Erin
Why have I been here so many times?
I know this feeling as if it’s meant to be my perpetual state of being — the shaky hands, the shallow breaths, the racing heart, the dizziness and gut-wrenching sense of dread.
I thought it was finally turning around.
I found a therapist who works well with me, and a therapy group that I feel comfortable sharing with.
I feel like I’ve finally buried the demons of my past and stepped fully into the present.
I graduated college. I started law school, just like I always said I would.
And I found an incredible guy.
Gavin has been everything I never thought a man could be — funny, mysterious, caring, and kind. From the moment he first laid eyes on me, I knew he saw deeper than even my closest friends ever did.
He knew my misery and pain, my scars, because he had them, too.
It feels like a dream, dizzying and foggy, how up and down my time with him has been.
From him blowing off our first date to then pleasantly surprising me with an impromptu sushi dinner, from being a sarcastic little prick in group therapy to being the sweetest, most gentle and sensual partner on our spontaneous trip, and most recently, from being with me almost every night to only making time for lunch every other week.
He’s like the spinning teacup ride at Disney World, full of joy and laughter, but one wrong turn of the wheel away from a nauseating disaster.
I haven’t seen him since I left his apartment that night he rejected me.
For the first week after that, he was calling me every night, texting me throughout the day, checking in. But then the contact became less and less, the texts fewer and farther between. I asked him multiple times when I’d see him next, and he always found a clever way to avoid the question.
He didn’t show up to group therapy like he said he would.
He didn’t meet me for lunch or take me out for dinners or even stop by after work or school.
And eventually, he just stopped talking to me altogether.
It was a gut punch, one I didn’t know how to sit with. I tried to convince myself that he was just busy, that he wouldn’t just abandon me, that he wouldn’t ghost me after all we’d been through. But the more calls that went unanswered, the more texts I sent without a reply, the more reality sank in.
I tried tracking him down through our group therapist, but she hadn’t heard from him in weeks.
I tried showing up unannounced at his job, but they said he quit unexpectedly.
I even showed up at the Palm South campus and marched right into the building where I knew he had class that afternoon. But when the class let out, he wasn’t among the students that flowed from the classroom, and his professor said he’d been absent the past three classes.
He didn’t just ghost me.
He ghosted everyone.
Which is why I have that all-too-familiar sense of dread simmering low in my gut as I stare at the envelope with my name sprawled across the front.
It’s his handwriting.
And it was delivered anonymously to the front desk downstairs, no stamp or return address.
Usually, I’d want to be alone for this. I don’t like anyone around when I’m feeling this way. I want to be left alone to my misery so no one can talk me out of it.
But right now, I need a friend.
Ashlei is either with Brandon or at work, no telling these days, and Jess is in her second week now at her brand-new job. I can’t just bombard her when she hasn’t even learned the employee handbook.
And I definitely can’t wait until after work.
I debate calling Skyler, but it’s Wednesday, which means, as president, she’s at the Panhellenic meeting. And though I could call Cassie, she’s probably in class.
Even if she isn’t, I’m not sure she’s the one I want here right now.
“Looks like I’m on my own,” I finally decide, letting a deep sigh flow from my chest before I slip my fingernail under the crease of the envelope and slide it along the top to tear it open.
I pull out a neatly folded sheet of notebook paper, then with an internal pep talk, I convince myself I can handle whatever it says.
And I open it.
Erin,
I’m sorry to do this to you.
I swallow just at the first line, and tears already prick my eyes, because I know now that whatever follows that sentence is going to hurt me.
There are many things I wish for in this world, and I could write a five-page letter if I detailed all of them to you, but I’ll save you the boredom. All you really need to know is that what I wish more than anything is that I would have met you in a different time in my life.
Whether it was before the car accident or ten years from now when, hopefully, I’ll actually have my shit together, I just wish it was different.
As it is now, I’m no good for you.
I’m no good for anyone.
The tears blur my vision so much I have to look up at the ceiling and force a breath before I can keep reading.
