My Heart for Yours

by Jolene Perry

  “What the hell are you even talking about?” I demand. I gave her everything I had.

  “Eamon influenced you more than you thought. You knew how he felt about us—”

  “Don’t give me that crap. Eamon loved you. Don’t you dare think otherwise.” He did. He would’ve done anything for Delia, just like I would. She was family.

  “I know that. He loved me. Not us. He wanted you to want what he did. To be just like him. I know how torn you were all the time, Tobin.”

  I slam the ice chest shut. She wants to have this out, let’s do it.

  “How can you stand here and act like there is nothing between us?” she asks.

  “There isn’t. Not to me at least. You left. You moved on. Pretty damn quickly, too.”

  “Are you kidding me? You weren’t there. I had to make the hardest decision of my life. Alone. Moving on quicker than you seems like a small crime in comparison.”

  “In comparison?” I spit. “Are we keeping score now, D? Really?”

  “You left me! You left me alone when I needed you the most!”

  “I left you? I fucking lived and breathed for you, Delia,” I say. She jerks back. Like the words bring her back to us. What we really were. Without all of this anger. It’s the truth. “But because I didn’t react the way that you wanted me to—”

  “Needed you to. I needed you, Tobin,” she qualifies. Her voice is cracking. Just like that night.

  ***

  “Tobin, I really need to talk to you,” she said. Her voice was pleading, urgent.

  “I work until six,” I said. “I’ll come by and pick you up when I get off.”

  “Oh, okay. Just get here as soon as you can.” She was sniffling like she had been crying. Again. Shit. I was sure it was more drama over the move.

  “Baby, are you okay?” I asked.

  Silence.

  “Do you need me to leave work early?” I really hoped she’d say no. It’s not like I wasn’t concerned about whatever was bothering her, but since we found out she was moving to D.C. next month, it seemed like everything was an emergency.

  “So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I asked later that night. She was sitting on the boat launch, her feet dangling just above the water. She hadn’t looked up since we got here, and she was really starting to scare me. I’d never seen her like this.

  “D?” I pressed.

  “I need to tell you, but I also don’t know how. I don’t know if I can. I don’t want you to leave,” she said. I couldn’t make sense of what she was saying.

  “Delia, you know there is nothing you could say to get rid of me. Just tell me. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it. Is it about the move? I told you, we’ll make it work. You’re dad’s a prick, he won’t be in D.C. forever. They’ll vote him out soon enough.” I was trying to make a joke, but she wasn’t laughing. At all.

  I moved closer to her and ran my finger up and down the length of her arm.

  “Just tell me, please. You’re really starting to freak me out,” I said.

  She finally looked up. Her eyes were already brimming with tears that were begging to spill over.

  “Tobin, I’m pregnant,” she said.

  I lost my vision for a minute. Everything went completely blank. My sight, my thoughts. Everything.

  “What? Are you sure?” We were always so careful. Always. I bet everyone says that when in this situation, but it’s the truth.

  “Of course I’m sure. I know how to count lines, Tobin. Two of them. Clear as day.”

  I ran my hand along my jaw, struggling to find the right words. Something to comfort her. Something to comfort myself. But I never found them. So in the end, I just backed off altogether. Stopped talking because I knew that nothing that I said would make it right.

  ***

  I didn’t know how to be what she needed from me then. I thought I was giving us both time to process it by avoiding her calls and giving her space. Or at least that’s what I told myself. But she was right. I couldn’t see what she needed from me through my own fear. My own selfishness. It sounds stupid, but as close as D and I were, I never thought about kids before then. I honestly didn’t know what I wanted. So in the end, I let her leave. I didn’t even try to stop her. Knowing I may never see her again, knowing what she was going to have to go through on her own when she got to D.C. I bailed.

  “I left you.”

  There I said it.

  And then, because I don’t know what else to do, and it’s all I’ve wanted to do since the second she got to town, I tangle my fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck, pull her in close, inhale that sweet jasmine oil smell, and kiss her. Her lips part with mine and she’s actually kissing me back. I press harder into her. The need for her overwhelming want.

  Twenty

  Delia

  It used to be that there was no problem in the world that Tobin's kiss couldn't fix. My tears easily dried. The world quickly righted itself. But it feels so different now. So weighted. His lips so full of why's. How can I make him understand that things aren’t that simple anymore?

  “You can’t do that, Tobin,” I say, pulling away. “It’s not fair.” Because I can’t think when we touch that way, and his kiss should NOT make me feel weak in the knees.

  “Shit, Delia. I—”

  “Totally wimped out when you knew I was pregnant. I could feel it in your voice. In your body. In the way you were suddenly needed for double shifts.” We’re still close. Too close for me think straight.

