(Were We Ever Meant to Be – Part 7)

Two days later, Kath asked that we not speak over the weekend. Her church had an important Sunday activity, and she needed time alone to think.

I gave her the silence she asked for, but filled it with visions of the life I believed we would finally claim. By then, I understood that Jay was not the greatest obstacle between us. Something far more powerful had already begun calling her back.

Kath called on Sunday night. Her eyes were swollen.

Her laptop was on the study table again, not on the bed. The change was small but deliberate. She had moved our conversation away from the place where we had surrendered to desire, as though furniture and distance could help her recover the boundary we had erased.

“I’m not all right,” she said. “The sermon struck me again.”

She told me that every service since our affair became serious had felt directed at her. Every time we undressed for each other, every time she chose my call over Jay’s, she felt the distance between her desire and her faith widening.

Her Christianity was not a convenient device she discovered at the end of our affair. It had shaped the marriage she chose to repair, the community in which she served, and the understanding of herself she wanted to preserve. Loving me had not erased those commitments. It had divided her against them.

“Doesn’t what we’re doing trouble you?” she asked.

I believed in God, though I was not devout in the way she was. I had asked for forgiveness and understanding, but desire had thrown my conscience aside. All I wanted was Kath.

“We love each other,” I said. “That is what matters.”

“Stop using love to make this right. It isn’t right. Are we supposed to live permanently in sin?”

“Would it be less sinful to remain with people we do not love?”

Kath wiped her eyes. “You keep speaking as if Anna and Jay are merely mistakes standing between two rightful lovers. They are people, Marco. We made promises to them. Our children did not choose this. Love does not make them disappear.”

I had no answer that did not return to what I wanted.

Even as I said it, I heard the convenience in my reasoning.

“It has to end,” she said. “Before Jay, Anna, or anyone else discovers us.”

“Kath—”

“I am not choosing between you and Jay. I am choosing between what is right and what is wrong.”

The sentence was not a denial of her feelings. That was why it hurt. If she had stopped loving me, I could have blamed time or distance. Instead, she was refusing precisely because the love remained powerful enough to destroy what she believed she was called to protect.

There it was: the rival I could not charm, outwait, or defeat.

“We can still be friends,” she continued. “We can exchange messages occasionally, but no more calls.”

“Let me call sometimes.”

“We both know what will happen. If you call, I will block you. If you use your phone, I will block your number. Please help me do this. I have grown used to your presence, and you know how weak I am when it comes to you.”

I had pushed against every boundary she had drawn because I believed persistence was proof of love. Now the only loving act left to me was the one I least wanted to perform: allow the boundary to remain.

“Jay will call soon,” she said. “I asked him to. Instead of talking to you, I should be talking to my husband.”

The words hurt more than I expected.

“Is there anything else you want to say?”

I shook my head.

“Then let me say this one last time. I love you, Marco. But I have to learn to forget you. I hope you understand why.”

“I love you too, Kath.”

“Goodbye. Please try to love Anna. I wish both of you well.”

The screen went dark.

For several minutes, my own reflection remained on the screen. The apartment was unchanged: the cup beside me, the winter lights outside, the empty room waiting for another film or another sleepless night. Yet the space felt altered because I had allowed Kath’s presence to occupy it so completely.

I thought of Anna, who had forgiven betrayals I would have struggled to forgive and still remembered to ask whether I had eaten. I thought of Kenneth, whose failure to answer my call I had dismissed so easily, without considering how much of his life I had already missed. I thought of Jay at sea, trusting that his wife would be there when he called. For the first time since Kath’s birthday, I understood that what we had called our private story had never belonged only to us. We had made it private by pushing everyone else beyond its borders, even though they would have borne the consequences of every choice we made.

I had spent all that time thinking of Jay as my rival. But I had not lost Kath to him. In the end, she had not chosen one man over another.

She had chosen her faith—and the person she still wanted to be.

It was difficult to compete with God.

Against Him, I never had a chance.

Perhaps Kath had been right all along.

Perhaps we were never meant to be.

— END —