Good and bad I still love you

I wake up startled, and feeling like shit. I'm hot like the heat you feel when you've got a temperature. I guess I know why that night is playing on my mind. I look down and the girl that changed everything is still there.

I lay rigid for a minute. The way I acted it was beyond words, beyond nasty names, beyond making amends. How Rach can bare to even look at me is beyond me.

Taylor's phone is buzzing again, it's like the people around her don't realise she sleeps. They just keep coming for her. It wakes her up.

"Fucks sake" she says cancelling the call without looking.

I chuckle.

"I'm sorry did it wake you" she asks snuggling into my chest.

"Nope it's all good" I tell her.

She pulls me closer to her. Sensing my tension. I smile. It's completely dark in the room and I can feel her perfect body against me.

"Are you okay Matthew?" She asks me.

I wait a little, deliberating.

"You can tell me." She implores me.

"If I tell you, you will run to the hills" I begin

I decide to just come out with it.

"Around a year ago maybe a little bit longer, I was messing around with Rach. And there was an incident that I'm not proud of and it's playing on my mind. I was a complete asshole, beyond belief" I tell her.

"What did you do" she asks me looking up into the dark.

"Rach and I had casual sex at a party and I left her in the morning. She was going on about being on the contraceptive pill, the thing that's in that pamphlet we picked up. Only she had been sick that day because of alcohol and the pill becomes ineffective or some shit if you're ill. And what's worse is she didn't take them the next day because she forgot them. I didn't realise she had been sick or that she forgot to take them" I tell her.

She's silent.

" she found me at Ross' the next night, already moving in on somebody else. She asked me what to to do and I didn't know so I was an absolute selfish asshole. She was not pregnant clearly. Ross was there for her and it wasn't even his fault" I say.

"I think that you should know what kind of person I was. It's literally keeping me up at night that you're going to realise all of this shit and hate me and not want anything to do with me anymore" I say.

***Taylor's POV***

This is just the day/night that keeps on giving really isn't it? If it's not that I might be pregnant then there is another issue to contend with.

I'm still processing what's he's told me. On one hand he's told me, I knew there was some history there with Rach but I couldn't really have known it would have been that.

Quite a few links click into place for me now. I can see why Ross has been acting the way he has and why Matty has not stopped him trying things on with me. I do think Ross actually has been genuinely worried for me.

The one thing I have learnt from my own experience going through this whole thing is that it is not just one persons responsibility to make sure you're both having safe sex. And I think even though he definitely did not deal with that situation correctly he most likely did very much believe she was protected by the pill at the time.

And mostly even though he's been an asshole to somebody else, I can't find it in myself to change any of my feelings for him. It doesn't negate how he treats me, it's doesn't change what we have been through and consequently how I feel about him in my relationship with him.

I kiss him and realise that I've taken a long time to even react. I feel moisture on his face and realise that he has been crying. I've never seen a guy cry, ever. I take my hands and clasp his face in them.

"Matty that doesn't change shit for me okay so sorry you haven't succeeded in making me run off" I tell him.

"Is this all because you didn't wanna meet my mum." I try to make him laugh.

"Look I'm sorry to be such a downer. I feel like I'm constantly one step away from you leaving me because of all of these things. And that's why I was being really stand off-ish about the party and Jay and all of that shit" he says rolling up two cigarettes.

We both light up. This is definitely becoming a habit. Not just the smoking but waking up in the middle of the night with him.

"Is there anything else Matty?" I ask him. I feel like now I want to be sure that this is all of it.

"Apart from being an actual dickhead waste of space until I met you, no. But isn't that enough?" He says.

"Okay, yes you did probably act like an idiot, a complete dickhead even. That's not going to change the way I feel about you. It doesn't change how you have made me feel so secure and loved. It won't change the respect I have for you for being there for me." I say yes I'm being slightly defensive. I cannot lose him, I am just not prepared for that to happen. It's scaring me how he's talking about himself like he's going to be a martyr and save me from this situation by leaving me.

"It's like me saying to you well I did this thing a year ago and it was a really shitty thing to do. And that means even though I haven't been anything but loving towards you, you must think differently about me. Do you see how that's complicated ?" I ask him hoping that I'm making sense.

He contemplates that which means I am getting somewhere.

"Okay I'm going to be so honest here, I don't agree with how you acted of course I don't. That doesn't mean I would leave you. I do feel though that Rach was just as much responsible as you were at making sure she was protected from pregnancy. Drunk or not if you consent to having sex with someone you also consent to the possibility that something else might happen like pregnancy. I know that because that is how I felt when.." I can't finish that sentence just yet.

He looks at me empathetically

"If she told you that she was on the pill and you had reason to believe she was then why would you have questioned that" I say.

He interjects "What I mean is I should have cleared up the mess, even if I didn't feel anything for her it was my job to deal with it. I told her to take the morning after, I think she already had but she wanted a reaction from me" he says.

"What do mean she wanted a reaction" I ask.

"I think because I'm such an asshole she felt that causing a scene was the only way to talk to me, get my reaction. I think she went to the clinic regardless and took the morning after. But I think she just wanted to test what I might say if she cornered me about it. Because she had been through it alone and needed to know she had done the right thing in taking the pill" he says.

"What I'm saying is I had no capacity of feeling. Now I know what it's like to love somebody completely and utterly beyond reason or doubt. I also know how she felt to be let down by that person. And ultimately ditched. I was a horrible person, Taylor" he says resuming his place next to me in bed.

"I do not deserve you" he says to me. Pulling me closer to him again, we've both finished smoking.

I just lay there with him, stroking his face until there are no more tears.

"Honestly Matty you really think I'm going to run away because of that?" I chuckle.

"I love you" I tell him

"Good and bad, I still love you" I say defiantly.