Page 80 of The Echo of Regret

Bishop seems to roll that idea around in his mind, and I grit my teeth, suddenly feeling that it’s unfair for him to be so clearly upset by this.

“What about you, huh?” I ask, crossing my arms. “I wasn’t the only one to have a relationship while we weren’t together. I heard all about your girlfriend.”

He laughs, though there’s no humor in it. “You think I’m upset because you slept with someone else? Because you dated someone else?” he asks, shaking his head. “Fine, yeah, there’s a part of me that’s…jealous. Okay? I don’t like that there’s been anyone else, but I get that it’s unfair for me to feel that way.”

“So then why are you so upset?” I demand. “I don’t want to be made to feel bad over something that had nothing to do with you.”

He scoffs. “Nothing to do with me? You had an affair with a college professor, and you don’t think it had even a little bit to do with the guy who’d broken up with you a month or two before?”

“What are you talking about, Bishop? You broke up with me, remember? I was in love with you. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. And then you called me up on a random Wednesday and told me it wasn’t working anymore.”

“And you agreed!”

My head jerks back in surprise at his raised voice, but even more at what he’s said.

“You echoed my words right back to me. ‘Yeah, it doesn’t seem like it’s working.’ That’s what you said.”

“Well what was I supposed to do?” I shout back. “Beg you not to break up with me?”

“Yes!”

I laugh, though it’s filled with irritation. “You’re an idiot if you think I’d ever stoop to begging a man to love me, Bishop Mitchell.”

“I wasn’t saying you needed to beg me to love you, Gabi. I loved you more than anything in the world. I’m saying you could have literally said anything." He pushes off the bed. “You could have cried or yelled or hung up on me in anger. But it didn’t even seem like you cared.”

I shake my head, anger roiling through me. All the feelings from back then flood my mind. They’ve been waiting there, for years, waiting for a chance to be purged, to demand answers, to understand…and he’s going to say I didn’t care?

“You’re twisting this whole fucking thing,” I growl. “You dumped me, Bishop. I was devastated. I’ve never felt pain like that in my life.”

Bishop blinks a few times in shock, surely knowing what it means for me to say those words. Considering my past with my mother, for me to tell him the end of us eclipses that pain…well, I don’t say it lightly.

“You’re right, Gabi. I broke up with you. I’m the one who called it quits.” He shakes his head, opening his arms wide. “I was young and didn’t know what to do when my girlfriend started to pull away, so I gave up because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know how to fight for someone the way I should have fought for you, and I will always take the blame for that. But you can’t stand there and pretend you played no part. I might have broken up with you, but you had already started checking out, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

I’m furious.

I’m enraged.

I have this ball of shaking anger inside me and no place for it to go. I want to shout at him, tell him he’s wrong, because there’s no way what he’s saying is true. There’s no way I was the first to push away.

And yet…something in the back of my mind gasps at what he’s said. I scramble through my memories, thinking back to that time, to when I was at art school in Monterey and he was hours away going to college.

I remember loving him more than I’d ever loved anyone. I remember worrying about the distance and what it would do to us. And I remember feeling this looming fear that he would get bored with me and move on, that I was just his hometown girlfriend and his life—on the fast track to success, the golden boy who was going to light the world on fire—was going to take him far away from me. I was scared he would leave me behind, felt like I’d already been left behind, so I…

It feels like all the air begins to leak out of my lungs. I…pushed him away? I…what? How have I never seen this before? How did I never realize?

We stand in silence for a long moment, the echo of regret reverberating around us with all the things we should have said, should have done. A different life might have played out for us if we’d just…talked. Been honest. Refused to let things fall apart.

The idea that all this pain we’ve been through, that it might be because we didn’t trust each other as much as we thought we did…I don’t even know how to process it.

“I’m gonna…go on a walk,” he says, grabbing a room key and heading for the door. “Just get some air.”

Before I can say anything in response, he’s gone. I stand in the center of the room for long moments once the door shuts behind him, unsure of what to do with myself, my mind a mess.

Eventually, I climb into the shower, the hot water pounding down on my body, hoping it will relieve some of the tension lingering in my achy muscles, but the entire time, all I can think about is what Bishop said. No matter what I’ve said about our breakup, I’ve always believed he ended things because I wasn’t enough, because he wanted more, something I couldn’t give him.

Now I realize it’s because he did want more…but from me. He just wanted…more of me, but because I was so sure he was going to leave me eventually, I began to pull back first.

Memories begin to trickle back in, times when he would call to talk and I would ignore him. Or if I did answer the phone, I’d say there wasn’t much to share. He’d try to schedule plans for us to visit each other, and I’d be waffly about my schedule.

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