I don’t know what it is but hearing him say those words—again and again and again. This time it makes me angry because I have an awful lot to be sorry for myself.
Without caring who’s around to hear, I take a deep breath, turn around, and purge the way I need to. “Why do you keep apologizing? Please stop saying you’re sorry! I know you’re sorry, I get it, but you didn’t take it further than a kiss with that girl, you didn’t leave your kids weekend after weekend to spend time with her, and you didn’t throw it in my face either. So, tell me Declan, why the fuck are you apologizing to me again when I should be the one begging for your forgiveness?”
Declan’s face says it all. He doesn’t need to say a word. I know I’ve just picked at all the healing scabs, poured salt deep into the cracks of his wounds, and broke his heart all over again. Does it get any worse than this?
“Um, Mr. Murphy. We’re going to have to continue the tour witho—”
Declan doesn’t take his eyes off me to answer the tour guide. He says the words like an emotionless robot, “Go on without us. We’ll catch up or make our way back home.”
The tour guide doesn’t argue or try to persuade Declan otherwise. Instead, she turns to join the rest of our group, which is doing a piss poor job of pretending not to be nosy.
We both stare at each other in complete silence as we wait for everyone to clear. We’re left alone in the presence of grapes—I don’t even remember what flipping kind they are—and the tension is thicker than the hot summer humidity.
“Say something!” I finally shout, unable to take it any longer. This is finally that moment—it’s all come to a head, and he has nothing to say.
He finally slumps forward, digging his hands into his hair that’s become unruly from a long day in the heat. When he comes back up to face me, his expression breaks my heart. “You wanted this. You wanted to hash it out, didn’t you? You’ve been waiting and nagging me to talk about it and I know I was doing the wrong thing by making you keep it all bottled up inside, but—” He takes a breath to steady himself, maybe even to gulp back the tears I see forming in his eyes. “You don’t think part of me wants to hate you for what you did to us?”
When I hear him use the word hate I cringe. Could he really hate me? I never once hated him when I thought he’d slept with that girl. I felt betrayed and hurt, but I never stopped loving him. “You hate me?” I say, impossible to hold back the tears.
Crossing his arms across his chest, he starts to pace. “I didn’t say I hate you. Of course I don’t hate you, but—Listen, Mia, I know I fucked up and I know you ran off to fulfill some fantasy with what’s-his-name because of what I did, but don’t think for one second that I wasn’t dying inside.
“You don’t think it fucking killed me to watch you pretty yourself up for another man? Or to play babysitter for you while you did God knows what with him? It was torture. It was infuriating. It broke me, Mia.” If any words could sear through a person’s heart, those were it.
“Part of me didn’t think you cared, Declan. You just let me go. You came back from Hong Kong and barely put up a fight.” That’s what it had felt like. Yes, we argued. Yes, we threw ultimatums back and forth, but never once did he try to stop me from being with Noah. He never asked me to choose him until that night he sang to me.
“Because I wasn’t going to force you to be with me if it wasn’t what you wanted. You needed time—I thought that was fair. But you took that time and spent it with him. You didn’t try to work on us or figure out what was wrong with us, you—”
Wait a damn minute! “I didn’t think there was anything wrong with us, at least not until you “almost” fucked that masseuse.” I made a show of air quoting almost. Sure, that’s what he said—and yes, I believed him, but how could I ever really know the truth? “You know what, I guess my sins seem greater than yours and I hate to pull out the you started this card, but Declan, you made me feel like all of a sudden I wasn’t enough for you. You made me doubt everything we had because in that moment when I thought you’d been with someone else, I felt like everything we’d ever worked for was taken away. That broke me.”
Broken. It seems like the theme. And lately, the reason I’ve had this plaguing need to talk this through is because I don’t want to feel broken anymore, when it’s so obvious that the two of us want to be whole again—together.
I can only imagine what the two of us must look like. Crying, sweating, shouting, kicking up dirt as we wear out the ground beneath us. Is there any other way this could have gone down? I mean, this isn’t exactly soothing pillow talk material.