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“I have to say, the changes you've made to my diet have made me feel like a new man.”
She lifts her head, studying me with sparkling eyes.
But I’m not proud of the next thing I'm going to tell her, so I lower my gaze and stare into my bowl, carefully spooning up a bite and shifting around the mixture of oats and berries. “I think my eating habits started becoming unhealthy after my dad died. And I think my mom is right. I think it was on the cusp of being an eating disorder, if not over the edge. I just wanted to eat the things that made me happy and reminded me of him.”
Her hand touches mine, the unexpected gesture comforting me. “Do you want to talk about him?”
I'm not sure I can, but I'm willing to try. “He loved to grill. Those are some of my best memories of him, standing in front of the grill with a soda can in one hand and a spatula in the other. He taught me everything there is to know about having a charcoal or propane grill, how to perfectly cook meat, and even how to smoke anything from briskets to fish.” The man was legend when it came to his grill.
“I haven't touched a grill since he died.” Maybe that's the part that's the most heartbreaking. I'd stuck with meats and heavy protein meals because they reminded me of him without the actual heartbreak of doing the activity that he was so well known for in my memories.
Her thumb gently rubs the back of my hand, and I focus on the touch and the comfort she offers. “When he passed away, it was the hardest day of my life. I guess I just fell into a pattern that I now know wasn't the healthiest. And I'm grateful that I have you.” I put my other hand on hers and risk a look into her eyes as pain flurries through my body like a blizzard.
“Thank you for sharing him with me. He seems like a very special man.” Her eyes shimmer with tears and I sense she’s feeling my loss on some personal level.
“What about you? Are your parents still around?” I sense that if she doesn't want to talk about something, she won't, but I want to enjoy this shared, intimate moment.
Again, she seems to drift off, her eyes focusing as if she's looking at something not quite in this room. “My parents are still here, but I just recently found out they're planning on getting a divorce after twenty-six years together.”
I rub my hand up her forearm toward her elbow and back down to her wrist again. “I'm sorry. I know that that's hard.”
She lets out a slight laugh. “The worst part is, I saw it coming. I knew they were going to wind up divorced. I just told myself it wouldn't happen, and then I didn't have the emotional wherewithal to handle them splitting up.”
“Well, do you?”
She glances up, surprised and possibly confused by my question, so I elaborate. “Do you think you have the emotional strength right now to handle your parents divorcing?”
“Do I have a choice?” She asks the question with so much hopelessness that I recognize the same feelings I'd had when my dad passed away.
“That's why I asked. I remember when my dad passed away. I didn't think I'd get through it, but we do. We survive because there's no other option.” I think about the people I'd leaned on to help me get through the worst of things, and how hard it'd been at first, but how over time that sense of loss had become less suffocating.
She nods her head. “It just all feels so difficult right now.”
I continue gently rubbing her arm, lifting my hand until just my fingers are skimming along her skin. “I understand that loss is difficult to get through. I don't know if it's any comfort, but I can tell you that over time it will get easier. One day you'll wake up, and that won't be your first thought. One day you'll go to bed and you won’t be drowning in that pain anymore. Eventually, everything fades into the void.”
“I feel like that shouldn't be comforting, but somehow it is.” She smiles up at me and I lift my shoulders. After a second, her smile fades. “I really like you, but I'm afraid of getting hurt.”
I inhale a deep breath. “That makes two of us.”
She seems surprised as she looks up at me.
“I know I might seem well put together and like I have everything under control, but trust me, I'm a mess inside no matter what I lead the outside world to believe.” I don't think I've ever been this open and honest with anyone before, and it's the most refreshing, freeing feeling I think I've ever experienced.
She blinks, and I worry that I've said the wrong thing. “Well, that was unexpected and appreciated.” With that handful of words, she makes me glad that I opened up to her. “I just worry because I'm a single mom, barely scraping by, trying to get ahead, and I've been hurt before.” Her eyes cloud over, and I know that whatever hurt she’s talking about is pretty serious. So I decide to take a page out of her book.
“Do you want to talk about it?” When she said those words, I felt heard, validated, and seen, so I can only hope she feels the same way when I say them.
She nods her head and squeezes her eyes closed before speaking. “I met Methew at Club Red.”
The second the words leave her lips, my spine stiffens, my stomach tightens, and I feel a jolt of surprise. Knowing that she'd been at the club does spark some desire in me, and I wonder so many things about her visit that would be inappropriate to ask right now.
“After I got pregnant, one of the first things I wanted to do was tell him, but I found out that he got married not long after he and I were intimate.” I can hear the shame in her voice, and I want to tell her that that guilt is not hers to carry, but his. He made a choice and I highly doubt he told her what he was up to.
“I quickly found myself being a single mother and dealing with all the struggles and challenges that come with that. The delivery room alone was so hard. My mom offered to come with me, but I just couldn't.” I can see her eyes glaze over as she loses herself to memories. “It took so much for me to just focus on the moment, and finally I just realized I needed to think about how excited I was to meet my daughter and not what I was about to go through alone.”
She inhales a ragged breath and I get up to walk around the table and sit closer to her. Pulling her into my arms, I try to offer her as much comfort as possible. “I can't believe how strong you are to have a baby by yourself, alone.”
She lets out a tear-filled laugh. “Oh, I wasn't alone. I had the most amazing nurses and staff watching my back the whole time. But I couldn't help but feel like it wasn't supposed to be like that, you know? He was supposed to be in that room with me, experiencing that joy.”
