Chapter 18
Eighteen
Tedi’s Journal Entry
Eleven years ago
Florida
To my older self,
Tonight was a hard one. We made a decision on the fly, and I’m unsure of it, but I think maybe it’s the right one. Then again, maybe we’ll read this entry again years from now and think we should’ve walked away. Either way, I’m going to give you a play-by-play of what happened so that if we ever want to recall this moment again because things go south with Tweetie, this might enlighten us to the first sign that we weren’t meant to be.
Tweetie had been quiet for weeks. We’d still go out and be pretty much attached at the hip, but he was always staring off into space, and his quick wit had taken a hiatus. I’d known something was on his mind, and tonight after he got home from a late away game, I finally confronted him, my patience worn thin.
He walked in, stopping inside the door, surprised that I was still awake and on the couch.
“Hey, babe,” he said, dropping his bag. He bent over the back of the couch and kissed me hello, but immediately went to the kitchen.
“Congratulations,” I said since they’d won.
“Thanks.”
I heard the fridge open. Since he was going to continue dodging me, I rose off the couch to meet him. We’d been dating for eighteen months, and I had never seen him like this.
He was making himself a sandwich, so I slid onto a breakfast stool and watched him. His movements were meticulous, and he didn’t say anything or even glance at me.
Something was going on. That pit in my stomach grew. Had he found someone else? Someone more loving and more affectionate, someone hotter? I knew I was strong-willed and could be difficult at times, but we were good together, weren’t we?
I hated this version of myself. Hated what my mother made me into by abandoning our family. I repeatedly told myself to be stronger and to never rely on anyone else, yet here I was, waiting for Tweetie to crush me.
“Tweetie,” I said in a near whisper.
At some point during our time together, I allowed him to chip away at that wall around me. And thinking about us ending was crushing me.
“What’s up?” He pretended he didn’t hear the plea in my voice, but I saw his shoulders tense. We both were aware that something was going on.
“Don’t make me a fool,” I said.
He finally raised his gaze to meet mine.
I swallowed past the dryness coating my throat. The armor I usually protected myself with clinked back into place. I was strong enough. I could take this. He wanted to end it? Fine.
“I’m sorry,” he said and stepped back from the counter but didn’t round it to come to me. No, now he was farther away from me.
“It’s fine.” I stood from the stool and climbed the stairs into his bedroom without looking back at him.
Technically, I still had my place, although I was almost always at his.
I pulled out my bag and opened the drawers with my things, piling clothes inside the bag before going into the bathroom. When I emerged with my toothbrush, he was leaning against the doorframe.
He was still wearing his suit, minus the jacket, the flaps of his button-down now wrinkled and out. His arms were crossed, and he watched me. “Where are you going?”
Tears pricked in my eyes, but I pushed them back. He would not get a reaction from me. “I’m going home.”
I jammed my hairdryer in the bag. Over the months, I’d brought too much stuff. It wouldn’t all fit into the bag, and the zipper fought me as I tried and tried again to zip it closed. “Oh, fuck it.” I grabbed the straps, but when I turned, I ran right into Tweetie’s chest.
“Can you give me a minute?” His voice was low, and without me answering, he took the bag out of my hands and placed it at our feet. He sat on the bed and took my hand, guiding me to sit next to him.
“Spare me, Tweetie. I don’t need the ‘it’s me, not you speech.’ We’re done. I get it. Just please let me leave.” I was holding on by a thread. A red alarm was blaring in my body that I was at max emotional capacity and couldn’t hold it in much longer.
“God, I’m a fuck-up,” he said mostly to himself. “You think I want to break up with you?” His face looked stricken.
“Don’t you?”
“God, no, but after I tell you what I’m about to, you might want to break up with me.”
He’d cheated. That was my first thought. Of course he had the opportunity, he must have them all the time, but I had learned to quiet that voice inside me and trust him. Even when he’d go out with the guys, he’d take the time to message how much he missed me and couldn’t wait to be by my side again. He’d cradled that seed of doubt in his palms and starved it little by little with reassurances. And now it was as if he’d put it in a pot with Miracle-Gro soil.
“And this is why you’ve been off?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Tell me. Just say it.”
He turned to face away from me.
“You can at least look me in the eye when you tell me.” My anger was rising even though I really wanted to put on a mask of indifference when he told me that he’d ruined us by sleeping with someone else. That wasn’t something I could ever get past, ever put behind us.
He faced me and separated my fingers until he held just my left ring finger. His two fingers ran up and down it, his eyes studying it. “I’m not ready. I know we’ve been dating for a while and the guys have been giving me hell, and you make me so fucking happy, but I just can’t.”
I tilted my head, allowing his words to run through my mind again. “I don’t understand.”
He dropped my hand, rose from the bed, and walked over to the window that looked out at the Gulf. It was dark, but the stars were out with a half-moon hanging in the sky. “You know how screwed up I am from my dad. I wish I was one of those guys who could just say fuck it and fall on bended knee. Take my chances. You deserve a guy like that.” He circled back around. “I’m not him.”
Tweetie had confessed a few things to me over the years about his youth. How his dad would weave in and out of his life until he just stopped coming around altogether. How, as a result, Tweetie lashed out when he was a teenager, unable to process the anger inside him. But he’d gone through therapy and found an outlet, but I guess not all of his demons were dead and buried. How could I fault him? I had demons of my own.
“That’s all well and good, but I don’t understand what changed between us. Why have you been so distant?”
He broke the distance between us and fell to his knees in front of me, wrapping his arms around my waist and putting his head in my lap. “I don’t know how to keep you.”
I closed my eyes, my fingers weaving through his hair. “Why would you lose me?”
He picked up his head and rested his chin on my thigh. “I can’t marry you, Tedi. I tell myself that it’s no different than what we’re doing now, but then this fear rises up and says if I marry you, I’ll destroy us.”
One tear came and then another until I couldn’t hold them back. His arms grew tighter. I hated to see him hurting so much.
“It’s okay.” The words flew out of my mouth before I could really process them. “I don’t need marriage.”
He peeked up at me, hope filling those gorgeous baby blues, and I wasn’t lying. I didn’t know what I wanted either. I had my own hangups. “You don’t?”
I shook my head, and he rose to his knees again.
“I just need you,” I said, and all that worry and torment washed from his eyes.
“Really?”
I nodded.
“Because I do love you, Tedi. I love you so fucking much.”
I knew he did, and I trusted that everything he could give, he gave me. I loved him just as much, and I didn’t want to lose him either.
We didn’t need a marriage certificate to prove our love to anyone, but even as he kissed me and toppled me to the bed, situating himself between my thighs, one thought haunted me—would his hangup about marriage eventually be the end of us?