Page 106 of We Drank the Dawn

“Bea.” I interrupted her spiral. “There’s nothing you could’ve done to stop this.”

“But how is that true? I refuse to believe that this was inevitable. Sarah has been with you through everything you’ve ever gone through. It feels so out of the blue.”

“Sometimes stuff just happens. There’s no point in trying to figure out where it all went off course. After the accident, we weren’t able to connect in the same way and we drifted apart.”

“That’s a wild take, Peter.” Bea scoffed, a note of disdain in her voice. “If Tag and I separated, I would want to know exactly what happened so I could go back and work through the problem together. But you sound like you’re okay with it.”

“No, of course I’m not okay with it. I just…” I sighed deeply, dread seeping through me as I thought of every layer I’d need to peel back in order to be honest with Bea. “I don’t believe I’m the best thing for Sarah anymore.”

“Why?”

It was the same question Dad asked, and I gave Bea the same answer.

She was quiet for a moment. “So, are you actively pushing her away? Is that what all the crap last weekend was about?”

“Saturday night wasn’t intentional, but, yes, I think a small part of me is actively pushing.”

“If Tag purposefully pushed me away from him, it would destroy me, Peter. I would never be the same. He is my entire world. And you’re Sarah’s.”

“I’m not her world, Bea. Not anymore. She knows if we stay together, there will be so many things she will never have.”

“Yeah, things like a broken heart.”

I half rolled my eyes. “I meant like a family and kids.”

“I don’t get it. Why can’t you have those things? Don’t you guys have a plan for IVF?”

“We did. We were actually supposed to meet with the reproductive endocrinologist the April after my accident. Sarah was so excited. We should’ve done it a long time ago. Honestly, I should’ve married her years before I did. I’ve done everything so slow, and I’ve been too cautious. But I constantly feel like I need to prepare more because something bad is going to happen. And, turns out, I was right. Bad stuff keeps happening. I ask her to be my girlfriend and immediately get diagnosed with cancer. Then I pop the question at nineteen and get cancer again. Then I pop the question for a second time and have a grand mal seizure. Then I schedule an appointment to start IVF and get in an accident that turns our life upside down. You know how scared I am to have a kid, Bea? I can’t even put into words the dread I feel. If something happened to Sarah or the baby…” My voice cracked. “Or if IVF didn’t work…I just…” Emotions choked off my words.

Bea reached out, her hand gently clasping my forearm.

“You know that list Sarah made when she was kid?” My voice was painfully tight.

“Her bucket list?”

“Yeah.” I took a deep breath, shocked that I was seriously about to dive into this. “She gave me her list when we started dating and it turned into this whole big thing. It became the basis for almost everything we did together. It still is. Or was, until the accident, anyway…I feel like…man, this is terrible to admit…” I scrubbed a hand over my face as Bea gently touched my shoulder.

“No judgment, Peter. You being honest is good.”

“I feel like I’ve used that list to pacify her need for the next things in life…namely, marriage and kids. Especially kids.”

Bea’s silence stretched for a few rocks of her chair. “You mean you do things on the list to keep her happy so that you don’t have to proceed?”

“Yeah.” I could hardly press the word out.

Emotion jumped into her throat. “Why would you do that?”

I shook my head, angry with myself. “At first, I wasn’t consciously doing it. We used the list to keep having fun while we went through college. But then I started having really bad anxiety. I stressed every time I had a check up with my oncologist to the point of not sleeping for days and passing out in the office every time. And I brushed it off, thinking I was just traumatized from having cancer twice. But it bled into every area of my life. I felt like a sitting duck. Like there was going to be an attack on us and it was my job to anticipate and prepare for it. Except, back then, I thought obsessively preparing for every potential outcome was elite wisdom.”

She squeezed my arm when I took a shuddering breath. “Then I started taking her on adventures when I could sense her getting restless. And it wasn’t because I didn’t want to marry her—I did. It was just the anxious thoughts that told me we weren’t ready yet. That we needed to get through one more check up to confirm I was cancer free or we needed more money in the bank or we needed to grow up a little more.

“When I finally did pull the trigger, I had that seizure.” My voice broke. “And it validated my fears. The doctors were totally clueless as to why I got epilepsy and all they could tell me is that it was an unexplainable side-effect of the chemo. And I just kept thinking, ‘what else do I have that I don’t know about?’”

Bea hummed and sniffled softly, just listening.

“That’s when I realized what I was doing with the list. We finally got married and Sarah immediately wanted a baby, which made sense because we were already getting close to thirty. But I delayed and put her off every time. It was so easy to rationalize what I was doing that I didn’t realize how badly I was hurting her.

“But then, after the accident, the list vanished. Obviously, I wasn’t going on adventures anymore, and it seemed like the thing that had bound us together for so many years disappeared overnight. Every day, I feel like I’m drowning just trying to process the world around me and then there’s Sarah who is pushing for something, anything.” I shook my head. “She just wants me to show up somehow. And she wants me to promise that I’ll come around and eventually try for kids. But I can’t even give her that. So we have nothing now. And it's my fault.”