just thought he should know the truth, after a year. I thought it would be time.” I pulled harder on the ends of my braid.

  “But, Rowan, were you really going to tell him everything?”

  Stacie was the only one who knew – the only person on the planet with knowledge of just how dark my life became surrounding my breakup with Tyler. She knew about the horrible choices I made, ones I could never change, no matter how long I lived.

  Had I planned to tell him everything? The truth? The entire complete, devastating truth?

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” I looked away from her.

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry. Look, I don’t know why I’m saying all this. I just want you to be happy. You deserve that. I don’t want anyone like Tyler taking advantage of you, because even if you don’t want to admit it, this is a vulnerable time in your life.” She squeezed my hand. “And I just don’t want some jerk to come along and use you, then run right back to his Barbie doll girlfriend and make you feel even worse, okay?”

  Stacie was right – and I wasn’t mad at her for bringing all this up. I needed to be strong, especially now. Right now I had to be the strongest I’d ever been in my whole life. I couldn’t have myself falling apart, not when I had a lot of things to deal with on the horizon.

  “Thanks Stace. I appreciate you looking out for me. You really are—”

  “Rowan?” The sound of my name cut me off. But it wasn’t just my name. It was his voice.

  Tyler stood at the end of our table.

  I smiled awkwardly, adjusting the collar of the white dress shirt I had yet to change out of. I stood at the end of the table where Rowan and her friend sat. I had no business being here. I had no business following her after the funeral to her apartment. I had no business sitting in my car outside for forty-five minutes debating on whether or not I wanted to knock on her door. I had no business following the two of them here to Miguelitos, Rowan’s favorite restaurant. I finally decided to come inside when I had wasted over half my day just sitting in my car mulling over what to do.

  So there I was. Standing before her.

  “What are you doing here?” Rowan asked. The sadness in her eyes seemed endless, deeper, darker than I’d ever seen it before.

  “I came to see you.” Well, that was honest.

  “Wait, how did you know she was here?” The other girl asked. I glanced over at her, remembering her from the funeral.

  “I came in to eat and saw you,” I quickly amended. “I wanted to, uh, say hello.”

  The friend squinted at me as if I was some sort of bug that needed to be squished.

  Rowan nodded, and cleared her throat when the silence started to surround us. “Oh, well, hello. This is my friend Stacie. I don’t think you two have met.”

  I reached out to Stacie to shake her hand, but her eyes only narrowed further, ignoring my gesture. I put my hand back in my pocket.

  “Well, enjoy your food, Tyler.”

  I nodded, realizing that I looked like a complete idiot right now.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  I should have been back at the shop finishing up some stuff like I’d planned.

  Just leave.

  I turned to go, but then stopped. “Wait,” I said, which made no sense because I was the one leaving. “I want to talk.” I turned back toward them.

  Rowan’s brows pinched together over her sad eyes. “To me? About what?”

  What did I want to talk to her about? Even though I had spent half my day debating on whether or not to talk to her, I didn’t know what I actually wanted to say. There wasn’t a logical answer in my brain, not one I could grab and hold onto. I realized immediately how things had changed. I had wanted nothing to do with her after everything ended, and now, now I thought I might fall apart if she wouldn’t agree to talk with me – and I didn’t even know what I wanted to talk about.

  “I just – after today. I don’t know. I thought you might want to get together and talk.”

  “I don’t know, is that a good idea?” It was Stacie who spoke now. I watched her glance between Rowan and me.

  “It…isn’t a good idea,” Rowan said quietly, fiddling with her braid. “Thanks for saying hi, but I’m not sure now is a good time.”

  I took a deep breath. I had expected that this could be an outcome, though I had hoped it wouldn’t be, especially after we talked the other night. “All right.” I gave a stiff nod. “You ladies have a good rest of your day.” As I walked away, a wave of bitterness swept through me. I had spent all day agonizing over this – and for no good reason. She didn’t want to talk to me.

  Well, why would she? She cheated on you for a reason. She doesn’t want to be around you anymore, she made that perfectly clear.

  I wanted to argue with myself, but I didn’t. What happened couldn’t be changed, and the fact that George had passed away didn’t change that either. It didn’t mean she necessarily wanted to reconnect with me – even on just the friend level. That’s when I realized what it was – I missed her friendship. That was something our relationship had that I hadn’t had with anyone else. We had been friends, best friends. I could’ve told her anything, and I lost that as well when our relationship fell apart.

  “Tyler, wait!”

  I’d almost made it to my car when Rowan called out behind me. I turned around as she hurried across the parking lot.

