"He didn't want you to have to deal with everything," I said quietly. I wasn't sure if this was where she wanted our conversation to start, but we might as well discuss it while we were here. She brought it up, after all.
"Why?"
"He said that he knew what it was like to watch someone die and then have to deal with their life after they passed. He didn't want that for you. He didn't want you to clean out his refrigerator. He didn't want you to see him that way; sick, weak, dying." A waitress walked up to our table and interrupted. It wasn't her fault, but it was hard not to glare at her. Charlie and I both ordered coffee and the waitress left again.
"Did he suffer for long?" She looked down into her coffee mug as she asked the question, swirling a spoon around, mixing the creamer into her coffee that blended in thirty or so swirls ago. I wanted to reach over and calm her, place my hand over hers and comfort her.
"The chemo was hard on him. For about six months he went through treatments and was never given good news. Eventually the doctors came to the conclusion that he wasn't responding and had a conversation with him about quality of life." Her hands came up and covered her eyes and I chastised myself for revealing too much. Charles wanted to spare his daughter from the hurt, to prevent her from seeing him in pain, and here I was giving away the information he wanted to take to the grave. Before I could think enough to stop myself I reached over and took her hand away from her face and held it; I gripped her fingers gently in my palm.
"He lived about six months after he went off chemo and the first two months I think he tried to live a little bit more. He went to visit you," I nodded towards her, trying to engage her, to make sure she wasn't just emotionally crushed. "He went to see a few places he'd always wanted to. Eventually, though, he came back here and got very serious about making plans.
"You were always his main concern, in everything. We had countless conversations about how to best provide for you, how we could take what he had and make the most of it, how he could spare you the most amount of pain and hassle. That's all he ever wanted, Charlie, to take away your pain."
She pulled away from me at that and I thought maybe I went too far.
"Is that why he never told me that you two were close?"
I shrugged and then smiled because, typically, that was her move. "I'm not sure. We never spoke about you, really. I was there a few times while you two had phone conversations, but we never talked about you. Not until he was trying to prepare for his death."
She scoffed. "For thirteen years you hung around my dad and the two of you never talked about me, or about us?" She didn't believe me and I didn't blame her.
"I think the first time I showed up at his house, looking for you, looking for answers, was the only time." Her eyes were big and round with surprise.
"You came looking for me?" I had become numb to the term ‘broken heart'. My heart wasn't broken. The word broken implied that it could be fixed or repaired. My heart wasn't fixable, my heart shriveled up like a flower in the fall when the summer sun had beaten it to death, when the heat evaporated the life from it. My heart cracked and shattered and crumbled until it wasn't even recognizable anymore and then I tried to piece it back together by searching for her, but every day I gave a shard of it away to keep breathing. There was no fixing my heart, but I'll be damned if it didn't break a little more to hear her question whether or not I looked for her.
"Of course I came looking for you. I loved you." It tore me up to use the past tense, but she didn't want to hear me telling her I loved her now, that would just make this even more awkward. I saw something flash over her face as she took in my words and it looked a lot like anger. She was mad at me. Hearing me tell her that I loved her and made her angry.
"What did he say to you about me then?"
I swallowed hard. This was it, the moment I longed to have with her – to apologize.
"He told me that you lost the baby. And that you left." She sniffled again and I wished to God she'd look at me. I didn't want to apologize to the top of her head. Honestly, I didn't want to apologize to her in a coffee shop. To my amazement she did look up at me, tears gleaming in her eyes.
"Can we go someplace more private?"
I exhaled loudly.
"Definitely. Where should we go? To your dad's house?"
She shook her head. "No, can we go to the park? The one we always used to go to?"
Something gripped my lungs, squeezed the breath right out of me. She wanted to go to back to our park? The place that held most of the sacred memories I had of her and I together?
"Are you sure?"
She nodded and a tear slid down her cheek.
"Of course. Come on, let's get out of here." I threw some money down on the table and walked her out of the shop, my hand naturally going to the small of her back. Once I realized I'd placed it there, I knew I should pull it away. But I'm a selfish bastard today so I left it there.
Chapter Nine
Charlie
I stopped my car down the street from the park entrance. I haven't been here in years. Even if I had come back here often to visit my father, I know I would have avoided this place. It's almost worse than my bedroom. This is the place where we came to be alone, where we shared secrets, plans, words. This was hallowed earth.
I took a deep breath and got out of my car to see Asher walking towards me from his. His car was sleek, a two-seater, nothing a man with kids would drive. I kind of resented that car. He didn't have a ring on his finger; I noticed while we were having coffee. No wife. No kids. He had the life he wanted, I supposed. I tried not to let my thoughts run away with my feelings. I tried not to be resentful of what he became since it had nothing to do with me. It was, in fact, the complete opposite. He became what he was due to the absence of me.
We silently fell in to step with one another, walking along the path of the park that wound around the perimeter. Neither one of us spoke. We just kept walking. Eventually we came to the gazebo and I closed my eyes for just an instant to push back the memory of a young girl and a young boy standing in that gazebo sharing a kiss, breaking boundaries, giving in to something that had been building between them. I opened my eyes to see Asher, grown and even more handsome, staring back at me from inside, the pond his background.
I walked towards him, without even thinking about it, and we stood next to each other against the railing, like we had a thousand times before. Only now, his arms weren't around me and I wasn't lost in his scent. I was, however, ridiculously aware of the space between us. Just inches separated us, and if I leaned my head over, it would rest against his arm. I had done that in the past, in this very spot. This was getting a little surreal, even for me.
"I'm so sorry, Charlie." He spoke suddenly and it caught me off guard. His tone was serious and I looked over at him, only to see so much sadness in his eyes. Instinctually I moved towards him, closing the distance between us and placed a hand on his forearm that rested against the railing. "I wish I could take back everything I said to you that day. I wish I could just go back and start over, you know?" He looked to me and I couldn't help but nod. I kind of wished he could have a do-over too. I wished everything was different.
"I was supposed to be the one person you could count on, the one person who was supposed to stand next to you through everything, and I managed to fuck up the very first time we were faced with anything of importance." He sniffled and rubbed his hands together, his head bent down, trying to compose himself. "I was a stupid nineteen-year-old boy. The very last thing I ever expected you to tell me was that you were pregnant, Charlie. And when I heard those words: pregnant, baby, adoption. Fuck, I shut down. I wish to God I hadn't. I wish everything was different. But it's not. What happened, happened. All I can say is that I'm sorry." He looked up at me and I was stunned by how much grief I saw reflected back at me.
"It's ok," I said. Those were words I never thought I'd say to him. I never thought it would be ok. Ever. "We were both young and inexperienced. It was a less than ideal situation and we handled it the way young people ought to, with fear and panic."
"Please don't make excuses for me, Charlie. I should have been there for you. I should have swallowed my fear and stayed by your side. I should have been there when you lost the baby." His words were lost in quiet sobs and I tried hard to hold my own back, but there was something so entirely damaged about him in this moment. He was vulnerable and cracked, and for a moment I saw my best friend and wanted to comfort him. I pulled him into me and he came, willingly. I wrapped my arms around his neck and his arms came around my waist and we stood there, comforting each other for a while.