He Thought I Was Being Good, I Was Just Getting Ready to leave Chapter 14

He Thought I Was Being Good, I Was Just Getting Ready to leave Chapter 14

After that day, Harrison didn’t leave.

He bought an apartment nearby without even thinking about it, furnished, move-in ready. Whenever he wasn’t there, he was at our family’s diner.

Sometimes he’d run into Nathan.

Nathan didn’t have Harrison’s easy confidence. After a few run-ins, he gradually stopped coming around.

The day Nathan flew back overseas, I took him out for a goodbye dinner.

He drank a lot. He kept looking at me. “If I’d come a little earlier. Or a little later. Either would’ve been fine. But now is just…”

Yeah. Now was just now.

I hadn’t let go completely. I was still stuck in the mud, still trying to pull myself out on my own.

I raised my glass. “See you around, Nathan.”

Harrison had always been smooth with words. After days of getting nothing from me, he changed tactics and started working on my mom instead.

A man born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and there he was, serving tables and ringing up checks at a small-town diner.

Some of the customers were difficult. Several times I saw his jaw clench like he was about to explode. But he held it in.

He’s tall and broad, crammed into that tiny diner. And he wouldn’t leave no matter what.

My mom started to crack under the pressure.

One day, she pulled me aside and asked if I’d consider getting back together with him.

I didn’t stop what I was doing. “Mom. He cheated on me. You know that.”

“But he apologized. Look at him, he’s a rich boy, and he’s been down on his knees doing all this dirty work, begging you to forgive him.”

“So what if he cheated? He’s sorry now. He knows he was wrong. He won’t do it again.”

“Besides, what man doesn’t cheat? If they don’t cheat before marriage, they will after. Your father was so reliable, and he still cheated.”

“Any man you pick is going to cheat on you eventually. So my opinion? You might as well pick a rich one. At least you’ll get paid well for it. Isn’t that better than ending up with some average guy?”

I asked her quietly, “And then what? Get married and spend my whole life begging the way you used to beg Dad?”

“You don’t know this, but I learned from you. I learned to be pathetic and beg a man to stay. That’s what I did for years. I forgave him again and again. And he still cheated again and again.”

“Is this what you want for me, Mom? To marry a man who won’t be faithful. To have a child no one wants. To be whispered about for the rest of my life.”

My dad cheated when I was six years old. I watched my mom forgive him over and over.

If he hadn’t been hit by a car on his way to see his mistress, she’d probably still be forgiving him.

I never said these things to her face. But now, I didn’t hold back.

The second I said it, I regretted it. I wiped my tears. “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean…”

She was holding her apron, staring at me. Then she turned and walked into her bedroom.

That night, my door creaked open. A rough, calloused hand touched my face in the dark.

I heard her whisper, her voice cracking. “I’m sorry, Ella. I shouldn’t have said those things today.”

I didn’t answer. In the darkness, my tears soaked into my pillow.

A mother and daughter are like vines strangling a tree. Tangled. Dependent. Loving and hating in equal measure.

Sometimes it feels like a knot you can never untie. You wear each other down in silence.

But most of the time, after the cruel words are spoken, the regret comes instantly.