Page 72 of Love.V2
My tear-soaked brain churned through these new realizations. It really had felt good to lay it all out there: Dylan’s workaholic behaviors, how they’d driven me to withdraw, how I hadn’t recognized myself for a long time, until recently.
Jas was right. I shouldn’t have tried to muscle through life on my own.
And I didn’t have to. Everyone at the table remained silent, allowing me to process my thoughts.
“I understand now why he was so focused on success. It just wasn’t whatIconsidered success. He thought he was providing, and I thought it was abandonment. I just pulled away.” Seeing both sides of our story was a real punch in the gut. “I wouldn’t want to marry someone like that, either.”
I appreciated that my confession wasn’t met with empty platitudes about me being enough, or how Dylan was in the wrong. The table absorbed the comment and thought on it.
“I hate to play the doctor card,” Lainey started.
“You loveto play the doctor card,” Jas countered, making us all laugh. Lainey shrugged.
“Ok, well,forgive mefor playing the doctor card, then. And I’m no psychologist, but the way you’re talking about withdrawing and losing yourself makes me wonder if your avoidance is something deeper. Have you talked to someone about all this? A professional?”
“Not since after my mom died. That was…not a good time, and my relationship with my mom was complicated. It all hit me at once, and it felt like a crisis I actually needed help to get through. But this has just been…”
How to describe what it felt like to look up from your life one day and realize you’d been slowly freezing? Every time Dylan walked away, every time I made the choice to sink further into myself, was a quiet, incremental slide into frigid water.
Then, all at once, I’d found myself neck deep in ice, unable to move or feel or break free. It wasn’t like the shock of losing my last remaining blood relative.
“The death of a relationship is its own type of grief, isn’t it?” Jas said. “It doesn’t have to be dramatic. The ending of something so big, however slowly it happens, is its own sort of implosion.”
I’d thought it would be impossible for me to become more limp, but taut muscles turned to jelly, and I slumped further in my chair. “That’s…exactly right.” My tears had run out, but my throat could still signal the emotion choking me up. “I’m not the person I used to be.”
“What changed?” Tiago took a swig from his espresso, nearly black eyes swallowing me up.
“Well, I…I’ve always been alone.” I glanced at Jas, who nodded like I’d just confirmed something she’d known all along. “Then I found Dylan right at this moment when I was ready to strike out on my own. He made it easy for me to be bold.”
I trailed off, voice scratchy. I gulped the glass of iced tea Lainey slid in my direction. “Then, after a few years, when I started losing Dylan…Maybe I felt like it would be easier just to give up. To lose myself, too. I mean, ithurt. He was supposed to be my other half, and I kept reaching for him, but he wasn’t there.”
Nods around the table as they considered.
“You said he started withdrawing into work more?” Lainey asked, biting her lip and staring off into the distance. “When I was going through a tough time, I threw myself into becoming a doctor. I got transferred to the best cardiac hospital and decided I’d be the best resident I could be. Then the best fellow. Then the best doctor. Myex and my friend…they hurt me. I couldn’t control that, but I could control how I did in the OR. I realize now I was self-isolating foryears, trying to avoid being vulnerable again.”
More nods. Jordan stopped by to drop a kiss on Tiago’s cheek and give him another espresso. He nudged the plate of brownies in my direction before he walked back to the counter.
“I don’t know Dylan, so I can’t speak for him,” Lainey continued, laying her hand flat on the table, “but maybe he was reaching, too, and you just didn’t see it? And when he got hurt, he pulled back into what he could control?”
Jas hummed. “When Connor or I hit a rough spot, usually one of us gets really distant.”
“You and Connor have rough patches?” My voice was small and stunned. “You two are solid.”
They were one of the most stable couples I’d ever encountered. They joked and laughed and seemed to genuinely like being around each other. Maybe it was my upbringing talking, but it had never occurred to me that two people like that, so in sync, could have issues.
“Oh, Lord, yes! We’ve been together since we were seventeen. We’ve both lived like six different lives since we met. Two of them in the last year. We work really well together, but not because we never have issues. Because we’re willing to talk about what’s going on. Get on the same page. Sometimes it’s a struggle, but it’s worth the fight.”
I was willing to fight. But you never were.
My eyes prickled again.
The more I gave you, the more you pulled away.Maybe Lainey was right. I’d always assumed Dylan had retreated into his work because hewas more interested in that than spending time with me. Something about the money and the clients and the wins were more compelling than coming home on that random Tuesday to watch TV on the couch. Maybe I’d been wrong, though. Maybe he’d only pulled away because I had.
The thought burned a hole straight through my chest.
“Dylan said earlier he was willing to fight, and I never was. Is that…am I the reason everything is messed up, then?”
“No!” they all spoke at once, but Tiago was the loudest. “You both drifted apart, sure, but he lost himself, too. Besides, it sounds like he wasn’t really fighting all that hard, was he? If he were, wouldn’t he have said something to you when you started getting distant? Forced the conversation?”
