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Masochistically, I pick up my phone and read my texts. All left on read. He saw them, but he chose not to respond. Was it rude of me to demand his new number from Taryn? Yes, it was. Do I give a damn? No, I don’t.
This has caused a strain in our friendship. She warned me... she fucking warned me to leave him alone. That people releasing from long prison sentences needed space. But I didn’t listen. I just fell head-over-heels for that beautiful brother of hers. And I truly believe he fell for me, too. It was more than sex. It was more than just fun dates and food and picnics and county fairs. We had a soul-deep connection and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. I feel like half my soul has been ripped out of my body.
That night, when I saw the news that the man whose wife died in the accident Eric caused passed away, I’d gasped. It just said the man died in his home, but was later reported it was a gunshot wound. They haven’t reported if it was self-inflicted, but I guess it doesn’t matter. I know Eric well enough to know that he blamed himself for it. That night changed him and the trajectory of our relationship forever. He barely answered my calls and texts after that. He refused to see me at all. Then, a week later, he was gone.
Just gone.
Taryn was enough of a friend to text me from her honeymoon and tell me Eric was fucked and that he needed space, and she begged me to give it to him. So, I did. So, Ido. After the honeymoon, she came over and told me with a sad expression that he had left for Kenya to pay some kind of penance by joining Doctors Around the World.
At first, I was furious. Absolutely enraged. How dare he just leave me here! Hadn’t I been the perfect girlfriend to him? Didn’t he love me? Why not ask me to go? I’m no doctor, but I would have quit my job in a heartbeat to go over there and help. I can watch children, do paperwork, help cook, clean, whatever. Anything to just be with the man I love. But he hadn’t. He just fucking left me here to pick up the pieces.
Then, I went from angry to sad. Sad for me, sad for him. What kind of pain had he been hiding this whole time? How much guilt had he been harboring that caused him to be triggered so? The death of Mr. Stamp literally caused him to snap. So, I put myself in his shoes and it helped me to understand a tiny bit of why he did what he did.
He blames himself for Mr. Stamp’s death. Regardless if the man did it to himself, or someone else took his life, a child is orphaned now.
It doesn’t lessenmypain, though. I thought I’d metthe one, but now he’s halfway around the world paying his dues for something he didn’t even do, when he’d already paid for his sins behind metal and concrete for six years.
I just wish he’d respond to me. Reach out to me, so I can tell him I understand. So he knows I want to be here for him, that I can help absorb some of that pain so he doesn’t have to roil in the agony of guilt and shame.
I just hope that when he comes back, he’ll feel a little more vindicated, refreshed, and with a new perspective.
If he even comes back at all.
I lift the wine to my lips, hitplayon the remote, and try to get lost in dragons and magic.
Nine
Christa
Idon’t know how toanswer her question. I’m not even sure I want to share how I’m feeling with my best friend.
“Well?”
I stare at her as we sit on the bench in the middle of the mall. It’s nice outside and I should go hike or something, but Taryn said we should meet here for some retail therapy. Two hundred dollars in shoes and handbags and I don’t feel very therapized.
“I do love him, Tar. But no, I never told him.”
