Never Again

Part Thirty Six

                “Don’t hide under the blanket!” Jack announced from the doorway. “A moment ago you had all the answers, now you’re hiding?” When nothing happened he added in a slightly softer voice, “Erin, don’t lose your confidence now!”

Erin peeled back the duvet and snuck a peak at him; he looked glorious, stood in the doorway, hands on hips, eyes glittering.  

The situation was too serious for humour, but her actions had given him so much hope. “I refuse to speak to you until you come out from under there! You’d swear I was some ogre or something! Are you scared of me?”

Shaking her head vehemently she moved to sit up in bed, hardly able to concentrate whilst he stood there half naked and looking perfect. She’d never be scared of him, and she knew he’d never do anything to hurt her, well deliberately anyway. It was herself that she didn’t trust, her own reactions that she was scared of.

Finally facing him she sighed, “I’d never be scared of you!”

The words were met with an exhale of mammoth proportions, and Jack visibly relaxed. “It killed a part of me when you left. I came back to find you...the hospital room was empty...I still don’t know why. No one would let me near you...it’s nearly killed me.”

His sadness shocked Erin, and for the first time she saw that this hadn’t been easy for him either. She’d been so absorbed in how wronged she was, and how hard done by she was. At no point had she figured Jack’s feelings into any equation.

                “I wanted to make things easier for you too, believe it or not. I didn’t want to have to deal with us actually parting face to face. It was easier for me when you weren’t there. And I imagined it’d make it easier for you.”

                “Make what easier?”

He seemed genuinely confused, so she explained, “it was easier for me to leave you, than wait for you to leave me.”

He shook his head as though he could barely believe all that he was hearing, “I don’t understand. Why did we have to part at all? We’re good together Erin.”

Erin crossed her legs, looking down at the duvet which she proceeded to weave between her fingers nervously, “you rejected me before Jack, I couldn’t cope with that again, I wanted to be the one to leave, when and how I wanted. I wanted to walk away before I saw that look in your eyes again!”

He stared at her eyes wide, “I have  never rejected you!”

Then he spotted her sad smile he instantly remembered the restaurant, the time he’d abandoned her rather than deal with his growing emotions, she’d told him how hurt she’d felt, but he’d not realised that this was the one moment in their shared past that she remembered more than any other. Those evenings watching TV together, laughing at the same jokes, the meals they’d shared, all the positive times, the times that now made him realise that she was everything he wanted, were all overshadowed in her eyes by that ridiculously stupid moment.

She’d run away to stop that happening again, and he felt devastated that he’d not made her realise that he cared for her. Even his mind tripped over the L word.

                “That meal?”

When she nodded Jack lowered himself to the bed next to her and sighed as she answered. “I didn’t want to see that distaste in your eyes again.”

He was incredulous, “Erin, I could never look at you and see anything negative, you are the best thing that has ever happened to me!”

She wasn’t convinced, “it took the baby to make you come back to me. Without it...”