Everything Changes

building across the street, one leg up as if I’ve been standing there all day, which isn’t true. It’s only been about two hours. I wanted to catch her if she happened to leave early.
    I debated long and hard over whether to come and see her. Maybe she would welcome the closure of seeing me one last time, to spit in my face and tell me what a pathetic excuse for a man I am. But it’s equally possible that she’s already written me off, accepting the admittedly less satisfying option of venting her pain through other channels in favor of never having to cast eyes upon me again. In that case, seeing her now could be detrimental, might set her back, but on the other hand, not seeing her might be unintentionally compounding the hurt, leaving her with the notion that I didn’t even care enough for her as a person to call and apologize. Not that an apology would be worth anything to her at this point, but I at least owe her an explanation, the only problem being that I don’t really have one other than the obvious, that I’ve failed her and betrayed her, and she hardly needs me to point that out.
    And so, with no clear direction in sight, what it came down to was this: I simply had nowhere else to go.
    So here I am, waving tentatively from across the street, and where I expect her eyes to narrow into baleful slits, they grow wide, her hand flying up involuntarily to her lips, which are parted in surprise, and by the time I manage to traverse the busy street, she’s wiping her running mascara with a tissue from her purse. “I’m shaking,” she says.
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take you by surprise,” I say, even though I suppose I probably did.
    “It’s okay,” she says. “Why are you here?”
    “I don’t know. I needed to see you. To tell you how sorry I am about everything. I still can’t believe this all happened.”
    “Trust me, it did,” she says, but strangely, without any malice. “It’s still happening.”
    “I know. I’m sorry.”
    She looks at the bruise on my face, grimacing sympathetically, without a hint of the satisfaction I might have expected. “Daddy really clocked you, didn’t he?”
    I’m staring at the graceful architecture of her face, always so miraculous to me, and only at this moment does the full impact of losing her, of the death of us, finally hit me, and it’s like watching helplessly as your home goes up in flames, with a lifetime’s accumulation of memories inside. “Hope,” I say forlornly.
    “I know,” she says. “Just tell me. Are you with her now?”
    I shake my head. “I’m not with anyone.”
    “Was it going on for a while?”
    “No. That night was the first time.”
    She nods, her eyes once again brimming with tears. “You know what I keep thinking?” she says.
    “What?”
    “I keep thinking that whatever happened was just this terrible, momentary lapse, a single instant of insanity because you were scared and anxious. And if my father hadn’t walked in when he did, you would have felt awful about it but ultimately gotten over it, and I never would have known, and we’d have been just fine. And I lie in bed at night, and instead of hating you, I hate my father for walking in like that, for ruining everything. Isn’t that crazy?”
    “I’m so sorry, Hope.”
    She opens up her purse and pulls out a little ring box. “Look,” she says, showing me the ring. “I’ve been carrying it in my bag. And every so often I just slip it back on my finger, and wonder if we haven’t lost all perspective, if this wasn’t just a small incident that got blown out of proportion by all the drama. I mean, imagine if you’d kissed her somewhere else, and then you confessed it to me. I’d be furious, certainly, but I think we’d have gotten past it. So what makes this any different?”
    I can see the desperate invitation in her wet eyes, the burning need for me to breathe life into the idea. I can feel my belly shudder at the possibility that what I’d thought was irretrievably lost might unbelievably be within my grasp, that I might end this day back in her arms, the terrifying desolation of our current circumstances already retreating into the past, shrinking until it disappears.
    “I can’t,” I hear myself say sadly, and Hope looks as surprised as I am. I never trusted that she could love me completely, and only now, as I irrevocably finish us off, does the reality of her love become clear to me, and it feels like I’ve lost her all