EMILY

Maggie looked at me closely. I had never mentioned Elliot before. She was still living in Minnesota at the time and to be honest, when I was with Elliot, he was my whole world. He completely consumed me. I was struggling to believe he honestly wanted me, that he loved me, so I kept him to myself. I thought if it were just the two of us, he wouldn’t leave me.

I never felt pretty enough or worthy enough for Elliot D’Arcy. To me, he was so much larger than life, and I felt small and insignificant. I was so sure, in time, he would see that and move on. I never understood what he saw in me. I looked back at the way it ended and I could see how my insecurities played into everything. I could never accept that what we shared was real. Elliot was a beautiful man I set high up onto a pedestal and then I shoved him off.

I was such a mess back then, an angry train wreck just waiting to destroy myself, and I almost succeeded.

“So what happened with this Elliot guy?” Maggie asked. “Was he the one? Did you really love the guy?”

Swallowing hard, I cleared my throat nervously. I took another sip of my wine to give myself some liquid courage and then began telling her my secret.

“What can I say about Elliot? He was a ray of light in total blackness. He was magical. Elliot could take anything evil and make it good. He was pure beauty in every sense of the word. Soft spoken and healing, just being in his presence made me want to be the best I could be. And he was so mouthwateringly beautiful to look at. His wavy, golden brown hair always needed a trim and was always a mess. His weathered face, the lines I traced with my fingertips every chance I had, the smile that never left his lips when we were together, even when I was screaming my head off about some stupid transgression my insecure mind conjured up about him.

“Elliot always seemed so calm and peaceful. He could spend hours outside just watching the world go by. He was curious about everything, looking for answers to crazy random thoughts and questions when they popped into his head.

“He would go off on these offbeat quests for days at a time trying to figure out an idea. Then he would come back and write for hours and hours … sometimes he didn’t stop writing for over twenty-four hours at a stretch. I think that’s what made his stories so great. They were an obsession with him.”

Maggie was stunned. “You never told me? Your best friend? What happened to him, to the two of you?”

I shook my head, feeling ashamed that I never confided in her and continued. Maybe after hearing the story, Maggie would understand.

“I loved him and hated him at the same time. There was a peace inside of Elliot that drew others to him. Complete strangers wanted to stand by him quietly and just breathe in his air space. It was crazy in a strange sort of way. He was everything I wasn’t, but wanted to be, and I was so damned insecure and so afraid, a very bad combination at that time in my life.

“After a while I became consumed with jealousy. I questioned everything he did, where he went, and who he spoke to. I was insane. I felt like there was this venom inside of me spilling out through the pores of my skin, hurting everyone that came close to me, especially Elliot.

“I was out of control. I didn’t know who I was or how blessed I was to have him in my life. He knew me … my flaws and imperfections, my quirks. He knew how my mind worked and the way my thoughts could just take off and get crazy.

“He loved me in spite of myself, so I began to hate him, and I destroyed us. He was so good to me and I was such a total bitch in return. I feel like I’ve been paying for it ever since the day he told me it was over and the love he had for me was gone. He walked out of my life and I have hated myself ever since.

“For a long time, I blamed him. I blamed him for everything that went wrong because I couldn’t face the truth. I didn’t want to really look at myself, to look inside of me and admit what I had become. It was me who drove him away. I have never met a man since who came close in comparison. And I do compare every man I meet to Elliot.

“He was tall, tall enough that I had to tip my head back to look up at him. Tall enough that my body fit perfectly into his arms and my head could rest in the junction of his shoulder. I loved that fit. I loved how his body rippled with strength and his golden brown hair glistened in the sunlight, his long curls dancing with a light breeze.

“When I think of Elliot, I think of poetry because nothing else comes to mind when I try to explain him. Words cannot define him. Elliot, in my eyes, was total perfection. And I destroyed the most beautiful creation ever to become tangled up in my messed up life. I think deep down I will always punish myself for what I did to him. I deserve it. I am evil to the core.”

“You are not evil!” Maggie chided me.

“Then what do you call someone who hurts the very person that loves them the most?” I asked her.

“Dumb maybe? Confused, immature? But not evil.”

