Chapter 14 #2
“Is this because of my dad?”
The question came out quicker this time, but it was more fragile than I wanted it to be. My hands twisted slightly in my lap as I tried to hold onto something steady while everything else started to feel like it was slipping.
“Because when you met him, he was kinda hard on you,” I continued with my voice wavering now. “I told you he’s like that. He didn’t mean anything by it.”
Even as I said it, I could hear how it sounded like I was trying to fix something I didn’t fully understand.
I wanted to blame anyone for what Tahari was trying to do here.
There was no way he was trying to end this.
Random feelings of not feeling like he’s enough, I could work with.
That’s something I could change. I felt like everything was coming out of nowhere.
Earlier on, when we first started dating, he expressed that I was some rich girl and he was a boy from the hood, and how the two had no business being together.
I quickly wiped those doubts away when I explained to him that my parents were rich and I was broke as fuck.
We shared a laugh, and I really haven’t heard much about it again until now.
Something had to have changed. If I’m being honest with myself, there has been a shift.
It was small at first and easy to ignore, but it was there.
Since Tahari met my family, things have changed a bit.
He wasn’t as open, and he damn sure wasn’t at present.
Before I could call him and get an answer every single time.
Lately, there have been hours passed between his responses.
It was even the way he looked at me sometimes that felt like he was distracted, like his mind was somewhere else, even when he was sitting right next to me.
I told myself it was just life, or maybe stress, or maybe he was just him being him.
Now, sitting here, it felt like everything I had brushed off was finally catching up to me all at once.
My eyes burned before I even realized I was about to cry.
“Talk to me,” I said, my voice breaking now despite how hard I tried to hold it together. “You can’t just say that’s the reason. What did I do? Did I do something to make you suddenly feel this way?”
That part hurt the most. Because a piece of me really believed I must’ve done something. I missed something. I know that Tahari was saying that it was him, but maybe I wasn’t enough in some way. Maybe it was because we hadn’t had sex yet.
Tears slipped before I could stop them. My vision started blurring as I tried to keep my composure. I was trying so hard not to fall apart completely in front of him.
“I love you,” the words coming out like they had been sitting on my chest waiting for the right moment, but coming out at the worst one instead.
Silence followed that. And that made the space between us so uncomfortable. I started to become angry because what was the point of all of this? What was the sense of him meeting my entire family if ultimately things were going to end like this?
“If you weren’t going to love me right, you should have left me alone!”
Spit flew out of my mouth as I yelled. I was livid.
I wanted to turn completely in the chair and use my foot to kick the shit out of him.
But I held my composure. This ache in my chest did not feel right.
I don’t know if it was the tone of my voice or that I was breaking down in tears beside him, but I saw his expression soften.
It softened just a bit, and finally, he opened his mouth.
“Baby girl, I swear I love you. I love you more than I love myself.”
Those words settled over me in a way that should have brought comfort, should have steadied the storm building in my chest, but instead they only made everything feel heavier, like they carried a truth that didn’t match what was happening between us.
I kept staring him in the eyes because I was trying to understand how love could exist in the same breath as distance, how he could say something that powerful while still choosing to push me away.
Before I could say anything else, he moved closer, and the shift in him caught me off guard.
His hand came up slowly, almost hesitantly, before it settled against my face.
His touch was warm and familiar. His thumb brushed beneath my eye to catch the tears that wouldn’t stop falling.
It was such a small gesture, one he had done before without thinking, but now it felt different.
His movements felt intentional and careful, like he was trying to soften something that couldn’t be softened.
“Look at me,” he said with his voice stripped of the tension that had been sitting between us.
I didn’t want to, because I knew looking at him would make this harder.
That intimate eye contact would make me want to hold on to something he was already loosening his grip on, but I couldn’t help it.
My eyes lifted to his, and just like that, everything I felt for him rushed back to the surface, making it impossible to pretend I was anything other than completely in love with him.
“I have never loved nobody like how I love you. You bring out all the good parts in me,” he paused and then looked out his window.
I heard him sniffle, and when he turned back in my direction, I could see that tears were welling in his eyes.
“You,” his voice cracked. “You deserve someone who will be to you what you are to other people. I’m no good for you.
You need someone good. And…” he sighed out, “that isn’t me.
But don’t ever doubt it, I do love you, Maliah. ”
The things he was saying put an ache in my chest that I don’t think I ever felt before.
This beautiful, rugged man was sitting beside me, choked up in tears.
I heard everything he was saying loud and clear, but I didn’t get the why.
Who was he to tell me that he wasn’t good for me?
Isn’t that a decision for me and only me?
I was sitting beside him with my brain throbbing, trying to wrap my mind around this shit.
I didn’t understand it. But one thing I did understand was his love for me.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind about that.
I had felt it in the way he looked at me.
It was the way he showed up for me and the way he let me see parts of him I knew he didn’t show to just anybody.
That’s why this hurt the way it did. Before I could even process what he was saying, he had pulled my face toward his and kissed me deeply.
The moment was so passionate, yet it felt final.
It was breathy and heavy. As I breathed outward, he pulled those same breaths in.
We were connecting in a moment of separation, and the pain of it hurt so damn bad.
As we kissed, I was losing faith in my happily ever after, simply because it was supposed to be with him.
After we finished kissing, he stopped and stared into my eyes.
Our lips were slightly touching as we locked in a glance.
“Then why are you doing this? If you really love me, Tahari, why are you doing this?” I asked.
