Before I Ever Met You by Karina Halle
I laugh. It feels like acid. “Oh and the truth comes out. Whether you meant to or not, you ruined everything, Charlie. And if you dare speak of this to Logan, you know he’ll destroy you.”
“Ron,” he says, examining his fingers as he pulls them away from his nose. No blood. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know…”
“You knew enough,” I tell him, looking him dead in the eye with as much venom as I can spare. “You knew about my family and me and our relationship. You knew I was at the bottom of the barrel with them. You knew it all and you talked to her and you kept it from all of us and now you’ve gone too far. You may have thought you were doing the right thing, you may have thought you were important by being the one person my mother had to talk to. But the fact that you kept it a secret from us all says something else entirely.” My throat feels thick with jabbing pains as I try to swallow. “Goodbye Charlie.”
“Goodbye?” He reaches for my arm as I rip out of it. “Where are you going?”
“Home.” I tell him, pressing my hands to his chest and pushing him away. “Where I can’t embarrass my family anymore.”
I hear Kate honk her horn from the street. I quickly open the gate and bring my bags through. Charlie looks over my shoulder, eyes widening at the sight of Kate in her car.
“You’re actually going?” he squawks.
“And it’s all your fault,” I tell him, not caring that I’m being overly harsh. “When you see Logan later, you can fess up to what you did and lose it all. Or you can keep your mouth shut and keep your job. Your choice.”
“Ron,” he says again. “Kate!”
But Kate is out of the car and quick to get my bags in the backseat and the trunk.
“Kate,” Charlie says again, coming forward.
Kate narrows her eyes at him and jumps back in the driver’s seat before peeling out of the lane with both of us in it.
I’m silent the rest of the ride. I’m heading to the airport way too early, I don’t know how I’m going to handle it. I don’t know what I’m doing.
“I know you don’t want to hear it right now,” Kate says to me later as we pull over at Lydgate Park to watch the ocean, a way to kill time since we are so early for my flight. “But I really do think Charlie will be hurting. I’m not saying this because I like him. I know him and I honestly think he didn’t think. He loves you both, he would have never said anything if he knew this would be the end result.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say with a heavy sigh. My hand still hurts. “He said it and whether it was an accident or not, we can’t change it. My parents know. And it’s just as well. I would have told them one day. I was under the very naïve impression that they would understand.”
“Ron, there’s nothing naïve in thinking your parents would be happy for you if you were in love.”
“It’s naïve when I should have known what they’d do. I thought it too. In the back of my mind, I knew this was all too good to be true.”
“What? Love? Love is never too good to be true. Love is true.”
I give her a look.
She shrugs. “What? People fall in love, people fall out of love. But in the end, almost everyone in the world gets to feel it, live it, taste it. Love is never too good to be true because it is the original truth. And everyone deserves it. Everyone.”
It’s the most poignant thing I’ve ever heard Kate say, which of course doesn’t help.
The tears start flowing again and they don’t stop. Not when we’re pulling up to the airport, not when I’m saying goodbye to my roommate and my best friend here. Not when I’m hauling my luggage through the agriculture inspection and security. There’s no space inside the actual Lihue terminal to hang out without getting on a plane, so I have to say goodbye to Kate right away.
And then the unthinkable happens.
Just as I step through the detector, grabbing my items and carry-on from the x-rays, I hear my name.
Loud, rough, broken.
The voice is a hand reaching over my heart and yanking me into submission.
I look up.
Logan is on the other side of the security gate, Kate hovering behind him.
I meet Logan’s eyes and the world goes still.
This man, this beautiful, loving, loyal man is here for me, fighting for me.
And yet I have to convince him I’m not worth fighting for. After the ring and the note, he’s still here, he’s still not believing it.
I didn’t think my heart could break anymore.
“Veronica, please,” he cries out, loud enough that everyone turns to look at him.
“Sir, you need to step out of the way,” a TSA agent says.
Logan ignores him, staring at me in such pain and disbelief that it knocks the wind out of me.
“Do you know him?” a TSA agent on this side asks me.
Shaking my head is the easiest thing for all of us.
“Please, Ron, we need to talk, come out here, please!”
But I can’t.
“Sir, please,” the agent says, putting his hands on Logan. Logan immediately shrugs him off, beyond agitated, as another guard comes over.
“Just go!” I yell at him before he gets in any more trouble. “Please, go back to your home. I’m going back to mine.”
The lies slice me open. They do the same to him. Kate is covering her mouth with her hands, knowing the pain we’re both in, both of us diced in front of her eyes. Meanwhile, everyone around airport security is watching, waiting for what Logan will do next. They can’t figure if this is a tragic love story or a fucked-up apology. It doesn’t happen like this in the movies.
Logan can only shake his head. Utter disbelief. Fear. Hate. Hurt. I see it all running through his head, projected through his eyes. He doesn’t understand, he doesn’t believe. No matter what I’ve said, he doesn’t believe.
There’s warmth to that thought, even though there’s fear. That he doesn’t believe the note, won’t believe any of it.
