Page 57 of Forked (Frenched 2)
I swallowed hard. “So then why did you leave me?” My voice shook. It was the question I had to ask. I’d been afraid of the answer for seven years, but I steadied my nerves and turned to face him. “Tell me now. How could you leave me that way?”
Nick held up both hands. “Before I tell you, let me say that I know now that no reason was good enough. But at the time, it made sense to me.”
“Just tell me.”
“OK. I was watching you sleep and I started thinking about everything I wanted to do for you. Everything you deserved in life. And what you deserved far outweighed what I could offer. I’d just maxed out my one credit card on the ring and the room. I was up to my ears in debt.”
“I cared about you, not your bank account,” I said through my teeth. He wasn’t really going to blame money, was he? What an insult.
“You would have. You had no idea what it’s like to live without money. You still don’t.”
I threw my hands in the air. “How dare you say to me? I married you, didn’t I? And I’m not the one who changed my mind! You did.” I poked his chest. “So don’t pretend I didn’t think you were rich enough for me or whatever. That was all in your head.”
“It wasn’t only the money, Coco. I was lying there thinking about that program, and how much I wanted it for you. About how, if you were my daughter, or if we had a daughter some day, I’d want her to have things like that.” He put a hand to his chest. “I understood what your parents felt. When you love someone, you want what’s best for them, even if it means sacrifice.”
I glared at him. “So it was because of my parents? You dumped me because you understood them, all of a sudden? Well, I hope they fucking appreciate it,” I said bitterly. “No wonder they were so helpful with our divorce.”
Nick shook his head. “It wasn’t just them—it was me. I started to think that you’d wake up one day and regret that you hadn’t gone. And it would be my fault. And even if you said you didn’t resent me, you should—because I had done a selfish thing. I had robbed you of this incredible opportunity. Deep down, I knew if you married me you wouldn’t go. Somehow leaving seemed the unselfish move.”
Mouth agape, I looked at him for five full seconds. “You asshole!” I was tempted to slap his face, but I settled for shoving a wall of water at him. “Leaving seemed the unselfish move, are you fucking kidding me?” My eyes felt as if they would bug out of my head. “You broke me! You shattered me! I was…” I shook my head, unable to come up with a word that adequately captured my emotional state. “Devastated!”
Nick wiped the water from his face. “I’m sorry. It was the wrong move, I see that now. But I panicked, Coco. And then when I tried to apologize, you wouldn’t speak to me. Wouldn’t return my texts, take my calls, wouldn’t stop the divorce proceedings.”
“I was hurt, Nick. I loved you, and you left me.” This couldn’t be real. He’d abandoned me for my own good? No. No. He was not the hero here. He was not the good guy. For years I’d nursed this anger, and he wasn’t going to evade it now just because he’d had good fucking intentions. “Do you know what it felt like, waking up that next morning and finding you gone? Seeing that goddamn note on the nightstand?
Your wedding band beside it?” The hurt and humiliation of that morning returned to me tenfold, stabbing me repeatedly in the gut. “It didn’t click right away, you know, what you’d done. There was no light bulb that went on, no immediate understanding of what the note really meant. I even thought it might be a joke.”
Nick looked miserable, but he nodded. “Go on. I deserve this.”
“You do, but I don’t even know what words to use to describe what that day was like.”
How could I convey the slow, sickening dread that started with a few erratic heartbeats as I checked the bathroom? How could I make him feel the way it dropped into my stomach like a bowling ball when I saw that his suitcase was gone? How could I tell him what I felt when I turned on my phone and saw those two words from him, like two bullets to the heart?
I’m sorry.
“Do you know how long I lay in that bed, sobbing? Hoping you’d change your mind? Hours went by, and the longer I lay there, the clearer it became—you weren’t coming back. You weren’t sorry you’d done it; you were just sorry I got hurt. And yet I stayed there. All day. All night. Desperately praying for you to return. Smelling the sheets where you’d slept. Crying so hard I made myself sick. Finally I had to face it—you were gone. And you didn’t love me enough to come back.” The violent anger I’d felt moments ago was replaced with a sadness that threatened to pull me under. My vision went silver at the edges, and I swayed in the water. Nick gripped my shoulders.
“Believe me, Coco, I did. I loved you more than I thought it was possible to love someone, and leaving was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I was sick too. Physically ill. I forced myself to get on that plane. I didn’t talk to anyone for two days. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Because I don’t.”
Nick dropped his hands into the water and exhaled. “No. I don’t deserve your sympathy. I don’t even know why I’m even telling you this—I know it doesn’t make up for what I did.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Hit me,” he said suddenly.
“What? Are you nuts?”
“No. I’m serious. Hit me. I deserve it.” He closed his eyes and put his hands behind his back. “As hard as you want. As many times as you want.”
He looked ridiculous. “Shut up.”
“Come on, do it. You know you want to. You’ve wanted to do it for years. Now’s your chance. Come on, hit me.”
I stared at him in disbelief. In all honesty, part of me did want to hit him. How dare he lay all this out for me now, years later, when he’d had so many chances to be honest before but kept lying and manipulating me and fucking everything up? And what about his seven-year silence after the divorce?
Another part of me wanted to kiss him, tell him it would be OK, we would be OK. (But that was a very, very small part. Mostly I wanted to hit him.)
