The Fall (21 page)

Dallas

• Now
  

I arrived at my parents’ house an hour later, not looking for either of them, and heading to my room. I texted Josh and told him I was too tired to see him. My reply was exactly what I expected it to be: cold and harsh. I would have to make it up to him. I was completely lost in Dean’s world and his confessions to me.

I heard my mother’s light knock on my bedroom door before she pushed it open to find me staring at the ceiling.

“Dallas? Honey, what are you doing here?” my mother questioned as I sat up in my old bed, grabbed a pillow, and held it to me. “I don’t know.”

“You’re upset. Tell me what’s wrong.” She moved in closer, her eyes scanning me as I breathed in deeply to keep from crying.

I wanted Rose. I needed my best friend and she was off in la-la land celebrating her newfound happiness with her fiancé, which I was currently resenting. I looked up at my mother with swollen eyes, suddenly furious with her and needing to unleash. “I need you to explain to me why the hell you would put these stupid ideas about love into my head.”

My mother turned around and walked out of my bedroom. I stood quickly, following her down the stairs while I ranted. “It’s ridiculous to believe there is only one person for everyone. Why would you teach your kids to think that! It’s absolutely wrong!” She stopped mid-step and looked up to me with her brows raised. Her hair was piled on top of her head and her favorite robe was snugly clasped around her. I backed off briefly until she turned back around, heading back down. “You are wrong,” I threw at her as I stopped and took a seat on the top of the stairs.

“That’s not what I taught you, Dallas,” she said as she looked up at me, concern heavy on her features.

“If this is what it’s like, I don’t fucking want it,” I declared firmly. She disappeared into the kitchen then returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses. “Your father is sleeping. Get your crazy ass out on the patio. Let’s have a drink.” I couldn’t help my grin as she addressed me. It was no big mystery where I got my personality from. I admired her to no end. She was strong, self-assured, yet completely lovable and loving at the same time.

“If I am crazy, it’s only because you made me this way,” I insisted as I followed her out. There was a perfect breeze offsetting the day’s heat as we took a seat on the cedar bench in the middle of her rose garden.

“Rose told me Dean is back,” she said, eyeing me while filling our glasses.

I nodded, downing half my glass, trying to erase the memory of his beautiful, naked body. “I’m with Josh. Actually, I’m supposed to be with him right now, and Dean is screwing it all up,” I said helplessly.

“Or are you?” she asked.

“Both,” I answered. “Mom, I would have been fine. I
was
fine...Finally,” I told her, pouring another glass of wine.

“And now you’re not,” she said, coaxing me. I looked at her oddly as she tried to hide her amused smile.

“No, I’ve gone bat shit. Completely crazy! He drives me insane! He expects to just waltz in after all this time and pick up where we left off! He’s still so arrogant and possessive, ugh, what an ass!”

“Wow,” my mother smiled, “sounds rough.” I narrowed my eyes at her.

“Mom, if you are going to make fun of me, I’ll leave,” I pushed out. She chuckled at my discomfort. “Seriously, it’s not funny,” I said, my voice cracking. “That man damn near destroyed me.”

She sobered up almost instantly. “I know this story,” she said grabbing my hand. “I know you’re scared.”

“Mom, I’m terrified.” I paused briefly thinking of the mess I’d made the first few years after our break up. “I never told you this, but I kind of lost it when we broke up. I mean,
lost it
. I did things you would never want to hear about.
”

“Now, I’m sure I know this story,” she said, setting her wine down and turning to me.

“Mom, he was
it
for me. I was so sure of it. I swore that he would be back and he never came.”

“Looks like he did,” she offered.

“Too late. It’s way too late,” I added. “
This
was not the time.”

“Austin? Your graduation day?” she asked sadly. I nodded in agreement. She closed her eyes briefly. “I knew it. I should’ve stayed. I should’ve made sure you were okay. I thought you wanted to hang with your friends, but I knew something wasn’t right.”

“He was supposed to come for me and propose. I mean, at least that’s what he promised before it all turned to shit.” She seemed a little shocked as I continued. “I know I never told you, but we were that serious. He never showed. I waited for him in vain, knowing it had been too long, but something inside of me wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t. I just
knew
he would come. That all the pain of missing him would be worth it. That’s why I insisted you all go to eat without me. I was waiting for him. I waited until every single person left. I stayed there until the sun set.” My chest was raw as I thought of how I circled campus endlessly, crying openly in front of everyone who saw me, searching for him relentlessly, refusing to believe he hadn’t shown. He’d given me absolutely no reason to hold on, and still I couldn’t let go.

I could see my mother tearing up and shook my head. “It was the worst day of my life. So he can’t be the right one,” I insisted.

“So why are you letting him disrupt your life now?”

“Because he’s...he’s...gah! I don’t know,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

“Yes you do,” she said filling our glasses up and retreating to the house to grab another bottle. When she rejoined me, we sat for several minutes in silence, listening to the noises of the cool summer night. The fragrant smell of her roses soothed me. I breathed in deep.

“I can’t go back there. My heart can’t take it. My head is already a mess,” I said defiantly. “He expects too much for nothing.” Sighing heavily I felt the warmth from the wine spread through me and I welcomed it.

“Well, then you’ve made your decision,” she said carefully, as if I would object.

