Callum sits, and I can tell he’s on the verge of tears. For a guy so cocky, he regularly refers to himself as the “cat’s meow,” I know he’s on the brink of devastation.
Maybe I can see their relationship with more clarity since I, myself, am actually in love in a real way for the first time. Maybe I can view it in the light I see it now because I’m about to lose the person I love, and there isn’t a thing I can do to stop it. Maybe I’m just emotional and selfish.
It’s probably a combination of all three. Taking a deep breath, I begin.
“Callum, you’re like my brother. We’ve been through so much, and I know you inside and out. So right now, I’m not pulling any punches. We both know a lot of the issues in your relationship stem from Bevan. She won’t get the help she needs, she won’t even try to push through her trauma. But if you can’t be there for her, if you can’t weather this storm, then let her go. You’re killing each other. This isn’t healthy, and neither of you deserve it. If you love her, let her go. You are miserable, she’s miserable. And I love her, she’s my best friend. But I’d say the same to her, and I’d tell her that I told you this. Break up. Try to heal. Move on. No one can do this for much longer, it’s toxic.”
He blinks at me, then buries his head in his hands. I watch as his shoulders wrack with sobs, and I just want to lie down on the floor and weep from all the heartbreak in the room.
“I love her. I don’t know how to stop doing that. And at the same time, I don’t want to fucking love her. I hate it. I don’t want to.”
His voice breaks, and I see the tears leaking from his eyes.
My heart is already smashed to smithereens from what I’m going through with Austin, and now those smithereens just crush into dust. It’s plain to see that he’s so madly in love with her that the thought of losing her makes him want to lie down and die. It’s written all over his face.
How can loving someone make you so horrifically sad that you hate them and yourself at the same time?
Would Austin and I end up like this if we stay together? Is this what love does? Destroys you until you don’t even recognize yourself or the person your heart has always claimed?
It’s only at this moment that I know we have to address the elephant in the room. We have to talk about whether we’re staying together or breaking apart. Because this limbo is killing me, and if my heart will be broken anyway, I’d rather get the healing started now.
Just like I told Callum, if it is the end for Austin and me, I need to heal. I need to move on.
35
Austin
There is an atomic bomb-sized mushroom cloud of gloom shrouding the house.
Callum is currently on the second floor, packing up his room to move out. Taya and I may be unofficially avoiding each other, but I’ve overheard from conversations and pretty much everyone else that he broke up with Bevan. Apparently, this happens a lot, but him moving out is a fresh hell.
You can feel the sadness looming over every plank and board of this home, and even though I’m in love purgatory, I feel for them. They seemed like they were end game for each other, and now it feels like they’re truly over. I can’t imagine the kind of toll that takes on a person. I can barely eat and sleep with how upset I am that Taya and I are probably done, and we’ve only been seeing each other for a few months. Callum and Bevan have spent a damn near lifetime together compared to us.
A knock comes on the attic door, and I call for whoever it is to come in. I’ve been up here for hours, finalizing the last paper I will ever turn in as a college student. It seems surreal that this part of my life is just about over, and I’ll be moving on to the real world. When you first enter college, you think of this chapter as being so far away. Suddenly, it’s here, and I’m both excited and terrified.
At first, I’m expecting the guest to be Callum, possibly saying goodbye, but instead, Taya opens the door.
She ducks inside, shuffling her feet and looking nervous. It’s been a couple days since we’ve truly talked to each other, and there is some unspoken agreement that we’d stop sleeping in each other’s bed. It’s as if we’re dismantling our relationship piece by piece so it hurts less, but it still feels like someone is stabbing me in the heart every other second.
She’s as beautiful as always, and I remember the first time I ever saw her in the house. The same shy smile parts her lips, as if there is a secret language she speaks that only I might know; we just haven’t shared it yet. Her velvet smooth skin is on display in a white sweatshirt material romper, her arms bare, and the top of her breasts just peeking out of the top. Those long, luscious legs go on for miles, and I wish like hell I could just walk over to her and wrap them around my waist. All of her mocha curls are tied up in some white ribbon at the nape of her neck, and she looks both like the girl-next-door and some kind of porn fantasy come to life.
On the outside, she’s relaxed and in home-mode. But anyone who knows her can read the anxiety and tension vibrating through her gorgeous body.
“Hey.” She finally sighs, and just hearing her voice directed at me for the first time in days soothes me a bit.
“Hey. Come, sit.” I pat the bed from where I sit in my desk chair.
Taya hesitates for a second, unsure, but then goes to rest on the very edge, as if she’s scared to sit any farther onto my bed.
There is a beat, and she assesses me with those beautiful hazel eyes, then speaks. “I could come up here and make small talk. We could keep avoiding this. But with what’s happening in the house today, I can’t pretend anymore. I can’t keep acting like this isn’t going on. So … what, um … what is going to happen with us?”
Ah, so she’s finally addressing it. I guess we’re doing this, not skirting around it anymore. Part of me wanted Taya to be the one to bring this up, to show herself and me that if she wants something, she’s going to get it.
I sound like an asshole saying that, but for someone who just told off his entire family to pursue what makes him happy, I need to see that she is also ready to live her life for herself. I only want her to be the best version of herself she can be, and I know she has so much untapped in there that is just waiting to be released.
“I don’t know.” I shake my head because I truly don’t. “I’ve never felt for someone else the things I feel for you. You have to know that. But this move is going to consume me, this job is going to be all-hours, I’m going to push myself so hard …”
“Do I always have to be the one to put myself out there?” She looks up at my ceiling, and I know she’s talking to herself more than I am. “I know it won’t be easy but …”
Is that what she thinks? I could see how the letter makes her feel that way, but my God, I’m the one who went after her. Who had to win her back after I invaded her privacy, after I said dumb shit. In her head, I think Taya still thinks she’s that freshman girl gawking at me instead of the confident, beautiful woman I’ve come to love.
Maybe that’s my fault that she still thinks that. But it would only make this harder if I set the record straight. I need her to hold a little anger toward me, to know that she’s better than what I could give her in these next two years. If that means cutting the chords to my own heart, suffocating my feelings, it’s what I have to do.