He’s the only person I’ve ever let past my defenses, fully, and the only one who has ever touched my body. We’ve been together for seven years. And though I know this has been coming for far too long, it feels like we were always cheating death. Like if we just stayed one step ahead, told ourselves one more lie, that everything would resolve itself and we’d put another Band-Aid on the bullet holes we created.
But Callum is letting us bleed out, he’s finally calling our time of death.
“No, Bevan, we won’t. I’m moving out, and once the fall semester starts, I’m going to be living somewhere else.”
I think this is more shocking than the breakup, because I physically recoil. “But we live here. This is where you live.”
I can’t compute that he won’t be one of the roommates in this house. The six of us, that’s how it’s always been. Since freshman year of college we’ve traveled in a pack, and as soon as we could clear it with Talcott, our university, we moved off campus into this rundown mansion.
“We both need to move on, not see each other for a while. I can’t …” His voice breaks, and he blinks away, looking in the other direction.
I realize he’s about to cry. I’ve seen it only a couple of times in our history, but the grief and sadness blanket the room like a blizzard wiping everything else away. While I’m over here falling apart, I realize Callum has already amputated me from himself. He’s mourning, that’s what this is. It’s heartbreak, but there is something more. We’re as intertwined as it gets, two people who shared organs and are now trying to extricate them. I gave him my heart, and he gave me his. Now, he’s asking for it back.
Or worse, he’s taking it without even asking.
Callum sniffs. “I’ve loved you as hard as I possibly can, and it’s never been enough. You have things you need to come to terms with, Bevan, whether you want to admit them or not. I’ll love you forever, probably until the day I die. I’m sorry for all the ways I’ve screwed up. I’m sorry for the ways I’ve fought, and for how I treated you when I was angry. But I know I can’t do this anymore. It’s not fair to me. So I’m moving out. Please don’t call me, respect that I don’t want to see you. I hope you can find the happiness I’ve always wanted for you. But I can’t stay to see it.”
With that, he gives me one long, last look and walks out, shutting my door behind him.
I sink from the chair, crumpling to the floor in a ball like he just took all of my sanity and made off. Maybe he did. For as many times as I’d yelled in threat that I would leave him, that I didn’t love him, I never thought I’d see this day.
Callum had done it. He’d really done it.
For the umpteenth time in my life, I wonder how I could have been better, what I could have improved about myself to make him stay.
But just as it’s always been, the most important men in my life abandon me. Even with all the work I put in, with how hard I try to be perfect, they get sick of me and leave.
This time, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to recover and put myself back together again.
1
CALLUM
I read the two emails again, each for the third time now.
Has anyone ever had such good and bad news in their inbox at the exact same time? The terrible confirmation arrived first, that the sublet I’d found for Six Prospect Street couldn’t fill my room and had to drop at the last minute. Then the email I’d been waiting on arrived; that I would be accepted into the physical education program and be able to graduate on time.
Have I ever had such mixed emotions swirling around in my chest? Most definitely, but not since a year and a half ago.
Sighing, I let my head drop into my hands as my elbows perch on the table in the library. I can’t focus on the sublet thing right now. This is the third person who’s dropped out and left me hanging since I started looking last May. They need to fill that room in the house, so I can afford my rent this year and not have to live across the hall from the girl who broke my heart.
Pushing past those thoughts, because I needed the good news, I type an email back to the registrar’s office thanking them. Then I go through my schedule one more time, ensuring all the requirements to graduate with the degree in physical education are put in place.
Hard to believe it’s senior year, a day I’ve been dreading for a lifetime. Because graduating college means the real world, and I’ve always been the kid who thrived in school settings. I was “the man” in high school, knew all the parties that were happening and could hang in any teachers’ class as long as I was joking around. I had a great group of friends who then moved on to college with me at Talcott University. Hell, we all rented said off-campus house together until my high school sweetheart, Bevan, and I broke up.
The last year and a half, I’ve felt like a boat with no anchor. As much as I was floating through life before, with no real motivation or dream, I had my girl. I had our friends. I was the fun-loving jester of the group and I didn’t mind that role at all. I figured I’d land some decent sales job with my gift of gab and charm, then be able to start a life with Bevan. I worked to live, not lived to work.
But then we’d gone to shit, and I was completely adrift. Junior year was fucking miserable for me, and I sunk into a deep depression that I refused to seek help for. I barely saw my friends, and only stayed in school because studying was the one thing I could use as an excuse to be alone, even when I wasn’t really studying.
Until this summer, when I slapped myself out of the funk. Or, well, my summer job did. My mom signed me up to be a camp counselor, more out of the need to get me off my ass than anything else. My two older sisters, Willow and Kiersten, are out of the house and have moved on with their lives. I think my parents weren’t ready to give up being empty-nesters, and they didn’t want me rotting in my bed ruing the day I was born until I had to go back to school.
Mom did me the biggest favor ever, besides giving birth to me. Ew, gross visual, but anyway, she unknowingly gave me the opportunity to see exactly what I wanted to do.
I’d never worked much with kids, but I’ve always been fond of them. During youth sports, I always took my “little” under my wing, and I was a peer counselor in high school. After that first day working at the YMCA camp Mom made me get a job at, one of the program directors told me I’d make a great teacher. As the summer went on, I connected more and more with the kids. Helped them with things beyond learning to do cannon balls and creating the perfect s’more. We talked about what they were afraid of, how they thought they’d be rejected by a girl or a boy, and what their home life was like.
I was never much for homework and studying when I was younger, but I’d play kickball all goddamn day. Getting to do that and being responsible for little human emotions? The seed of an idea grew all summer until it had planted roots, and now, I guess I’m going to be a gym teacher. Degree and all. It will just require me to way overextend myself on credits and nearly kill myself with schoolwork, but I’ll be able to do it, and graduate on time.
I rise to go check out the books I’ll use for my first paper in my developments on education course. Checking my watch, I realize I’ve been here for three hours, which is the most I think I’ve ever been in this library in my four years here.