Regretting You

by Colleen Hoover

I wonder if humans are the only living creatures that ever feel hollow inside. I don’t understand how my body can be full of everything bodies are full of—bones and muscles and blood and organs—yet my chest sometimes feels vacant, as if someone could scream into my mouth and it would echo inside of me.

Sometimes when we’re alone, he looks at me in a way that makes me feel empty when he looks away.

It’s like my chest has been on a constant search for its missing piece, and Jonah is holding it in his fist.

“Your father is right,” Lexie says. “Only give hot guys rides when I’m with you.”

Sometimes Chris still comes off as the hotheaded teenager he was when I met him. Jonah, however, seems above it. Like it’s a waste of time to try to prove Chris wrong. Maybe that’s another reason I don’t like that Jonah’s back. I don’t like seeing Chris through Jonah’s eyes.

You know I hate college boys. They all smell like beer.”

It’s my birthday, and I’m surrounded by everyone important to me, but for some reason, I feel more alone than I’ve ever felt.

Maybe I’m getting bored. Or worse. Maybe I’m boring.

It takes me a moment, but as soon as I see that it’s an entire bag of watermelon Jolly Ranchers, I want to smile. But I frown, instead. He remembered.

Everyone around me seems to have a purpose, yet I feel like I’ve reached the age of thirty-four and have absolutely no life outside of Clara and Chris.

one. I swear, sometimes I forget who I was or what I loved before I got pregnant with Clara. It’s like the day I found out I was pregnant, I became someone else.

Even last year, I’d been feeling 50unfulfilled. I’m proud of my husband and proud of my daughter, but when I look at myself and my life separate from theirs, there’s very little I can find to be proud of.

“So . . . you like him because he ignores you, eats suckers, and has a weird grandpa?” Aunt Jenny makes a concerned face. “That’s . . . those are weird reasons, Clara.”

“It means people who make mistakes usually learn from them. That doesn’t make them hypocrites. It makes them experienced.”

I liked them because they reminded me of life. How sometimes, it feels like someone is shaking the world around you, and things are flying at you from every direction, but if you wait long enough, everything will start to calm. I liked that feeling of knowing that the storm inside always eventually settles.

This week proved to me that sometimes the storm doesn’t settle. Sometimes the damage is too catastrophic to be repaired.

I like that the thought of us being relatives repulses him. That 101means there’s a chance he’s imagined us together in an entirely different capacity.

I love when the fMC is just as delusional as me

He’s sitting next to the one girl we both know he shouldn’t be sitting next to. And even though it makes me feel guilty, it also makes me feel good.

I’m smiling, but I hate that I’m smiling. It feels weird to smile when I’m so full of sadness, but this is how Miller makes me feel every time I’m around him. He’s the only thing that seems to be able to take my mind off everything, yet he’s the one person I can’t really hang out with.

“Shit. So your mom still has Elijah?” The way Lexie is chewing her gum makes it seem like we’re chatting about going to the mall rather than Jonah possibly abandoning his infant son. “Yep.” Lexie leans against the locker next to me. “That’s not good.” “It’s fine. He’ll probably pick him up today. I think he just needed to catch up on sleep.” Lexie can tell I’m making excuses. She shrugs and pops a bubble with her gum. “Yeah, maybe. But fair warning. My dad has been ‘catching up on sleep’ for thirteen years.”

I do know enough to know that silence is your enemy on dates. You try to fill that silence by asking trivial questions that no one really wants to answer, and then, if you can get past the terrible answers, you might get to make out at the end of the night.

“Earlier, when you called yourself my backup plan, I wanted to laugh. Because if anything, Shelby was my backup plan to you.” A reserved smile spreads across his face. “I’ve had a thing for you for almost three years.”

“I’ve believed in you since the moment I met you. I believe in myself now that I’ve finally left you.”

I tried to ignore it because Jonah and I had never been romantic in any sense. But we had a connection—one Chris and I didn’t even have.

I think it’s time I figure out who I was meant to become before I started living my life for everyone else.

Miller was the opposite. He was so patient, yet in a chaotic way. It was like he’d thought about kissing me so often that he wanted to savor every second of it.

