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Kevin and Michelle Monroe have been my best friends since freshman year of college. I was roommates with Kevin that first year and Michelle lived across the hall. It was love at first sight for Kevin and Michelle and before long, the three of us were inseparable. I’d even dated her roommate for a while making the four of us annoying co-dependent assholes. I’d been the best man at their wedding, godfather to both Whitney and her older brother Mason and had been a part of every memorable date of their lives until now.
How was I supposed to tell them this? I’d lose the two most important people in my life outside of those I was blood related to, the two constants I’d had for almost twenty years.
But the trade-off was losing Whitney, and I didn’t love that either.
“Whitney…” I take a deep breath preparing to say the words that will undoubtedly break her heart. “It’s just not a good idea.”
“Wh-what isn’t?”
“Any of it. You coming to Mexico. Telling your parents. It’s going to destroy them, Whitney. Your relationship with them. My relationship with them.”
“But… what about your relationship with me?” The unshed tears from earlier are now cascading down her cheeks at full speed. Her heart clearly communicating to her tear ducts what was about to happen. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes before opening them again. “Are you breaking up with me?”
My heart thumps painfully at the thought of not being with her. Not being with the most amazing, brilliant, kind, unbelievably gorgeous woman that I’d ever met. Be strong, Jacob. She needs this. She’s young and she needs to experience life. “I just don’t see how it can work, Whitney.” My words are quiet and soft. The tone I use when I’m making love to her. I swallow. “It was never supposed to get this far… I wasn’t… we weren’t…”
“You weren’t supposed to fall in love with me? Is that where you were going with that?” she says, her tone harsh and more biting than it had been before. “Or was this all just a fucking game to you?” I can see the pain she’s trying to hide beneath the anger but I won’t have her thinking that this wasn’t real.
“It was never a game and you know that. Sometimes things just don’t work out no matter how bad we want them to.” In its most basic terms, that is what this comes down to. We want to be together but it isn’t that simple. Our life isn’t that simple.
She stands, wrapping her arms around herself. “I don’t get a say in this at all? You’ve just made up your mind about this without a care in the world about my feelings? Let me guess, ‘when I’m older I’ll understand?’” The sarcasm drips from her voice, even though I believe that there’s some truth to her statement whether she thinks it or not.
“I do think time and some worldly experience will give you some perspective, baby.” The word slips out and I chastise myself when I see the anger fall from her face at the one word leaving my lips.
“You don’t want this.” She moves into my arms and wraps hers around me. “I know you love me.”
“I do,” I tell her honestly. I wasn’t about to lie to her after all we’d been through and I wasn’t about to let her think that this wasn’t going to be hard on me as well. “I do love you. But sometimes, love isn’t enough. Sometimes loving someone means letting them go.”
“I don’t believe that.” She squeezes me tighter and wipes her tears on my shirt. I rub her back as her shoulders begin to shake. “Please don’t let me go.” Her voice wobbles and I wish I could take her pain away. “I can’t do this without you. I need you.”
Her words cause a painful thump in my chest because in this moment, I don’t know how to move forward without her either. But, one of us has to be strong. “Please don’t do this,” I beg, knowing that she has the power to break me if I don’t shut this down.
“I love you,” she murmurs. “Please.” She sniffles.
I rest my chin on top of her head trying to keep the tears of my own at bay at the thought of it being over between us. “I’m sorry.”
“I can’t believe this is the end.”
“Neither can I.”
I’m well aware that I haven’t said anything to Trey in a few minutes as the particular trip down memory lane that I’ve avoided for the past three years comes at me in full force. I clear my throat and the words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
“I’ll be home in two days.”
“Icannot believe you’re fuckin’ here,” Trey says as he gets out of his truck in the pickup line at LAX airport. “You haven’t been home in three years.”
“A lot of people haven’t done a lot of shit in three years,” I remind him. It was nearing the end of 2022 and things were finally starting to get back to a bit of normalcy. But it was crazy that I hadn’t seen my brother in almost three years after years of living not only in the same city but the same neighborhood. The time had been good to him, giving him a bit more muscle after he’d turned one of his rooms into his home office slash gym and taking his Zoom calls from his treadmill. He looked at least ten pounds lighter with dark brown hair after probably one too many women told him that no serious adult man had blonde hair. We looked more alike now more than ever despite our four-year age difference. I was just a few inches taller and now I’m much tanner due to my time in Mexico and his time indoors staring at a computer screen.
“How were you able to get home so fast anyway? Doctors Without Borders just lets you come and go as you please now?” he says as we load my suitcases into the back of his truck. “Hey, watch the paint. I just got it detailed.” He points at where I dragged the suitcasebarelyagainst the bumper before putting it in the trunk of his Range Rover.
I ignore my younger brother’s neuroses about his truck and answer his question. “My obligatory eighteen months has been up, I just stayed to help out. There is still a lot of work to be done. Besides…” I shrug as I get into the car. “I didn’t have a reason to be here.”
“Just your family.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay, Mom. You guys are all grown. I’m unmarried with no children. Given the current state of the world, I think you guys can forgive my absence on a few holidays.” I snort, already preparing myself for the guilt trip I’m going to get from my mother, I’m sure.
“You know how Mom is, especially after Dad died. She likes to have us all here. She’s thrilled you’re home, though I can’t see why. It’s not like her favorite child hasn’t been around.”
“Keep telling yourself you’re the favorite.” I scratch my beard, that I’d finally gotten around to shaving to an appropriate length. I’d let it grow a little rampant while I was in Mexico, letting it grow for weeks at a time before trimming it. Now that it’s back to the stubble I used to have, my face feels fucking strange without the extra hair.
