I love you and I hate you and some days,
They feel the same.
I never understood how you meant that;
To feel so trapped in something so beautifully unmovable that . . .
It’s an exhilarating claustrophobia.
Day 382 Post-Gavin
It’s three in the morning when my phone vibrates.
I spent most of the night thinking about me. And Gavin.
Even Efrain from time to time.
But I’m not surprised or angry when I see Gavin’s name on my screen.
Gavin: Are you sleeping?
I smile, despite myself. Regardless of how I should feel, his name on my screen excites me, as does his pursuit.
Gavin: I feel like you aren’t. I just want to talk to you.
Most people will never do us the favor of being only good or only bad. I’d been given the best and worst pieces of this beautiful man.
And I’d given him much of the same.
Band-Aid, I tell myself as I call him.
“I’m surprised,” he says, his voice sounding deeper from fatigue.
“As am I.”
“I’m so tired but…is it okay if I come over?” He clears his throat. “I really hoped we’d have this conversation in person.”
My chuckle is short and dry.
“No,” I say. It’s strange to be stern with him, but I was sort of seeing someone else romantically and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, the moment I let my guard down with Gavin, in the same apartment we’d made love in many times before, I may as well kiss all of common sense goodbye.
“Okay. I get it.”
Silence stretches, and it feels like I’m in a home I once lived in. It’s been redecorated but . . . it’s still part of me.
“My mother died,” he whispers.
My gasp is involuntary. “I didn’t know.”
“How could you?”
“Are you okay?”
He takes a deep breath.
“I wasn’t. Because she was dying, and I couldn’t be a man and tell her how I felt. So, I told her everything. About you. About the pregnancy. She called me a coward and said I didn’t deserve you.”
I wasn’t brave enough to call him a coward. But what else could he be? To have loved me and then lost me.
I shouldn’t still have tears left in my eyes after these past few years. My eyes should be the driest, but they fill and then tears fall.
“It was hard to hear that from my mother. Especially given the circumstances.”
“I bet.”
“Yeah,” he whispers.
“So—”
“I’m—”
We both chuckle nervously as we try to tell each other to say what was on their mind.
Gavin goes first.
“I just have to know. Are you with that guy?”
“Uhhh . . .”
“I know it isn’t any of my business,” he starts, “but I just want to know if I still have a chance.”
So much time has passed. But is it too much?
“Gavin . . .”
He’s quiet as he waits for my response.
“If you did or didn’t, it wouldn’t be because of anyone but yourself.”
“I don’t . . . what does that mean, Denise?”
I shift in bed so I’m facing my window and I stare at the moon and the stars. And I remember secrets told under those stars as they witnessed me falling deeper and deeper in love.
I figure, what’s one more secret while the stars are watching.
“I still love you, Gavin. I will always love you. But . . . I need time.”
“Time? I can give you time.”
He makes it sound so easy, like he has any idea what life has been like for me. Without him, without my dreams, without what I thought would be.
“I need it because I’m so willing to go to war with myself for you. Do you understand how fucked-up that is? To believe in you so much that I have to fight myself to stay?” The words choke me up and I take a second to breathe. “This is what my life has been since you left me. Fighting to not give in and beg for you back, fighting to find the woman I once was. I had to do that by myself.”
His quiet apology frustrates me further.
“I slept in someone else’s bed and dreamed that I’d married you instead.”
A quick inhale on his end, like he hadn’t wanted to hear it.
Those words burned, and these ones would soothe.
“No one else will own me quite like you did. No one else makes me feel quite as alive as you do.”
This turned into confessions under the stars. And I wasn’t the least bit apologetic for it.
And, like I hoped, he follows suit.
“No one feels like I do. I know. It’s okay. No one’s come close to you, either.” He stretches with a small groan and is quiet for a moment. “Missing pieces is what it comes down to. Either I’m missing something with them or they’re missing something. Something that doesn’t make them you.”
I know something about missing pieces.
“I have missing pieces. And I can feel you, running your fingers over their curved edges.”
His breaths are short, giving way to his sudden long-windedness.
“I know I’ve apologized but there’ve been moments when I didn’t know how to forgive myself. For letting you go through something so difficult without my complete support. I was there, but I wasn’t there in anyway other than handling a burden.”
Silence stretches as I cry with my mouth away from the phone, even going as far as covering it with my hand.
His confession hurts. Because he hadn’t been a burden to me, even in my grief.
“My father stayed in Pakistan and I told him what my intentions were, coming back here.”
Only silence is offered from me.
“I came back to make things right with you and to live the life I’ve wanted to live. If you and I can be together someday, that’s what my wish is. But if I can only have your forgiveness, I’ll take that and let you be happy with someone else.”
I exhale slowly, thinking about everything he’s said. I don’t offer him much, other than a confirmation that I’d heard him.
“Okay.”
For the next few hours, we tell each other how much we’ve missed each other without ever even saying the words.
And when I wake up to my phone still on the call with him, I know anything with Efrain is impossible.