I guess if any one person looked at my life in perspective, it would seem that I had moved on, that I had buried my feelings deep into any girl that would follow me to bed. I tried to, anyway. I had that McCutcheon curse, the curse that Gabe so passive aggressively tried to pound into my skull the day I was supposed to walk down the aisle and make a lifelong commitment to the woman I loved. Make no mistake, I loved her. I loved her so much that I would have sacrificed anything to make her happy. But when I ran into him in the bar, blatantly and unashamedly cheating on his wife, he scared the shit out of me with all the talk of infidelity and the fact that he'd always be this way. And so would I. I let him get into my head and ruin the best day of my life, I let him ruin the rest of my life.

And no one would know that just by looking at me. Every girl I flirted with, every girl I fucked was just a feeble attempt to erase that horrible memory from my brain. Like, if I slept around enough, I would eventually forget her; and as far anyone else was concerned, it was working. But no one knew what I was really thinking, what I was really feeling. Every woman that found herself between my sheets was never good enough; the feel of their bodies could never compare to hers. Her beautiful, long, chocolate waves of hair that I buried myself in as we slept; the sensual caramel hue of her skin that tasted as delicious as it looked; her deep, brown, provocative eyes that could bring me to my knees with just a glance. It was all unmatched by any woman I had ever seen. Every time I was with someone else, all I could think about was her, the way I touched her, the way she responded, the way we were so in sync in every way possible. Emotionally, she had me at a stand still. There wasn't another person on this planet that I connected with like her. In fact, the majority of "relationships" that I'd had were detached and rather unfeeling. They were all just for physical pleasure, but with Carmen, it was just as emotional as it was physical, if not more so.

I hated Gabe for this, refused to take responsibility for the single most horrible mistake I had ever made.

If I could just see her one more time, I'd explain to her what really happened, how I really felt, and that nothing would ever come between us ever again.

That chance would never come, though.

I felt so empty, so alone, without her, unable to fill that space with meaningless hookups, and an overabundance of drugs and alcohol.

Everyone looks at me and they see a player, someone that has a different girl every night, someone that doesn't commit; and that's exactly what I used to be and what I've become once again. You see, without Carmen, I'm lost. There's no other word for it, just "lost". People see what I am and they assume that I'm not capable of loving anything or anyone the way that I should, and they're right in most cases, but not in her case. They think that just because I had the audacity to leave her at the altar, she was nothing more than a notch in my belt. It wasn't audacity that caused me to leave her, it was fear. I was afraid that eventually I would cheat on her, that she'd stop being "the one" for me, that I'd get bored and move on. Even though my feelings for her were honest and pure in their essence, I didn't have enough confidence or trust in myself to believe that it'd always be that way. It wasn't her that I doubted, it was myself.

It was always myself.