Page 74 of The Night We Met

When he finishes, my eyes are filled with tearsthat are begging to fall as I struggle to catch my breath. So I hit him back with a question. One that I stayed up all night wondering.

“Why didn’t you call me?” I hate myself for my voice breaking. “Those last few months were hell for me.”

It’s the one thing I always wondered. How he could go from being my everything to being nothing at all.

He shakes his head before answering. “You have no idea the effort it took to not barge into the sorority house and beg for you back. With the way I ended things that night, I just thought you’d be better off. I thought you’d be the warrior that I always knew that you were, and you’d just move on.”

“There was no “just moving on from you”, Mason. I was broken. You broke me. I wasn’t the same after you. And the fact that the whole campus had a front row seat into my heartbreak was the cherry on top of the fucking cake.” The tears that I fought to keep from falling lost that battle. Gently streaming down my face and making me feel weaker and weaker as each tear falls.

“I know. I have no other answer to give you. Other than that, I am so terribly sorry. I didn’t want that for you.” He pleads with me.

Here goes nothing...and everything. “Loving you, the way that I did was so easy. Mason, you were so easy for me to love. So for you to break me the way that you did…for so long I thought I was the problem. I ran through our entire relationship trying to pinpoint when it all shifted. And for the longest time I thought of what I would say to you. But every time I thought of the words to make you feel even an inkling of what I felt, it would send me into another spiral. I did everything to try and fix myself. I did everything.”

He nods his head. “I understand.”

“No you don’t, not even a little bit. My junior year ofschool, I shut everyone out. I was absolutely broken. I kept making mistake after mistake. I hid behind school. I hid behind alcohol. I hid behind this fear that I wasn’t good enough until I came to some weird epiphany that I’d go nowhere in life if I continued on this path.” I take a deep breath to continue. Talking about the boy I loved to the boy I’ll always love…well the universe never prepares you for that.

“It was the summer of my senior year, where the fight I had put up for the past year was bone deep and exhausting. I was so tired. So I stopped fighting. I accepted the change as it came. That’s where Liam comes into the picture. We were at that back to school party at the baseball house. He came up to me and said everything that I needed to hear. But by the end of those four years together, I realized that it was never what he wanted. At least not as badly as I did. He said those words because it’s what I wanted. My words…the way I treated him.” I bite my bottom lip to hold back the sob that threatens my next breath. “For so long I blamed myself for his death.” Tears continue to slip down my face as I voice the words I’ve only said to my therapist.

I’m grateful that Mason doesn’t attempt to placate me. Because no matter the gesture or the words, no one can assuage my guilt over what happened. I’ve been told that it’s not my fault. And very deep down I know that. I wasn’t the one that made him get into his truck. I wasn’t the one that made him crash his truck. Deep down I know this. But convincing my brain and my heart to get on the same path is a difficult road.

“When he died two years ago, I didn’t know how I would or if I could pick up the pieces of my broken heart again. How does someone move on when their guilt and actions are constantly thrown in their face? Because mostpeople don’t experience love and loss as hard as I have all before thirty, but I did. Most people don’t have to live with the words they said and the words they never said on repeat.”

The words I wished I’d said to Liam play on a loop when the silence creeps in. The guilt keeps me up at night when my mind starts to wander. The breathing and mind exercises I’ve been taught only work for a little while. So in the end I let the guilt run its course until sleep takes me.

“For so long I thought of what I would do and say to you if we ever saw each other again. Now that you’re in front of me saying these things, I don’t know what’s right anymore. You say you want me, but I don’t even know what that means. Because I’ve heard that line too many times to believe it. I don’t know how I’m sitting here in front of you after all this time when all I want to do is yell at you. Because all I see when I look at you is that moment on the bridge. That moment that has played on a constant loop in my mind for years.”

My mind flips back to the days I would sketch that moment on the bridge. I drew it so many times I eventually drew it with my eyes closed. I take a deep breath and steady my heart rate. Looking at him absorbing all that I went through…I can’t feel pity for the pain that he caused.