  “Look,” she said when she finally reached me. “I’m okay with talking.” She glanced down at her feet as if she was nervous. “But it can’t be like it has been, at the bar, and that one night at my apartment…that’s, that’s not what I want.” She seemed like she wanted to say more, but she didn’t.

  “Okay.”

  “Yeah?” She glanced up at me, her heart-shaped face framed by her long side-braid. A few hairs had escaped and floated along in the breeze. I wanted to tuck them behind her ear. I didn’t.

  “Yes. That’s what I want too. Just to talk…to be…friends.” The word sounded strange on my lips when referring to Rowan.

  A small smile tipped the corners of her lips upward
. “That sounds really nice.”

  “Can I come pick you up – after you’re back from dinner? Maybe we could go to Buzzy Brews and just hang out?”

  She nodded slowly. “I think that would be nice.”

  I sat across from Tyler at Buzzy Brews. The high top table had a glass overlay with printed ads for local businesses underneath. The same ads as the last time I came, which had been with Tyler more than a year ago. I fingered the edge of my cup.

  “You sure you don’t want an actual drink?” he asked, peering at me over his tall beer glass.

  “Yeah, you know I’m a ginger ale kind of girl.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, well you seem different now. I couldn’t be sure.” He was clearly referring to the last time I’d been drinking which ultimately led to physical contact between the two of us.

  Part of me was tempted to take the bait, to tell him to shove it. It was none of his business what I did when I drank.

  Except it is his business, Rowan. You seem to only get drunk around him and then make huge mistakes.

  I wanted to slap myself. “Nope. Not really. I still don’t drink often.”

  He nodded and took a sip of his beer. I watched him. He’d abandoned the suit he’d been in at the restaurant, and now wore a tight, plain white t-shirt, dark blue jeans that fit his waist perfectly, and gray Sperry’s. I couldn’t deny the animal attraction of him with the dark scruff on his face and his fresh hair cut. With the tattoos peeking out from his shirt sleeve, he looked like some sort of biker badass I’d only ever seen on TV. He didn’t look like the Tyler I knew. The Tyler I knew didn’t care about his hair, he had me buzz it on our porch once a month, and his clothing usually consisted of old, worn jeans and t-shirts he’d had for years.

  You don’t know him anymore, Rowan. Haven’t you figured that out by now?

  I realized that he had changed so much, and yet I hadn’t really changed at all. I wore my favorite pair of blue jean shorts, some old, scuffy converse, and a black tank top with my braid hanging over my shoulder. I was still same old simple me.

  “Are you okay?” His question surprised me, and I frowned, meeting his dark green gaze. “I mean, I know that’s a shit question considering what you had to do today.”

  Dad.

  Tyler’s presence at the restaurant and after had left me preoccupied with meeting him, pushing the hurt over the passing of my dad a little further back in my mind.

  I shrugged, and fiddled with the rim of my cup. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same.” I hadn’t actually considered those words before I spoke them, but I knew they were true. How would I ever get over the loss of him?

  Tyler looked down at his hands. “He was one the toughest guys I know.”

  “Yeah, but what am I gonna do with all his stuff, his things, his house…the business?” I expected he left a will. He had said as much to me before, and said that he left everything to me, but I didn’t want all that responsibility.

  “I’m sure he left it to you, Rowan.”

  “Yeah, but what am I gonna do with all of that?”

  “Well, you’ve helped him run the business since you were a kid. I’m sure you will fall right into place. Hell, there were multiple times when I was getting Nusom Automotive up and running that I wanted to call you and ask your opinion on things for the business.”

  “Really?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “Yeah,” He took a sip of his beer. “Of course. You know way more about the business side of things than I do. I’m just a car guy.”

  “Well, it seems like you figured it out just fine.” There was an unexpected bitterness in my voice. I looked away from him after I said the words, feeling guilty. I had let him go so he could do these things, so he could be more than he ever could have been at Steel Mechanics, Inc. Yet, right now, all I could taste was pointed bitterness in my mouth. The loss of my dad only made my heart ache even more. How would I be able to run his business without him when even he had been having trouble keeping things going?

  “You didn’t expect me to stay, did you Rowan?” He paused. “After the way things ended,” he clarified.

  Our gazes were locked, tangled for only a moment. I shook my head back and forth slowly, tempted, almost, to laugh. He still didn’t know – had no idea that I had set him free.

  “I had to get out of there. I couldn’t be around you anymore, or your dad or that dirt bag Darren. It was just too much.”

  I knew all of these things. I had counted on them. I didn’t want to talk about it though. I didn’t want to talk about that heartache, not when there was so much pain living inside me now.

