Page 49 of A Matter of Time
There were tears in my eyes as the hurt of the past bubbled up to the surface again, but there was no anger in my pain anymore. All that remained was sadness: sadness for the heartbroken kid I’d been and sadness for all the time we’d lost. If we’d just had this conversation six years earlier, how different might things have turned out?
Only as my words faded into the stillness of the room and as Tonia’s blue eyes looked over at me in uncertainty did I realize exactly what I said.
I used the present tense. I didn’t say Ilovedher. I said Iloveher.
And I had no idea what she would say back.
~Tonia~
The look on Cam’s face broke my heart, but not as much as the words he just said. I didn’t miss that he used the word ‘love’ in the present tense, but I didn’t intend to read too much into it, not when there was so much I needed to unpack in the rest of his words.
All those years, I never understood why he was so damn insistent on an apology. I thought he was upset for the way I had called him out in front of the whole school, breaking up in the most public way possible. I thought he resented the fact that I wouldn’t give him a second chance. And I most certainly thought thatheowedmean apology, not the other way around.
Even after what Marley revealed to me earlier that week, I didn’t fully understand. It made sense to me that he’d be upset that I thought he cheated when he didn’t, but I couldn’t understand why the apology was such a sticking point. If he loved me, he should have fought for me whether I apologized or not.
But with the words he’d just spoken, finally, after all this time, I could see where he was coming from.
He thought that I didn’t love him as much as he loved me. He took my refusal to apologize as a sign that I gave up on us first, even though in my mind it had always been him that set everything in motion.
We’d both been so caught up in our own hurt that we forgot to consider what the other person felt, which was what love was supposed to be about in the first place.
I did my best to explain myself to him, six years too late. “It was because you loved me so much that I believed it.”
He squeezed his eyes closed, his hands going to his temples as he processed my words. “You’re going to have to break that down for me, Sugar. I don’t understand what that means.”
Those were the feelings I had tried to pin down the other night when I ran out on him after we slept together. Knowing just how good we still were together and remembering just how good it had always been, and then hearing him ask for an apology again, I needed time to think it all through. And the main question I asked myself was exactly the one he had just asked me: why did I believe he had cheated on me?
I had some evidence, of course, but I could have questioned it more. So why didn’t I? Why was I so sure I knew exactly what had happened?
Some of it came down to my Callahan genes, that couldn’t be denied, but that didn’t fully explain it either. I’d wanted to talk to him about it the next morning in his office, when he turned me away, and I tried to find the words again in the soft light of my kitchen as the clock took us into the new day.
“You were my whole world, Cam. I never even thought about anyone else. When you kissed me that day out on that dirt road, that was it for me. You were my first everything and when you told me you loved me, I didn’t think I would ever need anything else.”
He fidgeted in his seat, obviously torn between staying where he was and not interrupting me, and getting up so he could come around to my side of the counter, closing the space between us. For the moment, at least, he stayed put.
“My whole future, my whole life was wrapped up in you, and that felt exhilarating but scary too. Somewhere deep inside, I was afraid that I loved you more than you loved me, and that as soon as we were out of that little town, you were going to realize that the world was a whole lot bigger than me.”
His brow furrowed as I spoke and he couldn’t help interjecting: “You never said anything like that to me.”
“Because I knew what you’d say. You’d tell me how sure you were, how nothing would ever happen to come between us. You never wanted to talk about the ‘what if’s. You were so damn certain all the time.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” He still looked confused. “I was sure because I loved you.”
“I know that, but I also knew how hard you found it to admit you were wrong about anything. So, when you started sneaking around and avoiding me, I thought: this is exactly what Cam would do if he were cheating on me. He would deny it as long as he could, because otherwise he’d have to admit he’d been wrong. And when you lied to me about Marley, that seemed like further proof. You said you wouldn’t lie to me, but you did, and if you could break that promise, how could I trust any of them? It all unravelled from there until eventually I couldn’t see any other possibility. And that morning in the school, I lashed out at you because the idea that your love was a lie broke my heart, Cam. It broke it so badly that I didn’t even care if you were hurting too. I just didn’t want to hurt alone.”
His fists were clenched, his face half-hidden in the shadows of the living room, but even so, I could see the tears in his eyes, the same as the ones shimmering in my own line of vision.
“I’m sorry, Tonia.” The words were rough and raw, coming from somewhere deep inside him. “I didn’t think of it that way.”
I nodded, trying to keep my own voice steady. “I know you didn’t. You were just trying to help someone out, which is who you are, through and through. I’m sorry I didn’t let you explain.”
Those simple words had taken six long years to get to, but at last, they’d been said. We had both made mistakes, and we both took responsibility for them.
And as soon as they were out of my mouth, Cam got to his feet, circling the counter to come over to me. His hands were on my face as he moved towards me, leaving me in no doubt of what he wanted, but at the last second, I turned away.
“I think you should go.”
I could sense his muscles tightening even though I wasn’t looking at him. “Why?” he asked hoarsely.
