Back to You (33 page)

“
No
,” he answered firmly before she’d even finished the question, whipping his head up to look at her. “Stop it. Don’t go there.”

She threw her hands in the air. “Well then give me an answer!” she shouted. “I deserve to know why you abandoned me!”

“Don’t you get it?” he said, jumping up to face her. “Don’t you get that it wasn’t about
you
?”

Lauren shook her head in disbelief. “Don’t give me that. I know you’ve been hurt. I know you’ve lost people in your life. But if you’re gonna stand here and tell me this was about your fear of that happening again, that’s complete bullshit,” she spat. “It’s not fair that you applied that fear to me. I never gave you a reason to.”

“Don’t you think I know that? Don’t psychoanalyze me,” he said with disgust. “You think I’m gonna say it was all subconscious? That it was me trying to protect myself because I was afraid to love someone and have them leave me again? This wasn’t some subliminal self-preservation crap. It was intentional. I
wanted
you out of my life!”

Lauren swooped down and grabbed her wine glass as she pushed past him. “Well, you got what you wanted Michael, so now I wish you’d just leave me the hell alone!”

She stormed into the kitchen and slammed the glass down in the sink, causing it to shatter. Before she could even check to see if she’d cut herself, she felt him grip her arm and spin her back around.

“Let me finish!” he shouted. “I wasn’t protecting myself! I was protecting
you
!”

Lauren was completely frozen, as much at his tone as she was at his words.

He took a breath, and although he kept his hold on her arm, when he spoke, his voice had softened significantly.

“Because if I didn’t leave, it would have ended in disaster. It always did with me. I didn’t know how to have healthy relationships. Shit, I still don’t know if I do. And I couldn’t put you through that.”

She ripped out of his grip and took a step back, completely appalled. “So what you’re saying is you tried to avoid hurting me by
hurting me
?” she cried.

“I had to, Lauren! I’ve been fucking up people’s lives since the
day I was born.
You
know
that. My very existence ruined every life it touched.”

She took another small step back, folding her arms as she stood her ground. “You know I never believed that.”

“Of course you do!” he exclaimed. “You’re just another example of it!”

“But it didn’t have to be that way
!” she yelled, silencing him. “You made that decision! You could have taken a chance! Maybe it wouldn’t have worked out. But maybe it would have been the best thing to happen to both of us. Did you ever think about that?”

He stared at her, saying nothing.

“And now where are we?” she said, her voice breaking. “You had a child with a woman who was a horrible excuse for a person and a mother, and I ruin every goddamn relationship I start. How was that the best decision for anybody?”

“Christ, Lauren,” he groaned, shaking his head in frustration. “You’re speaking in hindsight. Can’t you see it from my point of view? I didn’t trust myself not to screw up with you, so I had to walk away. But if I left, I’d be hurting you. It was a lose-lose for me.”

He took a step toward her, his eyes almost frantic. “I was a scared fucking kid, and I picked what I thought was the lesser of two evils. I did what I thought was right, because in my mind, the alternative would have been so much worse. I thought it would be better to leave you angry but intact than to drag you down with me. You were too good for that. You were too good for
me
. You always were.”

Lauren stood there, digging her nails into her palms beneath her folded arms. Anger, confusion, regret, and frustration swirled in her gut, making her body feel like a live wire.

Michael turned away from her, dropping his head back and fisting his hair before he whirled back around. “Do you know what the messed up thing is? Your freshman year, right after we met, I remember standing in the hall when you were leaving class, and Mr. Benton questioned you about hanging out with me. He said something about being careful of the company you keep. And you told him you’d expect better from a teacher.”

Lauren felt her shoulders soften as her defenses momentarily faltered. “I don’t remember that,” she murmured.

“Well, I do. I’ll never forget that. The way you stood up for me. And I remember swearing then and there that if anyone ever caused you pain, I’d kill them.” His eyes were desperate now. “Do you think I wanted to be the one? Do you think it didn’t rip me to shreds to do it? That I haven’t thought about you constantly since the day I left?”

