“I’ll sit with you on the deck,” she said. “But I’m going to hold off on the beer for now. There’s something I wanted to talk about.”
“Okay,” I said as we walked back outside to the deck. “There was actually something that I wanted to talk to you about too, but you go first.”
Just being this close to her was hard; I wanted to reach over and pull her to me, feel her in my arms again.
“Ben told me everything,” she said.
I let the words sink in, at first not quite believing what I was hearing. “He did what?”
“Don’t be mad at him.”
“I’m not... exactly, I guess,” I said, though I did feel surprised. “You mean, he told you everything about...?”
“About Declan.”
“Why?”
“Because he thought I should know. He thought that it might explain a little bit why you suddenly broke up with me.”
“I see,” I said. Now it felt strange to be sitting here with her, knowing that she knew the one secret I had never thought anyone else would ever know.
“I could say I wish you would have told me, but I understand why you didn’t,” Allie said.
“Would it have changed anything?”
“No. Well, it wouldn’t have changed how I felt about you. How I feel about you. I love you, Cole. I still love you, even though you broke up with me. I think I can understand a little bit better why you did, but that doesn’t change how I feel. I can’t just stop feeling something for you, even if that would make my life a whole hell of a lot easier. And I didn’t come over here tonight expecting you to change your mind about anything. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be thrilled if you did, but... I just wanted you to know that I still do love you, and that I get why you felt like you had to end things, but...”
Her voice trailed off, and I could tell that she was trying not to cry. I reached over and took her hand.
“Allie,” I said. “I hate to see you like this. I hate to think that I hurt you, because you don’t deserve that. And it’s funny, you coming over here tonight to talk because I’d just been thinking that I wanted to talk to you, and I was trying to decide when a good time for that would be. I shouldn’t have broken up with you like that. I didn’t want to; I was just so freaked out by what had happened with Declan that I reacted, and it certainly wasn’t in the right way. I realize
that now, and what I’d been planning on talking to you about was whether or not you thought we could get back together. Because that is what I would really like to see happen. And I’m sorry for putting you through all of this in the first place.”
“I’m so glad to hear you say that,” she said. “I’ve been miserable without you.” She took a deep breath. “There. It feels good to say it out loud. Even if that’s not what I’m supposed to be saying.”
“What are you supposed to be saying?”
“That I’ve moved on, that it doesn’t matter, that I’m going to go out on some rebound.”
“Rebound? Did you?”
She gave me a sheepish smile. “Well, Amy tried to set something up for me, but we just went out and ended up getting some food. I just couldn’t do it. It felt too weird.”
“I see. I’m sorry, Allie.”
“You don’t have to apologize. I get why you did it. I’m sorry that I had no idea about everything with Declan. That’s so intense, Cole! Do you...do you want to talk about it?”
I did, and I didn’t. There was so much to say, yet at the same time, I wasn’t sure even where to begin. And that was the thing—after all these years, I didn’t talk about it, so starting now seemed strange. I took a deep breath.
“I know I told you some of the history there,” I said. “I did leave out certain parts. That’s the real reason Marissa got sent away—she was pregnant. My parents just couldn’t believe it, though she didn’t tell them until it was she was almost four months along. She was able to get away with wearing big sweaters and stuff, and even if they’d found out sooner, she said there was no way in hell she was going to get an abortion.”
“That must’ve been such a hard thing for all of you,” Allie said. “I can’t even begin to imagine.”
“It was really hard. For my mother, especially. I had just finished my residency, and I was thinking about what my next steps were going to be, where I wanted to go, and then all this happened. But, you know, I really did what I felt like I had to do. For a time, I thought that maybe my parents were going to be the ones to raise Declan, but it was obvious they just couldn’t do it. They could be there to help out financially if need be, and they’d take him out every Sunday, but doing the whole raising a child again? They just couldn’t do it. Not again, not after what had happened. Not because they didn’t want to or anything, but I just knew they wouldn’t be able to do it.”
It felt undeniably strange to be speaking these words out loud to someone, yet I also felt an overwhelming sense of relief. As if I’d been needing to confess this, like talking about it would somehow absolve me from something.
But what? If I felt I needed to be absolved, wasn’t that admitting that I had done something wrong?