by Leddy Harper
She broke down and began to cry even harder. The relief I had just felt for speaking my mind vanished and was quickly replaced with remorse. I hated watching her cry. It didn’t matter how many times I had seen it over the years; it still cut me open.
“Gabi,” I said and tried to pull her closer to me. She pushed me back. “Please, just stop.”
“No. I can’t make you laugh like I used to. I can’t make you smile, and now you have to go to another woman to get that. Do you have to go to her to get fucked, too? Have I finally pushed you so far that you have to go to another woman to get all that I can’t give you? I can’t give you anything anymore. I’m fucking useless. I might as well not even be here. You have no use for me anymore.”
I grabbed her and pulled her tight to my chest. I hated hearing her talk so low of herself. “Stop, Gabi. No, I don’t go to anyone for anything. Yes, we were laughing and having a good time, but it’s not like how you’re making it sound. I don’t go to her for those things.” Yes I do. “You’re the only one I want to be with.” No you’re not. “I have never even thought about sleeping with anyone else.” That’s a lie. “You make me happy.” No you don’t. “I only want to be with you. Please, don’t leave me.” I’m a fucking coward.
She pulled away and looked up at me with tears streaking her face. “It doesn’t matter what you say, Dane, I watched it. You don’t look at me like that. You don’t play around with me like that. And now your walks to the pier all make sense. You meet up with her when you leave here, don’t you?”
“No,” I lied. “I honestly go to the pier for the peace. I go there to clear my head.”
“Because you can’t do that here.” It wasn’t a question. She was stating a fact.
“It’s hard, Gabs. It’s so damn hard to see you upset all the time. I just want you to be happy again. So we can be happy again. I know it’ll happen. But I can’t do much more than what I’m already doing and that frustrates me. It makes me feel like I can’t fix you.”
“I’m not a broken toy, dammit! I’m not one your companies that you can just take over and fix. I lost a child and you refuse to give me another one. I’m hurting, Dane. Doctor Greiner is making me talk about my mom. He’s making me go back and talk about all of it. He’s heard it all before, but he’s making me talk about all of it. He’s making me relive it all and I can’t do it! I can’t go back there! I just want to get over the loss of my baby and move on. I just want to start over again with you. I want a baby.”
“I thought you understood? I thought you agreed with me that the timing isn’t right?”
She closed her suitcase and stopped me as I began walking closer to her.
“Stay,” she ordered in a cold voice. “We want different things. I want to get married and have a family. You clearly don’t.”
“That’s not fair. I do want those things; I just want to wait until the timing is right. I want to wait until you feel better.”
“Maybe getting married and pregnant would make me feel better? Maybe it’s sitting around here without a real commitment from you and an empty womb that’s making me feel this way. You just keep pushing me to go talk to someone. Maybe you’re missing out on what I really need.”
“What do you mean without a real commitment from me? I put a ring on your finger didn’t I? I have supported you since before we even graduated high school. I have taken care of you for over ten years and have been faithful ever since day one. How could you say I’m not giving you a real commitment?”
She grabbed her bag off the bed and stormed past me, pushing me out of her way. “Would you have asked me to marry you all on your own?” she asked as she stopped just outside of the bedroom door.
I looked at her, wondering where that question had come from, but never answered. She finally turned back around and headed to the front door.
“Gabriella, stop. Don’t leave. Let’s talk about this. Let’s work this out.”
She spun around with her hand on the door handle. “I can’t make you laugh like that,” she said, nudging her chin toward the balcony, talking about the way she saw me laugh with Eden. “I can’t do that for you. Look at me and tell me you’re happy.”
I wanted to. I wanted to convince her that she made me happy, but I couldn’t. I knew I would never be able to convincingly say that to her and she knew it.
“Now look at me and tell me that others can’t make you happy.”