He took another step toward her. “I’m so sorry, Lauren. There aren’t even words for how sorry I am. I made a horrible decision, and I wish I could take it back.”

Michael’s eyes darted back and forth between hers, waiting for her to speak, but she couldn’t think beyond the surfeit of emotions churning through her body. She could barely breathe.

He looked down, shaking his head. “I just…I didn’t know what to do with us, you know? I never planned on crossing that line with you. It wasn’t supposed to go that way. We were supposed to be friends. I was supposed to look out for you, to keep you away from idiots like me. You were never supposed to love me. I wasn’t prepared for it.”

She exhaled slowly, unfolding her arms as she felt the tiny fissures forming in her resistance.

“I always knew I would fall in love with you,” he said softly, “but you were never supposed to love me back.”

Lauren’s expression fell. “What did you just say?”

Michael looked confused by her shock. “I loved you,” he said, like it should have been obvious. “So much. My God, more than anything.”

All at once, Lauren’s vision tilted, and she reached behind her and gripped the edge of the sink to steady herself.

He loved her
?

No. That’s not how it happened. She’d already determined long ago what went wrong. She fell in love with her best friend who didn’t love her back, who slept with her out of pity because she begged and then ran away to get rid of his mistake. And she had come to terms with his cruelness, with her stupidity, as best she could.

But now everything she knew, everything she thought she had a handle on, was completely upturned.

Lauren closed her eyes as she shook her head, and she heard Michael take a step toward her.

“No,” she said, holding her hand up to stop him.

He hesitated for just a second, but then he took another step toward her, and she took a quick step back and shook her head frantically.

“No. That makes it so much worse,” she nearly sobbed. “It’s so much worse now.”

“Lauren—”

“I can’t do this right now. You need to go,” she said, her voice breaking.

“Lauren, just—”

“You need to go.”

“Please don’t do this—”

“I said get out!” she shouted suddenly.

His shoulders dropped as he stared at her, and she turned away from the expression on his face.

The look of utter defeat in his eyes.

She heard the sounds of him exiting the kitchen, the shuffling noises as he put on his jacket, and then the front door closed softly, and there was silence.

Lauren let her knees give out as she slowly slid down the front of the cabinets until she was sitting on the kitchen floor.

She hugged her knees into her chest as a feeling of panic began to envelope her.

She closed her eyes, remembering the incapacitating pain. The double loss. Not only was her love unrequited, that in itself would have been painful enough to deal with, but in the same shot, she also lost her best friend in the world.

And she never could figure out which one hurt more.

It never healed. She could openly admit that now as she sat up against the kitchen sink with tears pooling in her eyes. It had been more like living with a disability. She had learned to work around it, to accommodate it, but it had never gone away.

All these years, she thought it had been so simple. The boy she loved didn’t love her back. He had handled it callously, and she had been a fool.

But now? He left because he
loved
her? That whole time, he had been in love with her?

She exhaled heavily and dropped her forehead to her knees as the first tears fell.

She meant what she said to Michael. This made it so much worse than thinking he just didn’t want her.

He loved her, but he still left her. And he never came back. Not even a second glance.

How could they ever move past this and start again now? How could she trust him? If he’d been able to crush her when he was in love with her before, what would stop him from doing it again?

And how badly would it hurt the second time around?

L
auren sat cross-legged on the floor, stringing multicolored beads onto a thread of yarn.

“I found another sparkle one!” Erin declared proudly, holding up the tiny gold bead embedded with glitter.

“Lucky girl,” Lauren smiled. “There aren’t that many in there.”

Erin studied it closely before she held it out to Lauren. “Do you want it? Your necklace doesn’t have any sparkly ones.”

“That’s okay, sweetheart. You keep it. I’m almost done.”

“‘Kay,” Erin said, furrowing her brow in concentration as she attempted to get the tiny bead on her string.

As Lauren secured the last bead on her own necklace, she glanced up at the clock and then quickly threw a look over her shoulder toward the vestibule.

