Pierre, who had done more than any human being to draw her out of the caves of her secret, folded life, now threw her down into deeper recesses of fear and doubt. The fall was greater than she had ever known, because she had ventured so far into emotion and had abandoned herself to it.
—ANAÏS NIN, DELTA OF VENUS
I had been back in Texas for three months when Austin told me that Garrett was engaged. I was stunned and angry. “Engaged?” I cried. “When did that happen? Why didn’t he tell me?” I’d been back to Tulsa five or six times since I left, and I usually saw both Garrett and Austin during those weekends. Garrett never said anything to me about getting engaged.
I knew he was dating, and there wasn’t anything I could say about that. We were in different places in our lives. He was twenty-nine, and he’d been saying for some time that he felt like he needed to get married. Austin called it an early midlife crisis. He said Garrett was worried that the life he’d been raised to see for himself, a life that included a wife and kids and a house with a yard, was slipping away. I was twenty-two, and that was the last thing I wanted at that point in my life. I had made it really clear to Garrett that I was unwilling to make a lifetime commitment to him or anyone else. The thought of marriage terrified me. I wasn’t ready, and I didn’t expect him to wait around forever while I was out catching my dreams. But we were so connected, and he had intentionally kept his big news from me. “He said not to tell you!” Austin said. “But you’re my friend, too, and I thought you should know.” I felt so betrayed.
Austin said he was worried about Garrett. He thought he was acting impulsively and that he would have married whoever came up to bat. He wondered if we should do an intervention, to try to get him to see the error of his ways, but we both agreed that was risky. We didn’t want Garrett to get angry and cut us out of his life.
My bimonthly Tulsa weekend was coming up, and I called Garrett, as usual, to tell him I’d be there. We made arrangements to meet that Saturday night near Oklahoma State University, in Stillwater, a two-hour drive west of Tulsa, where he’d been teaching business classes. It would be just the two of us. I didn’t say anything about Austin’s telling me about the engagement, and he didn’t mention it. He said he couldn’t wait to see me.
My stomach hurt the whole way from Texas to Oklahoma. I arrived in Tulsa late Friday afternoon and settled in with my girlfriend Pam, whom I was staying with. I couldn’t get to sleep that night. “What am I going to say when I see him?” I asked myself as I pulled up the covers and threw them off again. Did I have the right to say anything? Did he have the right not to? Garrett and I had jumped from friendship to romance and back again more times than I could count over the two years we’d known each other. We dated, but it never really felt like a traditional relationship. We enjoyed each other’s company so much and we loved spending time together, but there hadn’t been guidelines or boundaries. If I took a stand now, would it look as if I wanted more? Did I want more? All I knew was I didn’t want to lose him. I knew Garrett and I knew he went into hiding when he was cornered or challenged. What if I confronted him and he walked out of my life? I couldn’t imagine my life without him.
But he’d lied to me. He’d say he didn’t lie because he hadn’t said anything. But it was a lie by omission. Sooner or later, something had to be said. But when, and what? I didn’t know what to do. All the next afternoon I tried to prepare myself for what might happen. The best-case scenario would be if he said something to me before I had to bring it up. “Hey, Hannah! I have good news!” Knowing Garrett the way I did, I couldn’t imagine he’d do that. He hated hurting people, and he knew I’d be hurt that he hadn’t let on how serious his dating relationship had become in a few short months.
It took longer than it should have to get to Stillwater; I dawdled, stopping every fifteen minutes for gas or for water or to use a public restroom. As I was stalling, Garrett was texting me, asking where I was. He was excited to see me. When did I think I’d be there? What was taking so long? The tone of his messages made me angry. What was a man who was engaged doing talking to another girl that way? I put myself in the other girl’s place. It felt bad.
My hair was brushed in long curls, and my makeup was perfect. We met at our favorite place near the college. He hugged me really tight, and we lingered in each other’s arms for a moment. I thought maybe he was holding on because he knew it would be our last time together this way. “How are you?” I said, pulling back and looking up at him. He looked so handsome in his Oxford button-down shirt and khakis, very professorial. I liked that. “You look great!” I said. “And,” he said, “you look beautiful.” What I didn’t say was that I had never seen him looking so dead tired.