I knew she was talking about Eden, but I didn’t want her to do that. I didn’t want her to compare herself with other people. It suddenly became clear what Eden was trying to tell me when she said to take her out of the equation. It really wasn’t about her. It all came down to me and Gabi. All of it.
“That right there is why I can’t stay. It’s why we can’t work things out. I’m bringing you down. I’m making you suffer because I’m not strong enough to get over things like you can. I get upset. I cry. And you can’t handle that. You’ve been there for me for so much, and I can’t ask you to keep doing it. It’s taking too much of you and I hate myself for taking away your smile and your happiness. I think we just need a break. You need to laugh and I need to cry. And we can’t both do those things without hurting the other.”
And with that, she was gone. I tried going after her, but she shot me a look that told me to not bother. I was lost and confused. I didn’t know what was happening because every emotion known to man was flooding me. I wasn’t used to that. Over the last seven months, I had gotten used to just surviving. Going to work and coming home. Watching Gabi go through the motions of her depression and waking up to do it all again. Before that, it was a roller coaster. We had moments of being happy and moments of severe tragedy. Would there ever be a time when things were just good? Could I be with Gabi without ever worrying about when and how the other shoe would drop? So many shoes had dropped over the span of our relationship that I began to wonder how many more there possibly could have been.
I stood for a while after the door closed before sitting down on the couch. I put my face in my hands and thought about where it went wrong. So many things had happened to her, to me, to us during our relationship, but when was it that it actually went wrong? There had to have been a turning point, and before I could make any decisions, I had to figure out when that point was.
I thought back to when I first met her. How I felt as I watched the quiet girl walk through the halls of school with her baggy shirts and loose fitting jeans. Her hair was long and looked like it hadn’t been taken care of in a while. She never wore makeup and rarely met anyone’s eyes as she passed. But regardless of all of that, she was still the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She had a natural beauty about her. One I didn’t see often in the sea of high school girls. The girl I had been dating at the time never left her house without her hair perfect and makeup on. It was refreshing to see someone so perfect without all of that. It was the first thing that drew me to her.
After that, it was the way she smiled. I’d try to talk to her in class, but she rarely responded. Even though she didn’t often talk back to me, she’d smile and it made my whole world light up. It did things to my dick, too, but it mostly just made me happy. I was happy. Even then, before she gave me a chance, she made me happy. I hadn’t always been miserable. I just had to keep thinking it through so I could pinpoint it and possibly change it.
It was the first day of junior year in high school and I noticed her in the hall. She was looking at her schedule and the numbers on the doors of the classrooms. I was with a group of friends and walked away. They were in the middle of telling me something, but as soon as I saw her, their words vanished and I just walked away. All I saw was her. Her hair was longer, but still just as unmanaged as it was the year before. She was still wearing loose fitting clothes, but it seemed as though the shirts were getting a little tighter in the chest area. It was hard not to notice how she was filling out. Most of the girls our age were, but I didn’t notice them. I only noticed Gabi. I walked straigh
t up to her and asked her out. I didn’t say hi or ask how her summer was. I stood in front of her and waited until she looked up at me. A smile appeared on her face and her dark brown eyes lit up. I asked her to dinner on Friday and to my surprise, she said yes. I wasn’t expecting it, so I didn’t say anything else. I stood there, looking like an idiot as she laughed at me.
That was the beginning. It was great. She made me wait three weeks before I could kiss her and once I was allowed to press my lips to hers, I nearly ejaculated in my pants. I thought the world tipped on its axis once I felt her tongue on mine. I could tell she was new to kissing, and it made me feel high. The thought of being her first kiss made me puff out my chest and feel manly and shit. I couldn’t explain it, but there was something about being the only person to feel her lips that way that made me feel special.
Maybe that’s what that was. She made me feel special. I had a good life, a great childhood. I don’t want to sound ungrateful for what my parents had done for me, but making me feel special wasn’t something they did. They provided for me and supported everything I went after, but it was no different than the support I’d get from any other adult. I made my first dollar at fourteen when I went and applied for my first job. I didn’t apply because I needed the money; I did it because I wanted to work. I wanted to have a purpose, and it’s a decision I would never regret because that job is what allowed me to do what I love doing.
