Page 107 of Lily In The Valley
She sat back on the couch, crossed her legs, and picked at the hem of her hoodie. “You know what’s funny?” she said. “You try so hard to make it look like you were present. As if I didn’t notice when your mind wandered off, probably to wherever she was.”
“Tasha”
“No, let me finish.” Her voice rose. “You want to be a good guy. You want to do right by me. You show up, give what you can, but never all of it. I knew from the beginning you weren’t going to stay.”
I breathed through my nose.
“You’re not wrong,” I said. “And I’m not going to sit here and defend something that doesn’t feel fair anymore. To either of us.”
She looked at me, waiting for the part where I tried to deny it. To chase her, get back in her good graces so we could live happily ever after. But it didn’t. And I think that broke the spell.
Her lips curled. “Wow. That’s it?”
“No,” I said. “But I’m not going to argue the truth. You deserve somebody who can give you all of them. Not someone who keeps looking back at what he lost.”
She flinched, even though I said it gently, it still stung.
“You know what the messed up part is?” she asked, her voice rising again. Now, she’d started pacing in front of the TV. “I believed you could be different. I thought I’d finally found someone who didn’t come with ghosts.”
“I tried to be.”
“But you weren’t.”
“No,” I replied. “I wasn’t.”
She stopped pacing, turning to me. “Why can’t you give us a chance?”
“I did.”
“No, you didn’t. Not with your heart.”
That landed. I nodded. “You’re right.”
Tasha crossed her arms. “So, what was I? A placeholder? A warm body while you waited for your feelings to change?”
“No,” I said. “You were kind. You were honest with me. You gave me space when I didn’t know I needed it. But I never stopped bleeding.”
She blinked. “That’s not love.”
“I know.”
“And it damn sure ain’t healing.”
“I know that, too.”
She shook her head, jaw tight. “You men swear you’re so self-aware just because you don’t raise your voice.”
I stayed still.
“I was trying,” she said, biting her words. “I bent. I made space. I met you where you were. And every time you looked at me, I felt you measuring the distance between what I gave you and what you lost with Kelly.”
“I didn’t mean to”
“But you did! You meant to keep yourself guarded just enough so if I ever walked away, you could say you never really opened up.”
“I couldn’t open up something that was already locked down.”
She was grieving the version of us she had dared to imagine. A version she dreamed of in her mind. A version we could never be.
