Because of You

by Sam Mariano

  But I need you to make a decision. I'm sorry, I've tried to just take what you could give me, but it's not right and it's not what I want. I know that you're back together, but you told me that was just because of the baby. I've given this a lot of thought, and I want you to please think about this.

  If you're just with her out of some sense of duty and responsibility, I understand, but it doesn't have to be this way. Your duty and responsibility is to your child, not to Sarah. You don't have to be with her. You can be with me, but it's your choice to make. You have to do what you want to do. I love kids; I already told you that night in the break room that that wasn't enough to make me walk away. I have tried to be patient and understanding, and I will continue to be understanding. I'm more than willing to compromise with you, to work with you and try to make nice with Sarah to make your life easier. You're not even giving me a chance. I feel like you've just decided that it won't work, so you're not even going to try.

  If that's the case, I obviously don't mean very much to you. If you cared about me the way you claim to, you would be willing to try.

  You don’t have to pick me, but I do need you to pick one of us. I just want you to be happy, whatever you decide to do. Whether you return the feeling or not, I care for you very deeply, and I want nothing more than your happiness.

  I need to know what you want.

  If I didn't care so much, I wouldn't be doing this to myself. I would just keep what pride and dignity I have left and call it a loss. Instead, I find myself baring my heart to you time after time. So what's one more time?

  I don't want to let you go. I don't want to get over you. I still want to be with you, to hell with the complications. We can get through each and every one of these complications if we want it enough. But if you don't want to, I need you to tell me. Please.

  If you don't, please just let me go.

  Whatever you choose, be happy. The one thing I cannot stand to imagine is you being unhappy. But I need an answer. I can't keep going on like this.

  Love always, Jamie

  I stood there, just staring at the note for a few seconds. I lightly rubbed my thumb over her name, feeling bad for the girl she had been.

  I had always wondered what she had written in that letter. That was the "novel" she had written to him all those years ago, before he moved in with Sarah, the one she had tried to get him to make a decision in. But when she pushed for a response, that was the night he came up and told her he and Sarah had broken up.

  And he still had the letter.

  That bothered me for some reason.

  I thought I was done, but in the back of the book I found another piece of paper, also old and folded up. I frowned, wondering when she had written him another letter. I didn't know anything about another letter.

  "Dear Mike," it began.

  The other night was a mistake. I have to start this letter by saying that. I don't want you to think that I've changed so much, that I've become the type of woman who's okay with doing that sort of thing. It was a mistake. You're married now.

  "Hey, I was just joking about that search party," Derek said, coming into the room.

  I jumped a little, looking at him guiltily.

  He frowned, looking at the letter. "What are you reading?"

  "A letter," I said, wondering if he was going to be mad.

  "Where did you get that?" he asked.

  "It's from my mom, Derek. I found this one and another one in a copy of Wuthering Heights he had up in the top corner of his bookshelf." I glanced back at the letter. "Hold on, let me finish this, please."

  He frowned, but let me go back to snooping as he took the one I had already read and started to read it.

  Don't get me wrong, Mike, I still love you. I wish to God that I didn't, but I do. I've even tried not to. I've tried hating you. I convinced everybody else, but I find that I don't believe my own lies.

  I never believed there was such a thing as "the love of my life" before you. Just the concept that there could be just one person for everyone... it didn't sound right to me. But I do know one thing. I don't ever see myself loving anyone else the way that I love you. I don't even think it's possible to love like this again. Honestly, I think that might be a good thing... When I think of the hell you've put me through... why would I even want to experience that again?

  I don't know, but apparently I'm a masochist, because I do want to be with you, even now. You gave me so much hope the other night, and even though I went to hell and back before, I was ready to go again. I guess I still am. Did you mean what you said? Or were you just teasing me, like you always do? Just giving me a taste of the only thing I would give anything to have... just to give it back to her. I want to believe you, I want to believe that you've realized the error of your ways and you won’t do that again.

  After all, if you weren't being sincere, then you were being cruel. Why would you stir up all those hopes and feelings in me after all these years if you still didn't intend on following through with any of them?

  I won't be your mistress, I feel I should make that much clear. I won't put myself through that again. But if you two really are splitting up, if you really don't love her... if you're really, truly leaving her for good this time, then I'm here. Just like I've always been here.

  "What are you doing?"

  I gasped, the letter slipping right out of my hands as I looked up at Mike, whose gaze was narrowed.

  Unfortunately, the only sound that seemed to come from my mouth was, "Uh..."

  Derek recovered a little quicker, saying, "We were just going to watch Scarface, we were going to... get it."

  He directed his gaze at the letter that was lying in the floor. "That isn't Scarface."

  "No," Derek agreed, looking at me, not really knowing what else to say.

  "Get out of my room," Mike said, bending over to pick up the letter off the floor.

  Suddenly, seeing the letter in his hand seemed to knock me out of my dumbfounded silence. "You talked to her before it happened," I stated.

  He looked at me coldly. "I believe I asked you—"

  "No! I didn't get to finish reading that letter, but I read enough. I know—"

  "You don't know anything," he said, cutting me off.

  Derek took me by the arm. "Nikki, come on," he said.

