Free In Too Deep by Michelle Kemper Brownlow

wasn’t skewed by my own weaknesses.
    “So, what now?” she asked as though there was no question in my mind that I was done with Noah.
    “I guess I wait and see if I can trust him again.”
    “What?!” I heard her sheets rustle so I knew she sat up to yell that at me.
    “He came by Saturday afternoon and really opened up to me. He’s devastated, Stacy. He still loves me and says he wants me to give him another chance. I have already started trying to let go. But if he wants to try to work it out, I can’t say no.”
    “You can’t or you won’t?”
    “Both.”
    She sighed and flopped back down. Then silence. Nothing. I hated disappointing people. I just wanted people to be happy with me. Maybe that’s why this hurt so much. Noah was right, I felt it was something I was missing that made him stray. If he had been happy with me, he wouldn’t have gone elsewhere for sex. And I hadn’t heard from him since Saturday afternoon, maybe he wasn’t as devastated as he seemed. Maybe he would be okay without me.
    “Gracie.” Stacy’s voice startled me.
    “What?”
    “I wasn’t going to tell you this because I am so effing pissed at him…”
    “What?” My heart raced. Did I want to know what she was going to say? I didn’t know whether to hold my ears or jump up onto her bed to get a better listen.
    “He called me today.”
    The whole world fell away from me at that moment. My ears got hot, I started to quiver, and I sat up so fast I cracked my head on the bottom of her bunk.
    “Ow. Shit. Well…well? What did he say? You better tell me every word he said and in the exact way he said them!” I wrestled with the sheets and blankets until I was standing, staring straight at her.
    I could see her face in the strips of moonlight coming through our blinds. I was breathless. Every sweet, romantic thing he had ever said to me came rolling back into my mind. My heart puffed up with anticipation. He loved me. He really loved me. He called.
    “He called to check on you. He wanted to make sure you were all right. And…”
    “And?” Tears streamed down my hot cheeks, and my chest heaved. My body hummed. This was my Noah. This was the romantic side no one ever expected. That’s when I realized I still had hope.
    “And he asked if I thought you would forgive him and take him back.”
    I froze. Images of him smiling and us walking on campus laughing and holding hands flooded my brain. I was Alice falling down the rabbit hole of beautiful, happy memories of what we once were. I remembered the shock of our first kiss, the day in his room when he told me he loved me the first time, his tearful goodbye when he left for school, and the night I gave a piece of myself to him that no one else could ever have. And the reason why his cheating hurt so much. The night we made love for the first time, my soul married his. How do you undo that simply and without pain? You can’t. You just can’t. The pain was there as a means to hold us together. I was only a partial person without him. I knew I couldn’t live like that.
    “And you said…”
    “I told him you’d be a fucking idiot to take a piece of shit like him back. That’s what I told him. Then I slammed down the phone and ran up to Jake and Sam’s. That’s when we decided to order out. Don’t tell me you are even considering this! Please. You are so much smarter than that.”
    All of my emotions intertwined, and I couldn’t stand still. I was still in so much pain from his betrayal, but at the same time, I was elated that he was proving he really wanted me back. He really did love me. I didn’t have to say a word, Stacy knew what I was thinking. She grumbled something about spending the semester feeling like she was living a repeat episode of some awful soap opera. But it wouldn’t be like that. Yes, he had to prove himself, and his trustworthiness had to be flawless for it to work. He needed to understand that he was the one responsible for rebuilding my trust