“Let me get this straight. If I like a guy, and he likes me, we have to pretend not to like each other, or we’ll stop liking each other?”

Lexie shrugs. “I’m not picky. I prefer blond men with blue eyes. Someone with a dry sense of humor. A little rude. Hates spending time 176with people. Doesn’t mind a girlfriend who has a shopping addiction and likes to be right about everything. Athletic. Taller than six foot. And Catholic.” I laugh. “You aren’t even Catholic.”

I look at Miller and shake my head. “I’ve been dating you fourteen hours, and you’re already getting me in trouble.”

“I told her he would hate it, and do you know what she said to me?” “What’d she say?” Jonah asks. “She said, ‘You don’t know him like I do.’”

Jonah swallows, and then in a rough whisper he says, “I’ve never hated watermelon Jolly Ranchers. I only saved them because I knew they were your favorite.”

And don’t act like you don’t enjoy how I taste.” I grin. “You do taste pretty good.”

“Okay, then. Clara Grant, will you go to prom with me and have cliché after-prom sex with me?” “I would love to.” Miller grins and kisses me. I kiss him back with a smile, but I can feel part of myself sinking. Aunt Jenny would have loved this story.

We were teenagers. We weren’t in love. What we experienced was attraction, and attraction is confusing, but it’s also not worth uprooting Clara’s life over.

He sits next to me, rather than across from me, and straddles the bench. I like it. I like how much he wants to be near me.

I laugh after swallowing my first bite and then peck him on his cheek. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.” He grins. “Promise?” I nod. Then I shake my head. “It’s second to how you taste after eating suckers.”

“Why is it different with me?” He shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure that out. I just crave you more than I’ve ever craved anything in my life.”

Suffice it to say, we don’t get anything done on the project, but he also stays true to his word and doesn’t even attempt to remove my bra.

“I don’t know if that’s a compliment. It’s kind of pathetic that I’m still the same person I was at seventeen. No education. No work experience. Not a single thing to put on my résumé.”

“I wasn’t talking about your résumé. I’m talking about everything else. Your humor, your compassion, your levelheadedness, your confidence, your discipline.” He pauses for a quick breath, then says, “Your smile.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t expect you to understand. You were never in my shoes. You didn’t have to stand on the sidelines and watch the girl you were in love with build a life with your best friend.” Those words leave me breathless.

“How I felt about you. I could never tell. Sometimes I thought you felt the same way, but I knew you’d never admit it back then because of Jenny. But . . . I need to know. Did you feel what I felt?”

It’s an awakening, but it’s also a death. It’s the realization that I’ve gone my whole life being kissed by the wrong man.

Kissing him last night was one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made, and I knew that before I even let his lips touch mine. Yet still, I did it. I allowed it. And the worst part is I wanted it. I’ve wanted it for a long time. Probably since the day I met him.

I’d been dating Chris for a while at that point, and in all the times he’d touched me while we dated, I had never felt that kind of current pass through me. The kind that not only left you breathless but left you fearing you’d die from lack of oxygen if you didn’t back away. I wanted to slip with Jonah under the water and use his mouth for air.

I stare at the picture. The one of Jonah looking down at me. I finally understand that look in his eyes. It wasn’t attraction or contempt. It’s heartache.

I haven’t searched for that feeling at all. I’ve spent every year of my marriage trying to forget it—attempting to pretend that kind of connection didn’t really exist. Every time I caught myself thinking back on that day, I found things to blame. The heat. The sun. The chlorine in the pool. The alcohol we’d been sneaking from Jonah’s pantry.

He’s looking at me like he was in that picture. Full of heartache. 283 Or maybe this is what Jonah looks like when he loves something so much it hurts.

There’s something about being Jonah’s first choice—maybe even his only choice—that makes every look he gives me and every touch and every word he speaks reach me on a level Chris never could. A level I feel so deep in my soul it makes me ache beneath all the satisfaction his kiss brings.

Jonah is deep inside me when he stops suddenly and pulls back. Our eyes meet, and he smiles. “I’ve only ever wanted to be with you.”