The Pain in Loving You

by Steiner, Kandi

The air was thick and heavy, armed with electricity and toxins as we stood there on that beach bathed in starlight. My hands trembled as I lowered them, gently, carefully, until they rested so lightly on the lapels of his suit that I wondered if he’d even feel them at all.

  I lifted my chin, looking up at him through my lashes, waiting for him to say something — anything.

  But nothing came.

  I watched as a range of emotion washed over him, everything from surprise to pain, but he settled on something that looked a lot like anger. He ground his teeth, his eyes welling with tears and jaw muscles ticking from how tightly he held his mouth shut. His mouth opened just enough to let out a hot, quivering exhale, and his eyes flicked to mine.

  They were filled to the rim with tears, but he didn’t let them fall, and he didn’t say a word, either. He just watched me for a long, anguished moment.

  And then he sniffed, looking straight ahead again, his hands still in his pockets and his jaw set.

  That was it.

  That was my cue to leave, to let it go, to let him go. This was his chance to take what I’d confessed and run with it, to pull me into him, to say he wanted me, too.

  But he didn’t.

  The breath I took when I stepped back was like black smoke to my lungs. The first steps I took away from him felt like walking on shards of glass and rusty nails. And when I turned to look at him once more over my shoulder, it was a view I knew would be burned into my memory for the rest of my life.

  Still, I left him there.

  And he let me go.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE DAY MY MOTHER left, there was an elemental shift in me.

  I didn’t realize it then, because I was young and, for the most part, untouched by the cruelties of the world. I lived in the sheltered little bubble of Bridgechester, in the warm hideaway of my best friend’s house and family, in the comfort of my aunt’s arms. I believed everyone when they told me something — Morgan when she said we’d be best friends forever, Tyler when he told me I was spectacular, my mother when she told me she’d be back for me.

  But on that day, something shifted.

  It was the first time I was hardened by life, the first time I saw through the curtain I’d been hiding behind and viewed the world for what it really was.

  I hadn’t felt that way growing up without a father, for some reason. Maybe it was because I never had one at all, so I didn’t know what I was missing. Robert was the closest thing I’d had to a father figure and he served me just fine. But, when my mom made a promise to come back for me and then broke that promise, I never recovered.

  And when Tyler told me what we’d done was a mistake and that it shouldn’t happen again, it drove the nail further into the coffin of what my life had been before that day.

  I looked back now and saw that moment for what it truly was — an awakening. It was the separation between who I had been as a girl and who I would become as a young woman. It was a clear, delineating line of before and after.

  And when I woke the morning after Morgan’s wedding, I felt that same, bone-quivering, soul-deep shift.

  I packed my bags in silence, listening to the gentle waves outside and the steady beating of my heart. My mind didn’t race, the way it had for the past few days — hell, for the past two weeks since I’d flown back to New Hampshire. Instead, I felt eerily calm and decisive.

  When I was packed and ready to go, I stood in the doorway and let my eyes wash over the entire room. And I knew in the pit of my stomach that when I left it, I’d be leaving the young woman I was yesterday inside it, too.

  I wasn’t the same one walking out as I was walking in.

  There was commotion in the kitchen and dining area when the little house elevator opened on the bottom floor. Oliver and Morgan were at the center of the dining room table, with Oliver’s family and the Wagners gathered around them. Aunt Laura was there, too, with what looked like a tequila sunrise in her hand. A few of Morgan’s friends were in the kitchen pouring mimosas and making breakfast for everyone, and one glance was enough for me to see that Tyler was there, too, making a cup of tea.

  Azra was sitting right next to Morgan, and she was mid-laugh when her eyes flashed to where I was pushing my rolling suitcase through the elevator door. At the sight, she frowned, and Morgan followed her gaze with the same expression.

  “Why are you all packed?” she asked, and I cringed at how the entire party stopped at my entrance, at how everyone at the table and in the kitchen turned to find what had the new bride in a tiff.

