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Nothing.
More time passes, and he still hasn’t uttered a word.
I’m done waiting.
I need to get out of here before he has time to come up with a pretty lie to try and turn my head.
That was Kyle’s favorite thing to do, and he was exceptional at it.
No matter what he had done or how badly he’d hurt me, he always managed to twist it around so it was my fault.
When I told him he’d hurt my feelings, no, he didn’t. I was just overreacting and being hysterical. Then it was my fault he got upset and had to yell at me because my feelings were setting him off.
When I told him he humiliated me in front of his friends at the country club, no, he didn’t. All he was doing was providing a gentle correction to help me fit in, and how dare I fly off the handle. It was for my own good.
When I got depressed because I was so downtrodden and isolated, it wasn’t his fault. I was just, and I quote, “fucking insane.”
Then when I was right at the edge of a complete and total breakdown, he’d give me a beautiful speech about how perfect I was for him, how wonderful I was, and how he loved me more than air.
The speech was usually accompanied by a grand gesture like a fancy weekend trip, a rose petal bath, color coded sticky notes on the wall detailing all the things he loved about me, or a new jewelry piece from my favorite store—to name a few.
I worked hard in therapy to understand how toxic he was and how to start undoing all the damage he’d done. There was no way I was about to wait around for Jamie to do the same thing.
My hand is on the bathroom door when I hear him.
“Wait. Please, Avery, I can explain. I promise it’s not what you think.”
The sheer brokenness of his voice makes me pause.
“You have until I get dressed to explain yourself, and then I’m leaving.”
He makes several false starts, but each time, Jamie chokes up and can’t get more than a word or two out. I’ve seen this before with Kyle too, but with Jamie, it actually feels genuine. The fact that he can’t even manage to get the words out makes me inclined to trust him. If it were Kyle, he would have already told me some flowery story by now.
As I zip up the back of my dress, he finally manages a full sentence.
“I don’t think I can tell you without having a breakdown. Can I…” He takes a deep breath. “Can I show you instead? It’s only about twenty minutes away.”
“Yes, but I’m going to be sharing my location with Mia the entire time so someone else knows where I am.”
He recoils like I’ve hit him.
“That’s fair. I wouldn’t trust me either if I were you. I get it.”
Jamie disappears into his closet for a few moments, then comes out fully dressed with a lacquered box in his hands.
Neither of us utters a single word on the way to the van—Jamie because he can’t and me because I won’t.
Quiet isn’t unusual for us. We often have evenings where we sit in silence with our books, just existing together.
It isn’t like that now. This silence has the same stabbing pain as plunging your hand into freezing cold water.
He shrinks into himself when I refuse to allow him to help me into his truck, but he still doesn’t say anything.
The ride is dead quiet. He doesn’t even bother to turn on the radio.
My mind is full of questions I’m too afraid to ask.
Is he taking me to his other girlfriend’s house? His wife’s?
