Loves Me Not

SIXTY SEVEN

BEFORE
CATALAINA KITTRIDGE

I stood there, mouth agape, unsure of whether I was imagining it or not. He seemed to be just as surprised and caught off guard as I was.

Finally, after a moment of processing it, we slowly walked towards each other.

"Will," I breathed his name, still taken back by his presence. He had a dog with him.
There we were, standing in front of each other, face to face for the first time in over a year. My mind flashed back to the last time we were this close together, his sleeping body next to mine.
"Catalaina," he said as he stared at me. "What are you doing here?"
I swallowed, looked around briefly. "I was walking."
"Here?"
I was rendered speechless, didn't know what to say. His presence alone made me weak. It had been so long and there were so many thoughts running through my mind.

I wanted to reach out and touch him, pull him into me, bury my face in his chest and cry. So many emotions were overwhelming my body: longing, sorrow, sadness, guilt, rage, and lust.

He hadn't changed much in a year. Still the same old Will. Broad shoulders, tousled hair, clean-shaven face. I wondered briefly if it was Juliette who kept at him for this habit.

I thought about everything that had happened between us since we first met all those years ago. When I was just a naïve eighteen-year old girl, falling in love with a boy without even realizing it. We had come such a long way, gone through so much together. He had a hold over me that wasn't possible for anyone else to obtain, not even Ben.

I wasn't sure what exactly brought us together that night. Was it fate or destiny? Were we always meant to find each other again like that? Or was there some sort of greater power at work?

