deal with seeing Jeff after being ignored for over a month.
But he finally came to see me right after our high school graduation in June. He said we needed to talk. I needed closure after not speaking with him for over a month with no explanation. I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, I wanted to tell him to forget he ever knew me and never say my name again, but I couldn’t; he was my everything. He was my only truth in my world of lies and I couldn’t be smart. I was in love.
We drove to his poor excuse for a love pad to talk. After staring at each other for an hour, he finally started talking. “While I was waiting for you to grow up, I was having relations with this girl. She helped me in school and she was there when I couldn’t have you. I was going to break up with her once we graduated but something happened.”
As he told me this, I could feel vomit rising from my stomach and my legs began to give out from under me. I remember thinking that this is all one big joke. I mean, he couldn’t fake what we had, right? I didn’t imagine it, right? I didn’t make it up. It was all real! He waited for me, I waited for him; he loved me, I loved him. What the fuck was he talking about? We were meant to be. Why was he telling me about some girl? If he had to fuck somebody while he waited for me I didn’t need to know about it.
“Sara, say something. I’m sorry, but I didn’t know how to tell you.” He then added, “Jacqueline knows nothing about you.”
When he gave the nameless girl a name, it became infinitely more painful. With every word out of his mouth, I died a little more. Once I stopped free falling off a cliff and finally worked through the haze, I started demanding some answers.
“Jeff, we’ve been making love for over a year. Why didn’t you break up with her? You said you loved me. You said you waited for me.” I was still a child asking stupid questions from the person I had entrusted with my heart.
“Sara, I don’t love her like I love you. You are everything to me, but every time I tried to break up with her, something came up, something that I needed her help with. I was just using her and I didn’t think it was anything serious. I was about to finally end it about a month ago when her father came to see me.”
I remember Jeff’s eyes started to twitch as he told me the next part of his sordid tale.
“He offered me the job of a lifetime once I graduated, and a partnership in his firm. People who graduate law school work years for that kind of opportunity and he was just giving it to me. He started telling me how he knew that his daughter and I were very much in love and he and his wife were very happy Jacqueline and I found each other. I was about to tell him that Jacqueline and I weren’t serious, when he told me that his beloved only daughter was very sick. That she was going to break up with me because she was diagnosed with late stage cervical cancer and the doctors didn’t think she had long to live. Her father was shaking and crying as he told me this horrible news. He said he knew we’d been seeing each other, and since her future wasn’t promised, he wanted me to marry his daughter right away. He and his wife would take care of everything, they just wanted to give their only daughter a few last happy memories.”
I recall wondering if this was part of some soap opera or a joke. This shit didn’t really happen.
“So what did you tell him?” I probed, as if I didn’t already know the answer. “Jeff, are you telling me you’re engaged?” I was on the verge of having a mental breakdown if he told me that he put a ring on her finger instead of mine.
He nodded. “What was I supposed to do? Break up with her and let her die alone? If I told her about us, it would kill her, and then what? I would be an asshole and lose the job of a lifetime. You’re too young to even think about