Bad Teacher

Now, it’s the window.

Every time, it’s something new. Something else she’ll try to take away her pain.

How many more times can I save her? How many more times will she allow me to?

When I step closer, she says, “Don’t.”

I wonder if this is the last time I’ll ever see her face again. If it’s the last time I’ll hear her voice. It goes through my mind every time she does this, and each attempt is another crack in my heart.

“Please … come here. We can talk about it.”

“No … we’ve talked enough. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“We can work things out,” I say.

“We can’t. Nothing can fix this.” She points at her belly. “Nothing that can fix us.”

I don’t know why it became this way. Why we became so disconnected. Why we became two people just living together instead of one love.

I swallow and hold up my hand to make her stop, even though I don’t dare to step closer, afraid of what she’ll do. “Just give me the knife, and I promise I will do something. We can go into therapy again.”

“We already did that. It’s not working. None of it is.” Tears stream down her face. “I’m tired. Tired of this. Tired of life.”

“Please don’t say that. I need you. This world needs you.”

“No,” she says, vehemently shaking her head. “You don’t. You need a woman who can give you something more. Someone who loves herself.”

“But I love you. Isn’t that enough?”

“No!” she yells, throwing the knife on the floor. “You don’t love me. You don’t love me anymore …”

“Of course, I do,” I say, the desperation in my voice seeping through.

She crawls closer to the window and looks over the edge at the ground below. “I don’t believe it.”

Has she gone this far?

Is her view of this world, of me, so distorted that she can’t even see what’s right in front of her?

“I don’t want a baby. I want you,” I say.

“I can’t give you what you want, Thomas. Enough is enough. I don’t want this pain anymore. I need it to end.” She sniffs and smiles softly, but it’s faked. “I love you, I always will.”

Time seems to stand still as the woman I love turns her head away from me and throws herself out the window.

I scream. Louder than I ever have.

Its hollowness will never reach her in time.

* * *

Now

“Oh, my god …” Hailey murmurs as I tell my story. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t know what to say either except for the fact that I don’t talk about this easily.”

She swallows. “I’m sorry. About your wife … and that you have to tell me like this.”

I smile at her. “It’s okay. I guess it had to come out sooner or later. This time, it was too late. I should’ve told you sooner, considering what happened.”

I rub my hands together and touch my finger where my ring used to be. I threw it in the casket when I buried her, but the mark is still on my finger.

“I was married. And then, I suddenly wasn’t. And it broke me. It broke me into a million pieces, which I slowly glued back together over time, but they never became whole again. And now you know why I never tried to get past the flirting phase ever again.”

“That’s why you were … pushing me away,” she says tentatively.

“Yes. I kept ignoring my growing feelings, thinking they were wrong. I kept pushing away the fact that my wife died. But now, I realize that wasn’t the right way to deal with it at all.” I sigh. “After all, I’m still here, alive, breathing. She’d want me to move on.”

She smiles gently. “She’d want you to find someone to love again.”

“Exactly,” I say, nodding. “And I found it in you.”

* * *

Hailey

I rub my lips together to try to understand, but it’s coming slowly.

He didn’t want to commit because he was afraid he’d hurt me. Because he was afraid to lose me too.

He chuckles and shakes his head. “It’s sad, I know. Pathetic, how I handled life after what happened to her.”

“No,” I say, grabbing his hand. “I get it now. It’s not pathetic.”

“Really? When I made the one girl I truly cared about think I was cheating on her? Yeah, that’s pathetic.”

“But you weren’t …” I say. “I just saw you two together.”

“And you put two and two together,” he continues. “I know.” He looks me deeply in the eye. “But I promise you, Natalie and I are not fucking. Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl. I wouldn’t even touch her with a ten-foot pole.” He shakes it off. “Like I’d ever want to date my sister-in-law. Nope. Not sexy. She’s also my boss, so that would only make it more awkward. Well, ex-boss.”