  I felt rage coursing through my entire body, burning with the knowledge of what was in that letter that she had written before she died. That he was the one to dig it all up again, to make her more false promises that he obviously didn't deliver on. Finally finding out that it was his fault that she broke again.

  "He talked to her, Derek. He did it to her. She was okay, she was moving on, she had her life with me and then he had to go and screw it all up! Why? Why did you do that?" I demanded, even as Derek tried to drag me out of the room.

  “Come on,” Derek said, attempting to calm me.

  "Why?" I didn’t even realize tears were welling up in my eyes. "Did you enjoy seeing her suffer? Why did you have to open it all up again? I knew it didn't seem right. I knew she wasn't crazy. If she was, it's because you drove her there."

  "Get out!" Mike said.

  "Go to hell!" I screamed. "You did it! For years I've been living with the stigma, and you're the one that set her off! You took her away from me! I loved her, unlike you, and because of you she's gone!" I accused. "She loved you so much; how could you do that to her? What did you do? Did you sleep with her? Did you think you could just toy with her a little more? Did you ever really even give a damn about her? Did you tell my mother you would leave Sarah for her?"

  Derek yanked me out of his father's room, making a quick stop in his room to get his keys before he led me out of the house by the arm, as if I might run back in and attack Mike.

  And I might have. I was pretty pissed off at that point.

  "I'm not done here," I told Derek, trying to pull my arm free. "I want to go back in. I want answers."

  "Not right now, Nikki," Derek said, p
utting his hand on the small of my back to make sure I kept walking. "I'm taking you home."

  "You don't even understand. I know you lost your mother, too, but nobody made you pay for it. Not only did he ruin her life and cause her years of suffering, but he passed it along to me. I've had to listen to people disrespect my mother's memory for years—"

  "What she did was still wrong, Nikki," Derek stated, cutting me off.

  "What he did was wrong, too!" I fired back. "Don’t you dare defend him. It had been years, Derek. She wouldn't have just flipped out and taken her own life and someone else's if he wouldn't have triggered her. But he couldn't leave well enough alone. He made the wrong choice in the first place, so he thought he'd take my mother's heart off the shelf and kick it around a little more. This all happened because of him."

  "He didn't make her do it," he replied.

  "Yes he did," I said lowly. "He may not have been in the car with her, but if he wouldn't have started screwing with her emotions again she would still be here right now. So would your mother. My mom had given up," I said, the angry tears starting to fall. "She was trying to heal her broken heart, and she did to the best of her ability. We were happy. It didn't make sense. But it does now. And he just gets to keep on living his life, marrying someone else, raising a child, while they just died." I laughed mirthlessly, thinking how ridiculous it was. "All over one damn man," I said, almost to myself. "Do you see now why I hate love?" I asked, glancing up at him. "Do you see what love does?"

  "That isn't what love normally does, Nikki," he responded quietly.

  "Yes, it is," I returned just as quietly, turning my head to gaze sightlessly out the window.

  For the rest of that night I stayed in my room with my mother's journals, trying to make sure I had put together the pieces of the puzzle correctly.

  By my understanding, my mom and Mike had had their little relationship before I was born. When she found out about me, she decided to rebuild her life, but building it around me instead of Mike. I understood all of that, because I had always known about it.

  It was the new part I wanted to make sure I understood.

  She said, "You're married now," so it was obviously a letter from years later, because Mike and Sarah didn't get married until a year before the accident. Also, the letters were kept in Wuthering Heights, which was kept hidden in a corner, the only book Mike actually seemed to own. As far as I was concerned, he absolutely had to be the person she had given the book to, telling him, "You might relate."

  I wondered, then, at the context. When I had read her final line initially, I didn't think anything of it. But thinking of Wuthering Heights, of the tortured lovers, obsessed even beyond the grave, the line seemed a little more important.

  But what had happened between them to make her snap? How, after so many years, had they even found themselves together? Why was she talking about Mike leaving Sarah? She insinuated that he had told her he was going to, given her new hope.

  I could only assume, given that she killed herself the next day, that he had backed out again. She could only take so much, and having her heart crushed again must have just been too much for her.

  The next day was Saturday, and I wasn't sure if I should expect to hear from Derek or not.

  Normally we talked and hung out every day, but I had just yelled at his father and told him to go to hell. I wasn't sorry, not by any means. Telling him to go to hell was the very least I could have done. I would have liked to say much more, but Derek didn't let me.

  I worked until three and at the end of my shift I still had no voicemails from Derek. Even though I hated to admit it, it made me kind of sad to think Derek was mad at me. When would he talk to me again? When he did, was he going to be mean? I was getting so accustomed to Derek being nice, I really didn't want him to be mean to me again.

  It wasn't until a little after five that Derek finally called. I couldn't tell at first if he was mad at me or not, because he was talking lowly, which made me a little nervous. Then he asked me if I wanted to go to the park. I really didn't, because of the park's history with my family, but I agreed anyway, and he said he would come pick me up.

  He barely spoke to me the whole time we drove to the park, which made me uneasy. We weren't even dating, but I somehow felt like he was about to break up with me.