My voice was barely holding together because I couldn’t make sense of it.
Love wasn’t supposed to feel like this. It wasn’t supposed to come with distance, uncertainty, and words like space that felt more like separation than anything else.
His thumb moved again, slower this time, like he was memorizing the moment even as it slipped away from him.
It was like he was tracing my features with his eyes so that he would never forget it.
“I just need time,” he said, and there was something in his voice that made it clear this wasn’t something I could argue with or fix, “I need space to get my head right… to figure things out. But that doesn’t change how I feel about you.”
I wanted to hold on to that part. I really did.
I wanted to believe that love alone was enough to keep us where we were, that whatever he needed to figure out wouldn’t take him so far away from me that we couldn’t find our way back.
Or maybe that I could help him with whatever he had to figure out, and that we could make this work together.
But as I sat there looking at him, I realized something that settled deep in my chest in the quietest, most painful way.
He had already taken a step back. It was deep in his eyes.
There was a disconnect there that I had never seen before.
And no matter how much he said he loved me, he was still choosing distance over staying.
My thoughts drifted without permission, pulling me back to the moment he met my family, the way something in him had changed after that.
At the time, I convinced myself it was nothing, that he just needed time to adjust, that he wasn’t used to something that steady, that real.
But now, sitting here, it felt like that was the moment everything started to change, even if I didn’t want to see it then.
The tears kept falling, but something inside me started to calm down, like my heart was slowly accepting what my mind had been fighting against since the moment he said those words.
I couldn’t force him to stay. I couldn’t make him choose me the way I was choosing him.
And more than anything, I couldn’t beg for a place in his life if he was already creating space where I used to be.
I gently pulled my face away from his hand.
The movement was slow and not out of anger, but out of understanding that whatever we had at this moment was already slipping beyond my reach.
The warmth of his touch lingered for a second before it disappeared completely, and somehow that made everything feel more final than anything he had said.
“Okay,” I said quietly, and this time my voice didn’t break, which scared me more than the tears did, because it meant something inside me was already starting to shut down.
I reached for the door handle. My fingers wrapped around it as I took one last look at him.
I was not searching for answers anymore, and I was not hoping for him to change his mind, but I was trying to hold onto the version of us that existed before this moment.
When I opened the door, the cool air hit my face again, grounding me in a reality I didn’t want but couldn’t avoid.
I stepped out slowly. My chest was still heavy, and my eyes were still burning.
I closed the door behind me without slamming it, although I could have broken the window, with how bad I wanted to slam it shut.
Without hesitation, I began walking back toward the gate.
Each step pulled me further away from him, from us, from everything I thought we were building.
And even though every part of me wanted to turn around and run back to him and pretend none of this was happening, I didn’t.
Because deep down, I knew that if he needed space from me, then the only thing I could do was give it to him.
I walked toward the gate on autopilot, my body was moving even though my mind still felt like it was sitting back in that car, stuck in the space between what he said and what I didn’t want to accept.
The night felt silent now, like everything around me knew something had just ended and was giving me the moment to feel it.
When I reached the gate, I didn’t hesitate.
I placed my hands against the metal and pulled myself up.
It was a familiar motion because it was something I had done without thinking before, but tonight it felt different.
It felt slow and heavy. Like each movement carried weight.
My foot caught the top of the gate, and I swung myself over, landing on the other side harder than usual.
I was careful not to make noise, even though it felt like my whole world had already been loud enough.
As soon as my feet hit the ground, I ran toward the side door of the house where I had just left.
When I made it to the door, that is when I turned around.
And that’s when I saw it. His car. The headlights flicked on.
The halo beams cut through the night. For a second, I just stood there, watching as he pulled off.
The sound of the engine faded into the distance, taking him further away from me with every second.
My chest stiffened again. The tears were coming back just as fast as I tried to hold them in.
I stood there longer than I should have, staring down the street like if I waited long enough, he might come back.
But he didn’t. Eventually, I forced myself to turn away.
I wiped at my face quickly before heading toward the door.
I eased it open carefully and slipped inside like nothing had happened, like I wasn’t carrying something heavy enough to break me if I let it.
The house was still because everyone was asleep.
I closed the door behind me as quietly as I could and made my way through the house.
Each step measured and controlled like if I moved too fast or made too much noise, everything I was feeling would spill out.
By the time I reached my room, my chest was knotted all over again.
I shut the door behind me, not bothering to turn the light on because I was supposed to be asleep anyway.
A piece of me wished I hadn’t texted him back, and I damn sure wish that I hadn’t snuck out to meet him.
I let the darkness wrap around me as I moved toward my bed.
The second I sat down, everything I had been holding in started to crack.
I pulled the covers back and climbed into bed, instantly curling into myself like I could somehow make the space beside me smaller, like it wouldn’t feel so empty if I didn’t give it room to be.
And that’s when it hit me fully. I had to adapt to the feeling of losing something I wasn’t ready to let go of.
The tears came harder, then quieter, and then heavy all over again.
My body was shaking slightly as I pressed my face into the pillow to keep the sound in.
My chest ached with every breath. I love him, and this shit hurts.
And no matter how many times I tried to tell myself that he just needed space, that this wasn’t the end, that we would find our way back to one another, it didn’t feel like that.
It felt like the end of our story. One that was so short-lived.
One that didn’t even have time to grow. Lying there in the dark, surrounded by a house that still felt whole, I cried into my pillow, trying to hold myself together while everything inside me slowly came apart.