“You loved me the day before you stood on my doorstep and said I was too clingy, that I wasn’t girlfriend material. You loved me the day before you said you didn’t. I never understood it…” she stopped to suck in a breath as her sobbing started up again. “You loved me, and the next day you were drafted and broke my heart, out of the blue… poof. We were broken. You broke us.”
I shouldn’t have avoided this conversation. I should have been honest with her from the beginning that I might have ended it, but she was the one who broke us first.
I was trying to stay calm, but each of her last points was made with an angry prod to my chest, and every one cracked my façade a little bit more, until…
“I broke us up because you lied!” I snapped hard, pushing up from the couch.
She stared up at me, mouth wide open. “Wh... what?”
I stormed over to the kitchen, and took a bottle of water from the fridge. “I knew about CalTech, Marn.”
She blinked several times, and then her arms crossed her chest again. I couldn’t tell if she knew she’d been busted, or genuinely didn’t realize what I was talking about; not that either one made this situation better.
“What does that mean?”
“I found the letter you wrote to M.I.T. that said you no longer wanted your place, and the other one to S.M.H., and the CalTech application. Your dad went to my parents and asked if I was behind it.” Like it was yesterday I remembered how pissed I’d been, how hurt I’d been. But mostly I was pissed because I was getting blamed for something I was adamantly against.
“So you broke up with me?!” she shot back.
“Yes,” I replied simply, because back then it had been that simple. Back then it was the only decision I thought was right.
Since she’d been in New York, I’d gotten used to Marnie’s angry face. I knew when she was pissed because her eye twitched a little, and the tops of her ears reddened. But right now, she surpassed any levels of anger I’d seen before. A tiny vein was pulsing in her temple, and any second there’d be fire shooting out of her nostrils with the way they flared.
And it only served to flick the switch on my own temper.
“Don’t you look at me like that! I wasn’t about to let you give up on your dream, because I wasn’t going to give up on The Dodgers. You would never have let me do that! And look,” I threw my hands in the air, “you went to M.I.T. and you wentto N.A.S.A.! FUCKING N.A.S.A., MARN! Just like you always wanted.”
To give her credit, she didn’t even flinch. She just stared at me, her chest heaving and her eyes narrowing.
“Do you know how long it took for me to feel myself, to feel right, to feel whole again? I cried for six months! I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore.” It didn’t come out as a hiss; it was more angry than that. She’d surpassed anger to reach a level where every word was quiet and damaged, dripping with pain.
I was desperate to make it stop, but even more desperate to make her understand.
“Marnie, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I know I broke your heart, and I’m begging your forgiveness to mend it. I’m not going to apologize for why I did it.”
Thankfully her eyes flared again. The anger was back. It was easier to deal with her when she was angry.
“OF COURSE YOU WON’T! BACK TO THE SAME GODDAMN ARGUMENT!”
“NO! IT’S NOT! You broke our pact! You lied! You owe me as much of an apology!”
“I didn’t know where you’d end up. You wanted The Dodgers, but they didn’t have first pick. You could have gone anywhere, and I wasn’t going to risk it!”
I wished my dick would ignore the way her boobs bounced when she threw her hands in the air.
“You were giving up your career!”
“No, I wasn’t! I was giving myself options!” she spat out, like I should have realized all along. “It was the same course at CalTech. It was the same course just on the other side of the country, so wherever you went, I would pick the closest.”
My jaw popped so hard I could feel my back teeth ripping from the root. “No, Marnie, it wasn’t the same course. I checked.”
“What?”
I swigged my water, willing some calm to return. I didn’t have the fight in me if she was going to keep lying, or maybe she’d convinced herself of an alternate truth. “It wasn’t the same course. You were postponing a year, and then downgrading.”
“I was sixteen! I was completely in love with you, and I wasn’t ready to be three thousand miles apart. Sixteen, Jupiter!”
From the corner of my eye, I could see The Dodgers game playing out. Almost fourteen years I’d spent there. I could tell you how the field smelled after a rare Californian rainstorm; I could tell you about Vince, the head grounds-man, and how he used to spend an hour every morning cleaning the bases, because it had been his first job at The Dodgers’ and he believed in it with the same fervor people believed in God. I could tell you what the dugout looked like after every game, but while I’d spent all that time with a hole in my chest, I couldn’t tell you I regretted it, because if I did, I might not be standing here now, the love of my life in front of me, looking like she wanted to murder me. And if those years were the price to pay for the rest of my life, then rinse my fucking bank account and make a run for it.
