Regretting You

by Hoover, Colleen

  Jonah and I are silent as we watch her. We don’t know what mood to expect. Last night was good between us, and so was this morning. But we haven’t confronted this thing between me and Jonah with her yet. I’m not sure we’re ready to, because Jonah and I haven’t even really confronted it.

  Clara is holding Elijah, trying to get him to repeat sounds she’s making.

  “Has he said any words yet?” she asks, looking up at Jonah.

  “Not yet. It’ll be a few more months before he can do that.”

  Clara looks down at Elijah and starts making more sounds. “Can you say Dada?”

  He kicks his legs against her stomach, bouncing and making random noises. Then, to our astonishment, he repeats her. He says it so perfectly that no one moves a muscle because I think we’re all doubting what we heard.

  Then Jonah says, “Did he just . . .”

  Clara nods. “I think he did.”

  Jonah leaves the couch and sits down next to Clara on the floor. He’s too young to be repeating words willingly, but I move closer to them anyway in case he does it again. I sit on the floor on the other side of Clara.

  She repeats herself. “Dada?” She tries to get Elijah to mimic the sound again, but he just makes lots of other sounds instead. I know it was a fluke, but the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

  Clara tilts Elijah so that he’s facing Jonah. “There’s your dada, right there,” she says.

  I don’t know if it’s hearing Clara refer to Jonah as Elijah’s dad that does it, or hearing the word come out of Elijah’s mouth, but Jonah’s eyes begin to spill over with tears.

  As soon as I see the first tear roll down his cheek, I start to cry.

  Clara looks at Jonah, then looks at me, then back at Jonah. “Great. I thought I was done with the tears.”

  Now she’s crying.

  I watch Clara, and even though she’s crying, she’s playing with Elijah with a smile on her face. Then she does something unexpected. She sighs and leans her head on Jonah’s shoulder.

  It may not seem like much to her, but it means the world to me. The gesture is more than any words could ever be worth.

  It’s her telling him she’s sorry. Sorry for what Chris did to him. Sorry for thinking it was our fault.

  That one little move makes me cry even harder. I think it makes Jonah cry harder, too, because as soon as she pulls her head from his shoulder, he’s looking the other way, trying to hide it.

  Elijah is the only one who isn’t crying out of the four of us.

  “Wow,” Jonah says, blowing out a breath. He uses his shirt to wipe at his eyes. “We’re such a mess.”

  “The messiest,” Clara says.

  We all sit on the floor like that for a while, playing with Elijah. Laughing at the faces he makes. Laughing when he laughs. Trying to get him to say Dada again, but he doesn’t.

  “What are you going to tell Elijah about all of this?” Clara asks.

  “The truth,” Jonah says.

  Clara nods. “Good. The truth is always the best choice.” She kisses Elijah on the cheek. “I’ve always wanted a little brother. Maybe in a more conventional way, but this will do.”

  I like that she’s mature enough to separate the reason for Elijah’s existence from her love for him. Resentment is a heavy load to carry through life.

  I’ve been full of pride these last twenty-four hours. Watching her handle all of this with such grace and maturity makes me so proud of her.

  Elijah yawns, so Jonah begins packing up his stuff to leave. I help him, but when we’re both standing at the door, prepared to say good night, it’s awkward. I want to walk him out, but I don’t know what Clara would think of that.

  I can tell Jonah wants to kiss me, but he wouldn’t do it in front of Clara.

  “Good night,” he whispers. He winces, like it hurts him to walk away from me without a kiss, since he’s had to do that so many times before.

  “Oh, come on, you guys,” Clara says, sensing the awkwardness. “It’s weird, but whatever, I’ll get used to it.”

  Relief spreads across both our faces, so I walk Jonah out after we have Clara’s permission.

  After Jonah has Elijah in the car, he closes the door, wraps his arm around my waist, and spins me so that my back is against his car door. He kisses me on the cheek.