“Technically, he didn’t do anything wrong. I told him to go and pushed him away. But for some reason, I still blame him for how much it hurt.”

She simply nodded and waited for me to continue.

“Mom, how do you look at someone you loved so completely at one point that you drowned in them? Someone who knew you so intimately they were a part of you and you had no idea where you started and they ended, or who you were apart from belonging to them? How do you go from that to friends or even acquaintances? How do you just ignore your past with that person? How do people
do
that?”

“I think you answered that for yourself already. With Dean, you can’t.”

“So, what? I just stay away from him?” I asked.

“First, tell me why you are trying so hard to avoid him, Dallas.”

“The first reason is Josh.”

“Let’s keep him out of it for now.” She leaned over, grabbed a blooming rose bud in her hand and delicately thumbed it.

“It hurts too much to love Dean. He’s proven it time and time again.”

“Not intentionally,” my mother pointed out.

“I want to believe that,” I said. “He told me he met his ex-fiancée his first year. He’s been with her all this time. We were only together a year.”

“You have known that man half of your life, Dallas. Love doesn’t care if you were there five years or—”

“Five minutes, Mom. I know.”

“Dallas, you are forgetting something pretty important.”

“What?”

“Everything else,” she said slowly. “Aside from the pain your break up caused and constantly reminding yourself of it, it seems you have completely forgotten
why
you were in so much pain in the first place. Obviously, you had something good with him, something memorable, worth suffering over.”

“Being his, with him, it was the best time of my life,” I said, twisting my wine glass in my hand. “He made me feel loved and beautiful and wanted. Even when we fought, which was often. We just fit and neither of us could stay away.”

“All consuming,” she encouraged.

I nodded, leaning back in my chair, my voice cracking with my next words. “It still is and I can’t figure it out, Mom. I can’t make it stop. The need to be with him is so strong. I feel too much. I can’t stay in the same room with him without wanting more.”

“You can’t help the way you feel, Dallas. As guilty as it makes you feel about Josh, and I know that’s what is eating at you the most, you cannot help it. Trust me when I tell you I have been there. They invented the ‘nice guy’ theory for men who are innocent bystanders left in the wake of our first love gone wrong. We always recover but we never forget and we never love quite the same. The first love is always the most felt, the hardest to get over, and the hardest to forget.”

“Great,” I said, feeling hopeless. “So what do I do?”

“What do you want?” she asked immediately.

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do.” She winked, standing suddenly, and leaning over to place a kiss on my forehead.

I looked up at my beautiful mother and could see how transparent my feelings were. “Thank you. I’m sorry for what I said...about you filling our heads full of crap.”

“I’ve always encouraged you to love with all your heart. That’s when it feels the best.”

“And the worst,” I added, getting out of my chair and grabbing our empty glasses.

“And the worst,” she agreed. “We are having an engagement party for Rose and Grant on Sunday,” she said, opening the patio door for me.

“What do you think about that?” I asked, fearful of my mother’s response.

“I adore him. He came and asked our permission last week. Wait until you meet him. You will know right away he’s perfect for her. I know I’m pretty liberal when it comes to love, but I had my doubts until I met him. Be happy for her, Dallas. She’s had a horrible time in that department, as well.”

“I am, Mom. I swear. I’m just worried for her. I know how bad it can hurt when it goes downhill.”

“So does she,” my mother reminded, turning off the kitchen lights as we stood at the foot of the stairs. “And she’s ready to give it another chance,” she said, raising her voice so I caught her drift.

“I am with Josh,” I defended weakly.

“Cut him loose, Dallas,” my mother warned.

“So I just dump my boyfriend of a year, who happens to be close to a saint, and amazing to me, for a man who broke my heart and has been absent for the last seven years?”

“Do you want my permission?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to make your decision?”

“No, Mom, I get it.”

“Good, now stop whining. Get your ass upstairs and get in bed. Tomorrow morning I’ll make your favorite breakfast.”

“I love you, Mom.”

“You too, peanut.” She hugged me tightly.

“What if it’s the wrong choice?” I asked before she pulled away.

She stayed quiet for a long moment, and I wondered if she was going to answer me before she spoke. “It seems like we love so much
more
than the rest of the world, doesn’t it? So much
harder
, like we hurt more, feel deeper.”

“That’s not what I asked,” I said, confused.

“How hard is it to believe that he loved you as much as you loved him?”

“Very,” I said roughly.

“There you go,” she said before giving me a quick squeeze.

“What?” I said, shaking my head and heading up to my room. I got to the top of the stairs before I caught her cryptic teaching.

She was telling me I was selfish to think he’d suffered less than I had. Dean’s reaction to our break up was
his
to have and that everyone loved and lost differently. I wasn’t the only one who might’ve had a hard time moving on. But mostly she was trying to tell me that I was worthy of that type of love and not the only one capable of it. And maybe I was being a little selfish to think otherwise.

Touché, madre!

I wrapped myself up in the comforts of home, staring into the darkness and doing what I’d spent hours of my life doing in this very spot: thinking of Dean Martin. I woke up hours later covered in sweat, a whimper still on my lips as I came out of another bad dream. A dream I was all too familiar with. I took a long hot bath to ease the ache that had built in my arms from clinging to my sheets. I sat in the tub replaying the night Dean had made me the promise he failed to keep.