"What are you doing here?" I asked him in return.
"I'm walking Shadow," he motioned to the husky next to him.
"Since when do you have a dog?"
"Couple months now," he said. "She's a rescue."
I stared at him.
"Do you come here often?" he asked. "I'm here for walks all the time and I've never run into you."
"No," I shook my head. "I don't know what brought me here actually."
"Just drawn to the water, I guess," he joked.
I smiled. He remembered.
"You look good," he said, observing me.
"Thanks," I looked down awkwardly. "You do too."
"Do you want to walk with us?" he asked.
"Sure."
We turned and headed down the boardwalk, walking in silence. I looked out towards the water. The sun was just beginning to set. It was beautiful.
There were so many things that I wanted to say, a year's worth of words built up in my head. But for some reason, in his presence, I forgot all of them.
"How have you been?" I asked instead.
"I've been good," he said, seeming to slip easily into conversation. "Busy at the hospital, as usual. How are you?"
"I'm alright," I lied. "Busy with work, with life." I paused. "We should go for lunch sometime," I suggested. "Catch up or something."
"Yeah, definitely," he said.
"I got a new phone recently. Do you want my new number?."
"Sure," he reached into his pocket for his phone and brought it out. I recited off the number for the burner. Just in case.
Will slipped his phone back and his pocket and we continued walking. "How's Ben?" he asked.
"He's good," I said. But the mention of Ben's name stirred something inside of me that I didn't like.
I stopped walking. I couldn't do it – I couldn't walk with him as though everything was fine and normal. Because as much as I was trying to hold it together, I couldn't. My life was falling apart.
He stopped walking and turned to me. "You okay?"
"No, Will. I'm not okay."
Shadow proceeded to keep walking and he gently pulled her back by the leash. She sat. Then he looked at me again. "What's wrong?"
I exhaled deeply. "I don't even know where to begin... everything is wrong."
"Did something happen?"
I hesitated, staring at him as he stared at me. "I don't know who I am anymore. My life is slowly going downhill and I don't know how to make it stop bfore I hit rock bottom. Ever since you left my life, nothing's been the same."
"Don't say that," he said. "Your life is amazing. You have Ben."
"You knew my stance on my relationship with Ben that night in the hotel. Yet still, you walked away."
He turned away at the mention of the hotel.
"We can't avoid it forever. We have to address the elephant in the room sometime."
He looked at me again. "I don't know what you want me to say."
"Do you still love me?"
He made a face as though I said something horrible.
"Don't deny it, Will. Especially not after what happened that night," I said. "I still feel the same way I did in that hotel room a year ago. I've tried to move on, I've tried to forget you. I've done everything I possibly can to get you out of my head and live a normal life with my fucking fiancé. But do you think any of that is even remotely possible? No. I'd be stupid if I thought I could truly live a life without you."
He continued staring at me, making this perplexed face and I wasn't sure whether he wanted to wrap his arms around me or walk away and never talk to me again.
"You can't say these things, Catalaina. I'm married. You're engaged. It's not right."
"So? Nothing I do is right. Do you not understand that? I'm a complete fuck up. Nothing in my life goes as planned and I can't seem to keep my head on straight. But you know what? The one good thing I have, the one constant in my life, has and always will be you."
"Stop."
"Why? You afraid to hear the truth? You can't handle it?"
"Catalaina," he said sternly with a look of warning in his eyes. "What do you want from me?"
I started crying then. I couldn't help it.
He hesitated, like he was unsure what to do. Then he moved close and brought his arms around me, holding me tight to his chest.
All I wanted – all I had ever wanted – was to tear down these walls that surrounded the two of us, get rid of all the excuses and boundaries we had built up for so long, and just simply be with him. I wanted him before, I wanted him then, I wanted him forever.
After a few minutes, the crying ceased and I pulled away, wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my sweater.
I sniffled and looked at him. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize," he said. "You're not in the wrong here. I'm confused as well, okay? And I haven't thought about you in so long. I've been focusing on work and my marriage. Things are great with us. We're in a good place. She wants to have a baby."
I nearly choked.
"And then here you are," he continued. "Popping up out of nowhere, prepared to destroy the seamless life that I've built for myself."
"I'm not trying to destroy anything."
"I know you're not. It's never your intention. But that's what will happen if we continue to see each other. You do realize we can never go back, right? We've been friends for a long time, yes. But we threw that out the window long ago and ruined any possible chance of us being friends again after what happened between us. You can't just go back to normal after something of that magnitude."
"So you agree," I said, a hope igniting inside of my chest. "That what we had was real. It was cosmic. You don't find something like that with anybody, Will. It's once in a lifetime. Our paths were destined to cross. Everything that happened between us was always going to happen regardless of what we tried to do to prevent it."
He stared at me and it looked as though he might cry. "You need to stop saying these things."
"Why? Because you're married? Or because you know I'm right."
"Catalaina."
"You can't resist it, can you? You want me just as badly as I want you."
"Stop."
"What's the problem, Will? I honestly don't understand why we can't just tear down these borders between us. As long as we're together, nothing else matters."
"We can't do this. I don't know how many times I can tell you this. You need to leave me alone and not contact me again. It's for the best."
"How can you say that?"
"Because," he said. "Regardless of how badly I want you, I know that I can never go down that path again. It's not moral. It's not right."
"Stop fucking saying that!"
"I love her," he said. "Do you not realize that? I love my wife. I love Juliette. I want to be with her."
"But you also want to be with me."
"Well we can't have everything we want in life," he said, turning away from me.
"You're a coward," I said. "Afraid to own up and admit how you really feel. Afraid to admit what you really want. Fine. You want to be like that? Then go be with Juliette. Go back home to your perfect little house and your perfect little life and forget that you ever even met me."

And at that, I turned and walked away, back to my car, back to my life, leaving the person I loved the most in this world standing there watching.

______

Later that night, I lied in bed staring at the ceiling. I listened to the soft sound of Ben breathing beside me. I reached my hand out and touched his arm, rested my hand on top of his. Then I turned to the side and faced the window.

When I was younger and couldn't fall asleep, my mother used to tell me to count sheep. One sheep, two sheep, three sheep, four. Eventually, after counting enough sheep, my mind stopped focusing on everything else and I finally found slumber.

I've had the same problem my entire life. When I can't sleep, it's because my mind is plagued with too many thoughts. It's like a switch I can't shut off. Where the average person can close their eyes and fall asleep in seconds, I lie awake all night, overthinking and overanalyzing every single situation in my life. And so on that night, stricken with more insomnia than ever before, I tried something else. Instead of counting sheep, I picked rose petals. He loves me, he loves me not.

He loves me, he loves me not.