I was as honest with her as I knew how to be, talking, for the first time, about how I blamed myself for the breakup. It felt like I was lifting a ten-pound weight from my heart. I’d never told anyone about Elliot.

Maggie moved to Phoenix shortly after Elliot and I split up so she never met him, and I was very good at acting like my life was good. It was too painful for me to talk about him to anyone. I wanted him to come back with every single demented cell in my body. I kept thinking he would call me and tell me it was a mistake, that he still loved me.

Everything he left at my house was still there. His navy cotton robe hung in my bathroom on a hook next to the shower and some of his clothes in my closet, jeans and a few shirts. I still wore the shirts around the house sometimes like I did when we were together. He always laughed because his shirts came to my knees like a dress. He loved it because I never wore anything else underneath.

A bottle of Elliot’s favorite cologne was still on my dresser where I could see it whenever I looked that way.

Occasionally, after a particularly emotional or lonely day, I would mist a tiny bit on myself and inhale deeply. Closing my eyes, I could imagine him standing next to me and my world would be good once again. Or the long nights when insomnia wouldn’t leave me alone, I sprayed it on my sheets and prayed he would come to me in my dreams as I wrapped my body tightly around a pillow … pretending.

I waited for a long time, but nothing. Why would he? I never deserved him in the first place. I knew I was damaged somehow.

To look at me on the surface, you wouldn’t see it. I never let anyone look too deep. I didn’t want to see their pity or their disgust. I was afraid … of what I wasn’t really sure. Maybe because of who I was, what I did to him, I didn’t deserve to find love? I had to quit thinking about Elliot. I really needed to move on and start living again. Maybe then I would find love or it would find me. The real kind of love. But first I needed to change.

Maggie was quiet as she listened to my tale of Elliot. I didn’t see the pity or the disgust in her eyes that I feared I would, just sadness.

She reached over and hugged me.

“You are not cruel, Em. You’re not,” she assured me. “You were young. We all make mistakes when we’re young and dumb. You don’t realize what you have until sometimes it’s too late. We all look back and think of how we could have done things differently. We have regrets. It hurts when we lose someone, no matter what the circumstances. We each have our own shit to work through and sometimes we have to go away to do it or we can’t deal with the pain. Once we figure it out, we’re better for it. Then if that person we walked away from is still there, loving us, it’s meant to be.”

“What if they don’t come back?” I asked.

“Then there is someone else so beautiful and so utterly perfect for us that they will eclipse the one who left, and you will finally understand why they had to go,” she answered.

I thought about that for a few minutes while I sipped my wine. I hoped she was right. I hated the guilt I carried around me like a harness.

Her voice broke into my thoughts. “Quit punishing yourself!” she told me gently. “I know you, Em, you think you don’t deserve love because you blame yourself for hurting him. That’s bullshit. You deserve love like all the rest of us. You can’t keep thinking that because you screwed up when you were too young to really understand yourself, that no one could love you. It’s unrealistic and so wrong on every level. Let it go.”

“Easier said than done,” I replied with a smile. “Do you have the magic cure for that?”

“I wish I did. Everyone always tells me the answer is time.”

“I hate that answer.” I gave a sad laugh.

I was impatient, impulsive, and always in a hurry, and I realized it was part of my downfall. I needed patience in a big way. The problem was I needed it now. When I looked back, I knew I’d compared every guy I’d met to Elliot, every single one of them. And they all came up short. They always would.

I wanted them to make me forget. It didn’t work. It was still Elliot’s face I wanted to see when I woke up in the morning and Elliot’s voice whispering in my ear as I fell asleep.

I had sex with other men, but it wasn’t love. And no matter how hard I tried to duplicate what I had with Elliot, it fell short. It was just a body next to me at night so I didn’t have to feel alone. I couldn’t find it in my heart to love any one of them. Not when Elliot still held my soul. The sex? It just made me all the more lonely and sad.

“Hey Emily, maybe your secret admirer that left you the rose could be the one who helps you forget.” Maggie suggested, trying to snap me back into a positive mood.

“Maybe.” I laughed. But somehow, I didn’t think so.