A New Road ➢ Thomas Brodie Sangster

A Clean Slate

My hands shook a little bit as I held my Vanilla Bean Frappucino. I hit the home button on my phone to see what time it was.

2:27

Just three more minutes until Ian was supposed to get here.

3 days after my little talk with Henry, my brother found Ian online and also found out he was spending spring break in LA to be with his girlfriend. It took a lot of convincing from Henry, but Ian finally agreed to meet with me at Starbucks.

1 more minute.

The anxiousness kept building and as soon as I was getting ready to grab my stuff and bolt, he stepped through the door.

His blonde hair was buzzed and he had a little scruff of a beard. His blue eyes searched the room and as soon as they landed on me, they went wide and he froze.

I don't know how long we both were frozen, eyes locked, but eventually he took those hesitant steps towards me and sat in the seat across from me.

"So.. um, why did your brother tell me to meet with you?" he asked as he picked at the table.

I didn't answer him. I just sat there and stared. A range of emotions coursed through my body. Anger, pain, hurt, sadness.

"Why did you do it?" I cracked out in a whisper. I cleared my throat and repeated what I said, a little louder this time.

"Jade I'm so-"

"No. I'm not here to forgive you. I can never forgive you." I snapped back.

"Then why am I here, Jade? If you're so mad at me for what happened so long ago, why am I here?" he said, finally looking up at me.

"Did you ever care about me? Or was I just a sort of play-thing to you. Just one of those girls for you to use." I said, lowering my voice to contain myself.

He puts his hands in a clasp and laid them on the table. "I did, Jade. But I couldn't help myself-"

I slammed my hand on the table, "Couldn't help yourself? Four years, Ian. Four fucking years I committed to you and I found out that throughout the entire time, you were fucking with every other girl you could. You cheated on me and not only that, you lied. All those times you had "family emergencies" or had work, you were fucking with them."

He looks at me with a blank face. "Jade, I'm- I'm sorry that I did that. And I did love you. But I couldn't control my, my hunger. You never gave me what I wanted, and when you finally did, you didn't satisfy me."

Anger was boiling to the surface and out of the corner of my eye I saw some of the staff eyeing us.

"I didn't satisfy you? I lost my virginity to you because I thought you were committed to me too. But I was wrong. I was entirely wrong about you. The only reason I realized that was because you tried to put drugs in my drink at that one party. I'm so glad that I caught you when you were pouring them in. You knew I never wanted to get into that stuff. You're just lucky I didn't report you to the police. And you are sure as hell lucky I never told anyone about that." I said to him, the edge cutting in my voice.

Ian just sat in his chair, head lowered to the ground. "I know what I did back then, it was wrong. It was fucking wrong. But I've changed. I know you don't believe me but I have," he said, and I saw the sincerity in his eyes.

"You're right, I don't believe you. But I hope to hell you have changed for your girlfriend. She doesn't deserve to go through what I did," I say calmly.

I take a deep breath in and let it out, trying to push out the anger and get down to the task.

"The reason Henry called you here was because ever since, well, what we just talked about, I've never been the same. I've always put myself through so much pain because I was afraid what happened with you would happen again." I say, this time it's me with my head down.