All I Ask

by Corinne Michaels

  “You have no idea if she was a loser, she was being nice! Besides, how do you know anything about Teagan anyway?”

  She shakes her head like I’m an idiot. “Don’t be dumb, Dad. I heard Mom talk about her.”

  I jerk back, confused and pissed at the same time. “When did…?”

  “If she hated her, then so do I.”

  I close my eyes and count to four. I need to be calm. “Your mother didn’t hate her.”

  “Not what I heard.”

  “You’re thirteen! What could you possibly hear anyway?”

  “Mom always talked about your slutty friend from back home.”

  Anger begins to fill me, but also guilt. I let this happen. I allowed Teagan to be the villain in our story. It wasn’t Teagan who did Meghan wrong, it was me.

  At first, I did as Meghan asked, letting Teagan go, focusing solely on my marriage.

  I pushed aside the conflicting emotions I felt for Teagan because that’s what I needed to do to keep my wife.

  When I think back, I remember the pain in my chest when I made that last call to Teagan. The way I pictured her face as she cried and begged me not to do this. I let her think it was her fault. I didn’t tell her it was me who was weak and ashamed.

  I didn’t tell her that I had feelings for her and I needed to make the right choice, even if it hurt us both.

  Meghan would’ve left me if I spoke to Teagan again.

  So, I kept my promise to my wife, cut all ties, told Teagan I couldn’t be there for her anymore since I had my own family. Which wasn’t the case at all.

  But Meghan is gone now, and no matter what happened between me and Teagan I will not allow Everly to hurt anyone like this.

  “You don’t know anything about the past, and you will not treat that girl or her mother with anything less than the highest respect,” I say as I take a step closer. “So help me God, Everly, if I find out that you say anything again, you’ll regret it.”

  “What are you going to do, Dad? Move me from my home? Take my friends from me? Maybe take away my life? Well, too late!”

  “You think this is what I want?”

  I had a great practice in South Carolina. We had a beautiful home, friends, schools, and the life that people dream of, and I had to leave it all behind.

  Not because we lost Meghan, but because my father needed me.

  Everly crosses her arms and shifts away from me. “Just go, Dad.”

  I’m completely inept at dealing with her. Talking does nothing but lead to a fight and neither of us are willing to bend.

  Maybe giving her space is what she needs. “Fine, but you need to stop thinking you’re old enough to understand things you should’ve never heard. You’re not an adult, contrary to whatever you think, and I won’t put up with you bullying anyone, understand?”

  Her head turns and she glares. “Completely.”

  I have a feeling she and I agreed on something else, but I’m too exhausted to push her.

  “Good night, Ev. I love you.”

  I want her to at least hear that.

  Her eyes soften, but I know her too well to expect her to give in. She’s always been more like Meghan when she digs her heels in. “Whatever.”

  I close the door and lean my head against the wall. No one ever told me how hard parenting really is. It was different when it was Meghan and I. We were a team when it came to Everly and where one was a little weaker, the other was strong.

  Now, I’m just weak and completely freaking lost.

  My parents are sitting in the living room that hasn’t changed in the last thirty years, doing their best to pretend not to have heard all of it.

  I sit on the sofa that still has the bloodstain from when I cut my arm when I was six. The photographs on the wall haven’t been changed out and I cringe at my braces and long hair.

  “Are you going to tell us what all that was about?” my mother asks while continuing to knit.

  “Just me failing as a parent.”

  My father chuckles once. “That’s a perpetual state, son.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m just being honest. If you ever feel like you’re doing a good job—worry.”

  My dad is the main reason I decided to head back here. Mom told me that his memory has been failing of late and that he needs help with the practice. I suggested he finally retire, but she said he won’t even consider it until he found another veterinarian to take over.

  However, it’s not like there’s anyone else around here.

  He’s the only one people call.

  Which meant, I was the only option he had.

  “How are you feeling today, Dad?”

  He shrugs. “Horses were giving me a bit of trouble. You know how stubborn they can be.”

  “Much like teenagers,” I toss back.

  “Everly is in a lot of pain, Derek. You should remember that. Losing a parent is very difficult.” Mom’s voice is soft and full of understanding.

  “Doesn’t give her the right to be a little shit.”

  Dad pushes the paper he was reading down. “Mouth.”

  “I’m almost thirty-five.”

  “I don’t care if you’re seventy-five. Around your mother we don’t use that language.”

  My mother smirks and rolls her eyes because he’s so hell-bent on protecting her delicate ears when she has the worst mouth in all of Virginia. Mom cusses like a sailor thanks to her father, who was one.

  “Whatever you say, Pop.”

  He grumbles and goes back to his paper. Mom shares a secret look with me and I smile. She and I have always been close, and right now, I need her help. I was fortunate to grow up with a loving, sweet mother who baked a cake once a week but who also loved poker and taught me how to cheat. She’s the oxymoron to every situation. My friends would look at her and see this version of June Cleaver, only to find out she was really Peg Bundy.

