Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 79670 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79670 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
I wish I was joking. My sister is hands down the ballsiest woman I know. She’s literally my father but in female form. She doesn’t act; instead she went to law school, and now she’s working on taking over the district attorney’s office in Chicago. “To be honest, I thought if I spoke to her for a week, it would help me make sense of what happened. But instead, it took a while for me to admit that the reason I did it was, well, because I was a selfish asshole who just did it for his friends.” She is about to say something, and I stop her. “Friends I don’t hang around with anymore. It made me so pissed I fell for the bullshit that I did. I was better than that. I am better than that. I grew up in Hollywood, my father told me long before those relationships were not always genuine, but I just thought he was being my dad.” I shake my head laughing, knowing that he was so fucking right but still stubborn enough not to admit it, at least not to him. “I don’t know why it took me so long to see I need someone who will be there to make me a better person and not be the one who will push me to be the man I’m not.” I shrug, thinking of the “friendships” I had, and sadly admit that no one really knew me, the real me. No one but her that is. “Last week, when I left here, I called her, and she told me to make a list of why I thought you should be with me.”
“And?” she asks, and I shake my head and laugh, the nervousness rushing through me at admitting this to her. I don’t know why I was afraid to tell her I have a therapist, especially sharing some of what we discussed with her.
“Well, there wasn’t much in the ‘why you should be with me’ column,” I admit to her. “I mean, I tried list after list and there were a lot of reasons as to why you shouldn’t be with me.” I’m trying to joke about it, but the reality is that the list of cons outweighed the list of pros. “There was just the main one, really.”
“Which was?” she asks. I hold my breath, not sure I should just tell her, but knowing that if I’m fighting for her, I have to leave all the cards on the table.
“That I love you.” She gasps. We never spoke about our feelings when we were together. To be honest, I don’t think I even knew that I loved her back then. It took losing her to know how I felt about her. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but I also know it might be now or never.” I chuckle as the nerves fill my stomach. “I’ll show you the list if you want, and we can go through them one by one.” I run my hand through my hair. “But the bottom line is that I’m madly and wholeheartedly in love with you.” I shrug, the tears stinging my eyes because I want to kiss her so badly, but I’m also scared she isn’t going to see how I’ve changed.
“Romeo,” she says my name softly and I hope it’s not the calm before she tells me to go fuck myself. “Bottom line is, I don’t know if I can ever trust you again.”
“I know,” I say right away, pissed I made her ever doubt us. “Trust me, I know. My therapist kept asking me the whole time, what if she doesn’t accept it?” I swallow down the lump that is forming in my throat. “I’m going to be honest, I refused to go there.”
“You’ve met my family,” she starts. “In my family, there has never been anyone who has been…” She stops talking, and I can see her hands shake as she puts them on her stomach.
“Cheated on.” I say the words for her, and she just nods.
“I’m used to the whole fairy tale,” she explains. I can hear her voice tremble and I take a step to her. When she sat on that couch and rehashed that night, I never went to her, it silently killed me and I won’t do it again. “My mother, God, she had the worst life before my father. My whole life it was about finding someone who would love me like that. And then you broke me.”
“I’m so, so sorry,” I apologize as I hold her face in my hands, making sure I’m looking in her eyes as I say this. “For the rest of my life, that moment in time will be the worst moment of my life. If I could go back and change it, I would in a heartbeat.” My thumbs rub her cheeks as I try to catch her tears. “I know my words mean nothing, and my actions have to speak for themselves.” I swallow down, asking her the biggest question of my life. “Do you think you could give me another chance?”