Say Yes (Nostalgic Summer Romance)

I closed my eyes, releasing two silent tears down each cheek as I did. I didn’t realize my eyes had glossed over the more he spoke, but the emotion was too much to hold back.

“God, Liam. I’m… I don’t even know what to say.”

“There’s nothing to say,” he said, and when I opened my eyes again, I found him staring out over the river. “I realized then what a fucking sham life is. All of it. You think you know what you want. You think you know what’s important. You think you’ve got it all and then wham,” he said, illustrating with a clap of his hands. “In an instant, all that shit is gone.”

“What happened next?”

“I fell apart.”

He said the words simply, matter-of-factly, like the answer was obvious.

“I was alive, medically speaking, but I was completely dead inside. I didn’t speak. I didn’t eat. I couldn’t look Julie in the eye when she showed up at the hospital. And when my mom came…” He shook his head. “It was all I could do not to launch myself out of the hospital window and end it all. I was still numb when they released me, and everyone was waiting on me, everyone needed something. We needed to reschedule the wedding. We needed to plan services. We needed to do so fucking much and I just… I couldn’t handle it.” He swallowed. “I left.”

“You… left?”

He nodded, his eyes distant. “I asked Mom to cash out my trust. It nearly broke her heart when I did because she knew, she knew something was off, that I was about to do something drastic. But I think she also knew I couldn’t stay.”

My heart broke for the woman I didn’t know, for the pain she must have experienced losing her husband and youngest son to death, only to lose her other son soon after.

“I know now, looking back, that I should have stayed. I should have been there — for my mom and for Julie. I should have been a man. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t deal with it, any of it. I couldn’t look at Julie without feeling responsible for killing her dad and her brother. I couldn’t look at my mom without feeling like she blamed me for it all. I couldn’t admit that I was the reason she no longer had a husband or her youngest son. I couldn’t face the families of my best friends to tell them their beloved sons had died partying — because of me.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said hurriedly, reaching over to squeeze his arm.

I didn’t even realize until I did it that I reached with my right hand.

“Maybe not,” he said with a shrug. “But maybe so. You could argue both ways, I guess. Regardless, I couldn’t face it. Any of it. So, I left. I left Julie, and I left my mom, and I left school and our apartment and every materialistic possession I owned. I just… left.” He swallowed, his eyes meeting mine. “And I haven’t been back since.”

He looked down at where my hand was on his arm, and I withdrew it instinctively, wrapping my arms around my knees again.

“You never went back?”

“Never.”

“Do you talk to her?” I asked. “To Julie?”

“No. She hates me now,” he said. “Mom disowns me. I don’t blame either of them.” He swallowed. “I left them there to deal with all of it — the funerals and the pain, not just of losing fathers and brothers and friends, but for Julie, losing her very much alive fiancé, too.”

I frowned, looking down at the grass as my stomach roiled violently. I didn’t even know Julie, but I felt so sorry for her and what happened that a fresh wave of tears built in my eyes.

“And as much as I hate it,” Liam continued. “I know even if I could go back, I would have done the same thing again. Because I wasn’t the same after the accident. I wasn’t going to be able to just go back to work, and marry Julie, and be a good husband and son and employee and maybe a dad. I may have survived physically,” he said. “But mentally, everything shifted. The old Liam Benson died in that crash. I couldn’t be what any of them wanted me or needed me to be.”

“So, you left.”

“So, I left.”

I sucked in a long breath, blew it out just as slowly, and let my eyes wander over the moonlit river as I digested everything he’d told me. Part of me wanted to cry. Part of me wanted to scream at him for being so selfish. Part of me wanted to hold him and say I understood.

I knew what it felt like, to want to run away from it all and start over.

I just didn’t have the same choice.