Personal Chef

Chapter 57

"Why?" Shawn asked.

His question hung in the air like a spider hanging by its thread as I tried to compose an answer.

"There are several reasons," I started. "To start with, you hurt me when you left me to be with Kat."

"But you said you understood why I did that!" he argued.

"I did. I knew that it was your only option. I told you before that I love that you're the type of person who would drop everything to accept responsibility for a baby. But I was what you dropped, and I broke when I hit the ground."

"I'm sorry, Chelsea. Hurting you was the last thing I wanted to do!"

"I know. But I did get hurt. Right after you learned Kat was pregnant, you were so focused on her and the baby that you never stopped to ask me how I felt or what I wanted. Maybe I didn't have a say in what you needed to do, but my feelings mattered," I said.

It felt surprisingly good to finally tell him these things.

"Again, I'm sorry. Fuck. I had no idea."

"I know. I forgive you for how you acted after Kat's visit because the whole thing had to have messed you up."

"If you forgive me, then why not give me another chance?" he asked.

"There are other things," I said.

"Okay. Lay them on me. I want to know everything I've done that has damaged us so much that you are giving up."

I held a finger up to him. "Stop right there! I'm not 'giving up' on us. We're friends and I am committed to this friendship. You're asking me to alter what we have now. Me saying no to that is not giving up. Do not make me into the bad guy here!"

He hung his head. "You're right. That was a poor choice of words. I do want to know what else I did to damage any chance of us getting back together, though."

I looked at him and saw how tired and emotionally spent he looked. Had he even slept since he'd taken the paternity test?

"Maybe we should talk about this another time," I said. "You've had a terrible couple of days. Let yourself adjust to everything you've gone through, and then we can talk about us."

"I want to do this now," he said simply.

I knew we were in for a long night, but I continued.

"Okay. I was trying very hard to get over you. You were in California building a life with Kat and I was left behind. Each time I started to make headway in healing, you'd swoop in and tell me you still loved me. It fucked me up and you should have known better. It was emotionally manipulative," I said.

"We talked about this before. I stopped with the overly-affectionate talk after that. I've worked hard at keeping things on a just-friends level!" he countered.

"You're asking me why I don't want to get back together and I'm trying to tell you. Yes, we talked about it and you stopped, but it hurt me when you did it before that. Each little thing you did to hurt me makes me not want to be with you. I'm not saying it's all fair or rational. We're talking about my feelings, and I can't help them!"

"I never wanted to hurt you. You have to know that!"

"Unintentional pain still hurts, Shawn."

He just nodded.

"You sent me a lot of mixed messages while I was trying to move on. You came back to town around my birthday, but waited to see me until right before you had a flight to catch. You told me you loved me, and you even made out with me, but you also rejected me. That was a confusing message. I felt like you were always keeping me tethered by saying the right things but also throwing me away by making it clear we had no future."