  I feel nothing but relief as he holds me. The last few days could have gone wrong in so many more ways, but they didn’t. Maybe that’s thanks to Clara. Or Jonah. Or all of us. I don’t know.

  “She’s amazing,” he says.

  “Yeah, she is. I forget how hard it is being a teenager. Especially one in her position. I feel like I continue to diminish the hormones and emotions that come along with being that age.”

  “You’ve been incredibly patient with her through all of this.”

  His compliment makes me laugh. “You think? Because I feel like I lost my mind a few times.”

  “I can only hope to be half the parent you are, Morgan.”

  “You’re raising a child that isn’t biologically yours. That already makes you twice the parent I am.”

  Jonah pulls back, smiling down on me. “I like it when you compliment my parenting. It’s kinda hot.”

  “Same. Watching you be a good dad is the thing I find most attractive about you.”

  “We’re so weird,” he says.

  “I know.”

  Jonah threads his fingers through mine and wraps our hands behind my back, pressing them against his car. He kisses my cheek. “Can I ask you a question?” He feathers his lips across my cheek until they come to rest against my mouth. I nod. He pulls back, but just far enough that we’re able to look at each other. “Will you be my girlfriend?”

  I stare at him for two seconds before laughter erupts from my chest. “Do guys still do that? Ask people to be their girlfriends?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. But I’ve been wishing I could ask you that for a hell of a long time now, so it’d be nice if you would just humor me with a yes.”

  I lean forward, brushing my lips against his. “Hell, yes.”

  He releases my hands, bringing his up to cup my face. “I want to kiss you, but I’m not gonna use tongue because then I won’t be able to stop kissing you. I don’t want Clara thinking we’re out here making out.”

  “But we are.”

  “Yeah, but it’s still weird for her, I’m sure.” He gives me a quick peck. “Go inside and act natural.”

  I laugh, then wrap my hands around his head and pull him to my mouth. He groans when our tongues meet and pushes me harder against his car. We kiss for an entire minute. Then two.

  When he finally pulls back, he shakes his head a little while running his eyes over my features. “It’s surreal,” he says. “I gave up on the thought of us so long ago.”

  “And I never even allowed myself to think we were a possibility.”

  He smiles, but it feels like a sad smile. He slides both his hands down my back. “I’d give it all back if it meant they didn’t have to die. As happy as I am to be with you, I never wanted it to happen this way. I hope you know that.”

  “Of course I know that. You don’t even have to say it.”

  “I know. I guess I’m still grappling with it all. I’m happy to finally have you, but I also feel guilty because of the way I got you.” He pulls my head against his chest. I slide my arms around his waist, and we hold each other like that for a while. “Part of me wonders if you really want this. Me. I would understand if you didn’t. It’s a lot to take on. I don’t have the money Chris had, and I also come with an infant. It’d be like starting over for you, and maybe you want time for yourself now. I don’t know. But I’d understand. I want you to know that.”

  I want to shake my head and disagree with him immediately, but I think about what he’s saying. If we do this, I’ll be raising another child. I’ll be committing to a whole new life, right after the only life I’ve known has been altered so drastically. For most people
, they’d need more time to adjust. Especially going from such a long marriage to a brand-new relationship in the span of just a few months. I can see where Jonah might expect some hesitation on my part.

  I close my eyes and roll my head until my face is pressed directly against Jonah’s chest. I can feel his heart racing.

  I slide my hand up his shirt, moving it across his chest until my palm is right over his heart. I keep it there for a moment, paying attention to the extreme rate it’s pumping blood through his body. I can tell by the speed and the strength of his heartbeats that he’s full of fear right now.

  It makes me sad, because if there’s one thing Jonah Sullivan shouldn’t have to worry about, it’s the way I feel about him. But I’ve never actually expressed to him all the whys.