  “But you—”

  “Tobin, it was the scariest thing I’d ever done. I hated the decision. I hated knowing that I’d never see that baby’s face. Never know what part of you and me would look like. But what was I supposed to do? Dad practically sent me away to have it done. It’s not like I had any kind of plan. Like I had someone to raise a baby with, or someone to help me pick out parents to raise it. You weren’t around! I laid in bed with cramps in a strange house for days second-guessing everything. You. Me. The baby. Everything. You should have been there.”

  Tobin’s silent and staring. It’s too much. It’s all too much. The hurt still hovers between us, pushing and pulling on us like magnets.

  “If you’d been with me, Tobin, fighting with me...I don’t know.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that you should have stood up to him yourself? Make the people around you feel like they’re worth it! Worth something!”

  “Do you know how many times my dad was pissed at me over you? Have any idea how much pretending I’ve had to do to make up for it!”

  “And was it worth it?” he spits out.

  I ignore him. Because I have no idea what anything’s worth any more.

  “As soon as I felt good enough to get up and move around, Dad kept me busy. He sort of saved me that way. And—” And I can’t believe I’m defending my father—especially to Tobin.

  “Set you up with the perfect boyfriend.”

  “It took me months before I even held his hand! You hugged me in the driveway on the morning I left, and all I could feel was the distance you were putting between us, and the hurt of this huge decision we were supposed to make together! When you called, I realized that if you hated me, it would seal it. Us being apart. I let it happen that way. Because I knew if I felt like I couldn’t have you, it might make it easier! But Weston and I weren’t together then, Tobin. Not even close.”

  “Did it make it easier? Letting me hate you?” Something flashes across his face that I don’t recognize. Remorse? Or maybe a new shade of anger.

  “No! Yes!” I yell, and then I can feel my anger breaking down into something I don’t want to feel at a bonfire with a group of friends. “I don’t know!” Tears are falling freely down my cheeks.

  “Delia.” His voice breaks.

  I take a step back, needing distance. “Yes. You know what? Yes. It helped knowing or hoping that you were more mad than hurt until I got here.” And since then the anger’s been killing me. Feeling like Tob
in and I aren’t over is killing me. Wanting to at least try again is killing me, and I didn’t even totally realize it until now when we’re standing here yelling at each other.

  “Now what?”

  “I don’t know.” I’m a mess. I need home, but not home. I don’t want to face, Dad, Weston, Tobin…

  Tobin reaches for me again, and I want it. I want him to touch me. I want to find a way to be around him, but I’m also too hurt to try anything right now.

  “I gotta go.”

  And then I do. I spin away from the fire and our friends, get in Mom’s car, and just drive away.

  I drive around for more than an hour. Maybe two. I text Weston to tell him I’m safe. I don’t dare talk to Mom or Dad. I may be eighteen. I may be graduated. But there’s no mistaking I’m still in their mercy.

  I can’t believe that Tobin didn’t see how obvious it was. How he was gone long before I was. Maybe he’s starting to understand how it felt to be slowing losing him as my parents packed up our old life for our new.

  ***

  “Let’s just ease some of the pressure off both of us, Delia,” Tobin said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked my heart starting to pound. I only had three weeks left in town before our family moved.

  “I mean it’s hard on both of us with your dad breathing down our necks. Let’s just lay low for a while and think. We’ll figure it out.” But the look in his eyes wasn’t anything that resembled reassuring. It scared the hell out of me.

  What else was I supposed to do but let him go? It was obvious that he didn’t want the baby, the responsibility, or me. And right then, the tiniest part of me wondered if my dad hadn’t been right about Tobin after all. Even though I knew better. It was still Tobin who had pulled away first.

  DESTINY

  One for one?

  Or a million for one?

  Maybe two

  Two lives

  Two futures

  Two choices

  Just waiting

  For a decision to be made

  Like puzzle pieces

  We fit

  Filling holes

  Making pictures

  Making art

  Making love

  Or we don’t.

  Twenty-One

  Delia

  I’m fairly sure that I’ve been crying for most of my drive, and when I stop in front of the house, I just sit in the car, wondering if I’m ready to go in.

  My face is red, swollen, and my eyes are bloodshot. I’m a mess, but there’s no prolonging the inevitable so I step out of the car, dreading what I’m about to do. I slide inside silently, and make my way to the living room where I hear voices.

  “What happened?” Weston jumps up as I come into view.

  Mom looks at me over her glass, with a raised eyebrow, and Dad follows Weston’s lead and is now standing.

