Lost to You (Take This Regret 0.5)(23)
Author: A.L. Jackson

I sat up a bit and drew my knees to my chest. I rested one elbow on a knee and propped my head up in my hand. I forced what I was feeling aside. Sarah was always so direct, a good listener filled with even better advice, but her mood rarely fluctuated from her mild manner.

“What is it?”

“You’re going to be an aunt.”

Her news shifted through me, wound with the sadness, affixed as a plaintive smile on my lips. A dense weight welled up inside, filled with both light and heavy, distinct happiness laced with what Christian had left me with. “Oh my gosh, Sarah, I can’t believe you’re going to be a mom. Are you excited?”

She laughed. “Can’t you tell?”

“Yeah…I think I can. So…” I hesitated to ask. They’d planned on waiting, establishing their lives and their home before they had children.

I think she expected my unvoiced question. “It was totally an accident, but after the shock wore off, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.” Her sigh was tangible in the distance. Again, I pictured her in her kitchen, but this time with a tender hand resting on her belly.

“I’m so happy for you.” I was doing my best at hiding my own turmoil. I didn’t want to taint this moment. Compared to this news, my issues were so trivial. Still, I couldn’t let them go.

“What’s going on, Liz?”

“Nothing.” I rushed out the obvious lie.

“Don’t give me that. You think I can’t tell when you’re upset?”

My entire family was close, Sarah and I especially so. Five years older than me, she’d always been my confidant, my defender. She was the one to softly assert she was concerned I might be making a mistake, encouraging me to slow down and think it through, and my biggest supporter whenever I hesitated to try, afraid I would fail.

A strangled groan rose up from my mouth. I flopped with my back to the bed, rubbing my eye with the heel of my hand.

“This has to be about a boy… Only a man can make that sound come from a woman.” I knew this was Sarah’s attempt at lightening the mood while broaching the subject, but it felt too heavy, too much.

“Is it that Christian guy who always seems to be invading your space every time I talk to you?”

I bit my lip as unwelcomed tears filled my eyes.

“Liz?”

I tried to hold it back, but the choked sob that rumbled up and tore from my throat was uncontainable. It hurt as it scraped through.

Silence stretched across the line before Sarah finally spoke. “Oh, God, Liz…you’re in love with him.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. She had this intuition about her. She’d been the one who’d seen through my feelings for Ryan, that as much as I illusioned myself with being in love with him, I never had been. I wasn’t surprised she could easily tell when I really was.

Hearing those words voiced aloud ripped and tugged, taunted me for being such a fool. I couldn’t blame Christian. This was all on me. From the start, I’d known what he was like, yet I’d pushed it, invited him into my life. As if that smile wouldn’t worm its way into my heart. That the kindness I saw in the depths of those blue eyes wasn’t going to turn me inside out. Change everything—who I was and what I wanted.

And what I wanted was him.

She remained silent for a few minutes and just let me cry.

“Liz.” Sympathy rolled from my sister’s tongue, quiet understanding. “I hate that you’re all the way over there and I can’t hug you right now.”

A small jolt of laughter made its way through my tears. “I wish you were here, too. I miss you so much.”

Sniffling, I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. I rolled to my side and hugged my knees to my chest, held the phone closer to my ear.

“So you want to tell me about it?”

“I don’t even know, Sarah. We were just supposed to be friends, and then it was like one day passed, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t live without him. Everything was fine until he asked me to go to this party with him last night. I should have known better than to go.” I sucked in a breath. “I hated it there, Sarah. I mean, I can’t tell you how it felt to stand in that room and know he’s been with half the girls there. I went to the restroom, and when I came out, some girl was rubbing all over him. I couldn’t stand it, so I took off without telling him.”

“Liz.” Disapproval clouded her voice.

“I know, I know. It wasn’t cool, but I just couldn’t, Sarah. Then he showed up here at my place. The next thing I knew we were kissing, and then everything escalated out of control so fast.” My head spun as I remembered the fear on Christian’s face when I asked him what it was he wanted, the way he’d stepped back to put distance between us because he no longer wanted to be in my space. Because he didn’t know. Who would have thought that word could be sharper than a knife. “I don’t know how I was strong enough to stop, but I was. Those words came so close to leaving my mouth.” The pain amplified, squeezing my chest. “I think he knew it…somehow saw it in me.”

“And what does he feel?”

“I don’t think he knows beyond the fact that he wants to have sex with me. He made that much clear.” Anger slipped into my voice. I couldn’t tell if it was directed at Christian or myself. Like I didn’t already know that the first time I met him.

“Elizabeth, he’s eighteen. Of course he wants to have sex with you. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you.”

“But that’s the thing, Sarah, I tried to force it out of him, to make him tell me what he feels. He said he didn’t know… Then he said he was sorry and left. And that was it. He keeps calling and saying he’s sorry about what happened last night, and asking if we can just go back to the way we were before. He has to know that’s not going to happen.”

“I’m sorry, Liz. But you are both so young.”

I grunted. This was coming from my sister who’d been with the guy she ended up marrying since she was seventeen. I knew she was just being rational, that we were young. It was true. But she knew me better than that. Age had nothing to do with it, although I could only assume it did for Christian. Selfishness like that wasn’t easily shed, maturity hard to come by when everything had always been placed at his feet.

“Do you think I wanted to fall in love with him?”

Sarah’s voice was soft. “No, and I wasn’t minimizing what you feel, Liz. You just worked so hard to make it to New York, and I hate to see you waste it being hung up on a guy like that. He’s obviously kind of a jerk.”