Back to You

He took a step toward her, his eyes almost frantic. “I was a scared fucking kid, and I picked what I thought was the lesser of two evils. I did what I thought was right, because in my mind, the alternative would have been so much worse. I thought it would be better to leave you angry but intact than to drag you down with me. You were too good for that. You were too good for me. You always were.”

Lauren stood there, digging her nails into her palms beneath her folded arms. Anger, confusion, regret, and frustration swirled in her gut, making her body feel like a live wire.

Michael turned away from her, dropping his head back and fisting his hair before he whirled back around. “Do you know what the messed up thing is? Your freshman year, right after we met, I remember standing in the hall when you were leaving class, and Mr. Benton questioned you about hanging out with me. He said something about being careful of the company you keep. And you told him you’d expect better from a teacher.”

Lauren felt her shoulders soften as her defenses momentarily faltered. “I don’t remember that,” she murmured.

“Well, I do. I’ll never forget that. The way you stood up for me. And I remember swearing then and there that if anyone ever caused you pain, I’d kill them.” His eyes were desperate now. “Do you think I wanted to be the one? Do you think it didn’t rip me to shreds to do it? That I haven’t thought about you constantly since the day I left?”

He took another step toward her. “I’m so sorry, Lauren. There aren’t even words for how sorry I am. I made a horrible decision, and I wish I could take it back.”

Michael’s eyes darted back and forth between hers, waiting for her to speak, but she couldn’t think beyond the surfeit of emotions churning through her body. She could barely breathe.

He { display: block; text-indent: 5%; font-size: 0.88rem; margin-top: sen the looked down, shaking his head. “I just…I didn’t know what to do with us, you know? I never pla

She exhaled slowly, unfolding her arms as she felt the tiny fissures forming in her resistance.

“I always knew I would fall in love with you,” he said softly, “but you were never supposed to love me back.”

Lauren’s expression fell. “What did you just say?”

Michael looked confused by her shock. “I loved you,” he said, like it should have been obvious. “So much. My God, more than anything.”

All at once, Lauren’s vision tilted, and she reached behind her and gripped the edge of the sink to steady herself.

He loved her?

No. That’s not how it happened. She’d already determined long ago what went wrong. She fell in love with her best friend who didn’t love her back, who slept with her out of pity because she begged and then ran away to get rid of his mistake. And she had come to terms with his cruelness, with her stupidity, as best she could.

But now everything she knew, everything she thought she had a handle on, was completely upturned.

Lauren closed her eyes as she shook her head, and she heard Michael take a step toward her.

“No,” she said, holding her hand up to stop him.

He hesitated for just a second, but then he took another step toward her, and she took a quick step back and shook her head frantically.

“No. That makes it so much worse,” she nearly sobbed. “It’s so much worse now.”

“Lauren—”

“I can’t do this right now. You need to go,” she said, her voice breaking.

“Lauren, just—”

“You need to go.”

“Please don’t do this—”

“I said get out!” she shouted suddenly.

His shoulders dropped as he stared at her, and she turned away from the expression on his face.

The look of utter defeat in his eyes.

She heard the sounds of him exiting the kitchen, the shuffling noises as he put on his jacket, and then the front door closed softly, and there was silence.

Lauren let her knees give out as she slowly slid down the front of the cabinets until she was sitting on the kitchen floor.

She hugged her knees into her chest as a feeling of panic began to envelope her.

She closed her eyes, remembering the incapacitating pain. The double loss. Not only was her love unrequited, that in itself would have been painful enough to deal with, but in the same shot, she also lost her best friend in the world.

And she never could figure out which one hurt more.

It never healed. She could openly admit that now as she sat up against the kitchen sink with tears pooling in her eyes. It had been more like living with a disability. She had learned to work around it, to accommodate it, but it had never gone away.

All these years, she thought it had been so simple. The boy she loved didn’t love her back. He had handled it callously, and she had been a fool.@fulleasi

But now? He left because he loved her? That whole time, he had been in love with her?

She exhaled heavily and dropped her forehead to her knees as the first tears fell.

She meant what she said to Michael. This made it so much worse than thinking he just didn’t want her.

He loved her, but he still left her. And he never came back. Not even a second glance.

How could they ever move past this and start again now? How could she trust him? If he’d been able to crush her when he was in love with her before, what would stop him from doing it again?

And how badly would it hurt the second time around?

.

February 2012

Lauren sat cross-legged on the floor, stringing multicolored beads onto a thread of yarn.

“I found another sparkle one!” Erin declared proudly, holding up the tiny gold bead embedded with glitter.

“Lucky girl,” Lauren smiled. “There aren’t that many in there.”

Erin studied it closely before she held it out to Lauren. “Do you want it? Your necklace doesn’t have any sparkly ones.”

“That’s okay, sweetheart. You keep it. I’m almost done.”

“‘Kay,” Erin said, furrowing her brow in concentration as she attempted to get the tiny bead on her string.

As Lauren secured the last bead on her own necklace, she glanced up at the clock and then quickly threw a look over her shoulder toward the vestibule.

There was no way her luck would hold out much longer.

It had been two weeks since Lauren asked Michael to leave her apartment, and in that time, she’d had no contact with him whatsoever. She hadn’t called or texted, which was well within her control, but she’d also managed to avoid him at Learn and Grow, something she figured would be virtually impossible.

Most days now when Lauren’s shift ended, Erin would remain at the center playing with the late pick-up group. And she had started arriving in the mornings before Lauren, or else she would suddenly appear in the pre-K room out of nowhere on the days that Lauren happened to beat her there.

Granted, Lauren avoided the vestibule at all costs, so maybe they would have run into each other by now if she hadn’t been taking such precautions to prevent it.

Or maybe he was taking the same precautions she was.

Lauren felt like she had exhausted all of her courage in the past two weeks. First, there had been the argument with Michael. Then, the morning after Michael left her apartment, she had called Je