When he said that he had lied to me, that he didn’t stop loving me when I was eighteen, I felt like a wall fell on me. Like an unexpected earthquake toppled everything I knew about myself and my life so far. Because a lot of what I believed about myself in relationships came from how that one ended. I learned not to trust my own happiness or to have any faith in people being trustworthy. It meant that I needed to reconsider my romantic relationships as an adult, to see if my self-doubt, if my scars from the breakup with Drew had contributed to the demise of other pairings.
It was no wonder I’d run out of the bar. It was a miracle that I’d managed to avoid flipping the table on him and screaming that I hated him and he ruined everything. Teenage Michelle came roaring to life, ready to scream and weep. I got out of there as fast as I could. But there he was. His voice, pleading with me to stop. His surprise at my anger—did he think I just moved on like, oh well, so he quit loving me, no big deal? The person I trusted most had lied to me and had taken away my choice in our relationship. I would’ve stayed with him. I wouldn’t have met anyone better. God knows, I still haven’t met anyone I’d consider better than he was when we were together. I wanted to ROAR to the heavens with my wrath and sorrow. Did he not see that? How cheated I felt? How ROBBED? And not by a villain, a criminal. By him. The person I’d loved more than anyone in my life. That was what he thought of me—that I was a pet he could set free, that he knew better than I did what was best for myself.
I lay on my bed, watching the slow whirl of the ceiling fan and blinking back tears. My throat ached with unshed tears. I wanted to cry and scream, but I wouldn’t let myself. I cried enough over him eighteen years ago. He didn’t deserve any more of my tears, I told myself.
He had sworn what we had was real. Drew had said in his own voice that it was real. That I had to believe him. The desperation in his voice was just what I remembered, the rasp of frantic breath behind his low-spoken words. I would have done anything he asked me to do in that voice. I felt the thrum of it in my chest, just below my collarbone.
Drew had kissed me. I froze at first, stunned. This thing I had hated myself for dreaming of for so long was happening. It was real. It was shattering and beautiful and I felt my entire body and soul surge to life when his lips locked with mine. Then I came unstuck and flung my entire body around him—or at least my arms. His kiss, our kiss had rocked me to the core. I melted into pure sensation, drinking up the pleasure and passion he was giving me.
If the door hadn’t slammed and snapped me out of it, things would have gotten dire. I would’ve gone home with him, or asked him to come home with me. There was no way to process what he’d told me, much less that kiss. That world-shaking kiss that lifted me off my feet. My fingers got to rake through his hair again, just as silken as it was before, and I wanted to laugh aloud because I knew the shape of his head, the way his thumb traced my cheekbone when he touched my face, the familiar feeling of his heart hammering against mine.
His body had changed in the intervening years. I knew mine had, too. Now his shoulders were heavier and broader, his arms thicker with muscle. His hair was shorter, and there were faint lines bracketing his mouth when he frowned—I’d seen them in the bar when I sat across from him. His skin smelled the same, and the way his touch brushed over the pulse in my neck was exactly the same. If his hands were more calloused, rougher, his touch was still gentle on my body.
Nothing ever felt as good as kissing him again tonight after so long. It was a blissful, bittersweet agony. All that lost time, all the pain and lies and mistakes. All the nights I’d lain awake longing for him and then lecturing myself about how he hadn’t loved me and I needed to let it go. It hurt to be kissed by him and to feel like no time had passed, when that was just a cruel illusion. We had lived our entire adult lives apart. It wasn’t fair and it didn’t make sense that kissing him felt so good or so right. It should have felt awkward. I should have wanted to shove him away and say, that was a lifetime ago, Drew, and you don’t get to confess your sins two decades too late and then kiss me. Except apparently that was what he got to do. Because I was temporarily insane thanks to the shock of his revelation about dumping me to ‘let me go’ in some obnoxious, sexist way where he didn’t want me worrying my pretty little head about a long-distance relationship.