And I wouldn’t have rejected her straight away. Georgia is my best friend. I would have taken it away and considered what she told me, searching for whether we could be together. Maybe I would have come to these realizations sooner.
Though, I don’t blame her. If anything, I’m the oblivious fool here.
My mental planning pauses as I remember Georgia telling me that I was oblivious last week. I snort. I didn’t read anything into it, then; I just thought she was joking with me. Now I realize that she was being serious.
“What happened with Polly…will never happen with me.”
In the end, though, everything came down to my past. I’ve been running from it all this time. God knows how many times I’ve hurt Georgia because of it. How did she feel as she watched me break down over Polly? She stood beside me and helped me through everything, and I repaid her by accidentally hurting her at every turn because of one relationship that went wrong.
Admittedly, it went very wrong. Getting some answers from Polly ten years later hasn’t helped at all, just made me feel more empty and drained.
Now, on top of all that, Polly is about to challenge me for custody over Lily. It’s the last thing I need on top of everything else, and I haven’t even told Georgia about it yet.
I wonder if I should. Then I shake my head. Georgia probably has enough on her mind right now, between her work and everything that’s happening between us. I can handle Polly for now.
I just wish that she wasn’t standing in the way of wha
t’s happening between Georgia and me. Part of me thinks that I should cut this off before I end up getting hurt again. I trust Georgia more than anyone else. But I also trusted Polly, and look where that got me.
But…
“Don’t run. I know it’s frightening, but please don’t run from this. I’ll never do to you what Polly did.”
I think about Georgia’s soft plea. She didn’t once tell me what I had to do. She just made a quiet request for me to at least try,
It’s this, more than anything else, that makes me take in a deep breath. Georgia is beautiful. She’s my best friend in the world. She’s trustworthy and she keeps my secrets, and she’s an amazing pseudo-mother for Lily.
So what’s holding me back?
Fucking Polly.
I snort to myself and lower my head toward the steering wheel, closing my eyes briefly. It all keeps coming back to her, doesn’t it? Polly broke my heart and ripped my life apart with her actions ten years ago. Those actions have played on my mind ever since, convincing me that getting that close to anyone ever again was just a recipe for disaster.
Yet, I’ve made a liar of myself. All this time, I’ve been courting Georgia without even realizing it. If I look over our entire relationship over the last few years, we might as well be fucking dating with the way we act around each other.
Have I been accidentally leading Georgia on this entire time because I didn’t want her to leave my side? Well, as I’ve discovered since last week, her feelings for me aren’t unrequited, at the very least… I was just an idiot who couldn’t recognize what was happening between us.
I feel like I need to get on bended knee and apologize to Georgia for what I’ve done to her. She’s stayed faithfully at my side, waiting for something that she didn’t know was ever going to happen. She’s extremely patient, I’ll say that.
Or maybe she was just like me, unable to tear herself away. How many times have I wondered, over the years, why she put so much effort into Lily and I? How many times have I considered telling her that she needed to do more for herself and that she needed to worry more about herself? Selfishly, I only did so a handful of times. But not once did I ever say to her “you need to leave us”.
Now I know why I couldn’t do that. Now I know why she wouldn’t have left even if I ask. I sigh. I can’t work out whether the relationship between Georgia and I is healthy or not. If I consider the way we’ve clung to each other yet never spoken about our feelings, it doesn’t feel healthy at all.
So, what do I do now?
“Don’t run.”
Every part of me wants to run. She’s right, this is huge and terrifying. Somehow, these enormous feelings have crept over me without my knowledge, and I know that everything is going to change because of them. I’m not ready for everything to change.
But I also need to decide what’s more important to me right now. My nice, stable life with Georgia as my friend, spending my days worrying over Lily and how to provide for her – a life I’m not sure we can go back to after this? Or risk everything to give both Georgia and I what we appear to want? I would be putting our friendship, our hearts and everything I’ve been so terrified of losing on the line.
Is it worth it?
I inhale deeply. I don’t know if it is. Maybe that’s my deep-seated problems talking right now, but I don’t know how to imagine a life where I give myself so wholly to someone else again. I already did that, and she abandoned me.
But Georgia is Georgia. And she’s already proved that abandonment from her is not going to happen. She’s apparently been in love with me for thirteen fucking years, and not once did she ever leave me, despite my feigned disinterest.
So…my comfort or Georgia?