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“Fuck,” I said, my heart racing in frustration. Pulling her into my arms, I steered her into her living room and toward the couch.
“Sit,” I ordered, shoving her gently onto the seat and sitting down beside her. Turning to face her, I took her head between my hands again and stared intensely while I gathered my thoughts. “What you’re doing right now is a mindfuck, Tricia.” I sighed when she barely blinked and stared back. She looked numb. “Last night I went to bed deliriously happy, we were out to my family and your friend. We were making a statement to people we loved that we were together. This morning I woke up,” I shrugged, “I had the same feeling squeezing my heart because it felt so full… but then, in the shower, something happened in your head that I have no fucking clue about.” I took one hand from her head and ran it through my hair.
“I just think…” She shrugged, and a thought grew in my gut that I couldn’t ignore.
“Don’t you want me? Don’t you want this? Do you need more? Tell me, Tricia what do you want?” Frustration made it hard to breathe as I stared her down and waited for her to reply. Does she want out? Is that what this is? Panic crept in making my heart thump with dread.
“I don’t want me to be your biggest mistake in life,” she replied in a defeated tone.
“Did you bang your fucking head when I wasn’t looking or something? Have you not listened to a fucking word I’ve said?” I asked, my gut felt as if it were about to burst. “You don’t want kids—we won’t have them. Is that what you need to hear?” I said with absolute conviction.
Bursting into tears, she pulled away from me and covered her face with her hands. I immediately pulled them away, angry that she appeared to be goading me to say something … a slip of some kind that would perhaps allow her to walk away.
“This stops right now, today. I won’t have you sabotaging us like this. We’ve had seven weeks together and they have been the happiest of my life. All those years I’ve been looking for something, but I had no idea it was, and I’m telling you, baby, it was you. Whatever the fuck is holding you back, you have got to let it go. This… us, it’s so fucking real and I’m not scared of it or our future, not even a little.”
None of my fast talking appeared to be getting through as she lifted her head and looked expressionlessly toward me, tears streaming down her face before she covered it with her hands again.
“Tell me your fear, or whatever you’re hiding.” When she didn’t react and continued hiding her face, I lost my patience with her lack of response.
“Baby, I am not giving up on you. Not unless you tell me you don’t want this. If that’s what this is about, you need to tell me right now, but I’m going to want to know why. Come on, out with it.”
“I thought I could do this… have this… be happy…” She stopped and took her hands away from her eyes and looked directly into mine. “I don’t think it’s possible. It’s not fair… none of it’s fair.”
“Huh? What the fuck isn’t fair, Tricia? Spit it out because I’m fucking dying here.”
She shot off the couch. “Because I’m no better than Charlotte,” she blurted. She looked as shocked as I did by her confession, like the thought had slipped past her tongue without her permission.
“You’re what? Don’t even joke about her,” I ground out, as my temper grew with every second that passed.
“Explain,” I barked, but when I saw her body jump as she crumbled in front of me and started crying again, my anger drained in an instant. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to shout, but you have to know how much I love you. I’m fighting for us here, Tricia. You promised me you wouldn’t back out.”
“You think you know me? You have no fucking idea who I am or what kind of a person I am.” The self-depreciating tone in her voice scared me.
“Is that so? Then, enlighten me, baby. Tell me what the fuck it is that I’m missing. You keep talking to me about choices? All right, my gut tells me you’ve got some big fucking secret that makes you the way you are. You carry that fuck around with you like a huge boulder on your back. Something has held you back in life, and I’m not talking careers here, I’m talking about life. Whatever the hell it is, you’ve got to trust someone enough to let them in.” The longer she stalled the more impatient I grew.
“Trust? You talk to me about trust?” she screamed, like she found the concept ridiculous. “All right. Are you ready for this? Are you sure you want to know what kind of monster I am?”
“Indeed, tell me why I shouldn’t want you. Try to turn me the fuck off, because I’m telling you now there’s nothing you could say that’s going to make me leave you. That would be entirely on you, baby.”
“At sixteen I got drunk …” I’d already heard about this. It was the story Bradley had told me about and I’d challenged Tricia about it gently before. At the time, her response had been explosive, and she had shut the subject down.
“So you slept with a guy when your boyfriend was out of town? That’s what you want to tell me… that you cheated? You were a kid.” Does she think I think she’ll cheat? That I’ll cheat?
She began pacing the floor and pulling her fingers through her ponytail until she stopped and stared me down. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as her breathing and her anxiety grew. “Are you telling my story, or am I?”
Scrubbing my hand down my face I felt disappointed for interrupting her. I sighed heavily with a pleading look. “Sorry, please…” I coaxed, sitting forward on the edge of the couch and moved my hands behind my calves, so as not to reach out to her.
“This? Us? You…” she began and stopped, inhaling deeply several times. I waited, watching her distressed expressions as an internal struggle played out. She worriedly wrung her hands over and over as she tilted her head in thought.
“This… is me being selfish,” she said, gesturing an open palm toward me. “Despite what you think I do want this… God, I desperately want this with you, but I’m not being fair.”
My chest tightened to the point where I couldn’t expand my lungs to breathe deeply enough, when another dump of adrenaline surged through my body. Even my neck felt tight when I swallowed. “Tell me,” I said, softly, staring intently. I tried to appear calm when inside my heart thumped against my breastbone, petrified she’d disclose something I couldn’t live with. “Whatever it is, just say it.”
Tricia drew in the deepest breath she could inhale and shuddered. Exhaling as if to regulate her body, she bit her lip and tried to soothe herself with a hug. “How can I be with you … deny you a life where you could have it all, when I fucked up so badly with mine? You don’t deserve to be punished for my sins.”
“What exactly is this terrible sin? Why don’t you let me decide for myself if I can live with it?”
Flashing me a glare she hugged herself tighter. “I told you before I’m not the person you think I am.”
