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Perhaps I wasn’t as far along with my healing, my journey to forgiveness, as I had thought I was. Was it easier to think so because he was absent? Had him abandoning me forced me to accept reality, bury us, and move on? Probably. What I hadn’t planned on was a visit where he took it all back and basically demanded I try again.
Demanded. There was the source of my exploding. ‘We’ll finish the beach house. You’ll bring the food truck there. You’ll do your business there.’ What? Hello? You just up and deserted me, and you want me to do what?
“It was the note, Mom,” I said softly. “That and he tells me all about the new plans he has for us like nothing he did even happened.”
Mom remained seated at the kitchen island, listening to me, nodding, but not adding anything to my ramblings.
“My first emotion was bewilderment over how he could do what he did, you know?” I picked at a loose thread on my cargo shorts. “He shows up and thinks I’ve had nothing happening in my life. Like I’ve been waiting for him to deem me worthy enough to love,” I added.
Mom listened, taking sips of coffee in between silent acknowledgements that she was there to hear me vent.
“I gave all I had to that relationship. Never blamed. Never yelled or threatened. I did nothing but try to help him, Mom. And he leaves a note,” I muttered.
Mom looked up and caught my eye. “Tell me about the note,” she asked. “Explain why you are so fixated on that note.”
I gazed at her in shock. “Why am I so angry about a note?” I questioned, thinking she must be joking after hearing me go on and on about the damn thing for nine months. Mom nodded. “I gave my heart to that man, Mom,” I began. “Every bit of me went into saving that relationship,” I added, building steam. “Clint returned nothing but silence when I begged for him to help me understand his fear of living his life with me. But I still believed he was worth the effort. I would have stayed and given even more had he asked.”
I began to cry into my hands when Mom came across the room and knelt in front of me. “Then why didn’t you stay?” she asked. “Why didn’t you give more? What was the reason you couldn’t do those things, honey?”
I moved my hands from my face and stared at her through my tears, her questions dawning on me as she asked them.
“You know the answer, sweetie. Do yourself a favor and tell me why you didn’t stay.”
“He’d left, Mom,” I cried. “He’d already gone.”
“And he left that note, right?”
I nodded through my tears. It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t give more. I wasn’t wrong for coming home. I’d had no choice, no reason to keep our apartment. He’d left despite me trying harder, giving more.
I crumpled into my mother’s arms. A space that, despite being an adult, a child can always depend on. Mom held me tight as I wept. I’d spent nearly nine months blaming myself for not working harder on my relationship with Clint. It had to be me that failed. I was the person he depended on to make our love work and I had failed him, and I had failed me. I was the failure.
I pulled back. “He gave up on us,” I whispered. “I didn’t give up.”
“I’m glad to hear you get to that realization, and that might be true honey, but he’s here right now,” she stated. “And guess what?” she added. I looked at her, my stomach lurching at what she might say. “He still doesn’t believe that you have given up on him. The question is, have you?”
I wiped my eyes and studied my mother’s face. She had always known my true weakness in life. A weakness that many would call an honorable trait, but one she’d mentioned she worried about before. I didn’t give up. On life, or on people. And sometimes, that was to my detriment.
“I need to talk to him,” I said. “It’s time he understands my feelings.”
“And you can accomplish that rationally, son?” she inquired, squeezing my leg.
I nodded and smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, Mom. I can.”
I stood at the slider and took a deep breath before opening the door. Mom spoke before I stepped out, but my back remained to her. “Despite everything, Chad. You love him. We love him. Please remember that, honey.” I nodded and slid the door open.
Clint turned when he heard footsteps on the wooden stairs as I descended to the lower pool deck near the guest house. He flinched when he saw it was me. Not a physical flinch of fear that I might still be angry, but more of a flinch of recognition that traveled across his face where he realized that he would have to face me finally.
“Hey,” I whispered, hesitating briefly. “Can we talk?”
Clint stood, his eyes, as always, darting everywhere but toward mine. “I’m not going to be violent,” I stated. “I’m sorry for that, too,” I added.
“That’s okay,” he mumbled, gesturing toward a matching chair across from him. “I waited so we could talk. I hope your folks don’t mind that I stayed so long.”
I sat down and watched as his massive frame settled back into the chair. Clint was a brick wall of muscle. I’d forgotten just how big he actually was. His chest was barely contained in a sleeveless tank top, the veins in his arms as wide as the river Nile. He was the type of guy that if you saw him walking toward you, you might cross the street.
But on top of those mountainous shoulders sat a kind face, creating a softness to his look that betrayed the obvious brute strength he possessed. I knew him as a pussycat and that he would only wield his power if he was actually physically threatened. My tiny, wailing fists caused him zero alarm, and there was no chance he’d ever raise a fist at me.
I studied the man I was in love with before and suddenly realized that my love was still there, just that it had changed. “They are just fine with you being here, Clint. Mom and Dad care about you.”