  “You know what always helps me clear my mind?” she says, drawing my attention. “A walk on the beach. The salt air is great to cleanse the soul. Don’t you think, honey?”

  It’s been a long time since I’ve been close to the water. We lived on the Georgia border of South Carolina. I’ve missed the waves and the mere idea of seeing the wild horses.

  “I hear you, Mom.”

  She smiles to herself and goes back to her knitting when I stand.

  The walk to the shoreline takes about ten minutes, but it’s ten minutes of total peace. There’s no one out, since it’s September and all the tourists are gone, leaving the locals back to their little slice of heaven. It’s still warm enough that it feels like summer, though. The breeze tonight is light, just enough so the air’s not stagnant.

  I make my way over the dunes and see her.

  Her back is to me as she sits looking out to the ocean. There’s a bottle of wine beside her, and I’m thrown back in time.

  How many nights did we meet this way?

  When the world was asleep and we wanted to pretend all our dreams were within reach.

  Teagan was my world and my fantasy, wrapped up in one perfect person. I stand here, unsure of what to do. So much time has passed and I’m not ready to deal with the things between us.

  So I do what I did thirteen years ago, I turn my back on her—again.

  Chapter Ten

  Teagan

  Present

  I know he’s here. I can feel his presence, even in the dark with the wind and sounds of the ocean, I can sense him.

  If only I didn’t, maybe his being back in this town would be tolerable. Time has done nothing to diminish the connection I have with him, and that is the saddest part.

  The seconds pass and I wait to hear his arrival. There’s no doubt he saw me, but as the numbers climb in my head, he still doesn’t appear.

  I turn, shifting to see where he is, and that’s when I see him walk away. “Derek!” I call his name without thinking.

  I’m frustrated because I should’ve let him go. It’s clear
he didn’t want to talk and I don’t have anything to say—well, that’s a lie. I have a million questions I want answers to, but this place, this beach, is where we came when we needed to think.

  Which we both clearly are grappling with.

  Derek starts to walk toward me so I get to my feet, heading to meet him.

  “Hi,” he says as we stand a yard apart.

  “Hi. If you want the beach, I can leave,” I offer.

  If he needed solitude, I’ll grant him that. I’ve been here for an hour already and feel no better than when I arrived.

  “No, no. It’s fine, really. Not like the beach isn’t big enough for the both of us.”

  “Then why did you leave?”

  He straightens his back and looks off to the left. “I don’t know.”

  “You saw me, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” The air escapes my chest in a huff. “I get it.”

  He steps forward. “No, you can’t possibly because I don’t get it.”

  I don’t know what he means, but my pride can only take so much. He was my best friend. He knew me. He was the only person on my side and he walked away.

  He let me down.

  “I’m truly too spent for riddles or anything. I’ll head out, take the solitude.”

  When I start to walk away, he grips my arm. “Stay.” Derek looks as shocked as I feel. “We don’t have to talk, but I’d like you to stay.”

  My heart is racing, and as much as I want to be the one to walk away this time, I can’t. I’d never been able to before, and it seems I’m still not. It’s clear that things are weighing on him.

  “Okay.”

  We walk down to the shoreline, allowing the water to lap over our feet.

  This isn’t the time to ask the one question that weighs on me so heavily…how?

  Not why, because I know why. It’s obvious that Meghan forbade him from talking to me. Something happened, I still don’t know what, but we went from some kind of mutual understanding to radio silence.

  At first, I thought maybe she knew that I loved him. Although, not a soul was aware of that, so it always seemed impossible.

  Then I thought she suspected something was going on between us, but again, it made no sense. Yeah, he was coming to see me once a month, like he did the entire time we were in college, but that was part of our thing.

  So it isn’t the why that has kept me up at night, it’s how.

  How could he do it?

  How could he turn and walk away when he was my best friend?

  I look at his face as we walk, but he keeps his eyes down.

  “I can practically hear you screaming at me in your head,” Derek says with a sigh. “I said we didn’t have to talk, not that we couldn’t.”

  I cross my arms over my chest to hold myself together. Instead of asking about what happened all those years ago, I decide to start small. “What brought you out here tonight?”

  “Everly.”

  “Teenagers will do that to you.” I try to make a joke, but he doesn’t laugh.

  “She’s not handling things well.”

  “I would assume not. Losing her mother isn’t easy, I would imagine. She’s probably full of anger and then moving…to here…I would be pissed too.”

  Derek huffs. “Oh, she’s angry all right.”

  “And you’re bearing the brunt of it?”

  “Every day.”

  I feel bad for him, but there’s a childish part of me, the wounded part, that’s kind of happy he’s getting shit. “Well, I’m here to tell you that single parenting sucks.”

  “Gee, thanks for the encouragement.” Derek nudges me a little deeper in the water.

  Thankfully, I don’t fall.

  “I’m just being honest. I’ve been taking the hits since Chastity was born and it doesn’t get easier. You are always the bad guy and very rarely the good guy. Nothing you do will ever be right because…again…you suck.”

  Derek lets out a laugh, but then turns his head. “I’ve felt that way for a while.”