  “Can I talk to you?” I ignore my father in favor of Weston, and lean my body toward the front door, hoping he’ll follow.

  He nods, takes my hand, and leads me outside, but there’s something heavy between us that’s never been there before.

  I know what I have to do. Even though I don’t get Tobin, don’t even know if I can be around Tobin, Weston isn’t it for me. It’s horrible doing this to him, but he just isn’t, and I’ve driven around and thought about it enough to know that I can’t force him to be right for me. And I can’t force myself to love him in the way that would make him right for me.

  I lead him onto the front porch, and he closes the door quietly behind us. He’s wary. I’m wary. I want to erase everything wrong with this situation, but I can’t.

  “Are you okay?” He steps toward me with his hand out, probably poised to pull me into him, to try to mend the sadness. But I don’t think Weston’s hands are capable of that anymore. Not in the way he’d want them to be.

  “Weston, I—”

  “Don’t say it, Delia.” He shakes his head, practically pleading with me.

  “I’m going to.” I have to.

  “For him?” He lowers his head, but at least he doesn’t say him the way I know Dad would.

  I shake my head. “No. Not for him.” Not even because of him, really. Because whether Tobin and I are together or not—and after today the chances are slim. “I just don’t love you the way I should. It was okay when we were first dating, but it’s not okay to keep being together. Not like this.”

  “So, it is because of him.” Weston backs up a step, his eyes uncertain.

  I close my eyes, wishing there was a way to make him understand. “One day you’re going to meet a woman who sees everything wonderful about you and everything you hate about you, and make it all okay. And then you’ll see why we didn’t stay together.”

  He pulls in a few breaths and stares at the porch under our feet.

  The silence is killing me. I’d rather him call me a whore and run away. Instead he steps closer and takes my hands in his. And now I’m crying again, because I do like this. Him. But I know it’s not it. And it’s not even that I’m looking for someone to be married to, it’s that I know I will never marry Weston, and he wants to move that way. It isn’t fair.

  “I already did, Delia.”

  My chest drops.

  He pulls me close enough to kiss my cheek, and then without another word he spins around and heads inside.

  I hate him a little for not fighting with me. For me. But the same thing also brings relief.

  I slump against the side of the house. I’m just a destroyer I guess. A selfish destroyer. I don’t mean to be. I definitely don’t want to be. How could Weston feel that way about me? I’ve felt close to him, but not that close. Maybe it’s just that what we had was the closest he’d ever been to someone.

  I want to be as strong as the wall I’m leaning against. Actually, I’d go for anyone stronger than me right now. But I did just let Weston go—one part of my safety net. What else do I need to do? And how many people will I hurt or make angry to get me what I want? No. What I need.

  Needing out of my dress, I decide to brave inside.

  “Delia!” Dad yells. “Where have you been? We had reservations! You are not to blow off your family like that.”

  “Dad.” My voice is soft. I don’t have anything else in me right now. “One of my close friends was buried today.”

  I stare at him and plead for him to understand. But I can see that he doesn’t.

  “We went to dinner without you. Weston had to cover for you.” His brows come up, and his lurking form sends my insides shaking.

  I ignore him. And just before I start for upstairs, Weston’s walking down. With his suitcase.

  “What’s going on, son?” Dad asks. His tone in addressing Weston is all kind politeness. Or maybe it’s just politic settling in.

  Weston glances briefly my direction before resting his eyes on Dad. “I have that thing in Baton Rouge tomorrow with my dad, and Tennessee a few days after, so…”

  Dad’s jaw tightens as his eyes go between us. “Guess I’ll see you there.”

  “I’ll walk you out.” I turn to the door.

  Neither Weston nor Dad says anything. Walking through the room is like moving through syrup. Weston opens the door for me like always, and I step into the pools of light in the driveway.

  I feel Dad watching us as the door closes behind Weston who steps around me and almost breaks into a run getting to his car.

  “Weston?”

  “Don’t.” Weston turns to face me before jerking open the back door of his car, throwing his suitcase inside and slamming it shut.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Weston feel so much—or maybe it’s that I’ve never seen him show what he feels so much.

  “I’m sorry, I—” I almost step toward him, but to do what?

  Weston keeps his voice quiet. “Don’t give me any bullshit line about it not being about him, Delia. I’m not stupid. A few days ago when you left town, you clutched onto me like your life depended on it. About l
ike you held him today. Right in front of me. Don’t feed me anymore bullshit and I’ll keep my mouth shut about what happened between us.”

  Before I can make a snide remark about life not being about a series of appearances, he’s slammed the door and pulled out. Maybe I do want the nice guy he was on the porch.