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“Have you had time to think about coming back with me?” he asked, wasting no time and getting to the reason he’d showed up. If he was anything, he was persistent and to the point. I’d give him that.
My true, calmer self, smiled gently, a reaction far different than twenty-fours previous. “Yes, I’ve had time, Clint,” I acknowledged. “I’ve had the chance to clear my head of the anger as well,” I added.
“I’m figuring you was mad about the note,” he said, once again in Clint speak, getting directly to the point. “Least you mentioned it quite a bit the last time,” he added.
“That was yesterday,” I corrected. “And yes, the note.”
“Not my best,” he acknowledged. “I’m just dumb is all.”
“You are not dumb, Clint.”
“I do dumb shit,” he stated. “Not smart about love stuff.”
“You make up for your inexperience with a good heart,” I said. “I loved you, didn’t I?”
His face was instantly covered in anguish. The painful realization of the word I’d just used in the past tense hit him directly in his heart. “‘Loved?’” he asked, looking away and staring at the water a couple of hundred yards away. “Figured as much from you fighting me.”
“Please look at me.” He turned back, his eyes filling. I knew he hated to cry. He felt weak if he did. “I love you, Clint,” I admitted.
“But you’re not coming back to Beaufort with me, are you?” I shook my head to confirm I wasn’t. “You just can’t do that, right?” he asked, his lower lip quivering as he fought his fear of showing emotion.
“I can’t,” I answered.
“Because you don’t love me like I love you?”
How do you answer a question like that? I was no longer sure that Clint knew how he loved me. And what if he decided that our type of love was once again incompatible with his comfort if I did go back?
What if he shut me out again? But more importantly, I could never trust his love. Not the all-important kind of trust that would allow me to do what I always did, give my all. And I realized I was okay with wanting to give my all. Giving your all is required to achieve great things. I was twenty-two years old. There were great things ahead of me.
“I can’t provide what you need, Clint, and that’s okay,” I said. “And how could I ever trust that I’ll be enough for you? I can be a good friend, though,” I added.
He looked me in the eye as I spoke, and I wondered what he’d heard. Did he understand what I’d said? Really, truly understood? “Lucas did the same thing,” he stated, reminding me of how I’d met him and his brief history with Lucas. “I loved him, too. He didn’t love me, though,” he said softly, looking away when he recognized his eyes filling again. “Come to think of it, Rhonda either. She said she did. Said she wanted me back, but she was only after my money,” he muttered. “I guess I’m not good enough for people to love.”
His words struck a painful chord in my heart. What he just said was how I was feeling after he left. After David died, too. I imagined we all feel abandoned sometimes. Clint was a person who didn’t understand there were rules or a system in place where one is more respectful about how they leave a relationship. He had one simple thought that he couldn’t do it, so he up and wrote a note expressing those exact words because he couldn’t say them to me.
“You couldn’t just have spoken to me, could you?” I asked, finding space in my heart for forgiveness. Forgiving isn’t forgetting, but I had the capacity to do both.
“Wouldn’t have known how,” he confessed. “Didn’t know how to tell ya the truth.”
“But I deserved better than that, Clint,” I stated, forgiving and forgetting, but needing the words to be spoken for me, nonetheless.
“You did,” he agreed.
We sat silently, both of us absorbing the situation. I was sad about what I’d done, and I assumed he was for his part in it, too. For me, having him in front of me was what I had wished for many times. I’d needed a chance to say what I had to say. To point out how shitty what he’d done was. But here he was, and basically he already knew.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, I suppose,” he replied, swiping at one of his boots as he tried to not look at me. “I don’t have anyone, but of course, don’t deserve anyone either though,” he added.
“Who is it you want, Clint?”
“I wanted you,” he answered, gesturing toward me with a thumb. “But I see now that I’m not good for ya.”
“I meant who do you want for your life partner,” I corrected. “A man? A woman? Do you know?”
“Don’t like thinking I’m gay, but I like guys,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I like girls too, but I feel like something’s missing there.”
“How about you see who you like better?” I suggested. “Or maybe you are a true bisexual, Clint.”