But at the heart of it he knows that I have to go. That I wouldn’t do this lightly or otherwise. That I have my reasons.
Maybe on his darkest days he’ll reflect and wonder if the note was truth and that he was wrong. Maybe he won’t.
All I can do is stare into his eyes, past the TSA agents and the passengers and the screening equipment, and tell him to please, please let me go.
Let me go.
I mouth the words.
And then, then, I think he gets it.
He nods. He is living pain.
I am dying, trying to memorize this face and hold it in my heart.
He turns around.
Defeated.
Broken.
Ruined.
And he walks away.
Come back, I want to say. I’ve made a mistake.
I want to run through the screener, push the people out of the way, jump into his arms and have him hold me. That strength, that heat, that love that always has my back. But I remember why I have to do this. That too much will be ruined because of us being together.
I give Kate a small wave but she can’t even return it. In the distance, a chicken struts past them. And that’s when I realize how much I’m giving up. I thought that Logan and my ohana were everything. I’m giving up this island, too.
I’m leaving my home behind and trading it in for a place that never understood me, where I never thrived.
Oh, Kauai. Another love lost.
I don’t even know how I make it through the airport. I can’t look at the gift shops, can’t eat. There’s no internet and even if there was, there’s nothing to see or do. None of my music appeals to me, I won’t read.
I just find a spot, alone, and stare at the wall and I sink into a cold, numb state. After a while my heart feels like it has frostbite, where it’s so damaged that you can’t even feel the cracks.
And every now and then, Logan, Logan, Logan, I’ll see him, feel him, hear him and it all seems like such a dream. Such a dream.
Even when I take my seat, packed in the back of a full flight.
Even when the plane takes off and we soar over the coconut coast before heading northeast for home.
Such a dream. A nightmare.
It doesn’t end.
Hawaii is left behind and this pain doesn’t end.
What have I done?
What have I done?
What have I done?
21
Six Months Later
“So, tell us Arch, where did you go to school?” my mother asks, before she slices a bit of prime rib, spearing it with her fork.
I look over at Arch, knowing he’s been waiting for this question all evening.
“Harvard,” he says proudly, in that way that all Harvard graduates have. Like they’re a bit embarrassed even though they totally aren’t and have to show this false humility.
And why am I dating this guy again?
I think I’ve asked myself that a million times tonight, especially as it was his idea to meet my parents and take them out for dinner. He can’t pretend he doesn’t have some sort of agenda that doesn’t involve me.
But it’s the first time I’ve started seeing a guy since I left Kauai and I know I would never, ever get over Logan again if I didn’t go out there and try and put him past me. You can’t move on without moving on, and so Arch was it.
And yes. His real name is Archie. Archie and Veronica. I know. Thankfully he goes by Arch instead, which suits him a little bit better. He’s a good-looking guy, tall with a strong jaw and sandy hair that flops to the side. I met him through Claire, whom I’m living with now, and she kept on trying to sell him on me, knowing how badly I needed to just get laid.
I haven’t gotten laid, yet, by the way. Arch hasn’t really broached the subject, and despite the fact that we’ve gone out five times in the last two weeks, he’s done nothing but kiss me goodnight. Yet another reason why I think he’s dating me to get close to my mom.
Hell, if it weren’t for him, I would have only seen my mother twice since I moved back to Chicago. I know she thinks that everything can go back to normal, the way it was before, but our relationship before was a real piece of work and strained to the max. Now, I don’t want anything to do with her. She fucking blackmailed me to get rid of the love of my life and I’ll never, ever forgive her for that.
I know I haven’t forgiven myself. I know what I did to Logan broke him in two just as much as it broke me. That may be one reason why I can’t move on, can’t forget about him, why my heart won’t stop aching every single night as I clutch my pillow pretending that it’s him. Because I wonder if I did the right thing. I wonder if destroying what we had and making it all out to be a lie was the only way out of it.
But I also know Logan. And I know that he would have risked everything for me. That man had already lost so much, and he wasn’t going to lose me without a fight. So I created something he couldn’t fight against. Had I not handed back his ring and told him I didn’t love him, had I not told the biggest lie of my life, he would have lost everything he worked so hard to get. I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t have him risk it all in order to have me. I was never worth it.
And so I’m back in Chicago and trying to come to terms with everything. It’s not easy. I’ve been too afraid to include Moonwater on my resume, and I’m still not using Piccolo, so I’m starting over again and working as a line cook in a seafood restaurant part-time.
Claire has been a big help though. Not only is she letting me live in her spare bedroom rent free, but I’m working for the wine store she now manages, doing wine tastings on some evenings. It’s a lot of fun but I miss being back in the kitchen and using my creativity.
I miss a lot of things.
But this is the bed I made and now I have to lie in it, as cold and lonely as it is.
“Harvard,” my mother drones on, eyeing my father with one gleefully raised brow. “Finally Veronica has found a smart one.”
Arch seems to have missed the whole insult and instead grins proudly at me. I don’t give them anything. Since I’m battling my mother, she’s battling me more than ever, doling out passive aggression like it’s going out of style. Luckily I’ve had a lifetime to grow an immunity to it.
