I pull my palm across my face to smear the tears that are now streaming down my face. "I regret everything. All of it. I regret ever meeting you. All I am to you is a convenient fuck and for some reason you don't want me to fuck anyone else so you pretend that we're in a relationship." I pull the last word heavily across my lips.
"We are in a relationship, Jessica." I can hear the impatience in his tone and it only spurs my emotions more.
"People in relationships help each other." I pull my gaze to the floor. I can't look at him. I know that being vulnerable with him is a mistake. He doesn't care. All he cares about is coming inside of me.
"What do you need?" he asks it so calmly. How can he do that? How can he react so impassively knowing that I'm such an emotional wreck?
I push past him and grasp the door handle within my palm. "To leave," I whisper.
"Talk to me." He pulls my hand away from the handle and into his. "Tell me."
"I told you in my text messages. I cried about it in my voicemails."
Panic skirts around the edges of his eyes and everything suddenly makes sense. He hasn't read any of the messages. He hasn't heard one of the voicemails. He just didn't care enough to check.
"Since you obviously didn't bother to check the messages I left you, I'll recap them for you. My ex-boyfriend came to visit me to remind me that I killed a man when I lived in Connecticut." His hand drops mine and without looking at his face, I open the door and slip into the hallway.
Chapter 15
'You didn't kill anyone." Rebecca runs her hand down the side of my cheek. "Josh can't keep telling you that, it's wrong."
"I let him die. It's the same thing. "I close my eyes tightly. The memory of that night in Connecticut washes over me again. It`s become an endless loop that I can't escape from. I thought running from my life there would block out the pain. The heavy reminders that Josh brought back with him, can't be chased away with a simple change of scenery.
"You did your best." She moves closer to pull me into a tight embrace. "No one can fault you for that."
"It's not like that. I was trained to know what to do." I can barely say the words. I studied to be a paramedic. I know what to do when someone stops breathing, yet I let Josh's grandfather die in my arms.
"Jess." She sits upright on the bed now, her hands on her knees. "You listen to me and you listen good."
I stare at her. She's rarely this impassioned about anything that doesn’t include designer fashion or men. "He was old. He had a heart attack. You did what you could and he died. End of story."
"Josh blames me." I pull my teeth over my bottom lip. "He'll never stop blaming me."
"Josh is fucked up." There are tears in her eyes. "You gave up everything because his grandfather died. No one could have saved him. He was too..."
"Josh could have saved him." I cut her off. "He's stronger than me. He could have done CPR longer. I tried." I had tried. I had done CPR until the moment the EMTs arrived. I'd done everything I was trained to do. I just did
n’t do it well enough.
"People die, Jess. He was visiting you two. He would have died at your place, or back at his place. It wasn't anything you did." She grabs my hand. "Please let this go. Please."
"I wish I could do it again," I whimper into my pillow. "I wish I could have that day back."
She curls up next to me on the bed. "You can't. It's over."
***
"I was wrong." The words float through the air behind me as I walk the four blocks back to my apartment from work. "Jessica, I was wrong."
I stop at the sound of my name. Jessica. Only one person calls me that.
"I can't believe what an ass I was." He's behind me now, his hand resting on my shoulder. "You had every right to be pissed off at me. Hell, you had every right to fucking leave me."
"You were such an ass." I volley the words into the air. "You are an ass."
"You're going to forgive me." He traces a path across my exposed neck with his finger. "This is the first step."
A flourish of pink roses appears in front of me. I feel his other hand wrap around my waist. "I told you I don't do romantic but this isn't romantic so don't get your panties in a knot and expect this all the time."