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Millions of ideas float in my head, and I need a lot of answers.
Sooner, rather than later.
“I was going to tell you,” he says.
* * *
The car ride was tense.Quinn tried talking a few times, but I held up my hand to stop him. I’m not sure that I can handle anything that comes out of his mouth. I need to get my thoughts in order and to take several deep mental breaths.
We walk into his condo and I drop my purse on the counter, take a deep breath and turn around to face him.
“I think that there is a lot of explaining as to what the hell just happened at dinner.” I say.
He takes a deep breath and looks at me and opens his arms, “there are parts of my life that are kind of ugly right now. I wanted to shield you from it, until everything was cleared up. I wanted to be the man that you needed, without the drama. This stuff was drama, and I didn’t intend to keep it from you forever. I wanted to tell you, but I just didn’t know how you would react.”
“I would have understood, if you would have said something before. But you didn’t give me that chance.”
“I know that now. The longer that I waited to say something wasn’t fair to you. And then I started to be scared that I would lose you because of my mistake.”
“Well, you better start talking, or I’m walking.” I put my hands on my hips and say.
“Can we sit?” he asks.
“I’d prefer to stand, thank you.” I reply pacing the living room.
“Very well,” he walks over the fridge and grabs two waters, offering one to me. I take it from him, and he takes a deep breath.
“Amelia is my ex-wife. Kady is my five-year-old daughter.”
I sit down opposite of him as my legs suddenly feel like Jell-O and wait for him to continue. Hearing it all from him makes it all the more real.
“We dated through college, got married and hit a bunch of rough patches. We had thought that bringing Kady in the world would fix our broken marriage, only to learn that it didn’t. It put a temporary fix on it, but that was it. Amelia, she started dating someone behind my back and that was the last of our marriage. We got divorced, and then she moved out here to Los Angeles, took my daughter with her. I followed and now that’s where we are. She just served me with paperwork for full custody and well, it’s just going to get ugly, really ugly before it will get better. I didn’t want any of that for you. For you to be subjected to that.”
“You - you- you have a wife? A child?”
He looks down at the ground and nods. “I have an ex-wife and a beautiful daughter,” he whispers.
“I think that it would have been fair to include me in the decision of whether or not that I could handle it? I thought that I was your partner. You tell your partner these things. I can understand if we weren’t supposed to mean anything to one another, but we do. Or at least I thought we did.” I take a heavy breath.
“We do and we are, I just wanted to have the drama part of all this over and done with.”
“Why wouldn’t you have told me? Those are some pretty major things that you would tell someone. This kind of information is kind of a beginning of relationship, getting to know you type of thing. We’ve been together now for awhile, and none of this even breached any conversations. You know that right?”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry.” He shakes his head.
I pull out my phone and rapidly press open the Uber app to get out of here. Quinn stands and I hold up my hand stopping him with tears in my eyes.
“I need to go home. I just—I can’t. I need to leave.” I tell him.
“Can we just talk about this?” he asks.
“We’ve had a lot of time to talk, you’ve said what you had to say and now, I’m just—I’m not sure that I can trust you right now. I need to go.” I turn and open his front door, walk down the hallway and steps that lead to the street, then wait at the curb.
Quinn follows me out, “Please, can we talk about this, I will tell you everything. Please?” He begs.
“Not right now, I don’t know when, but I need a break.” I tell him as a car pulls up.
I get in and don’t look back.
QUINLAN
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I royally screwed up, and I could have totally prevented it. But here I stand, alone with my hands in my pockets as the woman that I am totally in love with leaves my house.
I understand why she does. I don’t blame her for it, like I said—I fucked up.
What do I do now?
I punch the wall pissed off at myself for not thinking about the consequences of keeping this secret.