There was no way her luck would hold out much longer.

It had been two weeks since Lauren asked Michael to leave her apartment, and in that time, she’d had no contact with him whatsoever. She hadn’t called or texted, which was well within her control, but she’d also managed to avoid him at Learn and Grow, something she figured would be virtually impossible.

Most days now when Lauren’s shift ended, Erin would remain at the center playing with the late pick-up group. And she had started arriving in the mornings before Lauren, or else she would suddenly appear in the pre-K room out of nowhere on the days that Lauren happened to beat her there.

Granted, Lauren avoided the vestibule at all costs, so maybe they would have run into each other by now if she hadn’t been taking such precautions to prevent it.

Or maybe he was taking the same precautions she was.

Lauren felt like she had exhausted all of her courage in the past two weeks. First, there had been the argument with Michael. Then, the morning after Michael left her apartment, she had called Jenn. Lauren apologized to her friend for the outburst and admitted that Jenn had been right about everything, and that it
was
incredibly stupid of her to even entertain the idea of rekindling anything with Michael. She ended the conversation by assuring Jenn she had a handle on whatever it was she was feeling and that nothing would come of it.

Three days after that, she called Adam and told him she had some personal issues she needed to deal with, and because of that, she wasn’t in the right place to continue a relationship with him. He had been upset, but extremely understanding, which ironically only made it harder on her. Truth be told, a little piece of her wanted him to yell at her for leading him on for two months. She wanted him to tell her to go to hell. But instead he told her he still cared about her, and if she ever changed her mind, he would love to try again with her someday.

It made her feel wretched.

After that, she just didn’t have it in her for another confrontation with Michael. And even if she did, there was nothing left to say.

“Is this long enough?” Erin asked, holding up her string of beads.

“Perfect,” Lauren said. “Tie off the end like I showed you and then you can wear it.”

Erin looked down as she worked her little fingers around the yarn, trying to make a knot. After a minute, she said, “I wanted to ask you to come over, but Daddy said I shouldn’t.”

Lauren stilled for a second before she gently cleared her throat. “That’s sweet of you Erin, and I would love to, but I’ve been very busy lately.”

“That’s what Daddy said.” She finished her knot as she sighed. “Maybe one day.”

Her normally bubbly voice sounded completely deflated.

“Hey,” Lauren said, forcing a smile as she ran her hand over Erin’s hair. “I still see you everyday.”

“But you don’t see Daddy.”

Lauren’s smile fell, and she turned toward the supply basket, trying to hide her expression.

What could she possibly say to that?

She took a small breath before she grabbed the scissors and turned back to Erin, cutting the excess yarn from her necklace.

“Are you mad at Daddy?”

Lauren lifted her eyes to see Erin looking at her intently.

Like she already knew the answer.

Even at four, she was too smart to be lied to. “I’m not mad. I’m…” She took a breath. “I don’t know what I am.” Lauren fastened the beads around Erin’s neck. “But it’s nothing you need to be sad about,” she added with a reassuring smile.

When she had finished securing the necklace, Lauren sat back, watching as Erin looked down at her creation and rolled it between her thumb and forefinger. “Daddy never gets mad at me, you know.”

“Oh no?” Lauren asked, beginning to scoop the unused beads into a pile.

“Nope. He only gets disappointed.”

Lauren smiled softly as she took the lid off the bead canister.

“So are you disappointed then?” Erin asked.

Lauren sighed. “Yeah, I guess I’m disappointed. Hey, you wanna have a race?” she asked, trying to change the subject. “Let’s see who can clean up the most beads.”

Erin leaned over and scooped up a heap with both hands. “Daddy said even when he’s disappointed in me, he never stops loving me.”

Lauren forced another smile. “That’s true, sweetheart. Your daddy will always love you, no matter what.”

“Well then do you still love Daddy?”

Lauren whipped her head up. “What?” she choked.

Completely oblivious, Erin dumped two fistfuls of beads into the container. “Even though you’re disappointed. You didn’t forget to still love him, did you?”