41. We Are Going To Fight
41
WE ARE GOING TO FIGHT
“I ’ll get it,” Justine said the following Saturday when his doorbell went off. “Your hands are covered right now.”
He laughed over the silly look she was giving him. Neither one of them was all that great in the kitchen with anything other than the basics, but she had this brainy idea to try to make fresh bread.
He was the one with his fingers covered in sticky dough while he tried to knead it and she gave instructions as she busted on his biceps flexing.
Maybe he was purposely doing it more than he should, but it made her laugh and that was all he was trying to do.
They were in a good spot and he didn’t want anything to change that.
“Is Garrett here?” he heard a familiar female voice ask and felt every nerve stand on end.
“Yes,” Justine said. “I’ll get him.”
He grabbed a towel and wiped his hands as quickly and aggressively as he could.
That was what he felt right now.
Aggression that his happy world was going to be turned upside down once again.
“Taylor,” he said when he took those few steps into the living room and saw his ex standing in the foyer of his home. “What are you doing here?”
Taylor looked at Justine. The difference was night and day between them.
Taylor was a brunette, about five foot six, and on the curvy side.
Visually, the complete opposite of Justine.
“When I heard you moved to the island I thought maybe we could talk or work things out. It’s what I’ve wanted and, well, you know.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve been done for over a year. You made it very clear what you wanted and this island wasn’t it. I’m not sure what this is about, but we have nothing to say to each other. Or I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
Taylor’s face scrunched back as if there was a putrid odor in the room.
Yep, there was. The shit he was going to have to clean up now with her appearance.
“You’ve never talked to me this way before,” Taylor said.
“Maybe I should have,” he said. “If there isn’t anything else, sorry you came all this way. Maybe you should have reached out first and I could have saved you the trouble.”
“I guess I should have,” Taylor said. His ex looked at Justine. “Good luck with him. He’s never what he seems and just drags you along until he’s ready to decide for himself. Just like now. He’s never talked like this before.”
Taylor turned and walked out of his house and he looked at Justine.
“An ex?” she asked.
“Yep,” he said, marching back to the kitchen to wash his hands and get the remaining dough off that he wasn’t able to roughly yank with the towel he’d had in his hand.
“Want to explain that to me?” she asked.
“It’s not like I’ve got a choice,” he said.
“We all have a choice,” she said. “I asked if you wanted to talk about it. I’m not going to take someone’s word about you as a person, least of all an ex, without hearing your side of it. I feel I know you fairly well at this point, but I have to admit it was confusing on some levels and then others not so much what she’d said.”
Not what he wanted to hear. “What level isn’t confusing?”
“Well, first the part about you making decisions. That’s confusing. I don’t think that is the case or I hope not. We’ve had this talk before about secrets and working things out as a team so I’m going to hope you didn’t withhold this after we’ve already been around the block on your neighbor and cancer diagnosis.”
Shit.
She was right.
He should have brought this up.
He’d had more than one opportunity to do it and made the conscious decision to not.
Which meant she’d look at it as hiding.
“What else?” he asked. “That’s confusing?”
“Your tone of voice with her. She’s right. It’s not a side I’ve seen with you either. You have a ton of patience with everyone and didn’t just now. So I can agree with what she said, but the question is why? It makes me want to jump to guilt and I’m trying my hardest not to do that.”
“I appreciate that,” he said. “I can tell right now we are going to get into a fight because anything I say is going to come off wrong. I don’t want that to happen.”
She narrowed her eyes. “If you know it will cause me to be upset, then that is why you haven’t brought her up before? So you have kept her a secret? Or is this the ex that didn’t like your job? I get that, but you never said more.”
“I don’t know about all of your exes,” he said. “I don’t question you on it.”
“Nope,” she said. “You don’t, but if you asked I’d tell you.”
“You haven’t asked,” he said.
It was like the top of the tea kettle went off. “You’re kidding me, right? I need to do that? If anything in my life was going on that involved an ex and it felt like the timing was there to voluntarily say something, I’d do it. I think that is the problem. I’m willing to bet what you’re going to tell me is that you had ample time to bring up Taylor and you didn’t for a reason. Am I right? That’s why you think we are going to fight? It was more than just she didn’t like your job?”
There was no getting around this.
Justine’s face was red and she was getting worked up but trying to hold it in.
He was going to have to tackle this head-on and take his lumps.
“Yes,” he said. “I want to argue I’m a wuss, but that isn’t the case here. This was personal. Taylor hurt me and I don’t like to relive it. The fact she just came knocking at my door acting like this was what she wanted and I didn’t give it to her is a load of crap. She’s the one that couldn’t give me what I needed and she walked because she couldn’t handle it.”