  I managed a smile somehow, clearing my throat as I leaned against my suitcase. “I’m heading out,” I said. “Time for this Cali girl to get back to the beach.”

  “But you’ve got a beach right here,” Morgan pouted, standing. “And you weren’t supposed to leave until tomorrow.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, I…” I didn’t want to lie, but I couldn’t bear to tell the truth. “I had some last-minute work stuff come up.”

  I noted the way Robert and Amanda exchanged glances at that, at how everyone tried to appear casual as they went back to sipping their mimosa or coffee or whatever they were doing before I interrupted. It was a lame attempt at covering up the fact that they knew I was lying.

  Just like my lie was a lame attempt to cover up the fact that I needed out of that house as badly as I needed oxygen in my lungs to live.

  Morgan’s bottom lip was stuck so far out by the time she rounded the table and reached me that I thought she might trip on it. But she gathered me in a warm hug, a long sigh leaving her chest. “I wish you didn’t have to go.” When she pulled back, she looked around to make sure everyone had gone back to their business before she whispered. “Is it Jacob? Are you going to see him and work things out?”

  Emotion surged in my gut, but I smiled against it, a sad laugh making its way through me. “No, I don’t think Jacob will ever want to see me again, if I’m being honest.”

  Morgan frowned, petting my hair. “What happened?”

  “Not today,” I said, shaking my head. “We can go over it another time, okay? But today, I want you to enjoy that fine ass new husband of yours, and have fun with your family and friends who are in town to celebrate you. Okay?”

  I knew she didn’t like it, but Morgan nodded anyway, and I was thankful that she respected me enough not to press it further.

  “How are you getting to the airport?”

  “Oh, I got a flight out of P-Town, actually. It’ll connect me in Atlanta. So I’ll just take a cab.”

  Morgan was already shaking her head before I even got the words out, her eyes wide. “Are you kidding me? You don’t need a cab.” And then, to my absolute horror, she looked at her brother. “Tyler can take you.”

  His eyes flashed to mine, his hand frozen where he’d been dunking the tea bag in his fresh cup of hot water.

  “It’s really okay, Morgan,” I said hurriedly, grabbing her wrists so she’d look at me again. “That would be time out of his day, whereas I can just take a cab and it’ll only affect me.”

  “Yeah, it’ll affect you by being boring and creepy and unnecessary. I’m not taking no for an answer on this. Okay? If you’re leaving, that’s fine, but Tyler is taking you to the airport.”

  “I don’t mind taking you.”

  I closed my eyes at the sound of his voice, chest squeezing with the predicament I’d landed myself in. How was it that even when I was trying to flee from the bastard, I somehow got stuck with him?

  “Okay,” I whispered, not wanting to make a scene when I opened my eyes again, and Morgan smiled immediately. “If that will make you happy.”

  “It will,” she assured me. Then, she wrapped me in a fierce hug, and the Wagners were next, followed by Azra and Oliver’s family and a blur of other people who I barely registered as I tried to resign myself to the fact that I was about to be in the car with Tyler when I was trying with everything I had left in me to let him go.

  Aunt Laura was last, and
she hugged me tight, her eyes wetting with tears. “I miss you already. Please don’t wait another seven years to come back, okay?”

  “I won’t,” I said, and I wondered if that was the new me — the one who could lie so casually it sounded true. Because if I knew one thing, it was that I couldn’t handle being in New England.

  And this time, I wouldn’t break my vow to never come back.

  “Come visit for Thanksgiving, though?” I said when she pulled back, and I saw a little flicker of realization in her eyes when she nodded.

  She already knew.

  “You’re going to be okay,” she whispered, squeezing my arm. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  My eyes welled, and I nodded, turning away from her to grab my bags before I could cry. Tyler was at my side in an instant, grabbing the heaviest one on wheels and steering it toward the door as I said my final goodbyes over my shoulder. If Azra stood to hug or kiss him goodbye, I didn’t see it, and I was thankful.

