On one hand was the only boyfriend I’d ever had. I’d lost my virginity to him. He was the only guy I’d ever gone all the way with… and until those last few days in Athens, he was the only one I’d ever kissed. He’d liked me back when I wasn’t pretty. We had three and a half years of history, and an entire future planned. We were going to go to college together, then we were going to go to New York City, and then to exotic countries, and write and get married and see the world.
On the other hand was the hottest guy I’d ever met. But I knew he was a womanizer. No matter what he said to me, no matter how much I wanted to believe him, there was this lingering fear that I was just another conquest. He had slept with dozens and dozens of women – used them up and then tossed them aside. Or at least never stayed with them. And that’s what I wanted: someone to stay with forever.
I was weighing a lifetime against one moment. Maybe not a moment; maybe a week, or a month. Maybe two or three… and then he would cheat on me. I was certain of it.
What’s one week or month against a lifetime with someone you love?
…or think you love?
I keep coming back to this interview I did once for the Syracuse student paper. I talked to a woman who ran a beautiful old house in the country that doubled as a wedding site and a reception hall, all in one.
She said that by her estimation, a third of the brides who had walked down the aisle in that house knew it was the wrong decision. She could see it in their faces that they knew they were making a mistake. Some even confided in her, because she was the only one they could tell. It wasn’t necessarily that there was another man, although occasionally that was the reason. Usually it was just that the person they were about to marry wasn’t the One. But it was happening now, and her parents had spent so much money, and 200 people were sitting there waiting as the music played –
Even more than that, those brides loved the men they were about to marry, even if they weren’t in love with them.
How could they walk out on them like that? How could they hurt them like that?
That’s essentially what my mom had done to my dad. Gutted him. Broken him. Hurt him so badly he never recovered.
I couldn’t do that to Kevin.
I couldn’t be my mother.
At yet, at the time, I was too young and inexperienced to see all the warning signs Kevin was throwing up like red flags. The insecurity… the petty jealousies… the anger and immaturity… the emotional manipulation…
But how could I see them? I’d only been with him. I didn’t know that’s not how it’s supposed to be. I didn’t realize that’s not how all men act.
I met a man who didn’t act like that, but, hey… he was a womanizer, right?
In retrospect, it’s funny that the womanizer was the more emotionally healthy of the two.
Not funny ‘ha ha’… but funny painful.
Or funny fucked-up.
Even when Shanna spelled it out for me… well… you only hear what you’re ready to hear, or want to hear. Anything else gets marked down to ‘how can a girl who’s never had a real relationship know anything about mine?’
Everything about my relationship with Kevin looked good on paper.
But you don’t make a life out of how things look on paper.
My heart wanted something else… but I went with my head instead.
Sometimes that’s a good thing.
Not this time.
Kevin and I broke up anyway.
See?
Funny fucked-up.
Actually, I broke up with him.
Like mother, like daughter.
Lying… destroying the people she was supposed to love most…
So go ahead, hate me for what I did.
You can’t hate me more than I hated myself at the time.
The really fucked-up thing?
As much pain as it eventually caused me… I wouldn’t have traded that night with Derek for anything.
That probably should have been my first clue.
75
Kevin knew something was different from the minute he got back to Savannah. He asked me what was wrong. I told him I was just afraid. Going to a new school… growing up… it was suddenly real, not just a daydream anymore.
I’m not sure he entirely bought it, but he had me around him again – and he was getting sex at least every other day – so he let it slide.
But the guilt slowly drove me insane… so I told him two weeks before we left for Syracuse.
Sort of.
I told him I’d kissed Derek, and that I was sorry, it was stupid, I was drunk, I didn’t mean it, I loved him – Kevin, not Derek.
Kevin freaked out, of course, and immediately broke up with me.
This time, I was the one pleading. I left messages and texted him a thousand times and cried and said I knew I didn’t deserve him, but please oh please could he forgive me, please, just this once?