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I knew I was unlucky in love, so why did it hurt so badly every time I found myself on this side of a relationship?
All my exes had had no problem telling me just how awful being in a relationship with me was. There was my first boyfriend—a boy who lived up the street from me. He was the first one to show me any sort of romantic attention and I jumped on it.
We lasted almost a year, but two weeks short of our anniversary, I sensed something was wrong. To be honest, I sensed it six months prior, but I finally did something about it one fateful summer day.
We were supposed to spend the day together, so I marched to his house and he barely said hi. I asked him if he thought our relationship was worth salvaging.
But really I was asking, “Am I worth it?”
So when he said a very blunt “no” and gave no further explanation, I gave him a hug—something I still cringe about—and walked home as he stood in his yard and watched me walk away.
He didn’t run after me like men in movies do. With every step closer to my house, I had wished he would shout my name and run to me, panting a confession about how he was wrong and how I was worth fighting for.
He just stared at me until I made it to my front door. When I had waved to him, he ducked his head and went inside.
And that was it.
We went to school together for two more years and never spoke another word to each other.
My next boyfriend made it a whole three weeks before he told me I was too much to handle while he was dealing with finals.
The thing that set him off? I had asked him if he wanted to take a day trip to Seattle to go whale watching. A simple no would’ve hurt a lot less than finding out—in front of his friends, mind you—that I was too much for him.
That was the extent of my high school love life.
I had a brief stint with a classically suave guy in college. Now looking back, I could see he was a pompous asshole and not at all suave.
The relationship—and my college stint—hadn’t lasted long. I talked too much for that guy and—like the others—he was more than happy to tell me.
If I ever got the chance to break up with someone, I would never tell them what I found wrong with them. I would tell them it hadn’t worked out and that we should break up.
I hadn’t asked any of the guys I dated why they had broken up with me, and I wasn’t sure why they got the impression I wanted to know exactly what they found so abhorrent about me. Still, they didn’t hesitate to tell me exactly what was wrong.
I thought Bryce was different.
But he was just like the others.
I drove away from his apartment complex as his voice echoed in my mind.
Prude.
He called me a prude because I didn’t want to jump into bed with him and some random woman I had caught him cheating on me with.
The joke was on him because I was anything but a prude—if anyone I dated had taken the time to get to know me, they would know that I had a lot hiding beneath the surface, thank you very much.
But none of them had given me a chance to open up to them. And Mr. Cool—the suave asshole from college—had ensured that I would never tell another boyfriend exactly what I wanted. If I was still too much, even before I was comfortable being myself, how could I ever trust someone enough to tell them my deepest fantasies?
I cycled through every emotion as I turned left and slowed my car down. I had arrived somewhere I hadn’t intended to go to, but realized it was the only place I wanted to be right then.
Pleasant Green Memorial Gardens.
Chapter Three
Emily
I walked the familiar trail to the plot of graves under a shady oak tree and found the headstone I was looking for.
Robert Avery.
