Before I Ever Met You

“Ron,” he says, examining his fingers as he pulls them away from his nose. No blood. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know…”

“You knew enough,” I tell him, looking him dead in the eye with as much venom as I can spare. “You knew about my family and me and our relationship. You knew I was at the bottom of the barrel with them. You knew it all and you talked to her and you kept it from all of us and now you’ve gone too far. You may have thought you were doing the right thing, you may have thought you were important by being the one person my mother had to talk to. But the fact that you kept it a secret from us all says something else entirely.” My throat feels thick with jabbing pains as I try to swallow. “Goodbye Charlie.”

“Goodbye?” He reaches for my arm as I rip out of it. “Where are you going?”

“Home.” I tell him, pressing my hands to his chest and pushing him away. “Where I can’t embarrass my family anymore.”

I hear Kate honk her horn from the street. I quickly open the gate and bring my bags through. Charlie looks over my shoulder, eyes widening at the sight of Kate in her car.

“You’re actually going?” he squawks.

“And it’s all your fault,” I tell him, not caring that I’m being overly harsh. “When you see Logan later, you can fess up to what you did and lose it all. Or you can keep your mouth shut and keep your job. Your choice.”

“Ron,” he says again. “Kate!”

But Kate is out of the car and quick to get my bags in the backseat and the trunk.

“Kate,” Charlie says again, coming forward.

Kate narrows her eyes at him and jumps back in the driver’s seat before peeling out of the lane with both of us in it.

I’m silent the rest of the ride. I’m heading to the airport way too early, I don’t know how I’m going to handle it. I don’t know what I’m doing.

“I know you don’t want to hear it right now,” Kate says to me later as we pull over at Lydgate Park to watch the ocean, a way to kill time since we are so early for my flight. “But I really do think Charlie will be hurting. I’m not saying this because I like him. I know him and I honestly think he didn’t think. He loves you both, he would have never said anything if he knew this would be the end result.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say with a heavy sigh. My hand still hurts. “He said it and whether it was an accident or not, we can’t change it. My parents know. And it’s just as well. I would have told them one day. I was under the very na?ve impression that they would understand.”

“Ron, there’s nothing na?ve in thinking your parents would be happy for you if you were in love.”

“It’s na?ve when I should have known what they’d do. I thought it too. In the back of my mind, I knew this was all too good to be true.”

“What? Love? Love is never too good to be true. Love is true.”

I give her a look.

She shrugs. “What? People fall in love, people fall out of love. But in the end, almost everyone in the world gets to feel it, live it, taste it. Love is never too good to be true because it is the original truth. And everyone deserves it. Everyone.”

It’s the most poignant thing I’ve ever heard Kate say, which of course doesn’t help.

The tears start flowing again and they don’t stop. Not when we’re pulling up to the airport, not when I’m saying goodbye to my roommate and my best friend here. Not when I’m hauling my luggage through the agriculture inspection and security. There’s no space inside the actual Lihue terminal to hang out without getting on a plane, so I have to say goodbye to Kate right away.

And then the unthinkable happens.

Just as I step through the detector, grabbing my items and carry-on from the x-rays, I hear my name.

Loud, rough, broken.

The voice is a hand reaching over my heart and yanking me into submission.

I look up.

Logan is on the other side of the security gate, Kate hovering behind him.

I meet Logan’s eyes and the world goes still.

This man, this beautiful, loving, loyal man is here for me, fighting for me.

And yet I have to convince him I’m not worth fighting for. After the ring and the note, he’s still here, he’s still not believing it.

I didn’t think my heart could break anymore.

“Veronica, please,” he cries out, loud enough that everyone turns to look at him.

“Sir, you need to step out of the way,” a TSA agent says.

Logan ignores him, staring at me in such pain and disbelief that it knocks the wind out of me.

“Do you know him?” a TSA agent on this side asks me.

Shaking my head is the easiest thing for all of us.

“Please, Ron, we need to talk, come out here, please!”

But I can’t.

“Sir, please,” the agent says, putting his hands on Logan. Logan immediately shrugs him off, beyond agitated, as another guard comes over.

“Just go!” I yell at him before he gets in any more trouble. “Please, go back to your home. I’m going back to mine.”

The lies slice me open. They do the same to him. Kate is covering her mouth with her hands, knowing the pain we’re both in, both of us diced in front of her eyes. Meanwhile, everyone around airport security is watching, waiting for what Logan will do next. They can’t figure if this is a tragic love story or a fucked-up apology. It doesn’t happen like this in the movies.

Logan can only shake his head. Utter disbelief. Fear. Hate. Hurt. I see it all running through his head, projected through his eyes. He doesn’t understand, he doesn’t believe. No matter what I’ve said, he doesn’t believe.

There’s warmth to that thought, even though there’s fear. That he doesn’t believe the note, won’t believe any of it.

But at the heart of it he knows that I have to go. That I wouldn’t do this lightly or otherwise. That I have my reasons.

Maybe on his darkest days he’ll reflect and wonder if the note was truth and that he was wrong. Maybe he won’t.

All I can do is stare into his eyes, past the TSA agents and the passengers and the screening equipment, and tell him to please, please let me go.

Let me go.

I mouth the words.

And then, then, I think he gets it.

He nods. He is living pain.

I am dying, trying to memorize this face and hold it in my heart.

He turns around.

Defeated.

Broken.

Ruined.

And he walks away.

Come back, I want to say. I’ve made a mistake.

I want to run through the screener, push the people out of the way, jump into his arms and have him hold me. That strength, that heat, that love that always has my back. But I remember why I have to do this. That too much will be ruined because of us being together.

I give Kate a small wave but she can’t even return it. In the distance, a chicken struts past them. And that’s when I realize how much I’m giving up. I thought that Logan and my ohana were everything. I’m giving up this island, too.

I’m leaving my home behind and trading it in for a place that never understood me, where I never thrived.