Chapter 5 Nevertheless
Nevertheless
Iknew that laugh.
Sliding off the picnic bench, I tossed my greasy Krippy’s Chippy plate into the garbage can and slowly turned around, some latent, reptilian sense of self-preservation warning me I would not like what I was about to see.
From across the patio, over the heads of far too many other people, Paul’s smile faded as his gaze locked on mine.
The woman seated opposite him followed his line of sight until she, too, clocked me. She turned back to him and smiled before softly patting his hand and nodding in my direction.
He took her hand with a tenderness he’d never shown me.
The chatter and laughter all around me faded into the distance.
He brought her here? To Krippy’s Chippy? He knew I practically lived here. Was he trying to rub her in my face?
Was this some ploy to get me back? He didn’t seem all that heartbroken when I ended things.
Ugh, was that hope in my chest?
I swallowed past the lump lodged in my suddenly parched throat. With my feet glued to the concrete, I stared at the vignette in front of me as if it was a bad car accident rather than the crash and burn remnants of my only real relationship.
And it was heading my way.
Stopping in front of me, he smiled tentatively. “You still love Krippy’s Chippy?”
“Of course,” I croaked, then cleared my throat. I nodded toward the shoreline. “You know how much I love the beach.”
“Yeah,” he ducked his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.”
“It’s fine,” I clipped. “It’s a public place.”
“Nevertheless,” he murmured. “It was too soon.”
Speaking of too soon, I blurted out, “You’re dating?”
I hated myself as soon as the words skipped off my loose lips. Why wouldn’t he be dating? Just because I was stuck in a time warp going over and over our relationship determined to see where I went wrong didn’t mean he was.
He was moving on. That was good.
I needed to do the same.
He bobbed his head up and down a few times, glanced at the woman behind him who studiously looked anywhere but at us, before gulping down a breath. “Engaged.”
All the air left my lungs in a whoosh. My hand flew to my stomach as I wheezed, “Engaged?”
He winced.
I struggled to suck back all the emotion I’d inadvertently allowed to slip. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
I looked over the water. Sought its peace, its certain, predictable rhythm, which was the only thing that made sense in that moment.
Because every conversation Paul and I had about marriage over the last year and a half of our relationship ended with him saying marriage was an antiquated institution.
I waited for him.
For five years, I’d waited.
Anger rose fast and fierce. “I guess marriage isn’t quite as antiquated as you wanted me to believe, hm?”
“Harley…”
I waved his words away. My throat tightened with shame. Confusion heated my face. What was wrong with me? Why was I never the first choice?
“It’s fine. I see the problem was me, not marriage.”
How long did he date her before proposing? Was her fucking pussy soaked in cocaine? We’d only been broken up for eight months.
Eight months and he was engaged?
“No. Yes. No,” he huffed.
“Make up your mind, Paul,” I snapped. “Was I the problem or wasn’t I?”
He took a deep breath and let it all out in one go, his words running together. “You never needed me.”
Tears stung my eyes. “What do you mean, I never needed you?”
He shrugged. “You’re self-contained. Independent. I don’t think it mattered to you one way or another if I was even there most of the time.”
“It mattered,” I hissed, furious with my tears, mortified by the public nature of our encounter, and oh so ashamed of how I’d beseeched him on more than one occasion to move ahead.
Ashamed of the number of times I showed him rings, dreamed about setting up the hall at the resort, of having children with his eyes and my hair, all the while planning other people’s weddings, deflecting his comments about my weight, and countering his arguments about the validity of that piece of paper.
I didn’t love him. Not anymore. I didn’t know when I stopped but somewhere along the way my feelings for him changed. At the time I thought it was all part of the ebb and flow of a relationship. I expected the feelings would return.
Had he loved me the way he did in the first couple of years, they never would have left.
No. I didn’t love him. These were tears of frustration. Loss. Missed opportunity.
Loneliness.
And the sharp laceration of rejection.
“I needed you,” I replied quietly. “I didn’t need your comments about my weight, but I needed you. I needed you to love me.”
He winced again. “Harley, the truth is, I was a douche to you. I was jealous of your relationship with your family. And frustrated that I couldn’t seem to be what you needed.”
“Why didn’t you ever talk to me about it?”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything. You didn’t need me, and I need to be needed.
You wanted me to fulfill the items on your life plan.
Marriage. House. Children. Dog. But you didn’t need me personally.
I was a single piece of your puzzle.” He glanced back to check on the woman behind him. “To her, I’m the whole damn picture.”
When he left, I slipped down to the beach, stepping out of my shoes on the way. Up and down the shoreline, I paced, my stinging eyes trained on the sand beneath my feet.
Seagulls squawked and waves drowned the sound of my shuddering breaths.
I didn’t love him.
It shouldn’t have hurt that much.
I lined my pockets with tiny chips of sea glass. One day I’d take my jars and broken pieces to Rachel at Artitude and make something from all these tiny bits of nothing.
For now, I filled my pockets.
And delayed my return to work because I knew, I just knew this was this piece of news my mother wanted to share to spare me from hearing it from someone else. If I went into work, she’d take one look at me and realize I’d seen him.
I couldn’t bear to see the pity on her face.
It was the same way she looked at me when I warmed the bench on the swim team.
Even though my swim times were better, I filled the spot on the team reserved for the back-up.
Because I didn’t fit the ‘aesthetic’. I never told anyone the coach actually said that. Not even Noelle. Shame silenced me.
The Brady Bunch, tall and slim, their long blond ponytails bouncing as they glided along the pool deck fit well with the other two girls on the team.
But not me. Short, curvy, dark, my unruly mop of hair barely submitting to a scrunchie, my swimsuit two sizes bigger than everyone else’s despite my petite stature.
It was the same look she gave me when the boys befriended me, treating me like one of the guys, in order to get close to Noelle.
It was the way she looked at me when I came home crying because I got picked last for the teams at school though I so badly wanted to play.
But all those rejections paled in comparison to this one.
I didn’t want to hear her platitudes.
He’s not the one for you.
Obviously.
Men are like buses. Another one comes every ten minutes.
Not in Sage Ridge.
You’re too good for him.
Evidently, I wasn’t good enough.
I’m sorry.
I felt sorry enough for myself.
Adding the weight of her pity would crush me.