Page 53 of His Bittersweet Regret

I scrunched my nose, whether in distaste or disbelief I couldn’t be certain. Probably a mix of both. “That is the grossest thing you could have ever said to me.”

“What? Why?” His voice grew excited, and I could see it plain on his confused face that he had no clue what he’d just implied.

“All you could think of was me? So, you went out on dates with a bunch of other women, and you thought of me?” He nodded his head. “Did you think about how knowing you were with other women made me ache like my heart was going to beat right out of my chest and I would die?”

Marsh’s mouth dropped open in shock. I continued to stare at him, not allowing him the opportunity to escape the pain he’d put me through. No answer came from him, but it didn’t need to. I was going to make my final point to him, so that he understood just how completely he had ruined us.

“You keep mentioning these six months, like there was some sort of hallmark event that was supposed to happen. What did you think would happen after six months trying to find an upgrade for a girlfriend?”

“I was never looking for an upgrade. That could never happen,” he denied.

“Then why were you looking at all? If you already had the best person for you, then why were you out there searching for something else?”

“I thought we needed to both experience the things we never did when we were younger, so that neither of us would have doubts later, like my father did. I meant what I said, I only thought of you during that time.”

I scoffed at that. “So, when you were fucking Monica unprotected you were thinking of me? Thinking of the diseases you would bring home in a couple days? Thinking of the baby that you’d have me raise if you knocked her up?”

“I wasn’t thinking about anything, except how angry I was that some other man put a baby in your belly and you didn’t seem to wait very long before you went there with someone else,” he yelled at me.

I shook my head. “It never occurred to you that you were the asshole who left me with a baby in my belly to go off and sleep with other women? You thought so little of me that you left without so much as a conversation, and your first thought upon seeing me pregnant was that I was somehow more of a whore than you were, and slept around?”

“Opal, that’s not fair. What was I supposed to think?”

“I don’t know, Marsh, maybe that you left me so fucking heartbroken that I couldn’t function for months on end, especially since I was carrying your baby and having to listen to the gossip about your latest dates around town. You couldn’t even respect me enough to go on your dates somewhere else. No. I had people sending me pictures of you. Did you know I had to change my phone number to get it to stop? And all the while, I was sick every day because the baby we made together didn’t like the smell of food, or my anxiety, or my sadness.”

“Opal,” his voice broke as he spoke my name with so much anguish that I almost felt bad for him. Then I remembered how much I had endured so he could have his freedom and not live with the regrets of ‘what if’.

I shook my head again. “No. Marsh, just no. You don’t get to feel bad about that. It’s what you wanted.”

“It’s not what I wanted. It’s never been what I wanted! I didn’t want to see you in so much pain…”

“What in the hell did you think would happen when I got home that day to find the apartment cleaned out and have a less than five-minute conversation where you told me that you needed six months to date other people? Did you think I would be happy about that?”

“Opal, I swear, I thought I was doing right by us.”

“Doing right by us would have been you realizing that we were happy already. It would have been you putting your friend and your brothers in their place instead of standing back, quietly letting them insult me for years while they were belittling our relationship. You put yourself in that situation and kept yourself there, Marsh. No one else. And now, you have regrets about your decision. Imagine that. You went from not wanting to have regrets about staying with me to having regrets about throwing me away and losing me forever.”

“No! Don’t say that! How can you say that?”

“Because it is the truth. You think I want a man who would so easily cast me aside for others? Who would think the worst of me and go sleep with another woman as an act of revenge when I did nothing wrong? You think I want a man who values everyone else’s opinions above our relationship? I don’t want you anymore, Marsh. If I hadn’t been pregnant, I would have already been dating, or moved to another town to start my life over without you. That would have been the better option for me. Since you left me with child, I don’t even get the dignity of a fresh start in a town where I haven’t been made a mockery of.”

“Fuck!” He hissed under his breath as he turned away from me.

22

Marsh

There were moments, since I made the decision to take a break from my relationship with Opal, where I felt like there might be no going back. I’d always talked myself out of those thoughts. I knew, deep down, that we were always meant to be together and for whatever reason, I never really thought about the situation from her perspective of hurt and anger. There was only the inevitable result that she would want us back together just as much as I did.

“I don’t want you anymore, Marsh.” I wasn’t sure if I heard anything else she’d said since coming into her shabby little apartment. Those words were on repeat in my head just as the pain of their meaning stabbed me in the heart. Repeatedly.

“I don’t want you anymore, Marsh.”

She couldn’t mean that. It couldn’t truly be over. My eyes drifted back to her belly, the one cradling my son as he grew inside her. We were about to be a family in the way I’d always dreamed of, but I’d already missed so much. Missed holding her hair back as our son made her sick. I missed all those doctor appointments, getting to see my son move around on ultrasound. I missed finding out, with her, that we were having a boy. And now, she was telling me that I’d miss out on nights snuggled up with them. I’d miss out on the happy family meals I always dreamed of having with her and our children.

There weren’t going to be any family moments to hang on the wall of the house that I purchased for us. She was telling me, in so many words, that I would have to settle for every other weekend visits, a few weeks in the summer, and maybe every other holiday and birthday. We wouldn’t be doing those things together. Our son’s first Christmas would be spent at one house or another, not enveloped in the love of his two parents as he joyously opened gifts. Okay, a baby probably wouldn’t be joyously opening gifts, but that wasn’t the point. By the time he got to the place in life where he bounded in early in the morning before the sun even rose, to wake his parents for present time, it wouldn’t be to a bedroom I shared with his mother.

I wanted to argue with her, tell her something that would magically wipe out the past six months of my personal stupidity. Six months of suffering that wasn’t worth it. Well, shit, seven months now. I didn’t consider the past month as part of that period though, since I had been dedicated to winning my woman back.

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