Before I Ever Met You

Oh, Kauai. Another love lost.

I don’t even know how I make it through the airport. I can’t look at the gift shops, can’t eat. There’s no internet and even if there was, there’s nothing to see or do. None of my music appeals to me, I won’t read.

I just find a spot, alone, and stare at the wall and I sink into a cold, numb state. After a while my heart feels like it has frostbite, where it’s so damaged that you can’t even feel the cracks.

And every now and then, Logan, Logan, Logan, I’ll see him, feel him, hear him and it all seems like such a dream. Such a dream.

Even when I board the plane.

Even when I take my seat, packed in the back of a full flight.

Even when the plane takes off and we soar over the coconut coast before heading northeast for home.

Such a dream. A nightmare.

It doesn’t end.

Hawaii is left behind and this pain doesn’t end.

What have I done?

What have I done?

What have I done?





21





Six Months Later





“So, tell us Arch, where did you go to school?” my mother asks, before she slices a bit of prime rib, spearing it with her fork.

I look over at Arch, knowing he’s been waiting for this question all evening.

“Harvard,” he says proudly, in that way that all Harvard graduates have. Like they’re a bit embarrassed even though they totally aren’t and have to show this false humility.

And why am I dating this guy again?

I think I’ve asked myself that a million times tonight, especially as it was his idea to meet my parents and take them out for dinner. He can’t pretend he doesn’t have some sort of agenda that doesn’t involve me.

But it’s the first time I’ve started seeing a guy since I left Kauai and I know I would never, ever get over Logan again if I didn’t go out there and try and put him past me. You can’t move on without moving on, and so Arch was it.

And yes. His real name is Archie. Archie and Veronica. I know. Thankfully he goes by Arch instead, which suits him a little bit better. He’s a good-looking guy, tall with a strong jaw and sandy hair that flops to the side. I met him through Claire, whom I’m living with now, and she kept on trying to sell him on me, knowing how badly I needed to just get laid.

I haven’t gotten laid, yet, by the way. Arch hasn’t really broached the subject, and despite the fact that we’ve gone out five times in the last two weeks, he’s done nothing but kiss me goodnight. Yet another reason why I think he’s dating me to get close to my mom.

Hell, if it weren’t for him, I would have only seen my mother twice since I moved back to Chicago. I know she thinks that everything can go back to normal, the way it was before, but our relationship before was a real piece of work and strained to the max. Now, I don’t want anything to do with her. She fucking blackmailed me to get rid of the love of my life and I’ll never, ever forgive her for that.

I know I haven’t forgiven myself. I know what I did to Logan broke him in two just as much as it broke me. That may be one reason why I can’t move on, can’t forget about him, why my heart won’t stop aching every single night as I clutch my pillow pretending that it’s him. Because I wonder if I did the right thing. I wonder if destroying what we had and making it all out to be a lie was the only way out of it.

But I also know Logan. And I know that he would have risked everything for me. That man had already lost so much, and he wasn’t going to lose me without a fight. So I created something he couldn’t fight against. Had I not handed back his ring and told him I didn’t love him, had I not told the biggest lie of my life, he would have lost everything he worked so hard to get. I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t have him risk it all in order to have me. I was never worth it.

And so I’m back in Chicago and trying to come to terms with everything. It’s not easy. I’ve been too afraid to include Moonwater on my resume, and I’m still not using Piccolo, so I’m starting over again and working as a line cook in a seafood restaurant part-time.

Claire has been a big help though. Not only is she letting me live in her spare bedroom rent free, but I’m working for the wine store she now manages, doing wine tastings on some evenings. It’s a lot of fun but I miss being back in the kitchen and using my creativity.

I miss a lot of things.

But this is the bed I made and now I have to lie in it, as cold and lonely as it is.

“Harvard,” my mother drones on, eyeing my father with one gleefully raised brow. “Finally Veronica has found a smart one.”

Arch seems to have missed the whole insult and instead grins proudly at me. I don’t give them anything. Since I’m battling my mother, she’s battling me more than ever, doling out passive aggression like it’s going out of style. Luckily I’ve had a lifetime to grow an immunity to it.

“You know Veronica’s sister, Juliet,” my mother goes on. Oh boy, here we go. “She was going to go to Harvard. She certainly had the grades. She was top of the class, valedictorian. Life got in the way, of course, but it was our dream for her.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Arch says, like he’s rehearsed it. “I saw a picture of her at Veronica’s, she was very beautiful.”

I do have a picture of me and Juliet together at her wedding on my bedside table. For the longest time I had kept it in a drawer. I hadn’t even packed it when I moved out to Kauai. I think I was pretending that she hadn’t died and if she hadn’t died, I didn’t have to wrestle with my feelings about her.

Logan was the one who put it all in perspective. It was him that taught me how to grieve for someone you loved but didn’t like. How to come to terms with my relationship with Juliet even though I was the one left to put it all back together. No one ever wants to speak ill of the dead, and people treat death like it erases all of one’s sins. But it doesn’t. And that’s okay.

Of course I figured all this out a little too late. I know that Juliet is gone and our relationship won’t ever be anything but flawed, full of missed chances. But I don’t have any regrets. I wish she was still alive today so I could try to get to know her for who she really was, the person she hid from everyone, but I’ll have to live with what we had. It wasn’t much, but it was something.