“And…”
“And he could make me do anything he wanted. I hated it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think you want to hear all the details.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Do I really have to answer that?”
I lower my gaze to my tumbler, held tightly between my hands. It’s not easy for me to talk about my brief and disastrous relationship with Mr. Walsh.
“It was something more, I think.”
“Okay.”
“He courted me for an entire semester. He would leave notes in my office, slide them under the door.” I don’t want to smile at the memory, but I can’t help it. “I felt sowanted, you know… I felt like a teenager. That hadn’t happened to me in a long time.”
“How long?”
“I had a boyfriend once. It was pretty serious, even though we were so young. We were at college together.” I take a deep breath, trying to keep the emptiness at bay before it can suck me into its depths. “He asked me to marry him.”
Eric sits in silence, but his breathing is laboured, suffocated.
“Then our parents passed, and Mila and I were left alone. She was going through such a dark time…” I try to retrace the steps of the sadness, bitterness, and loneliness we experienced, but it’s not easy. “She needed constant attention, someone to take care of her. She needed me by her side.”
“And he didn’t stick around?”
I shake my head slowly. “He called off our engagement and moved to another county. They offered him a PhD position in the department of Linguistics and I – we,” I say, correcting myself, “were just baggage he didn’t want to lug around with him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. He wasn’t the right guy for me.”
“Of course he wasn’t.”
“He looked at Mila like she was…” I shake my head, as if that movement were enough to push away the memory of those looks, those glares, the words muttered through gritted teeth. “She’s my family. I’d never have left her behind.”
I look at him. His eyes are glued onto me, dark and intense, as if he wanted to swallow up my past and make it disappear for good.
“I would never do that.”
I’m clear, direct. Firm in my decision the way I was all those years ago. If we need to cast aside pretence tonight, then I have to be completely honest. I don’t know where tonight will take us, and I don’t know what will happen between Mila and Jake, but I know I can never be without my family – without Mila – the way she can never be without me.
Eric rests his hand on my thigh, the way he did tonight at dinner; he slides slowly along the material of my trousers, a light pressure from his thumbs pressing against the muscles in my legs. I know he understands me; that he’s not that kind of guy.
“When Mr. Walsh came into my life, I’d given up on the idea of finding someone one day. But he was so young and so full of life… He made me feel things I never thought I’d feel.”
“What did he make you do, Sean?”
“He was overbearing: someone who sought out your weaknesses so that he could get what he wanted.” I’m not sure I want to share the way I felt, the way I still feel now. But Eric is here, and he seems so genuinely concerned, so invested.
“And I was weak and naïve, and he knew it. He stripped me of all my integrity, my personality. He manipulated me, said things that… That made me feel stupid and useless and then… Then he’d surprise me with these big, romantic gestures. And I fell for it, every time.”
“Is that why you don’t like surprises?”