  I lift my head, coming eye to eye with him as I tell him everything he deserves to hear. “When we were teenagers, you’re the only one who used to laugh at my jokes. And you used to hide it, like it would give away how you felt about me. I always watched for your reaction, though. And sometimes Chris and I would get into arguments, but I noticed you never used that as an opportunity to try and break us up. You would just listen to me vent, and then you’d remind me of all the great things about him. And when Jenny got pregnant last year, I honestly didn’t think you would step up. But you did. And then the night you came back for Elijah after finding out he wasn’t biologically yours . . . I think that’s when I fell in love with you as a complete person. It was no longer just pieces of you I loved. I loved you as a whole.”

  I don’t want him to feel like he has to follow that up with anything. I already know how he feels about me. How he’s felt about me. It’s his turn to understand how it feels to know that he’s always been someone’s first choice.

  I pull my hand from his shirt and bring it up to his cheek. “I married Chris because he was the father of my child, and I wanted to make it work. I did love him,” I add. “And I’ll always love Jenny too. But you’re the first and only person in this world I’ve ever loved without some reasoning or justification behind it. I just love you because I can’t help it, and it feels good to love you. The idea of getting to raise Elijah with you makes me happy. And I know before we made love for the first time, I told you I’d regret it, but I’ve never been more wrong. I didn’t regret it that night, and I don’t regret it now. I’m confident that I’ll never spend a single second of my life regretting you.”

  I lift up on my toes and kiss him softly on the lips. “I love you, Jonah. So much.” I slip around him and walk to my house. When I open my front door, I glance back, and Jonah is standing in the driveway, smiling at me.

  It’s a beautiful thing.

  I close the door, and for the first time in my entire life, my corners are beginning to feel like they’re filling up. Jonah already fills all the parts of my life that always felt so empty with Chris.

  And I’m proud of Clara and the woman she’s turning into. It was a bumpy ride to get here, but she’s had a tougher road than most kids her age. My sense of pride as her mother has returned.

  I’m still not quite sure what I want to be or what career I want to go into, but the last couple of months of figuring it out have been exciting to me. Getting a job and going back to college is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but for some reason I’ve always felt it was too late. It’s not, though. I’m a work in progress. Maybe I always will be. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel like a final draft, and I’m not sure I want to. The search for myself is becoming my favorite part of my new journey.

  I recall what I wrote on my birthday board: Find your passion. Maybe I don’t have just one passion. Maybe I have several, and I’ve just never made myself and my wants a priority. The idea that I have the rest of my life to figure myself out is exciting. There are so many things I want to try, whether they work out or not. I think finding my passion is my passion.

  After Jonah leaves and Clara goes to bed, I go to my room and pull out all the letters from Jenny that Chris kept locked away in his toolbox. Since the day I found out the truth, so many questions have gone through my head. I used to think I needed the answers, but I no longer need them. I know that I loved the best versions of Jenny and Chris. But they fell in love with the worst versions of each other—the versions capable of betrayal and lies.

  I’m always going to have memories of them because they were a huge part of my life. But these letters are not my memories of them. They aren’t ones I want to know or keep in any capacity.

  One by one, I rip them into tiny shreds without reading them.

  I’m content with the direction in which my life is headed, and I know if I obsess over the past, that obsession will only serve to anchor me in a place I am more than ready to move on from.

  I toss all the torn pieces of their history into my bathroom trash can. When I look up, I’m met with my reflection in the bathroom mirror.

  I’m starting to look happy again. Truly happy.

  It’s a beautiful thing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CLARA

  A few months later

  I walk to the back of the living room and slip my hand inside Miller’s. We’re both nervous. We’ve worked so hard on this film, and I really want Jonah to like it.

  My mother turns out the lights and takes a seat on the couch next to Lexie and Efren. Jonah is seated at the edge of the love seat, anticipating the video more than any of them.

  We decided in the end to make a mockumentary. There was way too much seriousness in our lives when we started this film, so I really wanted something fun for a change.

  Our time limit for the entire thing is just a few minutes, so it was harder than we thought to execute something with a beginning, middle, and end in such a short amount of time, but I’m hoping we pulled it off. We just don’t know if anyone else will appreciate the humor in it.

