God Bless This Mess(37)

Because my parents worked in cosmetology with the Paul Mitchell company, and in the hopes of getting an internship for my communications/PR degree, I contacted someone in their corporate PR department in Los Angeles. I sent them a résumé and interviewed on the phone, and they hired me for a summer internship between my junior and senior years.

My dad dropped me off at a tiny studio apartment above a laundromat and a Mediterranean restaurant on Westwood Boulevard, bought me some groceries, and said goodbye. It was the first time I had ever lived on my own more than fifteen minutes from my parents’ house. It was the first time I’d lived in a big city. And I loved it.

I was definitely a little scared at first, but I was super surprised how brave and willing I was to venture off alone in a new place.

I went to work every day in a beautiful office in Century City, and I hung out with people from work sometimes, but I spent most of my free time alone, just exploring the city. I walked Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. I went out to Santa Monica and dipped my toes in the Pacific Ocean. I went hiking. I missed Austin, and I talked to him on the phone a lot, but I was never all that lonely being so far from home. I’ll admit there were times when I was walking around or looking at the sunset when I wished I had someone there to share it with me. But it was the first time I ever felt truly independent, and I liked that feeling.

My internship lasted only two months, and the job didn’t entail much more than pulling product for gifting and clipping articles and mentions from magazines, but toward the end of it I was thinking, Wow, I think I could live here. I could love this life. I love the energy. I love going to work. How much fun would it be to do this all the time?

As soon as I got back to Alabama and back to UA, that new feeling sort of faded away. All of a sudden it seemed like so many of my friends were getting engaged—and I wasn’t. I felt like I’d fallen behind somehow. I was the one who was supposed to get engaged before everybody else, I thought. I’d had a boyfriend from high school right into college!

That feeling of wanting to get engaged, of wanting to go back to “the norm,” the things other girls around me were doing, definitely contributed to my belief that Austin and I were going to get engaged. He felt it too, and toward the end of our senior year, we made plans to go look at rings.

There was one big problem, though: I still had feelings for Brady.

I had talked to Brady off and on. We texted now and then. Our lives had been so entangled, it was hard not to. We had friends in common. We would run into each other around town occasionally. We would wind up being invited to mutual friends’ weddings, so we had to stay cordial. I was up-front with Austin about all of it. I told him whenever we ran into each other, or he texted, and I even told him sometimes that I missed him for one reason or another. I didn’t think I wanted to get back together with him. I just missed him.

But a week before we were going to go look at rings, Austin looked at me and said, “You still love him, don’t you?”

I hesitated just long enough that he knew my answer before I said it.

Austin broke up with me right there. He had poured a year and a half into this relationship, and so had I. He was such a great guy, and I had deep feelings for him. But my old feelings for Brady just wouldn’t go away.

After all the praying I’d done, I believed that the Lord was trying to tell me something.

Oh, my gosh, I thought. I do still love him. So I reached out.

I went to see him, fully convinced that he was the love of my life. Why else would I have these feelings? Why else would I let go of a guy who was so good to me in order to get back together with this boy I had fallen for at first sight, and who had caused me so much heartbreak?

Brady and I got together, and I told him, “I still love you. I haven’t got over you. I just ended this relationship with a person that was great to me, because I haven’t gotten over you.”

I opened up and shared my whole heart with him. Brady told me he’d been on a date recently, but that he wasn’t seeing anybody else. I took that as a good sign. I thought we’d both had a chance to mature a little bit. The timing felt right.

Brady told me it had been hard for him to see me in a serious relationship with somebody else for the last year and a half. He didn’t understand how I was ready to be with somebody that seriously so quickly after our relationship ended. He asked me whether Austin and I had sex, and I told him that we had. Twice. Only twice in a year and a half. I mean, it wasn’t like it was a casual thing. We loved each other. But still, I found myself apologizing to Brady about it. As if I had done something wrong.

Brady said he didn’t like hearing it, but there also wasn’t much he could do about it.

He said he still loved me.

We started kissing, and all of those late-night back-seat feelings came rushing back. We made out . . . and we hooked up. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t feel sure in that moment that we were getting back together. But just a few days later, he sort of mentioned that he’d been on more than “one date” with another girl. Then I found out that he was actually dating this other girl. They were together.

He had lied to me. Again.

I was so angry at him. “I just told you I love you,” I said. “You said you love me, too!”

I felt used.

Then he said something that crushed me.

“I’ll always love you and care for you,” he said, “but, like, I don’t see you as a wife anymore.”