Garrett was always telling me how pretty I was and how brilliant I was. I loved that about him. He seemed so proud of me. I wasn’t used to that. “I’ve missed you,” I said. “Me, too,” he said. We talked about many things over the next hour or so. Movies and books. His doctoral dissertation, his teaching job and how much he loved it. My Teen Mania experiences. We were having such a wonderful time together that I didn’t want anything to change. I wanted to pretend it was last week, before Austin broke the news to me, but I knew I couldn’t do that. “So what’s new with you?” I asked gently, hoping that would open the door for him to tell me he was engaged and, the next minute, hoping he wouldn’t and I could just forget for the night.
Garrett’s dad had been hospitalized a couple of weeks earlier, and he was in bad shape. He’d been working in an oil field when a piece of the machinery toppled, cracking him in the head and causing his brain to swell, and his prognosis wasn’t good. Garrett told me that, during the week, Papa had come to the hospital to pray over his dad. I knew Papa was going to be in town, and had asked him to visit the hospital, but I didn’t know he had. Garrett said he’d sat at his dad’s bedside for hours before Papa got there, and his father had been completely unresponsive, as he had since the accident. That same day, the doctors told the family he might never speak or think again. It was a terrible time for them.
The doctors had barely left the room, Garrett said, when Papa swept in with his powerful presence, laid his hands over his father, and prayed for his full recovery. Garrett, of course, loved Papa. He idolized him, I should say. The man crush, remember? He said the energy in the room was charged. He was watching the scene play out, and he’d been shocked to see his father’s eyes flutter open and widen, as he looked straight at Papa. His father closed his eyes again, but that had been the first and only time he’d reacted to anything since he was injured. I got chills when he told me the story.
When he finished talking, he leaned in to kiss me, but I pulled back. “What’s wrong?” he asked. I didn’t respond, and he seemed puzzled. He pulled me closer, and I turned my face away, wondering whether it was time to say something. I know what he was thinking. He thought I was toying with him again. He’d accused me of doing that in the past. “I know you want me, but you can never have me.” I saw that he was getting impatient with me. His face was flushed red, and he pursed his lips. “Hannah,” he said. “You know what I’m going through with my dad. Why are you . . .”
I touched his arm and looked him in the eyes. “Garrett,” I said, interrupting him. “I’m really sorry about what you’re going through. I’m not playing a game here. There’s nothing I would rather do than kiss you. You know how much I care about you. But you haven’t been honest with me.”
He looked sincerely taken aback. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean your engagement,” I said plaintively.
He leaned back. I knew his instinct was to run away. I desperately wanted to talk it through before he shut down, shut me out, but it was already too late. I could see it in his eyes. He turned away from me, dismissing me. I tried to engage him. “Garrett,” I said, pleading. “If this is the person for you, I support it. I want you to be happy. But why wouldn’t you have given me the respect of telling me? I had to find out from Austin. Do you understand how much that hurt me?”
I felt such a mix of emotions. I wanted to tell him to forget what had just happened. I wished I could have said we could go on being the way we were no matter what else happened. But I also wanted him to honor the commitment he made to someone else, and I wanted to respect his decision enough to hold him to that commitment, as least as it concerned me. I told him I refused to be that second girl people talked about. That girl who had to hide under the bed. I had too much integrity and self-respect to play that role in anyone’s life.
What I didn’t say was that I knew he couldn’t be my friend anymore. His wish had always been that some day I would be ready to share my life with him. He had been biding his time, being my friend, doing things my way, but now his dream of being with me was being replaced with someone else, and I had found out. I wasn’t about to feel responsible for his guilt, and I wasn’t going to play second to anyone. “I’m sorry, Garrett,” I said sadly.
He was hurt and wouldn’t speak. The silence was uncomfortable and then unbearable. I grabbed my bag and said I was leaving and driving back to Tulsa. He didn’t try to stop me. “I’m going to go now, and I’d like to continue this conversation when it’s not the middle of the night and we can be clear-headed,” I said. I searched his face for some sign that he was on the same page as me, that he was willing to talk it out, too. All I saw was sadness. “We’ll talk about this in the morning?” I asked. He shook his head yes, but I wasn’t at all sure he’d call.
While I was still in my car, he texted me. He said he really believed in me and he would be hoping for my dreams to come true and cheering my future from afar. It was a sweet and somber message. I feared it was good-bye and that he was cutting me out of his life. I read it again, and my heart sank. I questioned with regret our conversation but, at the same time, I was glad I had taken a stand. He had to make a choice. But what if he didn’t choose me? We would never have our late-night movies together, or our walks by the river, or our talks in the park. It would really be over. I began to realize just how much I valued him, how much he meant to me.
But I was afraid it was too late.