Alyse: want me to pick up that cheesecake u like on my way home
Me: ur all the sweet I need, baby. i plan on indulging later
Alyse: luv u
Me. not more than i do sweet alyse
I set my phone down, not expecting her to respond again, getting back to the task at hand. I’m going through my pile of clothes to take to the dry cleaner tomorrow, making sure all the pockets are emptied. I’ve lost all kinds of shit because I’m too lazy to clean out my suits. Wallets, money, business cards. So now I take ten minutes to scour my clothes every Sunday night.
Tonight I have a pile on the floor in my closet that includes probably five dollars’ worth of coins and nearly a hundred dollars’ worth of paper money, along with several scraps of paper.
I’m scooping the scraps up to throw them out when I notice the crumpled up one that Conn gave me several weeks ago now. The one with Natalie’s phone number on it. My mother’s words, which were meant for Alyse, but that I overheard anyway pop into my head.
“Forgiveness? That’s hard. Much harder than holding onto our hurts and wrongs. It takes courage and bravery to forgive. Oh, but Alyse…forgiveness is freeing. Healing. In both mind and spirit…”
I think about Alyse and how she’s been able to forgive the wrongs that were done to her. She’s even listening to me about possibly meeting her mother. And then I think about how I need to do the same. I need to let my bitterness with Natalie go, once and for all so I can be completely free of that dead weight.
I pick up my phone and dial.
“Hello?” her soft voice chimes through my earpiece.
“Natalie, it’s Asher.”
“Asher?” Her voice perks up, full of surprise. “Hi. I’m glad you called.”
I’m not. “What did you want, Natalie?”
“I—I wanted to see you.”
“That’s not going to happen.” I curse myself for being so short, reminding myself of my purpose. Forgiveness. Move forward without baggage. With Alyse. “But I have a few minutes now to talk.”
“Yes, okay. I’d like that. I, uh…I wanted to apologize. For everything that happened.”
“Why, Natalie? Why now?”
“Because I made mistakes and I hurt you. I was wrong and I wanted you to know that.”
“Why would you do that to me?” I need truthful answers if I have any hopes of ending this conversation with a lighter heart.
Her prolonged silence irritates me. “I was lonely, I guess. You were gone all the time and Rick was just there. And part of me…part of me wanted to get back at you.”
“Get back at me? What the hell for?”
“I know there was someone else, Asher. The last few months we were together, you’d call out a woman’s name in your sleep. You even said it a couple of times when we were having sex and you were drunk.”
I sigh heavily, not wanting to rehash the same shit more than four years later. I’m beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea after all. “Natalie, we’ve been over this before. There was no one else.”
“Then who was Alyse?”
My heart stutters, my breath momentarily stolen by her words. “What did you say?”
“Alyse? Who was Alyse?”
Even though it’s highly inappropriate, I laugh, unable to believe what I’m hearing. “Why did you never mention her name to me before now?”
“So it’s true?”
“No. It’s not true. Alyse was an old friend.” A friend I wanted to fuck, but we were never officially more than that. “I didn’t see her the whole time we were together, Natalie. I promise you.”
“But she was someone you cared about?”
I guess Alyse was buried deeper than I ever realized. “Yes. I never realized that I’d never really gotten over her. I’m…I’m sorry, Natalie.” I almost need to say thank you. Natalie’s insecurities and inability to effectively communicate kept me from making the biggest mistake of my life, pushing me back toward the love of my life instead.
“I’m sorry, too, Asher.” Her voice cracks and I hear sniffling. Now I feel like a piece of shit.
“I guess we both made mistakes,” I tell her. I wasn’t the perfect boyfriend. Too worried about climbing the corporate ladder, I didn’t pay enough attention to Natalie or her feelings or insecurities. This is the first time I ever admitted my culpability for the demise of our relationship, and apparently it’s far overdue. I can now see I did my fair share of pushing her right into her lover’s arms, even if most of it was unconscious.
“I guess we did. I’d do it all differently if I had to do it over again.”