  He finally spoke when he got out and stood against the guard rail, looking down at his shoes, which now had black laces.

  "I've destroyed all evidence of that video," he stated.

  My eyes widened a little. "The video from the party?"

  He nodded, still not looking at me. "There are no copies of it and I deleted the original. No one but you and I will ever know about that video, so you don't have to worry about it anymore."

  There was no other word for it, I was simply stunned. And even in the midst of all the shock I was feeling, I realized I didn't feel one single ounce of the relief I expected to feel. I didn't feel free, I felt discarded.

  "You're sick of me," I finally said, feeling strangely disappointed.

  He looked at me, but there was no twinkle in his blue eyes. "No, I'm definitely not," he said, a humorless smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

  "Then why?" I asked, feeling a strange tightening in my stomach. "I don't understand. I didn't ask you to do that, Derek. This is coming from nowhere. Is it because of yesterday? You're mad at me, so you don't want to be with me anymore?"

  "Nikki, it's nothing like that," he said, shaking his head.

  "Then what is it? I'm confused."

  He waited for such a long time that I actually thought he wasn't going to answer me, but he finally said, "I talked to my dad last night. About... the letters, about your mom... about my mom."

  My eyes widened again, but I didn't think it was my turn to speak, so I just let him continue.

  "I know what happened now. He explained everything, beginning to end. He told me he and my mother had broken up and he started hanging out with your mom... he explained how it all started, and about when my mom found out she was pregnant with me, the way she told him she had the best Christmas present in the world to give him."

  He paused briefly. "He told me that, although he tried not to let her see, he was completely miserable after that, and how even then your mom would try to cheer him up. He told me about the conversations your mom would have with him, how he was torn... but at the end of the day, he had to do what he thought was right. He told me that your mom cried to him a couple times, one time she even asked him why it was 'the right thing to do' to break her heart. He told me that... he could never give her an answer. He said he knew it wasn't right, but he didn't think it would be right to abandon us either, so he had to hurt someone, and I guess she just... I'm the only reason that he chose to hurt her. Then he told me that he had kept stringing her along, he even admitted that to me. He said he was trying to find some way out of it, some magical answer to all his problems. But he never found one, so he finally just started pushing her away, thinking that would make it easier for her to let go. He told me that my mother pretty much used me to make sure she didn't lose him. She knew about Jamie, but she didn't care, because she knew she had the Trump card. She had me, and as long as she did, my dad wouldn't leave her, because she made sure he understood that if he left her, he left both of us."

  I could remember journal entries where my mother had pretty much said the same thing, but I still didn't feel like it was my turn to speak, so I just kept listening.

  "And it was your mother that they were fighting about that night," he told me. "My dad lied to protect Jamie, because he knew my mom might actually go after her if she knew. But your mom was the woman that he cheated with."

  "Why?" I asked quietly.

  Derek shook his head. "I don't know. He said that he saw her, and she saw him, and even after all those years, her expression was still pained, he could still see the hurt in her eyes when she looked at him. He had turned her away to protect her, to stop hurting her, an
d in one moment of weakness it was all for nothing. He didn't tell me exactly what happened or how it happened, he just told me that... he did end up cheating on my mom that night."

  I had figured as much. "Well, what about the rest of it? In that letter, Mom said stuff about him leaving Sarah, about them actually getting to be together. What was that?"

  Derek sighed a little. "I guess being with Jamie again... after years of being unhappy, he said it just felt so right. He told her... he asked her if she still wanted to be with him, and she didn't answer at first, she just told him he was married. That was when he told her that he wanted to leave my mother, but he didn't want to lose me. He said she was so happy that night, and it was so nice to see her so happy when he hadn't seen it for so long, and she just kept getting promises out of him.

  “By the end of that night, they were both actually excited about the idea. He said that even before they parted that night, she took his hand and asked him not to lie to her anymore, to only make her promises if he was really going to keep them. She told him that it was too hard to get over him the first time, that she couldn't stand if he broke her heart all over again. He told her... that he never wanted to hurt her again, and that he was sure it was what he wanted. He said that even when she left, she looked at him as if she might never see him again, so he didn't think she was convinced."

  A few seconds passed and he didn't say anything else, so I asked, "What happened?"

  He shrugged his shoulders. "He let her down again. When he told my mom that he wanted a divorce, she freaked out. She started threatening him again, promising him that if he went off with 'that whore' he would never lay eyes on me again. My dad didn't want to go into all the details, but I guess they fought about it for about a month, maybe a little longer. Your mom could tell, he said. He knew she wasn't fooled, and he knew she no longer believed in him. The day he told her he was sorry, he couldn't do it, he said that she looked like she was going to cry, but she didn't, she just smiled and said, 'I wish you loved me.' For the first time, he told her he did. He told her that he wished things were different, but things just hadn't changed. He told her that my mom still held me over his head, that if he left her, she still wouldn't let him see me. He said his only hope would be to wait until I was old enough to choose, but by then she might turn me against him anyway. He said he was sorry that he had screwed both of their lives up, and he wished he had it all to do over again. He finally told her not to hold on, not to wait for him, because I would probably be 18 before he would be free of my mother."