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Were, is what I wanted to say. I guess at that point it didn’t really even matter, did it? She was a co-worker, a partner for a stupid game, nothing more, not now at least.
She leaned in closer. “Please?”
“I didn’t want it to end.” The admission hung heavy in the air between us, thick with tension. “I didn’t…” My voice cracked. “I didn’t want you to stop. Ever.”
“Even though I drew blood and gave you a black eye on accident?”
“Even then.” I jerked away and dug into the popcorn. “Happy now?”
She cleared her throat and leaned back. “Yeah. I’m happy.”
That was a clear lie. Her face had paled, and she was suddenly back into poisoning the husband mode.
I don’t know how long we sat there, but I knew we’d made it through at least three episodes before she yawned behind her hand and started getting comfortable on the couch again. “Promise you’ll wake me just in case?”
I’d stay up all night just in case.
Even if she wasn’t ever going to be mine again, she was still precious, so yeah, I would stay up all night, protecting her for someone else, and for a future I wouldn’t be a part of.
That didn’t sound depressing at all.
And yet, I knew I would never take it back, even if it meant the end of the story had me completely written out of it.
Chapter Eight
Bri
“I’ll see you after work,” he said. “Oh, and it’s Taco Tuesday, you better prepare yourself for something epic, I looked up a recipe, you’re ahead of me by one Taco Tuesday night, I refuse to lose.” He leaned down and kissed me across the lips, then frowned. “Everything okay?”
I touched my stomach briefly. “Yeah, um, yeah fine.”
“It might be a late night.” He pulled me into his arms. “I have to go over some things with the team, but I promise I’ll still feed you.”
I rarely saw him as it was. My brain told me he was climbing his way up and trying to make money for our life while I was working at the coffee shop, but my insecurity, that ugly, gross thing that always jumped out when I was feeling off said that he preferred work, that I was a burden, that I’d always be a burden. I mean, he didn’t even want kids right away anymore.
The one thing I could have done right—I somehow failed at too.
Self-pity sucked, but when you were in it, all you saw was the giant in front of you, there could be an army behind you, ready to fight on your behalf, but it was behind you, and all you saw was what was to come. Later on, I’d realize that that’s what depression and anxiety did to a person.
You had one foot in the past, one in the future, and you were quite literally shitting on the present because you couldn’t be present, you were either worried about past mistakes or things you did wrong, or worried about what you would fail at again in the future.
The present just ended up becoming existing, worrying, and it was selfish and I knew, at least I thought I knew all the right answers, but when I watched him smile and walk off that day all I thought was, I’m the shackle attached to him.
What did I contribute? What did I give?
I had the nightmare a lot, the day I decided to walk, the day I decided he was better without me, the day I stupidly broke my own heart and cut off all contact.
At the time I thought, I can’t love him if I don’t love me, and now that I knew what I knew, I realized he would have waited.
Timing, always perfect, yes?
I stretched my arms over my head and tried to get up, then stumbled into Ace, elbow first right into his cheek.
“Shit! Son of a bitch, a monkey attacked me! Sharks!” Ace shot up and banged his forehead against mine. “Why!”
“…Sorry, are you asking why a monkey attacked you? Or why sharks exist? And I may have aggressively stretched and tried to stand and then… fell.”
His nostrils flared, his dark hair was poking out in every different direction. “Yeah, got that, also felt that, ugh, my face, why are your elbows so bony? I’m probably going to have another black eye and have to lie and say I ran into another wall!”
