Shane
When he asked Rayvn over to his house for dinner, he was prepared for an over done steak on the BBQ, since he always cooked them a tad too long, a few glasses of wine for her, beer for him, maybe a movie and a long, epic make out session that ended in the same steamy sex they always enjoyed. Every. Single. Night.
He was already planning in his head just what he could do to surprise her. New ways to make her come, a different tactic, a different position… He was so lost in thought he nearly failed to realize that there was something wrong. They were halfway through dinner when he finally realized how morose she looked.
“Hey, is something wrong? Did you have a bad day? An asshole client that you want me to take care of? I can dump a select bag of shit on his or her lawn…”
Rayvn managed to smile, but just barely. “That would be nice, but no. No one was an asshole. Not today at any rate. I’ll have to keep that in mind for the future.”
There was something about her tone that indicated she didn’t think they had any kind of future at the moment and that scared the hell out of him. He’d used that tone a hundred times in the past to get out of shit or at least drop the hint that he wasn’t interested in anything but a casual liaison. He realized just how massive a turd he actually was. He’d come to that conclusion way more times than once since he’d met Rayvn. He wanted to think she was changing him for the better. She is changing me. She fucking inspires me.
“Uh- are you sure?”
How did one exactly ask if their unstated girlfriend was planning on dumping them? Shane pushed aside his plate, no longer hungry. The half a steak he’d consumed felt like a lead weight in his stomach.
“I… can I ask you something?”
He knew what was coming. Rayvn wasn’t a dishonest person. She didn’t bother trying to be coy or hide her emotions. She wasn’t deceptive. That’s what he liked about her. She just put everything out there. She was a straight shooter and expected him to be the same. He must have grown on her since the start, because for some reason he could never figure out, she’d stuck around. And he liked that. He really fucking liked that.
“This is karma,” he said out loud, without even realizing he’d said anything at all.
“What is?”
“Oh- uh- karma for- well- I’ll just say it. I treated people pretty shitty. I hurt a lot of people along the way. Now it’s my turn. I know you’re done with me, Rayvn. You can just say so. It’s alright. I’ll take it like a man. I promise I will.”
“God.” Rayvn pushed her own plate away. She’d hardly touched a thing. “That’s not what this is about. Unless you want it to be.”
“No, I don’t want it to be.” He wished he could relax, but Rayvn’s face didn’t change. That terrible pained expression was still there.
“Maybe we should have this conversation in the living room.”
“It’s alright. Just say what you have to say. You’re not going to kill me.” She might. She might fucking kill me. His fingers curled into the edge of the table, out of her line of sight.
“I… I’m sorry, Shane. We all have a past. I wasn’t completely honest about mine.”
“About the divorce?”
“About the reason.”
“You never told my why. So, you weren’t exactly dishonest.”
“I should have told you why or at least explained to you about it.”
“I never asked because I didn’t really want to know, unless you truly want to talk about it.”
“I want to talk about it now. I purposely put this off because I already know what you think. Do you remember that night in the park? Our first date?”
“How could I forget?” He tried to smile to ease some of the tension. It didn’t work one bit.
“Those kids threw that Frisbee at us by accident and you made some comments that really made me think you don’t like kids and that you for sure don’t want them. Is that true?”
Here we go. The kids thing. He knew it was bound to come up. He wasn’t surprised. People had this kind of discussion all the time. He just hoped he could put it off for a while longer. Or that he could change his mind. Rayvn made him want to change his mind.
“Yeah, I remember.” It embarrassed the hell out of him to recall how he’d acted. Like a damn child.
“Shane, I- I had a- do you know what a still birth is?”
The tiny seed of horror in his gut bloomed into a massive fucking plant, no, a tree, that ate him up from the inside out. He felt like it was growing out of his throat, choking him.
“Yeah,” he rasped. “It’s when the baby is born dead.”
“Yes. I- I was pregnant. With a baby girl. The pregnancy was a surprise. I wanted it. Alex didn’t. I thought he’d get used to the idea, but he didn’t want to be a dad when we were both so young. He wanted to wait. He- he supported me through the pregnancy. Kind of. He didn’t come to any of the appointments or anything. He didn’t really make an effort.”
“That doesn’t sound supportive at all.” Shane wished he could find the guy and slam his fist into the guy’s face. It would probably be a damn improvement.
“Well, he never said anything negative about it. Not really. I thought he’d just accepted it as a fact. I was on a pick one day. I was eight months pregnant. I was still working, even though I knew I should be taking things easy. I was healthy. My doctor said it was fine. I realized, that afternoon, that I hadn’t felt the baby move all day. It wasn’t really unusual, since she was way more active at night. I waited a few more hours and still nothing. I got really worried and went right to the hospital. When I got there, there was no heartbeat. The- uh- umbilical cord had a knot in it… I had to deliver the baby. They induced me and- uh- well, I got to hold her for a few minutes before she was taken away. Alex, he refused. He said that the pregnancy was a… well that it was nature’s way of telling us we shouldn’t be parents yet. That he was right. That it was god’s will.”
“What the fuck!” Shane shoved back his chair so hard it toppled over behind him.