  As if he sensed my discomfort over the topic, he moved on to something else. “How have things been going with you, otherwise? How is school?”

  “School? Well, I uh, I stopped going.”

  “You stopped going? Really?” Shock covered his face. “Why? You were close when we split, I mean, you had only what one, maybe two semesters left, tops, right?”

  I stared down at my glass, holding the pee-colored ginger ale. It could have been mistaken for pee if there wasn’t a lazy trail of carbonation bubbles running to the top. “It just wasn’t working out.” This was a lie. A bold-faced lie.

  “Not working out? You loved school. Did you just decide you didn’t want to be a teacher anymore?”

  It was far more complicated than that. He had no idea. “Something like that.”

  “So you just quit?” He stared at me in disbelief.

  “Yeah.” He had no idea just how complicated my life became after we split up. The things I did. The choices I made. They were things that someone didn’t come back from – not completely, and I still hadn’t. I didn’t know if I would ever go back. I glanced up at him away from my bubbling pee-drink. A look of surprise covered his face. “Is that so surprising?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “I mean, I guess it shouldn’t be. I don’t know. You had your heart set on teaching little kids. I just thought that was something you would never give up.”

  “Things change…even when you don’t expect or want them to.” I mourned my time at school, the future I had wanted so desperately. But I couldn’t have it now, my heart couldn’t do it, not anymore.

  “Yeah, well isn’t that the fucking truth.” Tyler took a long drink of his beer. “So what are you doing now, working at the shop full time?”

  “Yes, Dad likes having me there.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized what I said. “Liked, I mean.” I coughed into my hand, hating the horrible pang in my chest.

  “We don’t have to talk about him, Rowan. We can talk about anything – whatever you want.”

  He was trying to make me feel better. This was like the old Tyler I knew. When I was feeling down he would be there no matter what, would have spent days listening to my heartaches until I felt better, if I needed him to. The funny thing was, I hadn’t wanted to talk about my dad today, not with all those people, most of them I didn’t know well, but right now I did want to talk about him – about the fact that he was gone, really gone. How could I accept that?

  “Remember that old snow cone stand out in Maynard we used to go to? The one that looked like it was falling apart and was a good thirty minute drive?”

  The corners of Tyler’s lips quirked revealing a small, half smile. “Of course. Best snow cones in the county.”

  “And Dad would always have us get him one, a—”

  “—banana-lime flavor with cream,” we said simultaneously.

  I chuckled. “The grossest flavor ever, and it was always half-melted when we got it back to him.”

  “He fucking loved that snow cone, though.” Tyler’s half smile had moved into a full smile, revealing his straight white teeth, made almost brighter by the summer tan he had going on. “He was the one who would request that we go all the way out there to get one. He didn’t want that ‘shit cone from Rust, Maya, or Smithton.’ He wanted that good Maynard cream.” He snickered after his
words.

  I shook my head. “He never tried any other flavors either. Always just those two. Why those two?”

  “He liked what he liked, Rowan. No one could change his mind and make him try anything different. Don’t you remember?” Tyler said, practically quoting the response my dad would have given to that question.

  “How could I forget?”

  “Do you remember that time…” Tyler started off on another story about my dad in the shop. This one was followed by another one. I’d been listening to Dad stories all day for the last several days from all different people, hearing their memories. Yet the snow cone story was the first one I had told. Tyler’s stories were the first I had wanted to listen to. The others, while they were important and good, sure, but to listen to Tyler talk about him, using his hands like he did when he really got into a story – there was something comforting about it. Dad had always like to listen to Tyler tell stories about customers or run-ins with people he had in life. Tyler was good at things like that. He could have the whole shop rolling with deep belly laughs in less than five minutes. Dad would have liked that it was Tyler telling the hilarious moments of his life. I wondered if he was listening now, somewhere in heaven or in between, just somewhere nice, I hoped. I hoped he was smiling, feeling my love for him, and Tyler’s.

  There was no doubt that Tyler loved my dad. George Steel had been his hero before he had ever worked for us, he had told me as much, many times. A sad part of me hated that I had messed with that relationship and stolen a real goodbye from both of them. I could still remember it, my dad’s face the day Tyler quit, the morning after our breakup. I’d been at the shop early, in Dad’s office doing paper work because I couldn’t sleep after everything that had happened. Tyler hadn’t looked at me as he placed the resignation letter on Dad’s desk.

  Dad had looked at it and scoffed, dropping it in the trash. “So, you and Row are having a rough patch? That’s no reason to quit your job, Tyler.”