My father helped out and loaned me the money to help Mr. Allen. It wasn’t like he just wrote me a check, though. We had a long talk and he spent a few days thinking about it. He made me sign a contract and told me to treat it as if it were a business transaction, because that’s what it was. And when I succeeded and had success at that, he continued to treat it as a business transaction. He never once told me how proud he was of me. He took the money I owed him, plus the interest, and that was the end of it.
Gabi went on and on about how proud she was of me. She let me know as often as she could everything she thought about me. And I told her, too. It only took three months for me to tell her that I loved her. It took her an extra week before she said it back; that was the longest week of my young life. But she said it back, and all was right with the world. She made me wait until we had been together for eight months before she had sex with me for the first time. It wasn’t just the first time we had sex together, but it was the first time she had ever had sex. And knowing she was giving that part of herself to me was a feeling unlike any other. It wasn’t my first time, but with as awkward and nervous as I was, it very well could have been. But things got better, as they always do. We ended up having regular sex for months until my world came crashing down for the first time.
My grandmother, who meant the absolute world to me, died of a stroke. She practically raised me since my parents were workaholics and rarely gave me the time of day. The majority of my childhood had my Grans in it. She was my everything, and I was hers. But I woke up one morning, got ready for school, and found out during breakfast when the phone rang. It had been the worst day of my life. I climbed back into bed, still clothed for school, and hid beneath the covers for the remainder of the day. Gabi came over after school and climbed in with me. We didn’t talk, we didn’t kiss or even have sex; we laid there in silence. She was the only one there for me.
I remembered fearing I would forget about Grans. I worried that I would forget her smile or her laugh or the way she smelled. And I guess I almost did forget some of those things, until Eden came into my life. The way she smelled was exactly how I remembered Grans smelling, and that only confused me more.
Gabi helped me get over that tragedy, but it didn’t take long before she was going through her own. It was the worst feeling in the world knowing something was going on with the one person in the world you loved more than anything, and you couldn’t do anything about it. I knew something was wrong with her, but she wouldn’t open up. Once she did, my world completely went dark. I had never felt so angry or helpless before in my life. I wanted to murder someone, and I probably would have if the authorities hadn’t stepped in. But things didn’t get easier until much later. There was a trial and depositions and testimony that pulled her under. I tried to be her rock and support her as best as I could, but she had gone too far under by that point. That was the first time I watched a piece of her die, and I think a piece of me died with her. It had taken over a year before she was finally normal again. And by normal, I mean she wasn’t depressed. At one point during the whole ordeal, she had to be on a suicide watch for three days in the hospital after taking an unknown amount of pills. I hated that more than anything, but I never left her side. I slept in the waiting room the entire time. No one else was there. Her mom, stepdad, and stepbrother never once made it there. I was the only one. That’s how it always was—just the two of us. I had her and she had me.
Things with her were better for years. She followed me to school, even though she didn’t attend herself. But we lived together and everything was great. She wasn’t the same as she was before everything happened, but she was a hell of a lot better. She smiled and laughed and had fun, but not like before. Her crying days seemed to have been over for the most part, however, her insecurities grew. That took some adjusting because I didn’t know how to handle it. I finally convinced her to go to the salon one day and get her hair done. She did and seemed to have felt better after that. I thought if she felt better, so would I, but that wasn’t the case. It turned out to cost me in the end because we had an argument a month later and she accused me of wanting to change her. Somehow, me wanting her to do something nice for herself in the hopes of making her feel better turned into me wanting to change her. That wasn’t my intent at all. I just wanted her to feel good about herself again. I knew after what she had gone through, she wouldn’t ever be the same, but that didn’t stop me from trying. It didn’t matter that the fucker was locked away for a long time and that his life would never be the same, hers wouldn’t either.
