Page 34 of Still the One

“I still loved you very much,” I blurt out, but I can hardly ask for her sympathy because I was in the impossible situation of loving two women at the same time. Although my love for them was very different. I loved Mac with all my heart and soul. I fell in love with Cherry on a crazy, reckless whim.

“Sure you did.” Mac scoffs.

“I did, Mac.”

“I know it’s not true, because you don’t do what you did to someone that you love. You simply don’t.” She looks away, at the picture of her and me at Rockaway beach, where I asked her to marry me—legally as soon as we were able to, but unofficially as soon as possible. We met Cherry not long after.

“I think you know it’s not as black-and-white as that,” I say.

“Don’t you dare patronize me when it comes to what you did, Jamie. Just… don’t.”

“I’m not. I’m just saying that leaving you was the hardest thing I ever did in my life. That it wasn’t a cut-and-dried decision. That I second-guessed myself every single day. And with good reason, because it also turned out to be the stupidest decision of my life.”

“Then why did you do it? Why did you throw it all away? We were so good together and you just… up and left. For her.”

“I was stupid. Lovestruck. Blind to the consequences.”

“Do you have any idea what that feels like? When the woman you love more than anything falls in love with someone else and she wants to be with that other person so badly, she unceremoniously dumps you?”

“No,” I say honestly. “I don’t know what that feels like, but I imagine it’s one of the worst feelings in the world.”

“It crushes everything you are. It took me a long time to understand that I wasn’t the problem, but you were. I truly believed that I must have done something wrong for you to leave me like that, because I knew you as such an upstanding person with her heart in the right place. A decent woman through-and-through. Someone I could always count on. I trusted you with my life. You took all of that away from me in a flash.”

“Of course, I was the problem, Mac. I told you that when I left.”

“You think I was listening to that? Do you think I heard anything you said after you told me you were in love with Cherry and you were running off with her?”

We’re talking about this as if it happened last month instead of twenty years ago. Maybe this is how it goes when getting closure is too painful—the pain gets stretched out over time and it never gets the chance to go away completely.

“You must know by now how deeply sorry I am about—”

“Why did you and Cherry break up?” Mac cuts me off.

“Because she was a mistake. She made me lose my mind, but when I came back to my senses, I quickly learned that she was the polar opposite of you. She was flaky and unreliable and she didn’t have a plan for anything in her life. I couldn’t live like that. And I missed you. I missed you so much, Mac. I was grieving for our relationship, for the life we would have had. I was such a goddamn fool.”

“You had your midlife crisis twenty years too early.”

Is that a joke? It’s unexpected but certainly not unheard of with Mac.

“I should have bought a sports car instead.”

“You’d already bought that expensive new oven. There was no budget left for a sports car.” Mac exhales deeply. She takes a few sips from her Manhattan. “Since seeing you again, I have realized what my biggest problem is.”

“What’s that?”

“Hard as it is to admit, I never got over you, Jamie.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t know how to then, and I never managed to figure it out since.” A tear slides down her cheek. “I had time. I had all the time in the goddamn world. And time has helped and healed my wounds, but… I’ve never been able to get you out of my system completely, which is the main reason why I didn’t think we should see each other again. Look at what happened in Maui. Twenty-four hours in the same hotel and I couldn’t stop myself from kissing you. What’s that all about?” She knocks back the last of her drink and dangles the glass between her fingers. Tears are streaming freely down her cheeks now.

I’m not sure what I should do. I figure just letting her talk is the best thing, to just get her feelings out—although I’d much rather hold her in my arms and kiss those tears away.

“No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop thinking about you,” Mac says. “About that night in Maui and about all those other countless nights we had together. It feels so wrong, like something I should not be doing. Like I’m betraying myself.”

“I can’t stop thinking about you either, Mac.”

“I want you out of my head so badly, because it’s tearing me apart.” Mac sniffles and wipes something off her nose. “If I’d known it was going to be like this, I would never have gone to Sandra’s wedding.” I don’t think she heard what I said. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to hear it. Maybe it only makes things worse. “Another clock that can’t be turned back.”

“But, Mac, it doesn’t have to be such a bad thing,” I whisper. I’m afraid to actually say the words out loud.

“Maybe for you.” Her eyes are red and moist. “For me, there’s nothing good about it.” She looks away, then moves. She puts her empty glass on the dining table. “I can’t walk away, but I can’t stay either. It’s emotional torture.” She grips the back of a chair so hard, her knuckles turn white. “That’s basically the story of my life since you left. Before that, I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted to marry you and have four kids. You know that’s what I wanted more than anything, more than being a sports reporter, I wanted to be a mother, and I wanted to be your wife. It was so crystal clear to me. But then you fell in love with Cherry and it’s not because you suddenly disappeared from my life that I didn’t want those things anymore. And I tried, Jamie. I seriously considered getting pregnant on my own, but I couldn’t go through with it, because I grew up with a single parent and I didn’t want that for my kids. You know my mother. She’s strong and amazing and I love her to pieces. She did her very best for me, but I was still always alone as a child. She was always out working and no matter how admirable that is, I’d rather not be a mother than a mother to a child like the one I had to be.”

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