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She nods. “I’ve been hurtful and rude and inconsiderate and I’m sorry.” I stare at her before staring down at my drink. I’m a forgiving person by nature, but I swear these Clarke’s love to test my resolve. “Now Amanda…No bullshit?”
My eyes move to hers hearing her swear, having rarely heard her say anything more than damn or hell. “Sure?”
“I gave my son hell for cheating on you. You may not know that. I knew he loved you, and I was furious at him for taking the coward’s way out. Regardless of how I felt about you, I’ve been there, and it’s nothing I’d wish on any woman.” My eyes widen. No way. Bennett’s father loved Caroline. Surprisingly. “Bennett doesn’t know, and I’d like to keep it that way.” She swallows and dabs at her eyes with a tissue she pulls from her purse.
“Senior?”
She clears her throat. “Don’t think he’s so perfect now, do you?” She gives me a weak smile and pulls my glass of vodka from my hands and takes a long drink.
“Ummm, when?”
“Bennett was about four.” She takes another sip and I watch as her throat wobbles as she swallows. “So, he won’t remember that there was a time when his father wasn’t around.”
“You separated?”
She nods. “For about two months.”
“But you took him back?”
“Because I was twenty-five, with no college degree and a five year gap in my resume. It was the eighties, and I didn’t know what to do with a child and all of those very inconvenient characteristics. So I went back. For security and the life I’d grown accustomed to.” She sniffles.
“Did he ever…?”
“No, never again.” She shakes her head. “At least, not that I know of. Olivia, it took me a very long time to forgive him and I never forgot.” She sighs. “But what I’m saying is, you don’t have to be me. You have a million choices and options and you have all the tools to make the best decisions. You don’t need my son to live the life you want,” her eyes well up with tears but she swallows them down, “but I think you need him to live the life you love.”
I’m silent as her words seep into my soul. Maybe she’s full of shit, but her words still ring true. I don’t need Bennett in the same way she needed his father. But I need him in ways that I feel deep in my heart. His love courses through me and I feel the absence of him every time I move. Every time my heart beats it feels the loss of the only man I’ve ever loved. “What if we can’t get past it?”
“Have you tried?” she asks. “Or did you just jump ship when it got hard?”
“I didn’t…” I start when she pins me with a hard glare.
“Bennett has been fighting so hard for you and for your marriage, and I know he hurt you. Believe me, I know. But I know you love him enough to give him another chance, so I’m just curious what you’re afraid of?” I don’t answer because really I’m not sure. “I made my relationship with…Amanda so in your face because my son was devastated when he found out you moved on. I was angry at you for leaving him broken.”
“What about me? I was broken too.”
“Yes. But you left him. So by every rule of life there ever was, it meant you were stronger.”
“David didn’t mean anything,” I tell her honestly.
“Neither did Amanda.”
“It doesn’t change what happened.”
“No. Nothing can change the past. But you can change the present. You can do better for the future. There’s no room for pride in love, Olivia. Marrying someone is the most humble act. You’re promising to put another person first. Sometimes even before yourself. I can’t make you do something you don’t want to do. But I can empower you to make the choice you want to make but are too afraid to.”
Ninety-eight
Ninety-nine
One hundred
Sweat trickles down my face and back as I finish the last round of push-ups. I hadn’t been working out much and my body felt the difference. I lift my shirt, rubbing it over my brow and down my face. I’m exhausted, mentally and physically. I haven’t done much the past week besides wallow in my own misery and ignore the outside world. I haven’t gone back to work and I think they are beginning to wonder when their top realtor will return, but I honestly can’t be bothered to care. I’d signed the deal of a lifetime before my accident and the commission on the house I’d sold was obscene. I could take the rest of the year off, and still live comfortably.
I stand up on shaky legs, my muscles tired from the workout I had just put them through and grab my mother’s yoga mat I’d been using. I opted to work out on her terrace as to not give my mother a heart attack by dripping sweat on her white carpet. My mother still lives in the apartment she shared with my father, as she couldn’t bear to move after he passed. I look off the balcony, and over the city. It’s officially fall, and the thought chills my bones that I’m going into another season without Olivia.
I wonder what she’s doing right now.
Is she thinking about me?