“When?” Justine asked. “I want to say recently, but not since we’ve been dating. I’d know otherwise and you’re not a cheater.”
“Fuck no,” he said strongly.
“And there is that tone again that you never use.”
“Maybe I need to,” he said, throwing the towel down that he’d picked up to dry his hands. He hadn’t realized it was still a crutch he was twisting in his frustration. “Maybe what I’ve needed to do in my life was take a stand and say how I really felt and not always try to be the one holding it in. You’re the one who told me that, right?”
“I did,” she said.
“And yet you’re acting as if you don’t know me because I’m doing it. This goes back to having a no-win situation with you.”
“Don’t throw that in my face!” she yelled. “I thought we got past that. This is more about you only giving me so many facts again.”
He thought so too.
“You want to know what happened with Taylor. I’m going to tell you. We dated for about a year. She didn’t like the time I put into my job. You’re right there. It’s her and others. I’ve told you I’ve had relationships like that. You admitted that you did too. Right?”
“Yes,” she said. “But this seems different. You said she hurt you, so I’m going to say it was serious. That you were in love. Could be you saw a future with her too.”
“Did I love her? I thought I did,” he said, throwing his hands in the air. “But when you love someone they are there for you and she never was once. She saw the family name and thought she could tolerate it all for a chance at that. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t even the amount of time at my job, it was the mental toll it took on me. She left me when Linda died. Linda was the second of the three people I lost in a short period of time.”
Justine stopped pacing around the living room and stared at him. “The one you thought was like your mother?”
“Yes,” he said. “She knew I was upset over that one and that I was dealing with Zach at the same time. He was a new patient, things were tricky, and we were all trying to figure it out. I had a lot on my plate and she wasn’t there for me. I’d come home and need a bit of space and she’d be all about her day and her life and what we were going to do on the weekend. She never let me talk about how upsetting it was for me. She didn’t want to hear a word about my job. Not that I’d give her specifics, but she didn’t want to know anything . ‘It’s too depressing,’ she’d say. ‘Leave me out of it.’”
“Bitch,” Justine said.
“She was one. I saw it later on. Everything I was dealing with at work and I came home to that. We didn’t live together, but she wanted to. I kept telling myself I wasn’t ready to have her in the house. So yeah, I was the one making that decision and not letting her have much say in it. My house, my choice. I needed the space.”
“You want more time with me though,” she said.
“That’s right,” he said. “I’ve brought it up but not pushed. I’m not holding that back from you. I’m letting you make decisions, not me.”
“Are you doing that because things didn’t work with Taylor when you were controlling that decision?” she asked.
He picked up a cup and threw it into the sink causing it to shatter. “Justine. I can’t win with you. With anyone. Do you not see what is going on? What is being said by you and her? I don’t do things calculated like everyone thinks I do. I don’t sit back and say, hey, maybe I need to treat this relationship differently because the last one didn’t work. I look at you and I look at us and I do what I think is right for us! I’ve messed up twice already and now it looks like I’m doing it again. I should have told you more when it came up and I didn’t. It was the wrong decision on my end.”
She stepped back from him once he’d thrown the cup.
He’d never lost his cool before.
Not once in his life had he done something like that even though he’d always wanted to let it out.
In the past, he’d go in the shower or play the music loud. He’d scream or shout when no one could hear him.
He was too worked up to understand the meaning right now.
That this just meant more than anything else in his life.
She meant more.
Saying it now wouldn’t make a difference.
She wasn’t ready to hear it.
“I just don’t know why you couldn’t tell me about her. I told you I would have mentioned anyone who was meaningful in my life if it came up. When you were talking about the three people who’d died, you had more than enough opportunity to say you were with someone and she left you because she couldn’t handle it at that time. Or that it was just one more thing that happened and you were burning out and needed to move. It’s all about our journeys here, but you never once let on that there was a significant other in your life in the past year, let alone one that hurt you that much. Who could have contributed to your move to the island with everything else.”
She turned and picked up her jacket and purse.
“Where are you going? We need to talk about this.”
“You know what?” she said. “I’m the one that needs space. I’m wrong for leaving and I’ll admit it, but I don’t care. This is huge to me and I need to think some more and you need to calm the hell down yourself. I opened up when it’s in my nature to close down, and you didn’t always do the same.”
The minute Justine was out the door he’d done something he’d never done in his life. He punched a wall and then swore a streak loud enough that he was positive half the island heard.