Page 41 of Broken Pieces
“It’s none of your business.” She takes her drink off the deck and starts to swim toward the middle of the pool.
“I know you lost him. I heard as much on the phone. I also heard you blame yourself. You aren’t the only one you know, who’s lost someone.”
“I am aware of that. People lose ones they love all the time,” she says with her back turned to me.
“Yeah, but most people don’t blame themselves.”
That got her to stop. It even got her to turn around. “What do you know about blaming yourself for someone’s death,” she practically growls.
If this is the way I am going to connect with her, then so be it. I’ll let her have a taste of just one of the burdens I carry. “I am the reason I lost my girlfriend, three years ago. She died because I was piss ass drunk. I wish the car accident killed me, not her, but that’s not the way life works. To this day I think about her daily, and I wish I was smarter back then to make better decisions.”
Rae swims back toward me, drink in hand, her face softening at my confession. “How do you deal with it? How do you go about every day and not wish it was you instead?”
“I don’t. It eats me up inside every damned day. But I try to be a better person because of it. I cleaned my act up afterwards. I rarely go out. And when I do, I rarely drink unless I know someone is going to drive me home.”
“But you go out all the time.”
“Not really besides those nights with the girls. Which by the way I am sorry for being a dick about that.”
“Doubtful,” she says.
“I mean it, I am. But most nights when I leave, I just drive or I sit out under the stars and I think. I guess it’s my penance for what I did.”
She looks at me and I wish I could see what was going through her mind. Wish I could do something to make those thoughts of hers that close her up and keep herself hidden from the world disappear.
“Do you ever think there will be a day when we don’t blame ourselves?”
I look down at her and this time I remove her glasses. I rest my palm on her cheek which is more intimate than I mean to be, but she doesn’t pull away. “I think the day we stop blaming ourselves will be the day we can finally move on and feel whole again.”
Her eyes well up with tears and I have the urge to brush them away as one falls down her cheek. “I hope that day comes soon for both of us because I want nothing more than to feel free from the burden that holds me back, makes me weak, and keeps me scared of living in this world,” she says.
I don’t have words for her after that. But as I search her eyes, I think she might be the only person that helps me heal from my wounds.
She pulls away from me and jumps out of the pool. “I need to go.”
She rushes toward the cottage leaving all her things behind. I watch her go but don’t have the courage to go after her.