“Good night.”
“I love you, Jake and I miss you.” Max imitated my last line. “When did you become so corny?”
“What do you mean? I’ve always been like this. There wasn’t a day that passed without me telling you how much I loved you.”
“Maybe you did, but it was never that lovey-dovey.”
“Whatever. Where are we sleeping? Let’s go get some rest if we’re leaving at the crack of dawn.”
Max bought me a toothbrush, soap, and a small towel and took me to my cabin. It was a good-sized room filled with bunk beds. It was like summer camp in junior high all over again. I slowly walked to my bed and sat there feeling fearful about being alone in this room. Max read me immediately.
“You need me to stay here with you?”
“Would you?” My outlook brightened as the prospect of having a roommate. Perhaps the fact that he was my ex should have stopped me from wanting him in the same room with me but fear got the best of me.
“OK. I’ll take the bunk next to you if you’re sleeping here. You know I’ll get kicked out if someone finds me here. And by the way, what will Jake think if he knew I was sleeping in the same room with you?”
“Trust me, this is exactly what Jake’s worrying about. It wouldn’t surprise me if he got a helicopter to land right outside tonight and took me home.” Jake, I’m really sorry but it scares me to death to sleep in this place by myself. I hope you’ll understand.
Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have gone to bed at 9:00 but there wasn’t much else to do. Max and I chatted for a while, then tossed and turned for another hour till we decided to talk again. Our talk turned a lot more serious than it had been all day. The serious Max from our lunch in Santa Monica slowly reemerged.
“Em?”
“Huh?”
“ Does it bother you that I still call you Em? Should I stop?”
“No. Why would it? That was your name for me. It’d be weird if you called me anything else.”
“Doesn’t it take away from Jake creating a nickname for you?”
“Funny thing, he’s always called me Emi. Instinctively, he’s never called me Em, so that’s your name forever if you like.”
“You seem to be in love again. Will you tell me about you and Jake?”
“I’ll tell you if you’ll answer one question for me.”
“What’s that?”
I didn’t know if I was ready to hear this story, but it had been a nagging question the past year and a half. “Why did you break up with me? Did I do something wrong in the end? Did you get tired of me?” Tears began streaming down my face.
“Em, how can you ask that?” He placed his hand on my cheek and wiped away my tear. “I loved you more than life. Breaking up with you was the hardest decision I’d ever made.”
“Then why did you break up with me? You were my love, my life, my only family. You broke all of that up.”
“Em…” he began to say, “I don’t quite know where to begin with this explanation. Graduation day was probably the darkest day of my life. I didn’t mean to break up with you but everything went wrong.” He rambled incoherently about things that happened that day and all I could give him was a confused stare.
“OK, let me try to start from the beginning. I started the day thinking that I was going to surprise you and propose after graduation.”
So he was going to propose.
“I was truly excited about our future. I ran around making sure that all details were set, staying away from you all day knowing I couldn’t keep my surprise a secret from you. After the ceremony was over, we were going to go to a nice dinner and a proposal was to happen during dessert. It was all perfectly planned out.” He let out a breath and then stalled for a few nerve-wracking minutes.
“What I didn’t factor in was the graduation speech we listened to that afternoon. Do you remember it?”
“No. I don’t remember much about that day but the end,” I said sadly.
“Well, it was a speech about going out into the world after graduation and making something of yourself. During this speech, our so-called future plagued me. There was no job prospect, no plans for more schooling. All I was sure about was my love for you. But then flashbacks of you working so many hours to support yourself and your undertakings to establish a stable life came to mind. Your life had been nothing but struggle the last ten years, and my uncertainty would only add to this struggle. This made me think that we really didn’t have a future until I could get my act together. I didn’t think it was fair to keep you with me if I wasn’t going anywhere.”
“Did you ever think to consult me about my feelings rather than break my heart? Didn’t you know how much I loved you and how your actions would devastate me?”