Page 98 of All Her Broken Pieces

Be with Ethan?

All of it.

It’s too much.

I’m not fine.

Babe, I get it. I mean, I don’t, but I do.

I can’t imagine how you feel right now.

But you’re not alone.

I’m coming over.

With wine and ice cream.

Don’t.

He could show up any minute. I need to deal with him, and I need time to process. Raincheck?

Anything you need, babe.

I’m here for you.

I set my phone on the counter right as a knock sounds at the door. It’s soft and timid, nothing like Becka’s greetings, so it must be Ethan.

“Bridget, please, can we talk?” he speaks quietly through the door. I unfasten all the locks and open the door, his handsome face now holding a hollowed expression etched with despair. His green eyes are bloodshot and puffy, a stark contrast to their normally vibrant hue.

His features are drawn and slack, lacking the usual dimpled smile, and his once neatly styled hair now falls in disheveled tufts as though he’s been tugging on it. The weight of his emotional turmoil is evident in every tremor of his voice and the slumped posture that makes him seem smaller than before.

The heartbreak on his face is too much to bear so I turn to the kitchen determined to busy my hands with a meaningless task so I don’t have to face his hurt. I hear the door click behind him as he follows me.

“You’ve got to believe me, if I knew he was your ex, I wouldn’t have brought you there. I wouldn’t have put you through all of that.” I see his hand reach out in my peripheral, so I move quickly around the counter to put distance between us.

There is truth in his words, but a thought nags me, and I blurt it out before I can stop myself. “But you wouldn’t have kept dating me.” Even though my back is turned, I can feel the wound I inflict on him.

“Hell yes, I would have stayed with you. I know this is a fucked-up situation, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you,” he vows, grabbing my hand and forcing me to face him.

He takes a step toward me, so I step back to keep distance between us as I pull my hand from his grasp.

“For fuck’s sake, I lost my virginity to your dad. How is thisourstory? How do I explain that to people?” I shout, pulling at the strands of my damp hair, desperate to say anything that will create distance between us.

“Who says you have to? And who cares what other people think?”

“I do! I care!”

“I don’t. I don’t care who you lost your virginity to. I don’t care about all the other men you’ve been with before me. Those experiences shaped you into who you are, and I love who you are. If everything hadn’t happened the way it did, we might not be the people we are now. You might not have become the amazingly strong, independent woman I fell in love with, or maybe we’d never have crossed paths at all. I believe everything has to happen the way it did to make us who we are at this exact moment. And I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks about that. It’s just me and you.”

Despite the sincerity in his eyes, I flinch. How can he not understand?

“As a woman, I don’t have the luxury of not giving a fuck. I’ve tried, I really have, but I’m constantly reminded that everything I do is wrong or not enough. I have to put on a mask at work to be someone I’m not because if I show my true self, I’ll never be enough. Even Becka only gets pieces of the real me.

“I’m so tired of being a version of myself to please someone else. Be the perfect daughter, the perfect student, the perfect friend, the perfect employee. Be the perfect girlfriend so he’ll fall in love with you. I was so young when I lost my virginity, and it felt like I gave him every part of me, and he didn’t want it. So I made sure that every guy who came after him only got the pieces of me that I was willing to give. That’s why I don’t do relationships. Because this is how they end. I break, and I get hurt.” I will the welling tears to remain at bay. Crossing my arms over my chest, I stare him down, determination on my face. There’s no way I’ll give in.

“You don’t think it kills me to see you hurt?” His deep voice is soft and soothing as he takes a step closer to me, his hands balling into fists at his side.

“The only person who has ever seen the real me is you. You came barging into my life demanding pieces of me. You said you’d never hurt me. And you didn’t. But I am hurt. It feels like life has erected this unscalable wall between us, keeping us apart. This isn’t love. It can’t be. I can’t be in love with my ex’s son. I can’t.”

---