Rayvn started. Her eyes filled up with tears and spilled over. Despite it, a shadow of a smile played over her lips. “Thanks for being angry on my behalf. But it’s alright. At least, that part. It’s over. It showed me that Alex was never going to be the right person for me. Out of all the things that could happen… it just told me that he wouldn’t be supportive. He wasn’t the man I thought I had married. I was young when we met. Way too young. By the time we got married, I felt like a different person. Losing the baby made me realize I needed to get away from him before I had wasted my entire life with him. I got a divorce so I could make myself happy in the future in a way that I couldn’t if I had stayed married.”
“Still!” Shane wanted to find something and put his fist through it. “That is so far from right, Rayvn! Fuck me, I can’t imagine what you went through. No one should have to deal with that, losing their child and someone treating them that way.”
“It was hard. It was really, really hard. It’s just been- well it’s been a few years and I’m still learning how to heal. Sometimes I still get sad. I think about her, on the day of her birth and how old she’d be and what she’d be doing. I’m not sure what’s out there or after this, but I hope there is something good and pretty, just for her. I hope that somewhere she’s loved and that she knows how much she’s missed.”
He lost it. Just fucking lost it. He realized his face was wet, but it took him a minute to realize he was crying.
“Don’t,” Rayvn said shakily as more of her silent tears spilled over. “Don’t do that or I’m going to become unhinged over here.”
“Sorry.” He swiped at his eyes. “Fuck. Rayvn, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t come here to make you feel bad, or even to cry. I actually promised myself that I wouldn’t.”
“You can cry as much as you want…”
“I need to ask you, Shane, if you really don’t want kids. Because I do. I really, truly do. If you don’t, then I can’t do this with you anymore. I want to be with you. I’ve loved our time together. It’s meant so much to me. More than you will probably ever know, but I don’t want to lead you on or hurt you or myself any more than I have to. This was never supposed to happen between us, whatever it is we’re doing. I know we both expected to break up right away. And we haven’t. I know that’s a big shock to us both. I just… I can’t keep doing this without you knowing that sometime in the future, a reasonable amount of time, with the right person, I do want children.”
Silence filled up the room. He slowly bent because he didn’t know what else to do and picked up the chair that he’d knocked over. He wished he could find the right words. He didn’t want to lose Rayvn, but he also didn’t want to lie to her.
“I don’t know what to say,” he finally admitted. She remained sitting there. Her eyes closed, and it seemed like forever before she opened them again. The hurt glistening there was obvious. It made him hurt, socked him right in the chest. “I- I never really saw myself having kids. I never really liked them. But maybe that’s other people’s kids. Everyone says with your own, it’s different.”
“Don’t do that,” Rayvn warned.
“Do what?”
“Change what you want just to try and make me happy. That never works.”
“Well, people do change. They grow up. With you, I- I’ve never felt like this. I want to do things for you that make you happy. I want to see you, over and over and over. Normally that would make me panic, but with you, I don’t feel that way at all. I don’t want to jump ship or get out of this. I want the exact opposite.”
“Sometimes people can change, but sometimes they don’t change enough. I don’t want you to have to compromise.”
“Who says it would be a compromise or that I wouldn’t change enough? We haven’t known each other long enough to truly know what we want. I can’t just up and rethink everything in a month! I would need time to grow into it. I don’t want to give you false hope, but with you, I do want things I haven’t wanted before. I could change for you.”
“I don’t want you to have to do that.”
“Does it always have to be a bad thing?’
“And if we get one, two, three, four years down the road and we decide that we both can’t change enough to make each other happy? That you don’t want kids and I can’t stop wanting them? What then? I swear that we’ll just hurt each other more.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way…”
“You think that love and everything associated with it is bullshit.”
“Maybe I did,” he admitted, embarrassed. He finally slumped back down in his chair. “Maybe I did believe that, but you know I don’t feel that way anymore.”
“Do I? I know that we’ve enjoyed each other a lot, but that doesn’t mean that you have changed your mind or that you have to. In the end it probably would just be bullshit. Isn’t that how it always works? It starts out good and then just goes to hell? Maybe we should break it off while it’s still happy and we can look back on this and think fondly about it. I don’t want you to hate me. I don’t want to hate you.”
“So just quit while we’re ahead?” His shock came out as anger and his tone was harsher than he intended.
“Just like that? Just quit and not find out where it could have gone?”
“We both know, I think, deep down, that it never would have gone anywhere. We enjoy each other. That’s great. I wish I could just keep it like that, but I can’t. I can’t stop my feelings from getting involved.”
“You’re afraid of being hurt?”
“So are you. You’ve been afraid for a long time.”
She was right. She was right, and he damn well knew it. He watched, unable to say anything, unable to move, unable to stop her, as she rose. She slowly pushed back her chair and turned. She walked out of the dining room, through his living room, the fucking living room that he’d blown the wall out of to make the house more open concept, walked right through that newly created space, to the front door and out of his life.
The silence in the house after Rayvn left was utterly deafening. He sat there, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid of the pain welling up inside of him. He wanted it out. He wanted to tear it out and throw it away and never think about her again. He wanted to rip her from him, rip out the memories and whatever it was that he’d felt right from the first minute with her. He couldn’t. He couldn’t and she was right.
He was terrified.