I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re an enigma, a light so strong I couldn’t help but be drawn to you from the start. I knew I should have resisted, which was why I blew you off that first time I was supposed to take you out. But then I saw you again, and I just couldn’t tell myself no.
I’ve been living in this fairytale with you, in this place where I pretend like I’m okay and that you’re the answer to all my prayers and that we’re good together.
It’s why I touched you that first night outside of the poetry bar.
It’s why I soaked up every minute of our trip together.
But something happened on Valentine’s Day that struck me back to reality.
You trusted me enough to give yourself fully to me, even after what happened to you.
And I realized that I didn’t feel the same.
I’ve been so eager to take all your scars and mend them, to hold you and bring you peace, but I haven’t been willing to let you in to do the same for me. I can barely talk about what happened with my sister, let alone the myriad of other things in my life that you have no idea about.
To be blunt, I’m fucked up, Erin.
And I can’t be with you.
A sob racks my chest so violently that I slap a hand over my mouth to try to soothe it, my tears splotting the blue ink on the notebook paper when they fall. I squeeze my eyes shut and compose myself as best I can before reading further.
I know it won’t make a difference, because even now, reading this far, I know I’ve hurt you. But I want you to know that it’s not just you. It’s everything — school, work, life.
I’m not okay, and I’m finally admitting it.
That’s why I’m voluntarily checking myself into a treatment center.
I think about killing myself every single day, Erin. Sometimes multiple times a day. And as much as I care about you, I can’t submit you to this. You don’t deserve it. In fact, it’s because I care about you that I’m doing the right thing in letting you go.
I’m a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off, and I won’t let you get caught in the wreckage.
I know this is all hard to read. And I know I’m breaking your heart. I won’t even ask you to forgive me for doing it. All I ask is that you keep that beautiful spirit of yours and that you go on and live your life to the fullest, because that’s what you deserve.
Thank you for sharing your light with me.
I’m sorry I dimmed it.
Take care of yourself,
Gavin
“Take care of yourself?!” I repeat incredulously, staring at the letter in my hand. The longer I stare, the more I re-read, the angrier I become.
My chest starts to ache, and before I realize it, I’m breathing like a dragon, each pull of air thick and heavy before I blow it through my nose.
And when I hit that last line again, I scream, letting everything out while I viciously tear at the paper until it’s a shredded mess on the floor at my feet.
That fucker.
That motherfucker.
How selfish of him. How fucking narcissistic to try to make it seem like he’s some hero, like he’s doing me a favor.
I’m still seeing red when I grab my purse off the kitchen island and swing out of the condo, slamming the door behind me. I’m in the elevator and then in my car and peeling out of the garage before I even realize where I’m heading.
But as soon as I hit the highway, my anger dissolves into thin, smoky wisps.
And in its place, all I feel is devastation.
Tears well in my eyes so fast I can’t stop them from falling, but I’m not crying, I’m not sobbing, I’m not breaking down. It’s just a silent, heartbreaking release of emotion, my eyes still wide open and focused on the road as the tears shed themselves.
I pull up at the Omega Chi house twenty minutes later and park around back. I don’t even know if Bear is here. I don’t know why I’m here. But my body, my heart, my soul carried me here instinctively.
So, I’m listening.
I don’t bother knocking on the front door of the house, just let myself inside and try to keep what I’m sure is a mascara-stained face out of sight of the brothers hanging out in the common room.
There are four brothers shooting a game of pool in the corner, and a big group gathered around a video game match on the big sofa.
I get a few head nods and heys, but that’s about it.
It’s not until I round the corner into the hallway that leads to Bear’s room that I realize what I’m doing, and my feet falter, breath hitching in my chest.
I stop in the middle of the hall and debate turning around, but the pause is so brief I almost question if I did it at all, because in the next second, I’m knocking on his door.
“Just a minute,” I hear his voice call from inside, and then he’s mumbling something like he’s on the phone, silence, and then the turning of the door handle.
Clinton Pennington has a tendency to suck up all the air in a room.
Whenever I see him, whenever his cedar eyes lock on mine, whenever his beastly body fills a doorframe the way it is right now, I find it absolutely impossible to breathe.