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Tears trickled out of my eyes and ran down my cheek.
“Oh shit… I’m sorry,” Ryan said, and leaned forward to take my hand. “I didn’t mean to make you feel
worse.
I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s not that.” I shook my head and smiled sadly. “He basically told me straight out what you just said.”
Ryan looked bewildered. “He
did?”
“Yeah. I asked him for the truth… the
real
truth. If I’d stayed with him, would he have still cheated on me at some point? And he said yes.”
Ryan took a moment to take that in, then exhaled. “Wow… I didn’t think he had it in him to be that honest.”
“Yeah, well…” I wiped away my tears and exhaled deeply. “I think that’s all the honesty I can take for tonight.”
He searched my face, and must have agreed I’d had enough. “Yeah, I think the best thing to do right now is take a hot shower and go to bed. We’ll deal with whatever happens tomorrow… when it happens.”
When he said that last part, my heart and stomach both did backflips.
Because I knew that he meant
Derek will be back.
And I wasn’t sure exactly how I felt about that.
“Yeah, that’s probably wise,” I murmured.
He was still holding my hand, though, as he looked into my eyes. “Will you promise me one thing, though?”
Fear surged up inside me.
I was waiting for him to say something along the lines of,
Will you give me a chance?
That was one thing I
didn’t
want to hear right now.
“…what?” I asked hesitantly.
“Will you stop beating yourself up for choosing real life four years ago instead of a fairytale?”
Whoa.
Not what I’d been expecting.
I smiled sadly. “I’ll try.”
He smiled back at me. “That’s all I can ask.”
32
I tossed and turned for hours, replaying the evening over and over again in my head, Derek’s last words to me echoing in my ears.
Could I have done something differently? Something that wouldn’t have ended up with him breaking my heart yet again?
I could have gone with him… but I knew that was the wrong choice. I knew it in my bones. Derek was a wreck, a walking disaster. I had seen it tonight firsthand. Whether that was because of me, or because he was a time bomb waiting to explode and I had accidentally lit the fuse, I didn’t know.
All I knew was that leaving with him would have been a mistake. And that it would have killed Ryan to see me get in that taxi with him.
I knew I couldn’t live my life basing decisions on what would and wouldn’t hurt Ryan… but I didn’t
want
to hurt him. He had been so kind, so good to me… everything inside me rebelled at the thought of hurting him.
All I knew is that I had no idea what I would do the next day when Derek came back.
If he came back sober and in his right mind… if he came back like he had been four years ago, funny and confident, playful and yet vulnerable… I didn’t know if I could stop myself from hurting Ryan.
As it turns out, though, Derek didn’t come back.
We went to him.
33
I woke to a gentle tapping on my door.
I opened my eyes groggily. The window was still pitch black outside, though the rain had stopped.
“…wha…” I mumbled.
“Kaitlyn,” a voice whispered.
For a second, in my sleep-induced stupor, I thought it was Derek. Both fear and desire shot through my body in equal measure.
“You awake?” the voice whispered again, and I knew it was Ryan.
The fear was replaced with safety and relief.
The desire…
…curiously, the desire didn’t go away. Abated, a little… but not much.
I clutched the sheets to my chest. Which was funny, since I was wearing my customary t-shirt.
“What is it?” I whispered.
The door opened wider, and I could see Ryan’s silhouette against the hall light.
“I just got a call from the police. Derek got arrested. I’ve got to go bail him out.” Ryan paused. “I thought I should tell you… in case you wanted to go.”
I didn’t know if I
wanted
to or not…
…but I knew I
had
to.
“Give me a couple of minutes to get dressed,” I said.
He nodded wordlessly and closed the door.
34
The drive to the jail was a long one. The truck sloshed through mud for what seemed forever until we got to a paved road. In the night sky above, the clouds covered all the stars and mostly obscured the moon.
“What did he get arrested for?”
“Bar fight in the casino,” Ryan said grimly. “Drunk and disorderly. Thank God he had enough sense not to assault the police officers who arrested him.”
I sat there, feeling guilty, wondering if somehow I was to blame for all this.
Ryan knew
exactly
what was going through my head. “
Don’t.
Don’t think this has anything to do with you. Normal, well-adjusted people don’t get drunk, stalk their ex-girlfriends, barge onto their friends’ properties screaming at the top of their lungs, get escorted off at rifle-point, and then go get even more wasted and start a bar fight. He fucked up on his own. You had nothing to do with it.”
