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A flash of anger flared in my chest and I looked up at Tim. He seemed ready for me. Ready to take a punch, ready to absorb it.
“I forgave Mason. I did. I truly and honestly did. It broke my heart when I heard what happened with his grandmother and it’s the most understandable thing in the world, what happened. The moment he told me I forgave him. It was instantaneous. And complete. There is nothing but love in my heart for him. I forgave him. I’d forgive him over and over again. I don’t think there is anything in the world that I wouldn’t forgive him for.”
I was gasping when I finished. I took a trembling sip of the last of my wine and sank back against my chair, lightheaded.
“So there,” I said like a petulant child who’d just finished her tantrum.
Tim seemed content to wait me out. To let me have my say. To give me time to get it out of my system. But I think he knew exactly what he was going to say the moment I opened my mouth.
Calmly, he said, “I don’t mean him.”
My eyebrows flicked together. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.
“What do you mean?”
Tim licked his lips. He drew his fingers through his perfectly gelled hair, messing it up a little. I’d never seen him do that before.
“Rachel,” he said after a moment, “I knew about your past.”
I frowned.
“I knew you’d been a showgirl in Vegas. I knew you’d danced. I knew you had a skeleton or two in the closet,” he explained. “I went to that coffee shop you worked at all the time to try and talk to you. Well, when you weren’t there, I tried to learn more about you. Your co-workers knew things. And then, well, it’s easy enough these days. To dig things up on the internet.”
I couldn’t believe it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked in a whisper.
Tim shrugged. “I was waiting for you to tell me. And when you didn’t, I figured you had your reasons not to want to. I was going to respect that. I loved you, Rachel. Or at least, I loved whoever you’d become for New York. For me. For your heart, to get over him, maybe. I’m not sure. But whoever you were, why ever you were, I loved you.”
In that moment I felt the same draw to Tim as when I first met him, that first tenderness in my heart. Not that I loved him, maybe I never had. Maybe I never could. But I trusted him. Even if he couldn’t send me flying high, he would at least never let me fall.
Tim continued, “I figured the reason you decided not to tell me about your past was that you were ashamed of being that girl. But Rachel, what if the reason you never told me was that you were ashamed at giving that girl up? Of not being that girl any longer. Of changing. Of letting yourself, your true self down. What if the person you need to forgive instead of Mason is…yourself?”
Minutes later, Tim and I were out on the sidewalk. He blocked the late afternoon sun with his hand, shielding his face. I realised that I never really knew him. Never gave him a chance. It was always someone else’s face I saw when I imagined forever.
When I went to return the engagement ring I’d kept hidden in my suitcase for a month in Dublin, Tim closed my fingers back around it.
He kissed my cheek and whispered, “The pawn shop on 60th will give you the best deal.”
“I don’t need the money, Tim,” I tried to tell him.
He pushed my hand toward me and walked away. Looking over his shoulder, he smiled against the sun.
“Flights to Dublin aren’t free.”
