Maybe Once, Maybe Twice(98)
“You know it’s about you,” I said.
His gaze softened as he studied me for a long, quiet moment. The air seemed to pound and thicken with the rapid beating of our chests, neither of our bodies moving.
“You were wrong,” he said, his blue eyes looking into mine. “You didn’t love me more.”
Air left my lungs. It took me a moment to find words.
“How do you know that?” I cracked.
I watched the way the setting sun fell on Garrett’s face—how his eyes scanned mine. After a moment, his large hand reached over, linking our fingers together. His skin on my skin, even just fingers, felt like life and death wrapped in one. Garrett leaned toward me, almost nose to nose, setting his other hand on my cheek.
“Because I loved you more than anything,” he said.
49
THIRTY-FOUR
I DIDN’T WANT TO RELIVE the last four years—not for anything. But I needed to. I had been in intensive therapy for over two years, and I owed it to myself to be honest with the guy I was still in love with—the guy who I had pushed away at the very time he was ready to go all in.
The day after I broke down to Summer in Sheep Meadow, she gave me the greatest gift anyone has ever given me, the number to a recommended therapist. Little by little, the only person I started letting down after that was my mom, when I quit my job and picked my guitar back up.
It had been over a year since I had started mending my soul, singing in clubs and venues without having heart palpitations, writing music again, having sex and being able to enjoy it. But the lingering pang of Garrett, of that moment nearly five years ago, it loomed so large—even now. Looming large was also the fact that he was still seeing Cecily, but the regret of not saying what I needed to say felt bigger than respecting what they had. I know that made me selfish. But in therapy I worked to understand that unleashing a very selfish truth might also be life-affirming. Life-affirming was too big a win not to play my hand.
I sat in the little café in Greenwich Village, making blue-inked doodles in my open songwriter notebook around words that had just flowed out of me like lava. I felt a tap on my shoulder.
There he was.
Dressed in a suit with a long wool coat tugged over his broad shoulders. His blond hair damp and wavy from the drizzling rain outside. I hugged Garrett, and he felt stiffer than usual, but slowly he hugged me back, inhaling deeply.
We let each other go, and as we sat down, his eyes looked everywhere but at mine. His usual warm, bright behavior was somewhat on edge. Nervous, even.
“Thanks for coming,” I said, closing my notebook and leaning into the table so I could get a better look at him.
“Of course. I’ve actually—I’ve been meaning to call you. I wanted to…to chat. It’s been a while,” he said with a tiny smile, eyes now on me.
It had been a while. Four months, exactly. One of our longest stretches, but I surmised that Garrett didn’t know what to do with me anymore. I had chaotically disappeared from his life after he got back from San Francisco, then I popped up at birthday parties—his, mine, Summer’s, Valeria’s. And then, the last two years, I had tried to text more and call, but Garrett returned the distance I had shown him. Rightly so. This friendship was broken because of circumstance. I couldn’t blame myself, only what I had been through.
“Can I go first?” I asked, twisting a napkin in my hands.
“Sure.”
“I want to talk to you about my thirtieth birthday.”
Garrett seemed to go white, and I watched him swallow hard, his hand pinching around his tie. Clearly, this was the last thing Garrett had been expecting me to bring up. And clearly, it still stung.
After a pause, he nodded. “Okay.”
“First, I want to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I said to you right before I turned you away. And I’m sorry for how I acted when you tried to kiss me. That must have been so confusing for you,” I said, voice level.
I took a deep breath in, closed my eyes briefly, and then opened them on Garrett. His expression softened, taking in how hard this was for me.
“Two weeks prior, Cole Wyan—you remember I started working with him?”
Garrett nodded, eyes searching mine.
“Well, two weeks before my thirtieth birthday, we were recording a song, and it was supposed to be my first single, and—he put his hands—” I stopped talking, emotions bubbling in my throat. My heart was racing with the heaviness I was unpacking. The rest came out fast. “He touched me where I asked him not to. He tried to rape me. I punched the shit out of him. He threatened my career.”
Garrett looked like I had struck him with a shovel.
“He what?” Garrett growled.
His vein was pulsing on his neck, his fists clenched.
“He…yeah,” was all I could say.
“I wish—God I wish you had told me about him.”
I looked at his white-knuckled fists, then his reddening face.
“I feel like I’d be visiting you in prison if I’d told you then,” I said.
He looked directly into my eyes. “You would be.”
Tears clouded my vision, and I looked up to the ceiling, trying to keep my emotions somewhat neutral while I got the rest out. I brought my face back to his. There was a dark storm where blue eyes had been.