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“Just stop, Hope. You came here for nothing. Just turn around and leave.”
“I’ll leave as soon as I tell you what I came here to say.”
“If I let you say it, will you finally go and never come back?” I ask her, desperate to get her to go. She’s slowly killing me.
“Yes.”
“Then say it and get the hell out of here.”
“My aunt told me that people have a tendency to have scars when they’re hurt and those scars color how they react.”
I sigh loudly, hoping she’ll get the hint and just stop talking.
“Well, she said it more eloquently than I can. But, I was carrying scars that I didn’t even know were there. Scars left by my mother and losing my father—”
“Hope, I really don’t want to—”
“There were a lot of scars left behind by Jack’s father. I lost my Dad and my Mom was never much of a Mom. I took a chance… and I got burned… badly.”
“I don’t care, I just—”
“You said I could tell you what I came here to say. Please let me Aden. Please. It’s the last thing I will ever ask of you.”
“Finish,” I bark, mad at myself because I can’t shut her down.
“I devoted myself to Jack and that was good and bad. I was lonely, but those scars just kept growing inside of me—even if I didn’t know it at the time. So, by the time you came around, they were almost all I had left inside.”
“Hope—”
“I don’t know, but I suspect you had scars left on you. I don’t know who from, but just thinking back to the way you were, I figure your scars run as deep, if not deeper than mine, and I think maybe you’ve had yours a lot longer.”
I grunt. I can’t deny what she’s saying, but I can try and force her to either hurry and finish or fucking leave.
“When I first met you, I hated you.”
“Well congratulations, you proved that in spades.”
“You were mean, hateful, crude, and you reminded me of everything I hated about Jack’s father,” she says, and that gets my attention—even if I don’t want it to. “I was scared of you. Petrified really. I lashed back at you every time you delivered an attack, because I didn’t want to be the weak person I was with Jack’s father, but I was. Deep down, those scars were raw and you were hitting every single one of them with your attacks.”
“Perfect, so all this was my fault. Why doesn’t this surprise me? I’m going in, stay out here if you want, but I’m done.”
“I didn’t have much in life. I had Jack and I had the motel. I was barely hanging on to it, but if something happened and you took it away that would mean I had failed Jack in every way possible as a parent—as someone whose duty in life was to provide for and protect him. I was petrified you were going to sue me. It’s not an excuse, it’s not even an explanation. I just wanted you to know what was going through my mind. The paramedics assumed I was your wife and the hospital wouldn’t let me check on you—they wouldn’t even tell me how you were.”
“Like you cared. You were only concerned about being sued.”
“You’re right, I was,” she says, and that feels like a death punch. If I didn’t have so much anger inside of me, it quite literally, would have brought me to my knees.
“Because back then, you hadn’t let me in, Aden. I didn’t know you.”
“You still don’t. I became someone you invented in your sick little game.”
“Bullshit. You were real. I don’t care what you say, you’ll never convince me otherwise,” she says. Her body is shaking with conviction, as she tries to deny my words.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Hope. We never knew each other at all. You didn’t give us that chance.”
“Is that how you really feel? You don’t think anything we shared was real?” she whispers, and somehow I think it was me this time that delivered a death punch.
“Yes,” I answer, and I swear I’m so fucked-up in the head right now I don’t know if I’m telling the truth or lying. I thought it was the truth, but she’s standing in front of me and she’s the Hope I remember in my dreams. The one who laughs with me late in the night, while her body is wrapped around me. The one who plays with her son and looks over at me with love shining in her eyes.
I feel raw on the inside. Seeing her only makes that worse.
“Okay, Aden. I’ll leave,” she says, answering my silent prayer. Strange thing about that is, I feel panicked at the thought of her leaving. I beat down that feeling, she’s just messing with my head again.
