everything I didn't say

thirty eight

"Okay, go ahead."

"I am sorry, you said I don't seem like I am, and I'm also sorry for coming off like I didn't care. I do, a lot. I have no excuses for anything I did, so I won't try to waste your time with that. I don't have a reason that I left, I didn't then and I don't now. I wanted to call, every damn night I wanted to call but I fought myself against it. I thought you didn't want to speak, which I now understand that you did. So I'm sorry for that, too."

"It's whatever."

"I'm not finished." He unbuckles his seatbelt and turns towards me.

"Mostly I'm sorry for making you feel abandoned. That is not what I wanted at all. I'm sorry I left you waiting up every night. I'm so fucking sorry that I ruined a really good thing with an impulsive and stupid decision. Looking back now, it was just plain fucking stupid. I felt like I had to go home and that I needed it really badly, but I didn't. We both know I didn't."

"I guess going back there was my way of healing myself, but it took a lot of damage before I came close to healed. I'm healed from the loss of someone I knew for most of my life, someone I mistreated and didn't deserve, and then I realized something. There I was, lost without the one person I truly needed, someone else I mistreated and didn't deserve: you. That's why I called Jared instead of you, I thought the idea sounded better in my head. I fucked up, I know. I fucked up so badly but I know there's worse that's been done to you so I'm really hoping I could fix this."

I open my mouth to speak, though I don't know what I'll say.

"No, not yet. The soliloquoy isn't over." He says, and though he doesn't mean it as a joke I find myself wanting to laugh.

"I didn't know how or when to say this, I think maybe I planned to go to the coffee shop with flowers, and obviously I didn't. Leah, I'm bad with words and we both know this so give me a break here. Uh, wow, I don't even know. I've never done this before, I don't think I've ever fallen in love and that's probably why but," he continues to mumble.

"wh-what?" I say and he continues over me.

"So yeah, what I'm trying to say is I love you. God, do I love you. I'm not sure when I first realized that I did, maybe when you were curled up next to me after the funeral. It took me a long time, too long, to realize it and for that, like everything else, I'm sorry. I planned this in my head on the way back but I didn't think it would be this difficult for uh, for the words to come out. I didn't practice in my mind the way your eyes would look at me and now that they are I lost all my practice."

"I love every part of you, even the parts you don't want me to love. I love that you hate me because I don't blame you for a second. I love that even though you didn't know what was coming you were willing to stay and to listen to me mumble on and on like this." He takes a deep breath. "It's been a really long time since you said anything though, so now would be a really good time to speak." He weakly smiles at me.

"This is," I form a sentence in my head. I don't know how to react to this. It is too much. "This is a lot of things. It was, well it was beautiful. Every girl dreams of hearing that from someone they love and it couldn't have been better said. It's just so.. unfair."

"Unfair?"

"It's unfair of you to blurt this out after breaking me the way you did. It's unfair to leave me hanging for three straight months and show up and mix things up this way. It's unfair of you to tell me that and unfair for you to expect me to love you back. If you loved me the way you say you do you wouldn't have left."

He looks down at the steering wheel. I see tears hit it.

"I'm unfair I know. How I treated you was and for that I'm extremely sorry too."