Beautifully Broken

“I am,” I smile. “Middle School English/Lit hopefully.”

His gorgeous green eyes twinkle. “You’re going to be a fantastic teacher.”

“You think so?”

“I do,” he nods. “Although, you might want to consider an all-girls school. If you were my teacher at that age, I would’ve never had a chance of concentrating in your class. Probably would’ve failed.”

I laugh. “I think I’ll manage. I can relate to being distracted by your teacher.”

He gives me a thoughtful look. “What are we doing, Kat? This is bullshit, right?”

“What’s bullshit?”

He gestures to the space between us. “This enti

re conversation. We’re acting like we hardly know each other.”

“I don’t know you anymore, Gavin,” I argue. “And you don’t know me. A lot’s changed.”

“Like what?”

I narrow my eyes at him. All right, if he’s going to force the subject…here I go. “How’s fatherhood? And Hailey?”

He bites his lower lip and leans back in the chair. “I wouldn’t know.”

Wait…what? “What does that mean?”

“It means that I haven’t heard from Hailey in years.” He clenches his jaw. “The baby wasn’t mine.”

I stare at him open-mouthed. “She lied? How did you find out? Did you have a paternity test?”

He pulls on the ends of his hair. “I didn’t have to. When Christian was born—that’s what she named him—it was obvious. He has his dad’s skin and hair.”

“I’m sorry, but I feel like I’m missing the point here.”

“Kat, I didn’t need a paternity test. Joe is African-American. And so is Christian…at least half anyway. I’m guessing she was hoping his skin would be much lighter and it wouldn’t be so obvious. Hailey and I were never together—that night or any time after. She broke down and admitted everything after Christian was born. She was mad at Joe…hurt, I guess, so she wanted to get back at him. She says things…happened between us but she put a stop to it when I called out another woman’s name. Your name, actually. Anyway…when Joe found out she was pregnant, he assumed the baby was his. Until she told him it was mine. Things were really tense for a while.”

I don’t know how to respond. How could Hailey do that to him? To Joe even? To me? My God, the entire reason I left him was based on a lie! I’m shocked. Angry. Incredulous. Disgusted. How different would my life be right now if we hadn’t broken up? I want to cry when I think about all of the wasted possibilities.

“Kat, please say something.”

“Why…why didn’t you call me as soon as you found out? It couldn’t have been more than a few months at that point.”

He releases a sigh. “I wanted to. God, I wanted to more than anything. But I kept thinking about what you said to me one time. That you needed to experience life…to know that you could make it on your own before you’d be ready to settle down. I knew how important that was to you and I didn’t want to rob you of the opportunity. Things were already so fucked up; I didn’t want to make them worse. I didn’t want to cause you any more pain.”

I feel like there’s a ton of bricks in my stomach. I left him because I thought I was doing the right thing. He never contacted me because he thought he was doing the right thing. How can two selfless acts cause so much hurt?

“I don’t know what to say, Gavin.”

“Can I ask you something?”

I brace myself for his question. “What would you like to know?”

“Are you seeing anyone?”

I meet his eyes and see so much loneliness reflected back at me. It’s the same look I see in the mirror every day. “No, I’m not.”

“Can I take you out for a drink tonight? I have this work thing later but it shouldn’t take too long.”