My door swung open, and he walked in close behind me, as if trying to crowd me so I couldn’t run back outside. I hated that my body tingled when he was close. I needed space, dammit. “You didn’t like her eight years ago because she was my ex-girlfriend. You were jealous of any attention she gave me.”
I dropped my purse and keys on the table and spun around. “That’s true. What do you want, Tripp? You want me to admit that I’m jealous of her now? Because she’s with you? Is that what you’re getting at? Will that make you feel better?”
His hand shot out and grabbed my wrist, pulling me to him. “Yes, Bethy, it would make my fucking year. Because if you’re jealous of London, then I still have a chance. And this isn’t over.”
I had to keep breathing. His hold sent an electric current buzzing through my arm. My heart was in a frenzy, and the butterflies in my stomach were at it again.
“Is that it? Are you jealous of London?” His words came out in a low, husky voice.
I wanted to lie to him, because admitting the truth would open this back up again. I’d closed the door, and he had walked away. But I hadn’t been happy. I had missed him. I had stood at my window at night and stared across the street. I’d missed seeing his bike parked there as he watched over me. Every time I went to my car to leave and he wasn’t around, I knew I’d done this. I had pushed him too hard. “Yes,” I finally said.
Tripp’s jaw clenched, and his eyes flashed with satisfaction. Then the veins on his neck showed up, and I braced myself.
Tripp
Calm. I had to remain calm. But I wanted to haul her into my arms and kiss her until neither one of us could breathe. She was jealous. She cared enough to not like seeing me with someone else. Hell yeah!
“Then what does that mean, Bethy? You wanted me out of your life, and I backed out.” I was taking a risk. I knew it, but I had to know.
She looked away from me and focused her eyes on something over my shoulder. “Maybe it means I’ll always feel this way.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know I miss you.” She stopped and rubbed her hands over her face and let out a frustrated growl. “I don’t know! This thing with us . . .” She dropped her hands and looked at me. “There’s something you need to know. Or something I need you to know. I want you to know.”
She was breaking down. Her defenses were finally falling away, and if I was going to get a chance to get into her life, this would be it. “I’m listening.”
Bethy motioned to the sofa and chair in her small studio apartment. I hadn’t even looked around until that moment. This wasn’t where she belonged. I didn’t want her here. There was paint peeling on the walls, and the blinds were broken. Masking tape lined the window, and her sofa was patched several times. I kept my face neutral. I didn’t want her to think I looked down on her because of where she lived. I just hated knowing that while I went to bed at night in a luxury condo, she was here with bolts and chains on her damn door.
Bethy sat down on a vinyl chair that had seen better days back in the seventies. I took a seat on the sofa.
“I didn’t have an abortion. I miscarried,” she said.
That snapped me out of my unhappy thoughts about her apartment. “What?”
She let out a sigh, and her shoulders relaxed. “My aunt Darla said she’d help me do something with the baby. I thought that was her gentle way of telling me she’d take me to get an abortion. I curled up in a ball and cried for two days after that and grieved for the baby I didn’t know. I didn’t want an abortion, but I was sixteen, and my father would never allow me to have a child. My aunt Darla was all I had, and if she was taking me to get an abortion, then I had no one in my life who would support my decision to have a child. I called you several times in hopes you could help me, but I never got through to you.
“When I was eight weeks along, my aunt forced me to go to a clinic; I assumed it was an abortion clinic. I’d never been so terrified in my life. All morning, I had been cramping, but I figured it was from all the crying and the knots in my stomach. Then the doctor examined me, and I was bleeding. I didn’t know about that until this past week. I was given a shot for the pain because I was in the middle of an early miscarriage. My memories of that moment got muddled by the drugs.
“When I woke up, I was at Aunt Darla’s, and I was bleeding heavily. She told me the baby was gone, so I assumed they’d performed the abortion while I was under. We never discussed it, because it was too painful. This past week, Aunt Darla said something about my miscarriage, and I was confused. She told me the real story. She said she never would have made me get an abortion.”
She finally stopped talking and dropped her eyes to her hands.
“I’ve blamed myself and lived with that guilt for so long when I never had to. I wanted you to know the real story. That I hadn’t wanted to abort our baby. That when it was time, I was ready to do whatever I had to in order to keep it.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat, overwhelmed by Bethy’s story. Not once had I blamed her. I had gotten drunk and remained that way for more than a week when I had finally gotten up the nerve to listen to my voice mails. I’d no longer had my phone with me, the one my parents had paid for, but I could access the voice mail remotely. When Bethy’s desperate pleas for help had ended with a final message saying she’d had an abortion, my world had stopped.
I’d thrown a chair across the room at the cheap hotel I’d been staying at and shattered it. Then I’d put my hand through the Sheetrock before falling to my knees and sobbing. My next step had been to drink. I’d had to numb the pain. Bethy wouldn’t want me to come back and get her, like I planned. I’d destroyed her. I’d destroyed me. I couldn’t face her.
But never had I blamed her. She’d been so young and scared. Her father was hardly ever home, and she worked a job to help pay the bills. I hadn’t been listening to voice mails, afraid to hear what my parents had to say. As a result, I’d ruined my life.
I needed to tell her the truth about why I left. Now.
“Bethy, if I had stayed here, my parents would have sent me to Yale. I would have spent more than four years there. On holidays, they would have made me go with my family to Boston. Then the summers would’ve been spent at the law firm in Manhattan. My days at Rosemary Beach were over.
“So I had to run. If I ran away and found a way to become independent from them, then they wouldn’t have any power over me, and I could come back and see you. Then, when you turned eighteen, you could come with me. That was the only answer I could find. I didn’t want to lose you.”
I watched her face as she listened to me. I had tried to explain this to her so many times. But this time, she was listening to me. Finally.
“As for the pregnancy, I wasn’t using the phone my parents paid for. I left that behind. I was saving money to get my own. I was going to call you as soon as I had it. But I was worried about you, and after a month, I used a phone in my hotel room to listen to my voice mail. That was when I got all your messages. My world fell apart in that room.”
Bethy let out a sad laugh and shook her head. “We were so young then. Do you even remember those kids? I forgot how it felt to be them that summer.”