When I get to the desk, I see a familiar face turn toward me.
Amelie, a close friend from high school and my former roommate, smiles warmly. She also happens to be Bevan’s best friend and took her side in the breakup. Honestly, there wasn’t really a side. But I left the house, and she and Taya, our other roommate/Bevan’s best friend, wouldn’t choose me anyway.
“Hey, Cal.” She’s always been the sweet, kind one out of their little trio. “Taking an education class this semester?”
I try to hold back the defensive sneer that would usually twist my lips. I’ve been the butt of my friends’ jokes for years about how I didn’t have a passion for anything.
“Actually, I got accepted into the physical education program. I can still graduate on time, I’ll just be doing it with a degree that allows me to become a gym teacher.”
“No way! Callum, that is amazing.” She says this a little too enthusiastically, and I feel even more like they thought I was a deadbeat when Bevan and I were together.
“Thanks,” I say with less ego than I possessed when I first told her.
For a long time, I never minded being the lazy one. I didn’t care that I didn’t want to be a lawyer like Bevan or work for the United Nations like Taya. I didn’t care about being a superstar like Gannon. I was happy just being me and settling for a decent life with people I really fucking loved.
When all that disappeared, I kind of had to figure out what I was going to do.
“I meant to ask if you were coming to the screening for Gannon’s first episode? He got the tape early and wants to show us all.” Amelie looks hopeful.
Gannon, one of my best friends from high school. We’d grown closer once we’d come to college, and even roomed together in the dorm’s freshman year. Now he was going to be a big Hollywood star, and had booked a role in a teen drama that was bound to blow up like One Tree Hill. We stayed in touch even after I moved out and had hung out some of this summer when he was back in our hometown of Webton.
“I don’t know …” I’m just trying to look for an excuse.
“Come on, Callum. You’re our friend too, and especially Gannon’s. He really wants you there.” She’s pushing, albeit, gently.
“I’ll think about it.” My stomach grumbles, and all I want to do is go back to my small-ass single apartment and heat up the pizza I know I have in the fridge. “Hey, one more thing?”
“Sure.” Her grin is infectious, and I can’t help but smile back.
“My sublet fell through, so if you know anyone, would you mind talking to them about the room in your house?”
“You mean your house?” she corrects me.
I shake my head. “Not anymore. Just keep an ear to the ground, will you? I have to figure something out, can’t have two places again this year.”
Amelie blinks at me, then opens her mouth like she wants to say more. But I can feel it, this sense that she’s about to bring up Bevan. And I can’t hear that. I’ve essentially blocked my ex-girlfriend from my life. Not because she’s crazy, or stalked me, or any of that insane shit you hear about some people after being dumped.
I wish it were that simple. I had to cut Bevan out like a tumorous organ. Like she was a piece of me I hated to fucking part with, but at the same time, it was killing me. I had to remove a portion of myself to stop the toxicity. I blocked her number. I unfollowed her on social media. I made sure never to venture to the business school on campus, where she took most of her legal studies courses. I put a lot of our mutual friends on mute, so I couldn’t see when they posted pictures of or with her. I didn’t go out, not to parties or restaurants we used to frequent for fear of seeing her.
If I was being honest, my heart is still completely shattered. I might be coping and finding my way when it comes to my future career, but I am in no shape for anything romantic. I don’t think there will ever be a time where I’m not heartbroken and thinking of that launches me into a pit of despair. The thing is, I tried for years to be enough, to love her hard enough, to make up for the ghosts of her past that I had nothing to do with.
But I was standing in the shadow of much larger issues, and I finally recognized that she’d never move past them.
Amelie is about to bring her up, and I know I have to leave the library this instant.
“Let me know, okay? And maybe I’ll see you at the screening. Text me what day and time.” In my heart, I know I’ll probably back out.
But at least my friend grins and gives me a thumbs-up as I turn to leave the library.
My mission now is to find someone to live in my old room. Because I know more than fucking anyone that if Bevan and I were under the same roof again, it would be World War fucking Three.
And at this point, I’m still too heartbroken and too exhausted to start that battle all over again.
2
BEVAN
“What in the ever-loving hell is this text?”
Taya comes bounding into the kitchen, holding her phone out and directing the question at Amelie.
My two best friends are basically acting like I’m not here, but I have a salad to eat and a case study to memorize, so I’m trying to tune them out.
“Is he being serious or can he really not find someone? Because if he can’t …”
When I look up, Taya is nervously chewing on a fingernail and looking at me.
“You get that text from Callum?” Gannon, Amelie’s boyfriend and one of our roommates, walks into the kitchen without a shirt on.
The two of them have been besties since grade school, but Am had secretly crushed on him forever. After he got his big break on a reality show promising another girl he would marry her, their relationship blew up. He finally admitted he’s always loved Am, and they rode off into the sunset. Well, sort of. They still live in this grungy college house with the rest of us, they’re just having more sex.
“Just because you’re a big star now doesn’t mean the no-nakedness rule doesn’t apply,” I grumble. But then my brain backtracks. “Wait, you’re all in a group chat with Callum?”
Taya and Amelie immediately flash me looks that say they’ve been caught red-handed.
“Well, you know we just check in from time to time …” Taya twists her hands guiltily.
Amelie is making excuses in a rush at the same time as our other best friend. “We just want to make sure he’s okay, he was our friend after all.”
Gannon shrugs, opening the top to a yogurt that I definitely bought. “You’ve always known we stayed friends, so I don’t have to posture around like a sheepish little chicken.”
Amelie scowls at him. “You’ll pay for comparing me to a chicken.”
He walks over to her and scoops her petite body up in one arm, so that he’s carrying her and the yogurt. “Make my day, Ams, tell me how you’ll punish me.”
I roll my eyes. Their love fest is nauseating, but I guess after so many years denying it, I’m happy for them. Taya just smiles in their direction, because she’s got her own happily ever after. Austin, her boyfriend who now works in NYC, lived with us two years ago. It’s how she finally admitted her huge crush on him, since he went to our high school as well. Now, I get to listen to Amelie bumping uglies and Taya breathily having phone sex.