Trevor looks at him again, and it’s the pain in his eyes that makes Skyler take a deep calming breath. Because right. This isn’t about him.
“Can you tell me what happened?” he asks softly. And maybe it’s prying. But after everything they’ve been through, he deserves to know, doesn’t he?
“It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
He huffs, but Trevor shoots him a look that makes him flinch. “Sorry.”
Trevor clears his throat. “It was after you and I had…”
“Right, yeah,” he jumps in before Trevor can finish that sentence. He can’t handle hearing Trevor mention anything about how badly Skyler fucked everything up between them. “After we were done,” he supplies, almost choking on the words.
Trevor frowns but continues. “I was a mess, and she was there for me. You know we got along well. And it was like we’d been pretending to date for so long that it started to maybe make sense for us to actually be together.”
Skyler can’t stop the noise of pained disbelief that falls from his mouth.
“Like I said, I was a mess,” Trevor goes on, still not meeting his eyes. “And I know you thought… But it didn’t happen like that, I swear. I never… Not ‘til after.”
“Hey.” He places his hand on Trevor’s knee and gives it a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay. I was an idiot back then, but I know. I believe you.”
He knew it was bullshit right after he accused Trevor of cheating on him, but his stupid pride wouldn’t let him take it back. And before he could fix it, he ended up making everything worse. Then after the band broke up and they got out of their contracts, he expected Trevor to release a breakup announcement for him and Sierra, because he wasn’t required to have a beard anymore. When it didn’t come, Skyler didn’t know what to think. He eventually shook it out of Oli to find out Trevor had started dating her for real.
Even then, he still didn’t believe Trevor had cheated on him, but it was like all his worse fears had come true anyway.
“You weren’t an idiot,” Trevor says quietly, staring down at Skyler’s hand still on his knee.
He wants to say he was. He was an idiot for so many things. Especially for asking too much of Trevor, for not giving him more time. For leaving him no choice but to walk away. But this isn’t about them, so he removes his hand from Trevor’s body and asks, “Then what happened?”
“So we hadn’t been together that long. I was still trying to convince myself I truly wanted to be with her, and then she told me she was pregnant. She didn’tset out to lie to me. Shedidthink she was pregnant at first. But she made a mistake, and I guess once she figured it out, she was too afraid to tell me.”
“But that’s so stupid,” Skyler interrupts. “You’d find out eventually.”
“Yeah, but everything happened so fast. She’d already told her parents, and they were so happy, and she didn’t want to disappoint them either. But they expected us to get married, and obviously I’m the idiot, because I agreed to it.” Trevor lets out a humorless laugh. “Remember how our management wanted me to look all respectable by putting me in a relationship with Sierra in the first place? The band had broken up, and our reputation had taken a huge hit, and I don’t know, I guess I was worried about how it would look if I got my supposed long-time girlfriend pregnant and didn’t marry her.”
“That’s…”
“Stupid, I know,” Trevor says. “But it wasn’t only that. I guess I wanted to make it work. Because yes, I did want a kid, and you know my mom had to raise me alone. I couldn’t do that to her. So we announced our engagement, and then because it was kind of too late for her to tell me she made a mistake, she ended up saying she lost the baby. I was devastated. But it still seemed like marrying her was the right thing to do. At least then I’d still havesomeone.”
Skyler’s not aware of how wide his eyes have gotten until Trevor looks at him and immediately looks away.
“It was fucking misguided, clearly,” Trevor says. “Again, like I said, I was a total mess back then. Not only with losing the baby, or so I thought, but after losing—”
He stops and Skyler’s heart jumps into his throat, because was Trevor about to say after losinghim?
“Anyway, after we got married, eventually she felt too guilty about how much I was suffering thinking we’d lost the baby, and that’s when she told me the truth. Then I finally made a smart decision and left her.”
It takes a minute of quiet for Skyler to realize Trevor’s done with the story. It takes him another minute to come up with something to say.
“I’m so sorry she did that to you.”
Trevor shrugs and leans forward to pick up his chopsticks again. “I sort of deserved it.”
“Are you kidding me?” he yells, unable to control himself. “No, you didn’t!”
“I used her, didn’t I? I used her to try to get over you, and I used her because I wanted a stupid normal life, whatever that is. She admitted afterward that when she thought she was pregnant, she was happy because she knew it would be a reason for me to stay with her. She was afraid of losing me from the beginning.”
“That’s still no excuse for not telling the truth as soon as she realized it,” Skyler argues.
Trevor shakes his head, like he’s trying to clear it of all the pain of the past. “I know what she did sucked. But I wasn’t a saint in the relationship either. We all do messed up things sometimes. It doesn’t mean someone’s a completely bad person. People are complicated.”
