Unrequited(11)

It was an opening, a tiny one, but I dove through it and kicked the door open. "What ever happened between the two of you?"

As if there was something she could say that would make my own actions okay. Yes, they'd been broken up since she was twenty and that was five years ago, but Finn was still her ex. And it felt wrong. Even when it was so good.

"Oh, God." She flung an arm over her eyes. "That was a shit time in my life, Winter, and I did a lot of things I'm ashamed of."

"Sorry, you don't have to tell me."

Losing a parent was like receiving blunt force trauma to the side of the head. You never really fully recover, but you could move on. When our parents died in a car wreck on New Year's Eve when I was sixteen and Ivy was nineteen, there was a time there I thought we'd died too.

Ivy’d already had a bad drinking problem. She'd flunked out of her first semester at college and had come home defiant and unapologetic. They'd argued, and then the accident happened. After that, Ivy couldn't pull herself out of the tailspin. She was sober just enough to fight for my guardianship so I wouldn't have to stay in foster care for two years. But after the petition was granted, she let go, as if the court battle had sucked out every atom of her self-control.

We'd had the life insurance policies, so it seemed we'd make it financially. Ivy paid off the house and set aside money for my college. Or so I thought.

But Ivy's drinking turned into drugs, and the money from the insurance ran through her fingers like water through a sieve. I didn't learn the full extent of the damage until I tried to pay for my first semester at Central. The check bounced, my admission got denied, and I had a long screaming match with Ivy that ended with bitter tears on both sides.

I mortgaged the house to pay for her first stay at rehab and sold the house to pay for the second. But once an addiction had a hold, its grip was so tight you couldn't pry that person loose with a bulldozer. She had to crawl out on her own. That was the lesson I had to learn. Margo, Ivy's sponsor, said I still hadn't learned it. Margo thought I should move out, but until Ivy could stand for herself, I wasn’t leaving.

"No, it's good for me. That's what recovery is all about, right? Asking for forgiveness from the ones I've hurt. Step eight, right?"

Step eight: Make a list of all persons harmed, and when wrong, promptly admit it. I’d learned those steps in the Al-Anon meetings.

She sighed so deeply and so long that I wondered where she got the oxygen. "I cheated on him. Several times."

"On Finn?" I didn't mean to sound so incredulous, but that was inexplicable to me. If she had Finn, why look elsewhere?

"I was drinking. I would get drunk, and I would hook up. Finn wasn't into the party scene like I was. He played intramural sports and he went out, but even then he didn't drink hard. He started leaving me behind because I'd refuse to leave a party even if I had a test the next day."

"Did you break up with him?"

"No, he finally broke up with me after some chick in his chem lab started making noise that she'd love to be in his pants."

"Do you miss him?"

She was silent for a few too many heartbeats, and the guilt of the one night eight weeks ago made me hot and cold. Was it shame or something else? The memory of that night was filled with contradictory emotions. There was the bliss of being held by Finn and the glory of having his big, strong body rub against mine. There was his shocking lack of inhibitions and the mind-numbing pleasure he brought forth because he knew what to do with his body and was constantly listening to mine. But underneath it was the thought—like sand in the bottom of your shoe that you can't find but knew was there abrading your foot with each step—that I shouldn't have done it. The best time in Ivy's life was when Finn was her boyfriend. Post-Finn, her life was a disaster.

"I miss the idea of Finn more than I miss Finn himself. Having someone there to shoulder your burdens, always having that sure thing. That's really great. But I don't miss him. I mean, let's face it. The moment shit got tough around here, he bailed. He just kind of distanced himself emotionally after Mom and Dad died. I think he thought I was too clingy, and that's half the reason I cheated on him. I was trying to get his attention. The more I cheated, the less he seemed to care. We still occasionally had sex, but he stopped calling and making plans. When we saw each other, it was almost by accident. My grief and problems were an inconvenience for him."

Her bitter words were a surprise to me. It didn't jive with what I knew of Finn. He'd always made time for me when he was dating Ivy. He seemed sincere and loving. Had I built a completely mistaken image of him?

"Who's he dating now?" Ivy pondered.