It's now or never. Time to dig deep and figure this out. I need to fix this with Jesse so I can escape this screwed-up existence I call a life. I've learned over the last four years there is no escaping it, this really is my life. Suck as it might, you either live it or leave it. I glance over at the tiny brunette leaning against her kitchen counter with a glare that should be melting my face. Somehow it just makes me smile instead. She looks like a tiny, pissed off fairy–a description that would surely earn me even more of her pixie wrath. As my eyes slide over her, I realize that leaving Jesse isn't an option. Caleb was right, I've committed.
I walk to the kitchen cabinet, grabbing Kara's bottle of Vodka, and pour us both a shot. I'm going to need this if I am possibly going to get through this conversation. I'm about to rock her world, and I know because this revelation just rocked mine.
Tipping back the glass and pushing one towards her, I start. "Jess, I had a wife and I loved her with every fiber of my being. She was my life for seven years. She was my best friend, and I miss her...a lot. Yes, I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with Sarah, but it didn't work out that way. She’s gone, forever. You can't hold that against me. I lost her four years ago, but it took meeting you to realize I lost myself on that same damn night."
Jess starts nibbling on the edge of her thumb nail nervously like she so often does.
"What if one day she changes her mind? I mean...what if she isn't really gone."
"Yes, she is still breathing, but the woman I loved is dead. Jess, I can't change my past. I was lucky enough to meet a woman at twenty-one, fall in love with her, and spend seven of the best years of my life with her. Did you know we planned to have three kids? We had all these silly names picked out. There was supposed to be a little Danika and Hephzibah running around tearing shit up right now. God, those names were ridiculous," I smile and laugh to myself.
"She wanted unusual names, something about her name being so plain, and I could not have given two shits what she named them. They were going to be ours, and that was enough for me. We wanted to move to Georgia. Live on the coast. Buy a big house on the water, and spend our weekends lounging on the dock arguing about who won last night’s Jeopardy challenge. That is all I have ever known about my future. Those were our plans. Then one day I woke up, and just like Sarah, everything was gone," I pause to take a breath and Jess pounces.
"Jesus Brett, why are you telling me this? This is exactly our problem. You're sitting here reminiscing with a Cheshire cat grin on your face. You have dreams, and the perfect little story-book life of you and Sarah in your head. How am I supposed to compete with that? I struggle every single day knowing I have to share you with her. I can't do this, I can't be her replacement." She wipes a tear away from her eyes while scanning the room for an escape. "You need to go."
"Please shut up...it's about to get better, I swear." I take two steps closer, effectively blocking the doorway in case she decides to run.
"No, you need to leave." She crosses her arms over her chest in an adorable display of attitude.
"Christ Jess, stop running. You are always running from me, just hear me out. I have a point. I'm not trying to rub anything in your face."
"I don't want to hear you out!" she shrieks in a tone unlike anything I have ever heard before. "Call me a quitter or whatever you want, but I can't live like this. Everything I do, it always flashes through my mind 'what would Sarah do.' She was your perfection. She was your happily ever after. It's fucking exhausting living in her shadow. I can't do it anymore. I love you, I really do. But damn...at some point you have to say enough is enough. This," she frantically waves her finger between us, "is not working."
I run my fingers through my hair as I look around the room, hoping for some sort of divine intervention.
"Clearly, we are having some sort of miscommunication because this," I wave my finger between the two of us the same way she did, "is very much working."
"No it's not. This relationship is crap. I am the only reason it's even a relationship at all. If it were up to you we would be nothing more than friends who have sex. I'm sick of pushing you for more. It's not going to happen and I have to accept that. I get that you're scared. You had your life snatched out from under you. I can even see why you would be hesitant to get back into a relationship. If things had slowed down back in September, none of this would be happening right now. You can't honestly think we have been taking this slow.
"I'm not some crazy woman who's in a rush to get married and settle down. I'm definitely not trying to force you into some big serious relationship if you aren't ready. Brett, it kills me that you are the only one who doesn't recognize how you feel. I can see it in your eyes, I'm not stupid. I know you love me. I can feel it when you make love to me. Yep, I said it. It's making love when we do it, not fucking!"
She pauses to take a deep breath, and just as she did earlier, I jump in before she can say anything else.
"Did you just say fuck?" I ask at what I will later learn to be, 'completely the wrong time.'
"Oh my God, did you not hear anything else I said?"