I love you, Kat, and I’m sorry.

I text her again, the cellphone screen lighting up the dark bedroom in Pops’ house, my old bedroom. The stupid posters reflect the light that scatters into the room in stripes from the blinds on the window. The sound of the traffic is louder here and everything about it reminds me of the life I used to lead. The one before Kat. The one I’m so damn ashamed of now.

I’ll never forget the look of disappointment on his face when I showed up a few hours ago with a duffle bag. It’s like even he lost hope in me making it right with Kat.

It’s crushing to leave her. But it’s different this time. It’s hopeless.

I feel so worthless and it’s never been more apparent to me that my life is meaningless without Kat in it.

I swallow thickly as I lean back on the bed and fall into the flat pillow and close my eyes. I’ve never felt so alone. I wish I could take it all back.

How fucking childish. I know it is. But in this moment I make a silent wish that I could just go back five years and do it all the right way this time.

As I close my eyes and feel my heart slow and my blood turn cold, I remember one of the last conversations I had with my mother.

She’d seen me with Kat while we were out one night. Just a coincidence, but she kept acting like it was more than it was.

Kat was a fling and a good time. She’s someone I wanted more and more of and I made damn sure to monopolize her time until I had my fill, but of course that time would never come. I just didn’t know it back then. Or I liked to pretend I didn’t anyway.

“She seems sweet,” my mother told me when I came home for Sunday dinner. Looking back at that night now, I realize how much slower she was to set the table. How everything was a little off, but to me, it was just an obligation I had to my mother before I would be leaving to go out and have a good time.

“You didn’t even meet her,” I laughed at my mom. Shaking my head and taking a drink from whatever was in my cup. I leaned back and looked at my father, waiting for him to agree with me.

“Plus she’s the only girl you’ve seen me with.”

“That’s true,” Ma replied and shrugged. “I like the way you two look together,” she added and then looked me in the eyes as she smiled. “Is it too much to ask that you pretend to value your mother’s opinion?”

I let out a small laugh and shook my head. “I’m glad you approve,” I told her. More so just to make her happy than anything else, but it only opened the door for Ma to invite her over for the next family dinner. I had already started coming up with reasons to end it that night.

It was too much. I was young and in my prime and working a job that would keep my appetite well fed.

I was ready to end it too the next night. But, my God, her smile and the way she laughed at me when I pulled up wearing an old rugby shirt. She thought it was the oddest thing and I’ll never forget the way her soft voice hummed with laughter and it carried into the night. Who was I to take that away? I knew she’d end it with me anyway. I didn’t know it would be after marriage and five years later.

If I could go back to that night, I would change it all.

“I’m heading to bed.” My father’s voice catches me off guard and my body jolts from the memory. I pretend to rub the sleep from my burning eyes and clear my throat to tell my father good night. It’s tight with emotion and it takes me a second to sit up in bed.

“You look like hell,” Pops says.

My head nods and I take a moment to set my feet on the floor. My head is still hung low and my shoulders are sagging as I rest my elbows on my knees.

“How did you keep mom out of it? All the stupid shit you did?” I ask him. I know he led a wild life. He’s got the stories and the scars to prove it.

I lift my head and look him in the eyes, forcing a small smile to my face. “I need to know what to do. I need advice.”

“You can’t. It’s gotta stop.” He shrugs his shoulders, the faint light from the hallway casting a long shadow of him into the room, ending at my feet. “That’s the advice I can give you. Don’t keep a damn thing from her. You should already know that.”

I swallow, or try to, as a ball of spikes grows in my throat. “What if you can’t stop? What if I can’t quit this job and this life?” The image of Tony dead on the floor stays firm in my sight. Even as I blink it away and look up at my father, I can still see him. Overdosed and staring back at me as if it was my fault.

I brought him to that room. The one reserved for partying in our company.

I gave him the coke, but I didn’t know it was laced. And then I left him there to get whiskey and cigarettes.

I brought him to his death.

I can never tell her that. I can barely admit it to myself.

“Did you ever mess up so bad, you thought you could never make it right?” I ask, even though his answer doesn’t matter. I guess I just don’t want to feel so alone.

“We all do; you just find a way. I’m sorry, but it’s the best I’ve got.”

“Find a way …” I say the words softly, barely moving my lips as I look at the edge of the comforter, wishing it were that easy.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Evan. I did everything for your mom, and I’d do it all again. Maybe that’s where you went wrong?”

“What’s that?” I’m quick to ask him, my gaze focused on him and whatever it is he has to say. I’m desperate for an answer to all this shit. I need to take it all back.

“You weren’t thinking about her.”

His words sink in slow, but deep.

I shake my head and agree, “No, I wasn’t.”

“The best thing you ever did was marry that girl.” I nod my head, feeling a jagged pain move through my body. “Worse thing she ever did was let you leave her side.”

He doesn’t know how true his words are.