Page 99 of If You Were Mine (After We Fall 3)
“Fuck you, Aaron!” I was being too loud, and people were looking over at us, but I didn’t care. “Who are you to talk to me about leaving? You’re the one who left your wife and kids for two months—this time.”
“Shh. Keep your voice down.” Aaron glanced over his shoulder and back at me. “You’re right. I have made mistakes. I did leave my wife and kids. And there isn’t a goddamn day that goes by I don’t regret it. I’d give anything to go back and do things differently, Theo, but I can’t. I don’t want to watch you make the same mistake.”
“You know I told her she should leave?” I was being a spiteful dick, and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop. I wanted someone to feel as bad as I did. “Every day I told her she should leave and take the kids away. I never understood why the hell she didn’t.”
Aaron didn’t take the bait. “Because Josie’s not like you, Theo. She believes when you love someone, you stay.”
I tried again. “Then she’s a fool. You’re only going to leave her again.”
“I’m not. I made a promise to myself that I intend to keep. I had to face down a lot of monsters to get here, Theo, but I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
I’d run out of insults to throw at him, and it was only making me madder that my brother was so calm. That he’d figured out how to keep a promise. That he trusted Josie—and himself—to stay. That he’d finally faced his monsters and come away stronger for it.
Why was I the only one who couldn’t get a grip on my fear? Was it my fate to be alone for the rest of my life? I shoved out of the booth, dumped my trash, and went out to my car. Aaron came out a few minutes later, but we didn’t talk on the drive back to work or for the rest of the day. I knew I owed him an apology but I was too busy being pissed off and sorry for myself to offer one.
That night, I lay in bed and thought, fuck it. I don’t need this grief. And no one here needs me. I should just leave. Take off again. Hit the open road like I used to and see where it takes me.
But the open road no longer held any appeal. I didn’t want an unfamiliar bed or a faceless fuck or lonely miles of highway stretching out endlessly in front of me.
I wanted to be in Claire’s bed, holding on to her. Feeling her hold on to me. Hear her tell me she loves me. Say the words back. Make her a promise and keep it.
But how?
* * *
The next day, Aaron and I worked a job that Zack at the stoneworks had thrown our way. I nursed my self-pity for a couple hours that morning, but when noon came around, I swallowed my pride and asked my brother to come to lunch with me. Because he was a good guy, and because he could see I was suffering, he got in the car without a word.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I said once we were on the road. “I was an asshole.”
“Yeah, you were. But I get it.”
We drove in silence for a few minutes, then I asked him a question that had been troubling me. “How do you know? How do you know you’re not going anywhere? Or that she won’t?”
“Because I trust her,” he said simply. “And now I trust myself too.”
Exhaling, I shook my head. “I can’t. I don’t know why I can’t, but I can’t. Every single time, I panic. I feel like I’m tied to the tracks of an oncoming freight train.”
“You can’t trust her? Or yourself?”
“Either of us.”
“That’s because you’ve never been shown how. You don’t have any reason to trust anyone because all you’ve seen your entire life is people taking off, starting with Mom and Dad. You learned early on not to trust anyone who’s supposed to care.”
Something had started to twist in my gut, and I didn’t like it. “You think…” I had to work hard to swallow. “You think this goes that far back?”
“Yeah. I do.”
I stopped at a red light. In my mind I heard Claire telling me I’m not her. She knew. She’d seen right through me. “I love her.”
“I know you do.”
“I only left her because I was scared of being a disappointment to her. I was scared she’d leave me.” I took a deep breath. “And I didn’t think I could take it.”
“I know.”
I looked over at him. “I guess that makes me a coward.”
“Nope. It makes you human. You’re a coward if you don’t confront that fear, though. Work through it. Put it behind you so you can be with Claire and neither of you are worried that any moment, one of you is going to walk out.”
