Page 114 of Memories By the Shore
“Like you were surprised!” My patience is growing thin.
We’re back there now.
We’re back to that day all those years ago, finally addressing what we never did.
Maybe this is the closure we both need.
“Yes! I was gutted. I lost my baby, my wife, and my entire future in a couple of days.” His hands clasped behind his head. “You threw me aside like one of your expensive shoes.”
“How can you say that? I was willing to give up my entire life to be with you at only eighteen years old!”
“So was I!” he shouts. “I thought we had something special. But I was wrong. Who finds their soulmate as a teenager anyway?” he bites angrily.
“I did love you! I lost all of that too!” I scream in return. “I’mthe one who lost our baby.” I point a finger at my chest, then turn it toward him. “Not you. I have had to live with that guilt for eight years, all alone.”
“That was your choice. You didn’t have to do it alone.” Jasper’s Adam’s apple bobs. “I was there! And I am here. I always have been.”
“You left me in that hospital room to cry and mourn by myself,” I squeak, tears spilling from my eyes. “I was fucking alone! Do you know what that feels like?”
Jasper runs his hand down his face, and his eyes swell. “I grieved alone too.”
“It’s not the same,” I whisper. “It was my body.My job. And I failed.”
“You didn’t fail. There was nothing you did wrong. Sometimes, bad shit just happens,” he argues with a softer tone.
I hear his words, but they don’t scratch the surface of the trauma I’ve carried with me. “It changed my whole world.”
Jasper’s eyes lower. “I’ve never been the same either.”
“I need a divorce.” My stomach clenches. “I need to move on. From you, our baby …” I sniff. “Coconut Grove.”
“Don’t do this. Please.” His eyes are begging, pleading.It fucking kills.
“You’re putting this on me like I’m the one who made this decision.”
Jasper rubs the back of his neck, pacing between the counter and the dining table. “You’re the one who left me.”
“I had no choice. Your depression was difficult for me to understand back then. I was young.” Another desperate tear rolls down my face. “But you never came after me.”
Jasper’s jaw twitches. “I know it was a lot. I was still trying to understand it myself. And maybe a part of me felt guilty about forcing you to carry that darkness too.” He pauses, his eyes darting out the window. His struggle is written all over his sharp features. “I wanted you to choose me for all I was. Just like I chose you.”
I’m barely processing our conversation. It’s emotionally charged and painful. “You know where I’ve been since I left. And chose to stay here and move on.” I suck in a desperate breath. “But I haven’t. I never did.”
“Inever moved on.” He takes a couple of cautious steps toward me. “My love for you has been like a ghost. It has never died.” The wind is knocked out of me. My heart plummets frommy chest. “And you’re the one who’s engaged!” Jasper’s words hold disgust. I know I shouldn’t be ashamed, but I am.
I purse my lips together, swallowing the hurt and guilt and fighting to protect my heart forever. “I am.”
Jasper’s expression darkens, hardening under the midmorning sunlight. He abruptly turns and pulls out a drawer behind him. A yellow manila envelope emerges, clutched in his hands. I stand frozen, immediately recognizing what the document is.
The divorce papers.
He rips it open, flips to the last page in the back, and removes a pen from the same drawer without making eye contact with me.
My breath halts. A dense ringing in my ears drowns out every single background noise. In what feels like slow motion, I watch as he signs his name next to one of the sticky pink arrows.
“Now leave me the fuck alone,” he warns, shoving the stack of papers across the island. Then he leaves, slamming the front door and leaving me alone in his house.
I gasp, forcing a breath. Keeping myself together, I snatch the documents with shaking hands.