We finally moved back home after I graduated. Again, my parents came to the ceremony, but they treated me as if graduating was expected and not an accomplishment. Gabi didn’t act that way, though. That was all that mattered to me. She was proud of me and let me know it. We never discussed any plans of what would happen after I finished school; it was more or less assumed. She didn’t have anywhere to go and I never intended to stay away from home forever. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her to go back with me, but that was the first time I realized I felt an actual obligation to be with her.
We moved back home and I bought a condo immediately. She no longer spoke to her mom and my parents were always gone, so we needed a place of our own. We went looking and I bought the first place she fell in love with. It was nice, but I liked it more because she was so excited about it. I just wanted her to be happy. It didn’t matter what made me happy anymore; it was all about her. I wanted to give her everything. I would have given her the moon if it were possible. The way she lit up at the condo and the view of the gulf put a smile on my face. When I took her furniture shopping, I let her pick out everything. The entire place was hers and I didn’t mind one bit.
A few years after we moved back home, she found out about her stepdad dying. It was sudden and unexpected. He was out in the backyard, cutting the grass when he had a massive heart attack and died. Gabi’s mom took it hard and grew even more detached from reality. Gabi didn’t take the news of her stepdad or her mother’s breakdown well, which I didn’t fully understand since she didn’t like her mother very much and didn’t even speak about her stepdad at all prior to that. She hadn’t talked to her mom in years and it had been even longer since she had seen her. But it was still her mom, nonetheless, and I guess that kind of thing would have been hard no matter what kind of relationship they had. Things got even worse when it was discovered that her stepbrother had inherited everything, leaving her mom with nothing. Gabi battled with herself about what to do, but ultimately decided that it wasn’t her fight and let her
mother deal with it alone. It wasn’t an easy decision to make and it caused her to fall into another depression. She felt responsible for her mother’s downward spiral and I began to worry that I would ever get her back. I worried that things would never be good between us again. The unhappier she became, the more I followed down the dark hole with her. But with time and therapy, she started to come back. She wasn’t the same as she was before, and it started to seem as if I lost more of her with each tragedy that happened around us. It was like I lost of myself each time as well. And every time, our relationship seemed darker and darker. Things just became even more unhappy no matter what I tried to do to fix it. I buried myself in work and gave her the space she needed, hoping things would turn around. Leaving her wasn’t an option, so that only left me staying and making the most of it.
She was back to being happy–or happier than what she was—in time for our eleventh anniversary. I always did something for her every year we had been together, so I had planned a cruise for us to go on. It was our first time setting sail on a ship that large and we had so much fun. It was like I had my old Gabriella back. She got dressed up for dinner and did her hair, and even put on a little makeup, even though she didn’t need it. I would always prefer Gabi natural, but she looked amazing regardless. On the night of the formal dinner, I had it all set up with the wait staff. I proposed at the table in the middle of the dining room. People clapped and cheered all the way around, and Gabi acted surprised, as if she had no idea it was coming. But she did. She actually picked out her ring ahead of time after letting me know we had been together for so long and she was starting to feel like I would never ask. I didn’t feel pressured at the time, but looking back, she was pretty much telling me to pop the question. She was right, though. We had been together for eleven years; there really was no reason for us to wait any longer.
We must have conceived that week on the cruise, which wouldn’t have been surprising since we spent most of the time in our suite. The following month, she informed me that she was pregnant. I would never forget that moment. I came home from work and found six positive pregnancy tests sitting on the counter in the bathroom in the shape of a heart. Time stood still for me. She was excited and I wanted to be as well, though I couldn’t help but to be terrified. I had just proposed to her and the next thing I knew, we were having a baby. It took me a day to be excited, and from then on, I was looking forward to it as much as she was. The night she woke up covered in her own blood took all of that excitement away from me. It also took the life and smile away from Gabi.