Our Anniversary Trip Was Their Repeat Trip Chapter 07

Our Anniversary Trip Was Their Repeat Trip Chapter 07

I pressed my lips together and gave a self-mocking half-smile. I had said too much.

It was as if I had poured out every grievance all at once.

Ethan looked at me with a heavy, unreadable gaze.

Then he saw how guarded I was and softened his voice.

“I never realized any of that.”

For once, Ethan looked genuinely remorseful.

“I handled it badly.”

He explained that he and Olivia had often driven to California when they were in college.

They had still been deeply in love then, so many of their memories were tied to California. For a while, the place had been special to both of them.

Ethan’s tenth proposal had also happened in California.

Olivia had turned him down again.

So Ethan had angrily suggested that they break up and said he would settle permanently on the East Coast instead of flying out to see her all the time.

Olivia had accepted in a fit of anger, and eight years of love ended that easily.

“We broke up in California, too.”

“By then, we’d been long-distance for years, and our relationship had already become unstable.”

“But because the good and bad parts of our relationship had all happened there, the place had

become tied to everything between us.”

Returning to those familiar places had brought all the memories back. Ethan hadn’t been in a good mood, and his first instinct had been to avoid them.

“I said some harsh things to you because so many old memories came back. I was frustrated and didn’t think about how you felt.”

“After we left California that time, Olivia and I never saw each other again.”

“We ended things too abruptly. There were too many things we never said.”

“I had been angry with her.”

“thought she’d been too selfish in our relationship. From the time we were eighteen, she always did whatever she wanted and expected me to revolve around her. I soothed her, gave in to her, and kept trying to keep her happy.”

Seeing her again brought back two things: the old instinct to take care of her and the nostalgia of realizing how much time had passed and how much had changed.

At the same time, he wanted to look as if he no longer cared, but he was still bitter about all the times Olivia had rejected his proposals. That was why he had seemed so awkward.

All those tangled emotions made him see Olivia and overlook me.

“In Los Angeles, she apologized to me.”

Olivia said she had been too young and self-centered back then, always pushing and provoking him just to prove that he cared about her.

That long-overdue apology finally untangled the resentment Ethan had been holding on to.

“I wasn’t trying to humiliate you.”

“After Olivia said she’d said yes to her new boyfriend’s proposal on the first try, I didn’t want to look as if I’d lost to her again. I wanted to prove that, without her, I had also found someone I could spend the rest of my life with.”

“I’m sorry, Claire. I can make all of this right.”

I didn’t accept or reject his explanation.

“I heard your apology.”

“But no matter how you explain it, doesn’t it still prove that she can move you so easily?”

“I think we should let this go.”

“You’ve said what you wanted to say. Can I leave now?”

Ethan seemed not to have expected me to become so firm and so distant.

He hesitated, then finally let go of my hand.

Feelings weren’t numbers on a financial statement. They couldn’t be calculated with precision.

Ethan rubbed the bridge of his nose. When a message popped up, he saw that a friend had forwarded him a post.

“This sounds a little like you.”

Ethan opened it. The post had been published two years earlier.

The writer said she had finally gotten together with the person she had loved since she was a student, but he had an ex he had dated for years. As an outsider, she had heard at least part of their

dramatic love story.

The writer must have been deeply troubled. She posted updates in the morning, in the afternoon, and sometimes in the middle of the night.