“A writer.”
“What do you write?”
“Books.”
“Is that so?”
“You seem surprised.”
“I am. A little. I never really pictured you as the writing type. Didn’t you fail English in 10th grade?”
“I failed a lot of things in 10th grade,” he says, chuckling.
“So what...what made you become a writer?”
It seems like such a stupid question. Even as the words leave my lips, I realize how stupid they are. What made him decide to be a writer? Is that really any of my business? Maybe he wanted to pursue his secret lifelong dream. Maybe he had this vision of who he would be, and it was an author.
I have no idea.
I definitely never would have pegged him for that, though, although now that I’m looking at him a little more closely, maybe I can see how he could pass as a sort of artist. He’s definitely got the haircut for it, and I mean, he’s still wearing sweats and t-shirts from my home, but I can picture the way he might dress normally.
“I was pretty upset after what happened with my dad,” he says. “But I was too stubborn to come back home and tell my mom I was wrong.”
“Really? You...you wanted to come back?”
Why does that knowledge, that realization, make this hurt a little bit less? Somehow, the idea that he didn’t want to stay away makes me feel a little more comfortable with everything that happened.
“I didn’t think I was good enough to come back.”
He says the words plainly, as though nothing could be more obvious, but unfortunately for Cage, I’ve been in therapy for the last five years, and I know that what he’s saying is a total and utter cop-out.
“Bullshit,” I say.
“Excuse me?”
“Bullshit. You heard me. Bull. Shit.”
“Uh, okay?”
I shake my head.
“That’s a total cop-out. You couldn’t come back because you weren’t good enough? It sounds like you didn’t want to come back because you were ashamed. It had nothing to do with being good enough. You’ve always been good enough: for me, for your mom. I know she wasn’t the best mother, and I don’t pretend to have been the perfect girlfriend, but both of us would have loved to have seen you, Cage. You didn’t even give us a chance.”
What I mean is that he didn’t give me a chance.
He didn’t give me a chance to say goodbye.
He didn’t give me a chance to say I was sorry, or that I loved him, or that I wanted that thing between us to last forever.
He didn’t give me a shot, and part of me still feels just the tiniest bit broken because of it.
What would my life have been like if Cage had come back?
What if he’d never left in the first place?
What if, instead of running off, he’d come to me and talked about what he wanted?
Would things have been different?