Chapter 76 CHAPTER 079
"Our history didn't end well and I was bitter." Sheryl says, her voice shaky, she looks out the window as Hernandez drives smoothly, following the midnight black car in front of us, expertly weaving through the midday traffic of the city. It is bright outside but in my head, it could be midnight.
"That was over twenty years ago, Sheryl. You cheated on me and you are still mad I didn't take you back?" I ask incredulously. She refuses to look at me.
It is true that I and Sheryl dated for a couple of months during our freshman year in college. It was intense as young love usually was. We were young and wild. She was clingy and needy, the perfect Nineteen year old girlfriend for a twenty year old boy. We believed ourselves to be soulmates.
I don't credit our fallout to just Sheryl alone, I played a part, I have come to accept that over the years. I wasn't in the best of headspace in those days. Maybe I should have listened to her. Maybe I could handled it more maturely than I did. All these years and all these maybes, the fact remains. I turned her away coldly because she hurt me.
"You didn't give me a chance. Even though I gave you multiple. You think I didn't know what went on during those wild parties you went alone with Chris?" Sheryl looks at me with fresh tears streaking down her worn face. She suddenly looks her age, tired and incredibly sad. I don't want to think about how she must be feeling.
Again, I push aside my instinct to be warm and sympathetic towards her. She is at the centre of this whole issue. She does not deserve my empathy.
"Twenty years later and you still won't let this go. You still won't believe me. I wonder if you truly loved me as you claimed if you couldn't even trust me. I don't understand it, Sheryl. You really need absolution that bad? I told you then, I can't believe I am repeating it now. I never cheated on you. I never fucked anyone that wasn't you throughout our relationship.
Not once did I even look at another girl. I was loyal to you, Sheryl. Yes, I drank too much and I got shit faced high a lot, but I never cheated on you. I was teased at those parties for not fucking random girls like all my friends were, but I stayed loyal."
I am breathing hard by the time I finish my monologue. She looks at me, but there is nothing in them, not recognition, not acceptance. I can't believe she just made me repeat this spiel again when she obviously has made up her mind to be the victim. I feel disgusted.
"But Martin told me..." She says, her tone unsure and laced with apprehension. The car turns onto a long stretch of road, soundlessly.
The silence in the car stifles up to me, I try to remember the face. Martin. Then a lightbulb moment sparks in my brain. Martin! Of course, that is who she cheated on me with. Martin who used to be in our friend group but moved on to more dangerous circles after the breakdown from the betrayal. Martin who was killed some months later in a gang mixup fight.
"You chose to believe Martin over me. That is even more disappointing." I shake my head and look away, out the window even though I hate how bright and normal the day seems, when my whole life has just been brought to me in a flash.
The woman I love is at the mercy of a madman and it is all because of me.
"I got pregnant. He refused to take responsibility for it. He broke up with me and took off. I had to leave school. I had to relocate to stay with distant relatives down south. It was a bad time for me. I struggled. It was really hard. I tried to reach you, you were unreachable. You cut me off. Our connection didn't mean anything to you."
"Sheryl, listen to yourself for Christ's sake. Did our connection mean anything to you when you were fucking my friend? Or allowing him get into your head after all my repeated attempts at reassuring you? Did our connection mean shit to you? Because you saw me carrying on with my life, you believed I wasn't affected.
But I was. I sunk deep. It was terrible. I would have drunk myself to death if not for Chris." I snap, I don't want to get angry, but I am edging towards it. She is still as unreasonable as she was back then. I can't believe she is trying to blame me for how her life turned out.
"Our relationship wasn't healthy and it affected me in more ways than I can articulate."
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. She would never be accountable. It is almost comical that all these years later, we are still having this conversation.
"Sheryl, let's go back to why your son is trying to hurt me. He is Martin's, isn't he?"
"Yes. But he doesn't know that. He believes you are his father." She won't meet my eyes. " And I'm going to keep it that way, I don't care what you think or say!"