When five minutes pass, panic strikes, and I realize it’s the latter. The worse of the two things I’m worrying about. She’s been avoiding me for years. She’s good at it now.
Desperate, I knock on the door.
“Jia, please… let me in. I want to talk to you… I can’t allow you to avoid me,” I say. “Please… I just want to talk to you.”
I sound like I’m begging. I barely recognize my voice. I’m about to continue when the door clicks open and I look at her standing before me a pair of shorts and a tank top. Her hair is piled up on top of her head in a messy bun. The look makes her seem younger, like how I left her years ago.
Her eyes look puffy, and I sense that’s not from lack of sleep. She looks like she’s been crying.
“Five minutes.” I sound like an echo of myself from the other night. “Can I come in?”
She releases a ragged breath and steps to the side to allow me passage.
I walk in, and she closes the door.
When she turns back to me, I pray like fuck she doesn’t tell me last night was a mistake. It wasn’t to me.
“Paul… I don’t know what to make of last night, but it can’t happen again,” she says, and her eyes widen slightly, like she can’t believe what she said.
“You regret it?”
She stares at me long and hard. It feels like I’m stuck in time, being held in place so anxiety can torture me while I wait for an answer.
“No,” she rasps on the edge of a breath. “I don’t regret it, but I do regret allowing you to see that part of me that still feels for you.”
My damn lungs tighten. I’ve lost her again, and I haven’t even started to fight yet.
“I want you back,” I state, and she tenses. The blood drains from her face, leaving her sun-kissed skin pale. “I want you back, Jia. I never stopped loving you.”
“Why’d you leave me, then? Why would you damage us? You were the same guy last night. It was like you hadn’t changed. It was like the only thing that changed was time, but we were the same people who’d lose themselves in the fantasy of being together.” Her voice quivers, and I’m left feeling exposed. “Why did you ruin us?”
All that time our parents were married, I never spoke about the hell I went through with my father. She must have guessed it, but until a person is told the full details of something, they can’t possibly understand.
And I can’t talk about it now. It’s my personal reason that caused me to fuck up. It’s an excuse that doesn’t change what I did.
“I was a fool,” I answer, and she narrows her eyes at me.
“What kind of fool were you? Was it because you wanted to screw around, fuck around when you were away? I’d bet I was in your way and you wanted to be with other women.”
“No,” I say quickly.
“Telling me you were a fool doesn’t cut it, Paul.”
“There’s more to it than that, but I was a fool to do what I did. Jia, look what happened last night. It has to count for something.”
“It can’t. Last night was everything, but for me it was the end. It was the proper goodbye I think I needed to close that chapter of my life with you.”
“No. It wasn’t. For me it was hello.”
A tear runs down her cheek. “I can’t. Paul… I think that I went to The Dark Odyssey last night to let you go. I won’t lie to you, I go there a lot, but I’ve never been to the wall. It was too painful. Seeing you this week and this whole thing with Montrose Place has left my head spinning, and I need to move on. I can’t have the past filling my head with angst every time I look at you.”
“Jia, please.”
“No…”
“Please give me another chance.”
“I can’t do it. I think it’s best if I don’t.”