  We loaded my bags into Tyler’s truck without a word, and when each of our doors shut and we were alone inside it, the silence was deafening.

  Tyler sat there for a long moment, his hand wrapped around the keys and gaze locked on the steering wheel. Then, he fired the engine to life and pulled out of the driveway, heading north toward Provincetown.

  It was a short, ten-minute drive to the airport, but it might as well have been an entire lifetime for how each second stretched on between us.

  Tyler didn’t move to turn on the radio, and neither did I. It was just the low hum of tires on the road, the soft whiz of other cars passing by, the distant, faint whisper of the waves touching the sand. I stared out the passenger side window with my hands clasped so tightly in my lap that they were damp and aching.

  Every second that passed without Tyler saying something made the pain inside my chest reverberate more. I wanted him to acknowledge what I’d said last night. I wanted him to tell me what he was thinking. I wanted him to say anything at all.

  But he was silent.

  When we arrived at the airport, he pulled into one of the empty spots in the small lot, putting the car in park. Neither of us moved once he had — not me for my purse on the floorboard by my feet, not him for the door handle. We just sat there in the heavy silence until my eyes blurred with fresh tears that I couldn’t believe I was still able to produce after the week I’d had.

  The more my chest burned, the more that emotion strangled me, the more I thought of my conversation with Aunt Laura. I heard her words echoing in the chamber of my mind, and my palms dampened more at the thought of acting on them.

  You have a choice, whether it is an easy one or not.

  A shaky inhale found my lips, and I shook my head, closing my eyes and letting the first wave of tears flow freely down my hot cheeks.

  This was it.

  This was my last chance to say what I needed to say, to ask for what I really wanted, to face the truth — and accept the consequences that come with it. I couldn’t predict what he would do or say, and I couldn’t hold back what I needed out of fear alone.

  I knew it would hurt, but I had to jump, anyway.

  “Sometimes, I wish I’d never met you,” I whispered.

  Tyler swallowed, his hands wrapping around the steering wheel as if he was debating driving away before I could even bail out of the car.

  I looked at him. “I do. There were so many nights over the last seven years that I lay awake thinking of you, knowing you weren’t thinking of me, cursing myself for being so wrapped up in someone so unaffected by me. I wished I could go back to that first day of Bridgechester Prep and sit somewhere else during lunch. I wished I would have become best friends with Riley Horn, or Becca Martinez, or literally anyone but you and Morgan.

  “But then I think of a time we shared together, of a night we stayed up too late or a day we wasted hours making up a music video to our favorite song, or a week lost in the sun by the lake during a summer when time didn’t have limitations the way it does now. And it’s then that I know even if I had the choice, I’d still go back and sit with you, and I’d still spend every waking hour with you and Morgan.” I paused. “And I’d still lean into your kiss that day my mom left, when I went looking for Morgan and found you, instead.”

  Tyler blew out a slow, long breath, his hands gripping the steering wheel tighter.

  “I know this isn’t right,” I continued. “I know we shouldn’t have done what we did. And maybe I shouldn’t have said what I said last night, either. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying all of this that I’m saying to you now.” I turned a little in my seat then, so I could face him fully, begging him to return my gaze. “But it doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong. This is how I feel.”

  Tyler swallowed, his neck straining with the motion.

  “I want you, Tyler,” I whispered through the tears building, and at the words, his mouth parted, his chest depressing with the trembling breath. “I always have, and I always will. I’ve tried to forget you, and I know now that there is no amount of time or distance I can put between us that will ever allow me to. I am yours,” I said, and I felt so bold with the truth on my lips that I reached for him, wrapping my hand around his on the steering wheel until he let me pull it free. I held it between mine, his elbow balanced on the center console between us, and he kept his gaze forward while I lowered my lips to his fingers and closed my eyes. “Whether you claim me or not, I am yours.”