  “Welcome to the club. I’m the owner.”

  Then both of us are quiet as we walk at a glacial pace. I’m not in a hurry, even though the proverbial elephant is between us.

  “Everything I want to say to you right now seems so trivial,” he admits.

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Do you?”

  We both stop walking, and watch each other.

  It’s apparent that we’re both dancing around what we want to say, but I don’t know that I’m fully ready to hear it all either. Once I know, I’ll have to decide how to handle it, whatever the outcome. In the past, I haven’t been known for my fantastic decision-making, but when it comes to him, I’m even worse.

  I give him an out. “You never said, how did Meghan die?”

  Derek’s eyes break from mine. “It was a car accident. She was running late to get Everly to cheerleading. They were arguing because Meghan was overwhelmed since she got her new job and kept forgetting everything. Including when she had to pick up Everly. I was in surgery and couldn’t get her this time.”

  The tightness in my chest grows because I already know the ending. The tragic part is coming and there’s no alternate ending.

  “Everly was in the car?”

  He nods. “She was on her phone, apparently texting her friends about her mother being a bitch, and a car ran the red light. They hit the driver’s side, Everly was in the back passenger side.”

  I gasp. “I can’t even…”

  “It was horrific. I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t know how Everly walked out of that wreck.”

  “How long ago?”

  His eyes are filled with unshed tears. “Six months.”

  “I really didn’t know,” I say as I shift closer. “I would’ve called or gone to you. Your parents never said a word.”

  He nods. “I asked them not to.”

  My back straightens and I eye him curiously. “Why not?”

  “Because I knew you’d come. I knew that if you thought I needed you, even with me being an ass the last time we talked, that you’d be there for me. Isn’t that ridiculous? That I would rather suffer than have had you comfort me?”

  There’s nothing I can say. The tears that don’t fall from his eyes descend from mine. It hurts to know that he didn’t want me there. I loved him, sure, more than I should’ve, but I would never have hurt him. I kept my mouth shut, dealt with standing beside him during that fucking wedding, and never said a word.

  I struggled so he wouldn’t.

  And he’d kept his wife’s death a secret.

  “What did I do to you that was so wrong?” I blurt out. “What did I ever do, Derek? Because I don’t understand how thirteen years ago you could walk out, and never tell me why.”

  I didn’t plan to say anything, but small talk will only go for so long. There are big issues between us, and while I wish we could pretend things didn’t happen, wish we could sweep them under the rug and ignore what happened in the past…we can’t.

  I can see that he’s either not ready or can’t say what he’s thinking, and I really don’t feel like playing this game.

  I muster the courage to speak first. “We need to talk about this.”

  “Yeah, it probably would make things a little less awkward.” His foot carves a line in the sand, the water rushing over and flooding it. “It’s funny how things happen. You dig the hole only to have the space you thought you made fill right back up.”

  I stay quiet because I’m not sure if this is going to relate back to us or if he’s just talking.

  Derek continues after a moment. “You can’t stop it or control any of it, it just…happens. Which is sort of how I feel about the way things went down with us.”

  “You couldn’t stop it?” I ask.

  “I couldn’t control it.”

  I shake my head while releasing a heavy breath. “You’re talking in riddles.”

  “Megh
an.”

  The single word hangs out there.

  “Meghan?”

  Derek takes a step back, allowing more space between us, and although he’s only moved a few inches it feels like miles to me. He takes a deep breath.

  “Meghan found my journal.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Derek

  Twenty-two years old

  “We’ve only been married two months, Derek! How can you be so unhappy?” Meghan asks with tears streaming down her face.

  I wish I could tell her the truth, but that would be intentionally cruel.

  Meghan hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s been a great wife and she was a good girlfriend. We’ve had our spats and arguments—mostly over Teagan—but we’ve found a way through it.

  But the last two months have been hard. I’m trying to be a good husband, give her the support she needs, especially since she’s four months pregnant, and yet…I’m failing.

  I’m torn between driving up to see Teagan and being here for Meghan.

  Because ever since I found out Teagan was pregnant, I realized: I’m madly in love with her.

  Since the night it hit me, three days after my wedding when I was staring at my new wife, wishing she was Teagan, I can’t look at myself. I hate myself more than I can express. I married Meghan in spite of what I thought I felt for Teagan. I love Meghan, but there was this moment when I was looking at Teagan, wishing it was my child she was carrying.

  How fucked-up am I?

  Then again, I didn’t have a choice because she was with Keith, trying to figure out if they had a future, and by then, I was engaged to Meghan. What choice did I have?

  “Talk to me!” Meghan pushes her hands to my chest. “Please.”

  I can’t. I can’t tell her because she really doesn’t want to know. It’s my job as her husband to fix myself, and she doesn’t deserve this.

  I grip her wrists, holding them, focusing on the fact that it’s Meghan here. She’s my wife. She’s having our baby. “I’m just…nervous, Meg. I’m worried that I’m not going to be a good dad and husband.” Which isn’t a lie. “I’m still in school and I don’t know how I’m going to take care of you guys and still finish vet school.”