Genre: Angst

Word Count: 1,763 words

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It had been four days since I had that fight with Charles over something that I felt was so silly now. Several times I nearly reached for the phone to call him, but my ego won out every time and I managed to stop myself. Selia was right; he should treat me better, and until he apologised to me, I shouldn’t trip over myself to talk to him.

The radio silence was killing me though. We had never gone so long in silence after a spat, and each day that passed made me more nervous, like the calm before a storm. Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, my phone rang not long after I got back to my apartment after closing down the restaurant.

“Hey Charles.”

“Hello.”

A moment of awkward silence passed, and Charles cleared his throat before saying, “We need to talk. Can I drop by your place?”

“Now?” I asked in surprise. He very rarely visited my apartment, only on occasions that I invited him and he couldn’t refuse.

“Yes. It won’t take long.”

I agreed, and let him in when he showed up at the door twenty minutes later. We sat across each other with the coffee table separating us, two cups of hot tea that I brewed sitting on the glass surface. I tried to keep calm and waited for him to talk. He seemed nervous for some reason, an expression that I have never seen upon his usually stern and confident face.

I tried not to gape at him when he chuckled quietly and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “Actually, I don’t know how, or even where to begin. Although I suppose apologising to you would be a good place to start.”

Fighting the urge to say something, I forced my tongue to stay still and waited for him to continue. “You were right, we were never really like a real couple, and it was all my fault. I haven’t been fair to you, and even though this isn’t an excuse, I do have my reasons for acting the way that I did, for being the way that I am. And after all I’ve put you through, I suppose you deserve an explanation.”

He took a deep breath and told me of his painful past. Of the woman that he loved more than anything, the one person he expected to spend the rest of his life with. Of her cruel betrayal, with none other than his brother, the man he thought he could trust no matter what, the person he would have laid down his life for. On the fateful day when he found his girlfriend in bed with his brother, he broke up with her on the spot and moved out, even though she begged him not to. He hardly spoke to any of his family members since, and never talked to his brother again. There was nothing left to say.

If I was struggling to keep my mouth shut before, now I had to try to formulate a response to his sudden revelation. I was speechless. A bad past was something that I had suspected, but never in a million years would I have imagined something as painful as this. The words that escaped my mouth were soft and slow, as if I was taking care of what I said, but it was really because I had no idea what to say, and was making it up as I go. “I’m really sorry to hear it, Charles. I’m sorry that it happened to you. No one deserves that to happen to them. If I had known, I wouldn’t have pushed…” I paused as a thought occurred to me. “Why are you telling me this all of a sudden? You were so reluctant before.” When he looked up at my question, I quickly raised my hands and shook my head to defend myself. “Not that I don’t appreciate it! I’m really touched that you decided to share your past with me. I just wonder why.”

He sighed and put his cup down on the table. “Well, like I said, I’ve been treating you unfairly, and you deserve an explanation as to why. That, and…” He took a deep breath, as if the next words were even more difficult to express than everything that he had already told me. “We have to break up.”

Of course I had a feeling that this was what it would lead to in the end, but for some reason it didn’t make it any easier. My chest constricted and my throat closed up, so I had to force the words out. “Because of your past? Yes, it is surprising but I don’t it against you. You’re clearly not at fault. We can work through this, now that I know what you went through, I wouldn’t feel bad anymore.” When he started to shake his head, I continued without giving him the chance to explain himself. “What is it then? Is there something wrong with me?” I bit my lower lip, partly so that I could stop myself long enough to let him talk, but mostly because I needed to hide my pain.

“No, it’s not like that. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you.” He let out his breath in a half-chuckle, half-frustration. “I can’t believe I’m using such a cliché line, but it’s not you, it’s me. Really.” Before I could protest, he signaled for me to remain quiet so he could elaborate. “After I was betrayed by the two closest people in my life, I was…” He hung his head. “Devastated. For the next few days after that incident, I spent a lot of time just holed up in a motel room, but in the end I resolved that I would get over it with time.” Scoffing at that statement, he looked up at me, the expression on his face was of comical laughter – at himself. “Well, I thought wrong.”

“What do you mean?” My question came out in a whisper because I was too afraid to hear the answer.

He continued his story, but this time he kept his eyes burning through mine. “As you might have expected, Kate was frantically looking for me, but I didn’t even look at my phone for the next few days. Even when I did, I refused to reply to her messages and pick up her calls. Eventually she tracked me down, begged me to stay with her. Told me some nonsense about loving me, that she made a huge mistake. When all else failed to persuade me, she dropped the bomb: she was pregnant.”

The gasp came out involuntarily, like I was some character in a sappy drama. “Was it… Yours?” I asked fearfully. Somehow the image of Charles as a father seemed alien to me.

His laughter in response to my question was sarcastic and laced with self-hatred. “That was what she was hoping to convince me of. I don’t know how she thought she could get away with it, I’m not that stupid. With all the work and training that I had to do, I hardly had any time to spend with her. Anyone with half a brain could calculate that it wasn’t mine, but my brother’s.”

The sight of him on the verge of tears tore my heart apart. A little due to my own pain, but mostly because of his. I reached out to grab his hand, it was the only thing I could think of doing. Luckily he didn’t brush away the gesture, squeezing my hand with a grateful smile instead. It was probably the closest I’ve felt to him as a person, and ironically, it happened on the brink of our break up.

“Since my brother is married, he couldn’t take responsibility for the child. So I suppose they were hoping that I, the foolish boyfriend who didn’t notice that my girlfriend had been cheating on me for months, could shoulder the burden in his stead. Anyhow, I refused, and that was that. I didn’t want to know if she kept the baby or not. I just wanted to get as far away as I could.”

Giving my hand another squeeze before letting go, he slapped his palms on his thighs, as if trying to shake things off, but he simply sobered again as he got to the point of his visit. “I want to believe in love like I did before. But I don’t think I can trust or love anyone again.” Before I could argue, he stopped me. “It’s not that I don’t want to. I do. Desperately. Living like this is miserable. And I tried. I like you a lot, and I asked you out because I was hoping that it would grow deeper, that I would come to love you with time. But it didn’t happen. I don’t know if it will ever happen again with anyone.”

His hands raised upwards in a motion that seemed to be reaching for my own but he changed his mind, bringing them down to grip his knees instead. “I suppose it was a while ago that I realised that I would never love you. Yes, I should have ended things then, but I was weak and selfish. I held on to you because I was afraid of letting you go, because it was comfortable and I wanted to show Kate that I’ve moved on.”

I could feel my lower lip trembling, tears threatening to fall, but I bit down on it and blinked the tears away furiously. “I understand why you did it.”

“I’m sorry,” Charles said quietly, his expression filled with sorrow and guilt. “It wouldn’t be right for me to string you along knowing that I wouldn’t be able to love you and treat you the way you deserve to be loved and treated.”

I wanted to say that it was okay, but it really was not. All I could do was nod and stand up to indicate that our discussion was over. Charles took the hint and followed me to the door. He crossed the threshold and stood awkwardly outside my apartment.

“Uhm… I hope we can still be friends after this,” he said before shaking his head again. “God, I’m so full of cliches tonight. But I really mean it. You’re an important person to me and I hope we can stay in touch.”

“That would be nice, Charles,” I managed to mumble before closing the door. Finally I could let the tears fall.