Page 90 of All I Ask
“You don’t have to explain, Derek. We were kids, you were confused, I was pregnant, and it all fell apart. I will tell you, there is nothing close to the level of heartbreak I felt when I watched you marry her.”
I’ve never felt that level of emotional pain. Knowing he was going to pick her with me standing there. Watching them profess their love when all I wanted was for him to love me the way I loved him. It was excruciating. I wanted to be happy for him, God I tried, but I couldn’t.
There was the man I wanted to marry, marrying someone else.
I couldn’t do or say anything.
I was trapped, watching it, pretending my tears weren’t because my heart was being torn from my body.
When we stopped talking, it was different because he’d already hurt me once.I guess that makes me a fool, but…
He shakes his head. “I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t. But even if you did, would it have changed anything?”
Derek’s mouth forms into a thin line. “I want to say yes, but I really don’t know. I loved Meghan and I was so hell-bent on proving I loved her, then we got married.”
“And she was pregnant.”
He nods with a laugh. “Yeah, there was that. Were you angry?”
I shake my head. “I couldn’t be. You were doing the right thing by marrying her, where Keith was doing the opposite. Besides”—I smile and nudge him—“Derek Hartz is a good man who would always be the kind of man who married the girl he loved and knocked up.”
“Great. That’s what you think of me.”
“It was never a bad thing. I just was afraid that things were going to change even more than my life was already spiraling out of my control. I had hoped and prayed that I could have you at least as a friend. I would find a way, I knew I would, but I needed you.”
And he left me anyway.
“Do you think, in some way, it was what we needed?”
“Is there really a right answer to that?”
He shakes his head. “No. Probably not.”
“On one hand, we were so young and I was…not ready for a real relationship, being pregnant when I felt like my life had imploded, so who knows if we would’ve made it? On the other hand, I would’ve liked to have tried.”
Derek leans his arms behind him, looking up at the sky. “I think I had to lose you.”
I wait for him to elaborate and when he doesn’t, I decide to push. “You what?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but you were…you. You were Teagan, my Teagan. Even when you were with Keith, I knew we weren’t really like that. I had this ridiculous delusion as to what our lives would be and I was so fucked in the head that when that vision was shattered because you wouldn’t leave him, I rebelled. I knew that you would never love me, at least that’s what I convinced myself of. By the time I got my head out of my ass, it was too late. I was married with a baby on the way. I had done permanent damage and continued to destroy everything.” He sits back up and his voice is a little broken. “I didn’t deserve you then. I’m not sure that I do now either, but I know that I would like to try.”
Now it’s my turn to stay silent. All of this feels like too much. Tonight was meant to be a date and now we’re deep into talking about the past and what we could have in the future. I never expected that there even could be a future.
I’ve spent so much of the last decade telling myself this would never happen. None of it. I would never see Derek again, talk to him, and then I stopped allowing him to enter my mind. I focused on being the best mom I could for Chastity. Everything I’ve done has been for her.
Now, I’m at this bizarre crossroads and there are so many more potholes and construction signs up. There’s Chastity, my family, his family, Everly, the fact that our past is murky, and I don’t need murky.
I need clear.
I need to feel secure because for so long, I haven’t been.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“Us. What any of this means and if we’re still stupid kids trying to fulfill some destiny we defined.”
There’s no point in lying, and it’s better if we get this stuff out now so I can move on with my life and stop driving myself crazy.
