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“Maybe I’m to blame,” Aydin told me. “In the end, I didn’t claim what was born to be mine because I was a shit twenty-two-year-old kid who knew nothing.” He trailed off and then continued, his voice lower again. “But later when I could finally stand up and claim her, I spit on her instead, because every effortless breath she wrapped around everyone else became another nail through my heart, and I couldn’t look at her.”
My chin trembled, and I wasn’t sure why. He wasn’t special. We’d all suffered loss.
But one thing was pretty clear. She was the reason he was here. Much like Will could saddle me with that honor, possibly, as well.
A woman happened to them both.
“I couldn’t look at her, much like he can’t look at you,” Aydin said.
My stomach coiled, and he released me, backing away.
I turned and looked at him.
“I just wonder…” Aydin said. “If he ever decided to run from here, would he care to take you?”
He turned and walked away, leaving me there and feeling more alone than I ever had in my life.
Will would leave me, and he would be right to.
• • •
I stood there next to the pool for I didn’t know how long, Aydin’s words hanging in the air even after he’d left the room.
Was Will planning on running? What would happen to me if he weren’t here? Or if he were sent home?
Would he fight for me?
I’d left him once. I’d let him be arrested and sent to prison, and in his head, I hadn’t cared at all. Maybe I deserved the same.
I walked to the pool’s edge, descended the steps into the water, and jumped in, sinking my entire body below the surface.
The water held me, warm and weightless, and I drifted back up to the surface, floating on my back.
The saltwater stung the cut on my lip, but the pain filled me with anger and memory, and I knew this was coming. I always knew.
I just figured it would’ve come after he got out of prison, and as the subsequent years passed, it didn’t. I got comfortable.
Where would both of us be if he had just left me alone like I told him to?
I stood up, walking to the side of the pool as the shorts and shirt stuck to me like a second skin and tears hung in my eyes.
I used to think that if I got out of Thunder Bay and lived my life for me, doing what I loved and inviting only the people into my life whom I wanted, everything would be perfect someday.
But I hated everything I had, and loved nothing as well as what I’d given up, all of it tainted from the moment he was charged seven years ago, because I knew I didn’t deserve to be happy.
Despair sat on my heart as warm tears streamed down my cheeks, and I didn’t even realize the shower had stopped running until I noticed him standing there.
I looked up, seeing a towel wrapped around his waist as he stared at me. The air thickened, I almost couldn’t breathe, and I was torn between wanting to run to him and run away from him.
Just go.
I begged him in my head, meeting his hard eyes with my blurry ones, and there was so much to say, but if I didn’t explain, then maybe I wouldn’t have to feel him spit on me and throw me away for good.
Please just go.
He charged over instead, not going, and I gasped as he reached down, grabbing me by the collar and hauling me out of the water.
“Will,” I cried.
