Page 13 of Still the One

I don’t tell her I just had a drag from a joint. Wait. Is she out here looking for me?

“I’m fine. How are you?”

Mac slants her head. “You look funny. Different.”

“Must be the sea air.”

“Hm.” She can probably smell it on me—and she wasn’t born yesterday. “Must be.” She takes a step closer. “Do you need some water?”

I shake my head. “No, but thank you.” I take advantage of the confidence that accompanies my light buzz. “Do you want to take a walk with me?” I ask.

“Hm. Yeah. Sure.” She heels off her shoes and carries them in her hand.

“Great.” I make sure to walk us in the opposite direction of the smoking kids. “Did you need a breather from dancing?”

“No. I’m in excellent shape,” Mac says matter-of-factly, as though it should be obvious. It is. “But you’d been gone a while.”

“You noticed?” I wouldn’t ask so directly if I wasn’t a little stoned, but here we are.

“First time in a room with you in twenty years, I’m going to notice, Jamie.”

“Still. You could have sent Alan or Charles to find me.” I’m pushing it, but I might as well. I may be high, but maybe I can also see this clearer now. We need a little push to get past these first few barriers of politeness and distance. There was a time when Mac and I were going to get married, for crying out loud. We should be able to have more than a superficial conversation.

“Can I ask you something?” Mac says, her voice shooting up a touch.

“Anything.”

“Why did things not work out with you and Cherry?”

She’s really asking me something. I guess what she actually wants to know is whether it was worth leaving her for, to which the reply would be the most resounding no.

I try to laugh away my discomfort, but Mac has every right to ask me this question.

“It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.”

“What did you think it was going to be?” Sounds like she’s gone into journalist mode.

I huff out some air which leads into the most awkward chuckle ever. “I made a mistake.” Only the biggest mistake of my life. “I excelled at being humanly flawed. I fell in love with another woman and instead of letting it go, of letting it fizzle into the nothingness it would eventually become, I left the love of my life. I left you.” And I made everyone hate me, I don’t say. My own father didn’t speak to me for a month after I told him, that’s how angry he was at first. He forgave me eventually, because he’s my dad, but I will never forget that initial disappointment in his eyes.

“Are you still in touch with her?” If she’s affected by what I just said, Mac’s not showing it in her voice—or her line of questioning.

“God, no. It was… she was nothing. I mean, not nothing, obviously, but whatever I had with her was nothing compared to what I had with you. To what we had. You and me, Mac. It was everything and I blew it and I’ve had to live with that for the past twenty years.” It must be the weed making me go down the self-pity route. With Mac of all people. “You had to live with it as well, obviously. I don’t mean that my pain is comparable to yours because of what I did to you. It’s not. I know that I hurt you so much and it’s the biggest regret of my life. I know we’re not supposed to do apologies anymore, but I want to apologize, because I’ve never been able to before and I’m so incredibly sorry, Mac.”

“I think that…” Mac has slowed down. “The reason I don’t want your apology is because I can’t accept it. Because it doesn’t change anything. Not then, and not now. What happened, happened. I can live with it now, but it took me a long time to not look for blame inside myself. For years after, I wondered if I had pushed you too hard or made you do or even want things you didn’t really want. Because I couldn’t for the life of me understand why you would leave me like that.”

I swallow hard. My mouth is dry from the pot—or maybe from this suddenly very difficult conversation. The thing I hate about myself the most is exactly what she just articulated. That I hurt the person I loved most in the world. That I made her doubt herself.

“I was a fool,” I say. It’s still hard to actually say to Mac that I was in love with someone else.

“Was it really that simple?” She sounds as though, even though years have passed, she still can’t quite believe that.

“There was nothing simple about it.” I had the most excruciating choice to make. Leave the woman I’d had a wonderful relationship of ten years with, the woman I was going to marry and have kids with. Leave her for this exciting stranger who crossed our paths and choose a different life altogether. Cherry was seventeen years older than me and child-free. She was vibrant and eloquent and smart in all the ways that excited me. And she was fucking gorgeous. Maybe it was simple in the sense that I couldn’t resist her. I tried so hard. I imagined Mac on our wedding day. I imagined her with our child in her arms. But then I would think of Cherry and my skin would break out in goose bumps and I’d have trouble breathing and my poor heart didn’t stand a chance because it was under the influence of the greatest drug of all time: I was in love as well as in lust. I wasn’t thinking clearly. The chemicals in my brain reduced me to a horny teenager with a one-track mind. It was horrible and amazing at the same time. Then, I slept with Cherry, and the choice was made. My fate was sealed. So was Mac’s. “But it was not your fault, Mac. It wasn’t anything you did or didn’t do. It was all me.”

“If years of therapy have taught me one thing, it’s that it’s never just down to one person when a relationship breaks down.” Mac has come to a full stop. “Maybe Cherry coming along was a blessing in disguise. Maybe you and I weren’t right for each other in the long run.”

“My love life after you would very much suggest otherwise.”

“I can’t have been the one for you, Jamie. You left me.”

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