Page 51 of The Last Kind of Kiss
“You’re not going to say anything?” I yell at him, not caring that the rest of his teammates are probably listening through the ceiling vents downstairs. “You’re not going to say anything after you disrespected me? Twice? After you used me and then decided to drop me?”
No, I’m not butthurt because he clearly doesn’t reciprocate my feelings. I’m enraged that he continues to lead me on, I continue to fall for it, and he wastes my time taunting me with a future I can never have.
I want to hit something. I want to scream at the top of my lungs. I want to have a meltdown and bang my fists on the ground like a fucking toddler. Every emotion is storming through me right now, necessitating the first tears to splatter my cheeks, and I redirect my full-body tension into closed fists, feeling my nails print crescents into my palms.
After a full minute of silence, Bristol responds. His voice isn’t apathetic…it’sempty. Unpurposefully empty. So analytically clinical that it erases all the warmth I’ve grown to love. “You’re right. You’re right about me never giving you my all, even though you deserve it. Even though Iwantedto,” he whispers.
I stare at him in disbelief, spitting out the empathy that he’s trying to force-feed me. “If you wanted to, why weren’t you just honest? I’m not going to stand here and treat you like a child to try and get you to communicate with me. I have…I have more respect for myself than that,” I snap, though disingenuity booms in my ears like an atomic bomb.
His entire upper body is hunched over, and ruinous sorrow devastates the features of his face. “I think…” He swallows, his expression shifting more toward unease. “I think you deserve to know the truth.”
“Oh, Ideserveto know now? How thoughtful of you. Truly.”
“I’m sorry. I meant…fuck, I don’t know what I meant, Lila. I should’ve been honest with you when we started seeing each other. I let this secret affect our relationship. I let this secret destroy what we built. And I’d do anything to take it all back and start over. If I hadn’t been a gigantic coward, you would’ve never questioned your worth or how much I care about you.”
I slowly make my way over to him, plop down on the bed, and call on the gods above to give me enough strength to refrain from wrapping my arms around him. We’re sitting right next to each other, but we’re worlds apart. I have no idea what he’s about to say. All I know is that it has the possibility to permanently destroy us, and I’m not sure if that’s a chance I’m willing to take. My mind’s running laps, practically quantum jumping to the worst conclusions.
But nothing—and I meannothing—could have prepared me for the severity of the truth.
When Bristol fully looks at me, he doesn’t dab the moisture clinging to his lashes. He’s barefaced, finally letting me hold his heart in my hands. “There was…I…”
I give him room to continue, nodding my head encouragingly.
He exhales deeply, and it’s as if that single breath carries all the pain in the world. “When I was in college, I was…I was engaged to my long-term girlfriend, Summit. Or, I wasgoingto be engaged if she said yes.”
Oh my God. Bristol was going to be engaged? I feel like the truth’s a double-edged blade that’s just gutted me down my belly. How could he keep such an important part of his pastfrom me? Does he still have feelings for her? Is that why he’s had reservations this whole time? I’m a fucking fool. Of course there was another woman.
I gnash my teeth together to hide the quivering of my lower lip. The tears are still there, eager to trace the prior track marks, and a torrid heat infiltrates my head.
“I’m not going to downplay anything. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I wasn’t unconditionally in love with her. At the time, she was my everything. She made me a better person. She brought out a side of me that never existed before, and I was so adamant to hang on to that. She was it for me, you know? I was ready to share the rest of my life with her. I was ready to spend every waking day basking in her light because she scared away the dark.”
A sob—a terrible, guttural, all-human sob—shatters the bedroom, plucked from the very depths of his heart. “I was planning to propose to her around the holidays. The streets were packed with people coming into town. She was on her way home from work, and she was taking longer than expected. I got worried. I…”
And then, the worst feeling manifests in my gut. A feeling I can’t explain. A feeling so raw and powerful that I fear for the consequences it will bring in its wake.
“I texted her,” Bristol says, squeezing fistfuls of his sweatpants between his fingers. “I texted her, and she took her eyes off the road, and she…she was hit by an oncoming truck.”
I immediately cover my mouth with my hand. Even though I didn’t know this woman, the tears spring into action, sullying my skin. My lungs cave in, my throat dries up, and my stomach turns with acrid nausea. This isn’t the truth I wanted to hear. This isn’t the reality I wanted to live with. Bristol may have treated me badly, but that doesn’t mean he deserved to endure something so traumatic. I can’t even imagine what he’s gonethrough. I’ve been lucky enough to evade loss in my family, but I know that a lot of people my age have experienced more loss than I ever will in a lifetime.
“She was killed on impact.”
There isnothingI can say to make him feel better. And to think that all this time he’s been shouldering this grief privately. How could I have ever hated him? How could I have blamed him for his actions without knowing what prompted them? How could I have yelled at him when he was trying to heal?
“Bristol…”
Wails impede his sentences, water and snot and spit slathering his face. Every time he tries to breathe, it turns into a sickening choking noise that I’ll never be able to get out of my head. “S-she’ll never know that I w-was planning to p-propose to her. S-she’ll never know h-how much I l-loved her,” he cries, taking a wrecking ball to his own fortified defenses and finally letting me in after a year of exile.
No longer swayed by my frustration, I embrace him without a second thought, and his large body racks with bawls that vibrate through me. He clings to me like a baby, nose nestled into my neck, arms squeezing me with enough strength to fracture glass. I try my best to ameliorate his pain as I rub circles on his upper back—coaxing him with hushed whispers—but the fountain of tears is bottomless. He’s kept everything pent up since the accident happened, giving every negative feeling the chance to fester. Now I’m watching, helplessly, as they overpower him.
“She knew, Bristol. I can promise you she knew. If you loved her with an ounce of the compassion you’ve shown me, there’s no doubt in my mind that she knew.”
“It’s all my fault. I was the reason she crashed. If I hadn’t texted her, she wouldn’t have looked down. If I had just waited a few more fucking minutes, she would still be here today.”
I gently pull back from him, taking his face in my hands. “It wasn’t your fault. Please tell me you know that. I need to hear you say it.”
He eschews eye contact, trying to rip himself away from me, drowning in the rivulets of tears slipping down his nose and into the part of his cracked lips. “I ruined everything, Lila. It was my fault. It was my fault. It was my faul?—”
“Bristol, stop. It wasn’t your fault. I can’t…I can’t listen to you blame yourself like this. It was an accident. There’s nothing that you could’ve done, or she could’ve done, that would’ve changed the outcome. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that you’ve had to live with this pain. And I’m so sorry that all I’ve done is give you shit because of it.”