“It took a long while for me to even be happy again. Most days I’m still so far from that feeling before everything in my life crumbled. And here you are, after almost eight years expecting me to just forget the past. And I can’t do that.” I tell him sounding more defeated than I should.

Mason shakes his head. “I don’t want you to forget the past. Doing that would be selfish of me. And with you selfishness is all I know. But you have no idea how many times I wanted to call you. Just to hear your voice. To know thatyou were doing okay. To know if you moved on. I am glad that you moved on. That’s all I wanted for you. That was my selfishness thinking.”

Mason was always an eloquent speaker. On days we would lay around in his room, he would just read to me. I would float away with nothing but the baritone notes of his voice lulling me to sleep.

I could never forget the way he made me feel when we were together. The love difference between him and Liam, were worlds apart. Still, I felt utterly safe while I was in the other’s arms. I would have given the world to be with Mason, but I wouldn’t have gotten the world from Liam. Is that what it’s like to love and be loved?

Loved? Or love?

“Thank you. I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to try again…with you. Because I do. That whole year after that’s all I pictured. You coming back and begging us to just wait a little longer while you got settled was all I wanted. I would’ve waited for you had you asked me to. But soon I realized it wasn’t healthy dwelling on the “what ifs”, I know that now. Because despite everything I went through, you were the one I wanted to experience all of the accomplishments with.” I get carried away and tell him my silly dreams of being part of a power couple. Labeling us that in college was the start. He would be the star QB for the professional team that drafted him. I would end up wherever that would be. But what I know now is that I’d be my own boss.

“I’m not saying one night is going to make up for years of absence. Because it can’t. I’d like to start over as friends to see how that plays out. But if and when things progress, I need you to know that I’m not dating to date. I’m dating for marriage. I’m dating because the person that I’m with is my endgame. They’re not a pit stop to something better. Thatperson is my something better.” A lull in my speech has me looking over his face. Cataloging every shape and curve of his face that’s only gotten more distinguished as he’s gotten older. “Tell me this, in five years from now where do you see yourself?”

“Married. With a kid or two. Maybe three depending on how lucky my wife and I get.” He answers without hesitation. A smile threatening to break free as he tells me his answer like he’s been waiting for someone to ask him that for years.

The chills that slide over my body hearing the words ‘my wife’ coming from his lips has me envisioning it as me.

“Maybe taking a gig on a sports talk show that allows me to work while the kids are at school and my wife is at work. I’d make sure our family understood that celebrating little accomplishments were just as important as celebrating the big accomplishments.”

It wasn’t a fluke. Chills spread through my body again when he says ‘my wife’. Also a tinge of jealousy as I imagine him with someone else. But still that spark of ember threatens to ignite as I still can’t help but feel he’s placing me in the picture. Selfishly that’s all I want even though I just told him we’d start back as friends. Stupidly, I shouldn’t even entertain that notion.

“I see a life outside of football that’s not all-consuming. I won’t lie and say that it’s not you I’m picturing, because it is. It’s been you since I said ‘I love you’, all those years ago Kamryn. And it’ll always be you. I don’t plan to take this second chance for granted. That’s if I get a second chance with you. I want us to fall in love again, Kamryn. I want the endgame with you.”

Fresh tears form at his words. My breath freezes and my head feels as if it’s floating in the clouds. His confessionon a silver platter just for me. All I have to do is take it. Yet I hesitate. Remembering the last time he told me he loved me that ended in destruction.

“I’m willing to give this another chance, as friends. I want to cheer you on at your games, because that’s what I did in college. Seeing you succeed was all I wanted. And I want nothing more than to see you in the audience at my shows. I want the life you just painted to be a life with you. But I won’t make this easy for you.”

Removing a brick from that wall around my heart, while not easy, I do feel it’s necessary. Not just because of Mason. But because of me and my family and friends. My heart has been hardened for so long that I don’t know it any other way.

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