But having your heart broken in the way his had been when he was so young had made enough of an impact that he just wasn't interested in trying again.
Better to protect his heart than allow it to get smashed to smithereens all over again.
While their relationship had been serious back then, they’d been young, so there was no way to know how things would have turned out between them. Teresa had still been in high school when he ended things, he’d only been in his second year of college. Maybe as they got older, they would have found they weren't compatible in an adult relationship.
Only …
It hadn't felt like that would happen.
Young or not, his feelings had been strong back then, and he believed they only would have grown with time.
Of course, they never got the chance to find out.
Now, looking back, with the benefit of age and wisdom, he wondered whether what Teresa had done was just part of experimenting and being a kid. After all, she hadn't been a legal adult at the time, and that time of your life was supposed to be about finding out who you were.
Had he been too harsh, cutting her off without a word?
Ending it was the right thing to do, after all, she’d cheated on him even if she was just experimenting, but he hadn't gone about it in a very mature way. Hadn't even had a confrontation with her.
Embarrassed and devastated, he just got back in his car and drove back to his college. Then he’d blocked her number, blocked her on all social media, and even refused to open the letter she’d sent him about a month later.
He still had that letter. Unopened. Tucked away in the bottom of his underwear drawer back home.
Opening it had never been his intention, and he wasn't sure why he’d kept it, maybe in the hopes that it was the apology he knew she owed him, but now he was wondering whether maybe when he got home, he should pull it out and see what she’d written to him.
It wouldn't change anything, but it would be nice to know she regretted cheating on him.
Or maybe it would change something?
Right now, he wasn't sure.
Everything he’d just read about the girl he used to love with every fiber of his being said she’d turned out to be the woman he knew she would be.
Teresa had taken on a lot of responsibility from the time she was nine years old. Despite not even being in double digits yet, with her father gone and her mother the sole provider for their little family of four, a lot of the responsibilities of caring for the apartment they lived in and her brothers had fallen on her.
Her youngest brother had suffered a stroke shortly after birth and had been left with some permanent disabilities. Caring for him was a big ask, but Teresa had tackled it the same way she approached everything else in life. With compassionate determination. She was a hard worker, organized, and juggled handling school, housework, and her brothers with the skills of someone much older than her tender years.
While her middle brother, two years younger than Teresa, grew angrier with having to help out, his grades slipped, and he started to get in trouble. She worked harder to pick up the slack and show him that he was important, too, just like their little brother was.
Not that it had helped.
By the time he met Teresa when he was sixteen and she was fourteen, her then twelve-year-old brother was progressing up the criminal food chain. Moving on from stealing fromlocal convenience stores to knocking down elderly women and stealing their purses.
In fact, it was because of those crimes that they’d met.
His father was a cop who had arrested Teresa’s brother while they were out having a father-son day. Micah had still been with his father when Teresa brought her youngest brother to the police station to find out what was going on and wait for their mom to show up. The beautiful, strong, intelligent girl had immediately caught his eye, and when her mom had finally arrived to take over, he’d struck up a conversation with her.
Despite their ages, it had been love at first sight as far as he was concerned, and that love had only grown over the three years they dated.
Which was why it had come as such a blow when he drove home to surprise her that Friday night and instead found her on the couch in her family’s living room, naked, with four other guys.
It was such an un-Teresa-like thing to do.
But maybe the stress of having so much on her plate finally caught up with her, and she just buckled beneath it.
Who could blame her?
She was seventeen years old, a senior in high school, but instead of hanging out with her friends she studied, worked a part-time job, did the majority of the cooking, cleaning, and laundry, cared for her thirteen-year-old disabled brother, and tried to watch over her juvenile delinquent fifteen-year-old brother.