“You know Veronica’s sister, Juliet,” my mother goes on. Oh boy, here we go. “She was going to go to Harvard. She certainly had the grades. She was top of the class, valedictorian. Life got in the way, of course, but it was our dream for her.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Arch says, like he’s rehearsed it. “I saw a picture of her at Veronica’s, she was very beautiful.”
I do have a picture of me and Juliet together at her wedding on my bedside table. For the longest time I had kept it in a drawer. I hadn’t even packed it when I moved out to Kauai. I think I was pretending that she hadn’t died and if she hadn’t died, I didn’t have to wrestle with my feelings about her.
Logan was the one who put it all in perspective. It was him that taught me how to grieve for someone you loved but didn’t like. How to come to terms with my relationship with Juliet even though I was the one left to put it all back together. No one ever wants to speak ill of the dead, and people treat death like it erases all of one’s sins. But it doesn’t. And that’s okay.
Of course I figured all this out a little too late. I know that Juliet is gone and our relationship won’t ever be anything but flawed, full of missed chances. But I don’t have any regrets. I wish she was still alive today so I could try to get to know her for who she really was, the person she hid from everyone, but I’ll have to live with what we had. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
Naturally my mother still puts her on that pedestal. I tried to tell her the truth. The first time I saw her after coming back from Kauai, she showed up at Claire’s door wanting to check-in with me. We had an all-out screaming match (luckily Claire wasn’t home to witness it) and I let everything fly. I told her the truth about Juliet, that it wasn’t Logan who cheated, that Juliet had the affair. And, like I thought she would, my mother turned a blind eye to it all. I know it makes me out to be a terrible daughter to bring it all up like that, but I just wanted her to see the truth for once.
Now I know that nothing I ever say will change my mother’s mind. I have to let her be and believe all that she wants to believe. Despite our differences, I know my mother will forever be grieving over her. I know she truly loved Juliet and only wants to believe the best.
Times like this though, it’s hard for me to keep my mouth shut.
“Juliet could have been a movie star,” my mother says, taking a sip of wine. “Sadly, she was too beautiful for this lifetime.” She looks to me. “And Veronica, what have you been up to lately?”
Arch gives me a strange look, probably because it’s a sign that my mother and I don’t talk anymore.
“Living the dream,” I tell her and the phrase makes me think of Charlie when he first picked me up from the airport in Lihue. I miss my friends there so much that it hurts, my chest feels like it’s being squeezed and drained of every last drop.
Even though it’s hard, I still keep in touch with everyone. I talk to Kate, Johnny, and Nikki on the regular, usually through email since I try and stay off of Facebook. The idea of seeing Logan’s photo pop up in a tagged pic or something scares me too much.
I talk to Charlie sometimes. We’ve had a few emails back and forth over what happened, and honestly I can’t go on blaming him. He knows he fucked up and he feels forever guilty (Kate says he’s really taken it to heart). Charlie has always meant well, it’s just a shame it had to come to this.
I ask about Logan sometimes, usually via Johnny since he’s a guy and doesn’t try and tiptoe around the subject. Usually they tell me he’s doing fine, working harder than ever. I haven’t spoken to him though. I want to. I think about it every night. Just texting him. Sending an email. Mailing a letter even. I want to hear his voice, I want to kn
He reached out to talk to me after I left. A lot. Phone, email, Facebook, whatever he could. He even called my parents on a few occasions, though I would hear about it from my father a few months later. But every time he tried to talk to me, I couldn’t bring myself to answer. What was there to say. Nothing I could say would ever make him believe me and it wouldn’t make it better.
After a while, the calls stopped. No more texts, no more emails. It meant that Logan was over it, moving on. Done with me, and who could ever fucking blame him.
The thought hurts. It hurts like my heart is breaking all over again and I have to double over from the pain. The idea that I’m alone and reeling from my decision, that he doesn’t think of me the same way. I know I have little right to complain but I can’t help it.
You reap what you sow. I chose what I thought was the lesser of two evils and not a moment goes by that I’m not reaping it.
When dinner is over, the four of us step out of the steakhouse and into the hot Chicago night. It’s nothing like Hawaii. You can’t see the stars. You can’t hear the crickets. There are no chickens. There’s just this smoggy orange glow above you, the dirty smells and grating sounds of the city.
My mother wants us to go to a cocktail bar down the street, though I can tell my dad has had enough, just as I have had. That’s the last thing I want to do. Arch turns to me and tells me he’ll pay for my cab back to my place and I honestly couldn’t be happier about that, even though it’s a slap in the face that he doesn’t even want to come.
So here comes the awkward goodbyes. I give Arch a quick hug and then am soullessly engulfed by my mother who smells like lavender soap and expensive perfume. I have a feeling she just had her hair done before this dinner, though being the deputy mayor she never really needs an excuse to look her best. Growing up, I used to envy the amount of time my mother put into her appearance, like it was magic. Now I know it’s just a mask, hiding everything ugly underneath.