A little while later she arrived carrying two coffees from Starbucks. It was the first time I’d had Starbucks since Deacon last brought me one. I’d stayed away from there because it reminded me of him. How would I ever look at a Starbucks cup and not remember the first time he’d told me he loved me?
Simone put the coffees down on the table and brought me into a hug. “I’m so confused, Carys. Help me understand what the hell happened while I was away.”
I walked over and picked up my latte. Even the taste reminded me of him. My eyes lingered blankly on Simone’s name written on the side of the cup. I felt a tear forming before it fell.
I wiped my cheek. “Jesus. I told myself I wasn’t going to cry.”
“Whatever it takes, you need to get it out.” She looked around. “Where’s Sunny?”
“She’s napping.”
“Okay, good. It will give us some time to talk.”
We brought our coffees over to the couch. I’d previously told Simone the basics about the accident—that a car had hit us on our way home from the farm in Poughkeepsie. We were banged up and bruised, but none of us were badly injured—on the outside anyway. But I hadn’t elaborated on anything that happened after. She just knew Deacon and I had broken up.
“Where do I even start?” I took a deep breath in and started to let it out. “The day of the accident was perfect. We’d taken Sunny to a farm upstate. We were like a little family. Deacon told Sunny he loved her. It was so beautiful.”
“This was all before the accident?”
I nodded. “The accident happened on the way home. A man driving a truck sideswiped our rental car, pushing us into a guardrail. We’d had the window down for Sunny, so it was noisy, but I don’t think that made a difference. It happened so fast. There was nothing we could have done to prevent it. I don’t think Deacon felt that way, though.”
She sighed. “I don’t understand…”
“Neither do I, really, Simone.” I shook my head. “Anyway, we all went to the emergency room as a precaution, but we were discharged pretty quickly. But Deacon just wasn’t the same. He spent more and more time at his apartment, away from us. He blamed himself for what happened, said his reflexes weren’t fast enough, that the wind had distracted his focus.”
“But it wasn’t his fault,” she insisted.
“No. But he felt he should’ve been able to protect us. I guess if we all hadn’t been buckled in, we might’ve died.”
“But you were buckled in. Why do you think he’s so hard on himself?”
I sighed. “It brought back a bad memory for him. He got into an accident in college, and it ended his football career.”
She nodded. “Okay…wow.”
“I tried to get him to talk about what he was feeling, but he just kept blaming himself, saying Sunny could have died, and it would’ve been his fault. I kept hoping things would change as the days went on, that he would snap out of it, but he never did.”
“When did he leave?”
“A few weeks after the accident. One night, he came over. I went to take a shower, since he’d be able to watch Sunny for a few minutes.” I closed my eyes at the memory. “When I came out, before he realized I was there, I heard him talking to her. At the end he said, ‘I know you won’t remember me, but I’ll never forget you.’”
Simone placed her hand on her chest and her face wilted. “Oh no.”
“I said, ‘Deacon, what are you talking about?’ And he flipped around, shocked to see me standing behind him in my towel.” I hesitated. “He was crying. I’d never seen that. He just kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, Carys. I’m so sorry. I can’t do this. I’m so sorry.’”
Simone reached out to rub my back. “Oh my God. What did you do?”
I shook my head. “I lost it. I started screaming, ‘I knew you would do this. I knew you would do this to me.’ And it was the truth. He’d warned me from the beginning that he was likely going to hurt me, that it wouldn’t be intentional, but it would happen. And I didn’t listen. I didn’t fucking listen, and it’s my own damn fault.”
“How did he respond when you yelled that?”
“He just stared at me. He didn’t have anything to say. He tried to reach out and hold me at one point, but I wouldn’t let him touch me. I told him to leave. I couldn’t bear to hear anything else he had to say. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t going to fight for us.”
“Jesus Christ, Carys. Where is he now?”
“He stuck around for a few days after that, calling me to make sure I was okay, but I wouldn’t answer. I know that wasn’t the mature way of handling things, but I was too hurt. He eventually texted that he was going to Minnesota for an indefinite amount of time, saying again how sorry he was.”