Page 10 of His Bittersweet Regret

“Don’t listen to the littlest Kennedy. He still doesn’t know what’s good for him,” Brixton cut in, but I could see a bit of doubt slip into his gaze as he avoided looking at me. Then they cut to my phone again, something he had been doing more and more the past week or so.

“Have you tried to reach out to her, since you left?”

“You know I have. She isn’t answering and none of my texts have been delivered.”

Brix winced. “Do you think she blocked you?”

“Why would she block me?”

“I don’t know? You cleaned out all your shit from your apartment and left her after a brief conversation telling her it was over,” he reiterated.

“I didn’t tell her it was over. I told her we would see how we both felt after a break in six months.”

Bastion winced that time. “Man, Marsh, everyone knows a ‘break’ is the relationship equivalent of the kiss of death.”

“No. It’s not. It’s just a fucking break.”

“Maybe, baby brother knows more than you do. This is why we kept telling you that you needed to get out and experience other stuff, man. You don’t even know what a ‘break’ really means.”

“And just what the fuck do you think it means?” I asked, getting irate with my brothers all over again.

“It means that you’re out there looking for something better, and if you don’t come back, you found it. If you do come back, then you didn’t find anything that sparked your interest long enough, so you might as well settle for what you had before.”

My eyes were probably as round as my mom’s tea saucers at that point. “Please, tell me that’s not what everyone thinks a ‘break’ means?!”

Bastion bounced his shoulders once. “That’s pretty much the definition.”

“Son of a bitch,” I hissed under my breath. No wonder she wasn’t talking to me. I’d really fucked up.

“You still going out with Tandra tonight?” Brix asked.

I nodded my head. “That was the whole point in doing this,” I shot back at him. No part of me felt up to going out with anyone. Tandra was someone I wish I had met after my break with Opal. Maybe a few months after, to give me some time to heal. As it was, every time I thought about going out with her, my nerves got the best of me. Not because I was excited at the prospect of a date with her anymore, but because I dreaded it.

Once I went out with Tandra, it would make things real and final. Opal would no longer be the last woman I took on a date, kissed, or hung out with. She would be a memory in the realest sense. I wasn’t sure what the hell I was doing anymore because part of me ached at the thought of replacing those memories, of having someone else come in and taint them.

The awful feeling inside my heart was all my own doing. I’d made the decision to do this, so that I wouldn’t one day end up like my parents. They had been thirty years into a marriage, when my father wondered if they had missed out on something more.

“He looks fucking miserable, you should tell him,” Bas whispered to his twin. I glared at them, not even caring what they were talking about anymore. Before any of them could tell me anything – which probably meant they had news about Opal – I stood and went to go get ready for my first date after leaving the love of my life behind.

~*~

“When Cassy told me you had been dating the same girl since high school, I thought she was joking.” Tandra laughed as she admitted that to me.

“What’s so funny about that?”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s just weird to talk to a guy who has only ever been with one woman.” Her nonchalant attitude about having sex with multiple partners wasn’t exactly a turn on for me. Part of what I loved about Opal was that she had always only been mine and she deserved to have the same from me.

“There’s nothing wrong with being true to the person you’re with,” I told her.

“No, but most people our age have gotten around a bit and know a few extra things as a result.”

“How many people have you been with?”

Her eyes rolled up for a minute, as if she was deep in thought and looking for the answer somewhere in her brain. The fact that it was taking so damn long for her to come up with that number was concerning. She was only twenty-three years old.

“Um, I think seventeen.”

I choked on the beer that I’d just sipped. “You’ve been with seventeen people sexually?” I asked, a bit shocked by the sheer volume. If she started having sex at fifteen, like I did, that would mean she had been with at least two people and then some per year since. She narrowed her eyes at me.

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