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It got so bad that I decided to give him back my ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card.
It was about ten days after Derek’s drunken appearance during the rainstorm. I was sick with depression, obsession, and self-loathing. I knew I was hurting Ryan by being around him and still having all these feelings for Derek. So I figured the best thing to do would be to end it.
It may sound like it was a snap decision, but it actually took me several days to work up the courage to say, ‘Yeah, I really need to go and let him live his life and be happy.’ When all my deliberations finally came to a head, I was about to throw up I was so nervous. It took me 30 minutes of pacing before I could work up the courage to go talk to him.
He wasn’t in the house, so I walked outside to find him. He was in the barn, bailing hay for the horses. The barn had become his refuge over the last ten days, just like alcohol had become mine.
He stopped when I walked in. He was wearing a wifebeater and jeans, and I noted – in a kind of abstract, purely platonic way – how hot he was. Strong arms with biceps clearly defined… sweat-streaked hair tousled just so. He wasn’t Derek with his bulging muscles and broad back… but he was taller, and steadier, and just as attractive in his own way.
“You alright?” he asked when I walked in.
I could read the concern in his face – something I wouldn’t have gotten from Derek.
I swallowed. I felt nauseated and horrible, but I figured I had to do this.
Make a clean break.
Get it over with.
Allow him to get back to his life, and me to get back to mine… whatever was still left of it.
I held out the “Get Out Of Jail Free” card with a trembling hand.
He just looked at it. No surprise on his face, only a dark kind of resignation.
“We both know it’s not working out,” I said, my mouth dry.
He looked up from the card to my face.
His eyes… his eyes were so beautiful. Soft and brown and kind.
But I ignored that and plowed ahead. “I’m just… I can’t get over him… and I know that’s hurting you… and I think it would be best if I just left.”
“No,” he said.
At first I didn’t think I had heard him right.
“…what?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I mean ‘no.’ I refuse to take it.”
My confusion quickly turned to anger. “What about the whole ‘Are you sure?’ thing, and the ‘I won’t ask you any other questions, I’ll just put you on the next flight out’ thing? What about that?”
He looked at me for a long time before answering. “Do you remember on the ride home, when I said Derek would lie, cheat, and steal to get you back?”
You mean, the moment of sexual tension between us?
“…yes.”
“And you asked me, ‘And why didn’t you?’ Do you remember that?”
Suddenly I was very aware of the summer heat in the barn, and of the heat in my own body.
“…yeah?”
“I thought about that for a long time. I wondered, ‘Why
didn’t
you lie, cheat, and steal to get her? You wanted her. You
still
want her. Why don’t you take her?’”
When he said
take her,
something deep inside me did a loop-de-loop. I caught my breath.
“I was always trying to be
good.
A good friend… a good guy… a good person. But I never got what I wanted. Which was you.”
Jesus.
My mouth was dry again, but for a completely different reason.
“So this is me lying, and cheating, and stealing. Or my version, anyway. I’m not taking the card back; I’m not letting you go. I want you to stay here with me.”
I just stood there, not saying anything, staring at him goggle-eyed and open-mouthed.
I guess he took that for a sign, because he dropped the pitchfork into the hay and walked over to me, decisive and strong. He put his arms around me, grabbing me at the waist, and pulled me in to his body.
My head was spinning; my vision blurred around the edges so that all I could see clearly were his eyes. My heart was hammering in my chest, my knees were weak. I smelled the clean scent of his sweat, felt the strength of his arms around me and his body against mine as he leaned his head down to kiss me –
And I turned my head away.
Not out of anger, or not wanting it.
More out of shame. Guilt.
As insane as it was – as much as that asshole had put me through, and even though we were about as broken up as you can get – I felt like I would be cheating on Derek. I just couldn’t go through with it.
Ryan paused for a long moment… and then I felt his arms release me. He walked past me towards the door to the barn.
“Ryan,” I choked out, regret in my voice.
He stopped at the doorway and half-turned towards me – not facing me, instead staring at the ground.
“It’s okay, Kaitlyn. I get it.”
“No, you don’t – ”
“Yeah I do. You still love him.”
He turned all the way around and stared into my eyes. I shrank away slightly, under the full strength of being
seen
by him. Of those kind brown eyes seeing me and not judging me.
Not hating me.
“I get it. He’s incredibly good-looking. He’s the lead singer. He’s charismatic. He’s funny and clever and confident. He’s what every woman wants.”
With every word he said, my heart felt like it was being stabbed.
Because I knew he wasn’t just describing Derek. He was describing all the things he thought
he
wasn’t, because he’d spent the last five years comparing himself to the Golden Boy.
“Ryan…”
“And he’s a good guy,” Ryan continued. “He is. Maybe not always, maybe not now, maybe not the way he’s acting towards you – but he was once. And that’s the guy you fell in love with four years ago. I get it. I do.”
I walked over to him like I was led by a magnetic force. I wanted to touch him, to comfort him, to not be the one breaking his heart.
He watched me approach, watched me put my hands on his chest as I peered up into his eyes.
“Ryan…” I whispered.
But as I moved one hand up to touch his face, he grabbed my wrist. He didn’t hurt me… but he let me know there was no going further.
“Don’t. Okay? Just… don’t,” he whispered back, his voice full of pain. “Don’t pretend you feel something when it’s not there. Okay? Just… I can’t. I can’t deal with
that.
I can deal with you loving him, I just… I can’t deal with
that.
”
Four years earlier, there was a moment when I knew I had fallen in love with Derek for the first time. It was a conversation about crying during a movie. Derek had broken my heart with how sweet and open and vulnerable he was. He had cracked open all my walls, and love flooded in.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the same thing happened as the best man I had ever met walked away from me, leaving me in the barn alone, my heart breaking open all over again.