  Miller looks at me, and I can see the nervous energy in him. We smile at each other when the film begins to play.

  The screen is black, but then words flash across it in bright-orange letters, revealing the title: CHROMOPHOBE.

  The scene opens on a character, aged seventeen. The name KAITLYN flashes across the screen. Kaitlyn (played by me) is sitting in an empty room on a stool. A light shines on her as she stares off camera, nervously wringing her hands together.

  Someone off camera says, “Can you tell us how it all started?”

  Kaitlyn glances into the camera with transfixed fear. She nods nervously. “Well . . .” It’s obviously hard for her to discuss. “I think I was five, maybe? Six? I don’t know exactly . . .” The camera zooms in closer to her face. “But . . . I remember every word of their conversation as if it happened just this morning. My mom and dad . . . they were standing in the living room, staring at the wall. They had all these . . . these . . . plastic paint swatches in their hands. They were trying to decide on a shade of white to paint the walls. And that’s when it happened.” Kaitlyn swallows but continues, despite her reluctance. “My mother looked at my father. She just . . . looked at him like the words about to come out of her mouth weren’t about to ruin our family forever.” Kaitlyn, obviously disgusted by the memory, wipes away a tear that’s sliding down her cheek. She sucks in a deep breath and then continues speaking on the exhale. “My mother looked at him and said, ‘How about orange?’”

  Her own recollection causes Kaitlyn to shudder.

  The screen fades to black, then cuts to a new character. An elderly man, gaunt and gloomy. The name PETER flashes across the screen. This character is played by Gramps.

  Peter is sitting in a green midcentury modern chair. He’s picking at the chair with his frail fingers, loosening some of the fuzz. It falls to the floor.

  Again, a voice somewhere off camera is heard. “Where would you like to begin, Peter?”

  Peter glances into the camera with dark almond eyes encased in years of accumulated wrinkles, all different in depths and lengths. The whites of his eyes are bloodsh
ot. “I’ll begin at the beginning, I suppose.”

  The screen cuts to a flashback . . . to a younger version of Peter, in his late teens. He’s in an older house, in a bedroom. There’s a Beatles poster hanging over the bed. The teen is rummaging through his closet, frustrated. Older Peter’s voice begins to narrate the scene.

  “I couldn’t find my lucky shirt,” he says.

  The scene playing out on-screen is of the frustrated teen (played by Miller), walking out of his room and then out the back door.

  “So . . . I went to find my mother. To ask her if she’d seen it, ya know?”

  The mother is standing at a clothesline in the backyard, hanging up a sheet.

  “I said, ‘Mom? Where’s my blue shirt?’”

  The screen is back on the older version of Peter now. He’s staring down at his hands, twiddling his thumbs. He blows out a quick breath, bringing his eyes back to the camera. “She looked right at me and said, ‘I haven’t washed it yet.’”

  The screen now shows the teenage boy again. He’s staring at his mother in utter disbelief. He brings his hands to the sides of his head.

  “That’s when I realized . . . ,” Peter’s voice-over says. “I was left with only one option.”

  The camera follows the teenage boy as he stomps back into his house, back to his room, and back to his closet. His hands push apart the clothes in his closet until the camera is focused on a lone shirt, just hanging there, swaying front to back.

  “It was the only clean shirt I had.”

  The camera is back on older Peter. He presses his sweaty palms against his thighs and leans his head back against his old green chair. He stares up at the ceiling in thought.

  A voice from off set calls out to him. “Peter? Do you need a break?”

  Peter leans forward, shaking his head. “No. No, I just want to get it over with.” He releases a puff of air, looking back at the camera. “I did what I had to do,” he says with a shrug.

  The camera follows the teenage boy as he rips the shirt off the hanger. He yanks the dirty T-shirt he was wearing off and then angrily puts on the clean shirt he just removed from the closet.