“Please, Kaitlyn, I’m sorry… maybe once I graduate.”
“In a year?” I snapped. “Please, Emily, tell me you’re not asking me to wait an entire year? A whole year without you? How the hell am I supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, “I just know that I really like you. Really, truly like you, and I hope that one day we can figure this out and end up finding our way back to each other.”
I was so hurt and wasn’t even trying to hide it. I knew that school was important to her, of course it was, but this felt so damn extreme.
I was already in love with her. Truly, madly in love with her, and there was literally nothing that could keep me from being with her. So she needed to study more, that was fine! I could give her more time! But no, the first thing she jumped to was breaking up.
Which made me think maybe this relationship wasn’t as important to her as it was to me. And that was what really hurt. That she was willing to give up so easily. All it took was one bump in her road to success to make her want to totally forget about me.
“I really love being with you, Kaitlyn. I really do,” she said softly.
But there, it was even in her words. She loved being with me. She didn’t say she loved me, though… if she did, if she felt for me what I felt for her, she wouldn’t be able to do this.
“I can’t just wait for you,” I said suddenly. “We’ve only been together a little over a month, and… and I’m not going to spend a year waiting for you.”
She looked dejected. “Yeah… yeah, I guess that would be pretty unreasonable of me to ask.”
“Yeah, it would,” I said coolly.
I stared at her, she stared at me, and for a moment, we didn’t say anything to each other. I didn’t know what I was waiting for. I guess for her to take it all back, to say she wasn’t really going to do this. That she couldn’t break up with me over one bad grade, and we’d make it work.
But she didn’t say those words. And as I waited, more thoughts ran through my mind. Then, something suddenly clicked for me.
“How long ago did you realize you wanted to do this?” I asked.
“What?” she asked. “Today, of course. You think I’ve been planning this for a long time or something?”
“No, no,” I corrected. “I mean when today.”
She looked at me confused. “When I realized how badly I’d done in my class…”
“So, back at the bar?”
“Yes…” she began slowly.
“You’ve known since the bar, but… you just had sex with me for the first time?”
Her expression fell flat. She looked immediately guilty. “Well, yeah…”
“You didn’t care?’ I asked her. “It didn’t bother you that you were going to sleep with me for the first time and then dump me? You didn’t think that might be kind of shitty in any way?”
“I did…” she said softly, “but, I also just thought, you know, I really like you, and I wanted to be able to do it at least once before we broke up…”
“Ah!” I said with a sarcastic laugh. “So this was my parting gift!”
“Kaitlyn…” she said, exasperated.
“No, Emily, seriously. You didn’t think how shitty that was? You didn’t think maybe I was going to fucking grow more attached to you if you slept with me? That my feelings might intensify before you dumped me?”
“I mean, I thought my feelings might intensify… but it’s not like it was your first time. I didn’t really think it would have a very big effect on you or anything.”
“Of course not,” I said bitterly, “because you didn’t think about me at all, did you? I barely crossed your mind. God, this is so fucking unbelievable.” I stood up off her bed.
“Kaitlyn, wait!” she begged, as she grabbed my hand. “Please try to understand.”
“Oh, I do,” I assured her. “I understand completely. You just worry about school, Emily.”