  A single tear slipped down his cheek when I opened my eyes to look at him again, but he wouldn’t blink to set another free. He just looked straight ahead, his eyes tired, his jaw set.

  “I know I am not in the position to ask anything of you, not after I took what I thought was the righteous route and insisted that what we had done was wrong. I pushed you away the morning after you’d pulled me in. I felt it in my heart that Azra was the one for you, that your family loved her, that you loved her, and I couldn’t step in the middle of that.” I paused, heart squeezing with the admission. “But I’m asking you now.”

  I reached for his chin, running my fingers over the slight stubble there until he finally turned to face me. His nostrils flared when our eyes locked, two more tears freeing themselves, and his chest heaving at the touch.

  “If you feel anything for me, Tyler,” I whispered, searching his eyes. “If you love me, too — don’t let me get on this plane.”

  A thick swallow found his throat again, and his eyes washed over me, taking me in, drinking my words. I saw a million things in that gaze of his, felt a thousand lifetimes of us warring with that truth I’d just spilled between us. He and I, we weren’t just here and now. We were the past, the present, the future. We were other worlds and other universes, too.

  No matter what we did, it would always come back to this.

  Every molecule of my being was tied up in that moment, in the request that hung between us on a delicate wire. I held his hand between mine, watching, waiting, wishing.

  His hand squeezed mine, and I inhaled a deep, shaky breath at the contact, leaning into it.

  But in the next breath, he released me completely, taking his shaky hands back to the wheel and his gaze back to the windshield.

  I didn’t miss the way his throat constricted, the way his nose flared, the way his lips were pressed together so tight that little lines formed around them.

  And I didn’t miss that I had made my choice, and this — him turning away from me?

  This was him making his.

  I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, staring at his profile, wondering if I’d imagined the whole thing. Did he hear me? Had he listened to the words I said? How could he not fold into me right now, tell me he loves me, too, swear off everyone and everything for us?

  But the moment was very real, and I nodded, understanding even if I hated it.

  Without another word, I pulled the handle on my door, kicking it open and snatching my purse off the floor. In the next second I was around the back, releasin
g the latch of the truck bed and heaving my suitcase and duffle bag out.

  Tyler didn’t get out to help me, and I didn’t look at him again.

  I knew I never would.

  But I’d left everything in that car, exposed every yearning that threaded through my heart, that heart that beat only for him.

  So when the plane lifted off the tarmac and carried me west, I didn’t shed another tear.

  I smiled for what we had.

  And I promised myself to let go of what we never would.

  Chapter Twenty

  Two Weeks Later

  ME: AND THAT’S WHAT I think so many people miss, Tara, is that we spend so much time trying to be what we think everyone else wants us to be, that we stop asking ourselves what we actually want. Who do we want to be? What passions and hobbies do we actually enjoy? What is most important to us in life?

  Tara: Exactly. And then we get to this point in our late twenties or so where we look around at the life we’ve built and we almost feel like… a spectator? More than the person living it. We’re like, “Wait… who are these people? Why am I always prioritizing getting blackout drunk at brunch over hiking or something productive?”

  *laughter*

  Me: So, what suggestions do you give to any of our listeners who are wanting to make that change in their life, who are wanting to wake up, so to speak, and take hold of their life?

  Tara: *sighs* Well, I think there are a lot of ways to work toward it, but I’ll suggest where to start. The first step, in my eyes, is to sit down with a magnifying glass and really examine your life. What is your day-to-day routine? What do you do for fun? What do you do for a living, and why, and how does that make you feel? Then, once it’s all written down in front of you, just highlight the things that you love, that make you feel good, and leave anything that makes you feel some type of way un-highlighted.

  Me: On my list, 2AM Instagram shopping would be one I’d leave un-highlighted.

  *laughter*

  Tara: Mine would be feeding into my toxic friendships.