Because this means he doesn’t want us again. It means I have no shot. It means he really isn’t coming back.
“Remember, you did this. You pushed me to the breaking point, and I broke. I asked you for years to seek help, to get therapy. I’d have gone with you. But you took all of your anger and fear and lashed out at me. This is the result of that. So please, let me move on.”
I’m flabbergasted, unable to speak, and feeling like my lungs won’t function properly. In the almost decade we’ve known each other, I’ve never heard him plead like this. We’ve gotten in so many fights, had so much groveling on both sides, and still, I’ve never heard Callum this desperate to stop whatever was happening between us.
Before I can get another word out, he’s leaving, and I let him. Everything in my body is either singeing hot and tingling, or it’s numb. I feel like I might throw up, or that the world will swallow me whole. I’d pick the second option.
A world in which we are never meant to be together again? Sickly, hot nausea pushes at my throat and then I’m kneeling in the grass, bile working its way up. I vomit while hot tears slide down my cheeks, and none of it has to do with the drinks from the bar.
This is it. I’m truly losing him, and I’m never going to get him back.
6
BEVAN
My fingers drum on the desk, the sound vibrating through my arm.
In front of me, a browser from the on-campus health service is pulled up. And I’m trying to pick a therapist.
Jesus, what the fuck is happening to me? I feel dazed and out of sorts, my entire being repelling against this idea. For so long, I’ve fought this, the idea of talking about what happened in my past. I would rather just plow through with my anger and spite as weapons, giving the world my middle finger and resting bitch face.
But to get the love of my life back, I’m going to have to make a show of good faith. And apparently, talking to someone about how screwed up I am is the ticket.
I am the way that I am because I’ve been unwanted my entire life. From the moment I became a particle, a thought on this earth, there has been someone out there who never wanted me to take a breath at all. Heady shit, that kind of pressure.
That someone is my father. The no-good piece of shit. He met my mother when she was working as a hostess in a fancy restaurant in New York City. And though he’s fifteen years older than her, he somehow convinced her to go out with him. As such things go, he wooed the young, naive woman putting herself through grad school. She fell in love with him and the lavish world he introduced her to. He began providing for her, taking her to exclusive spots and buying her expensive gifts. My mother missed more and more classes until she eventually left her master’s program and decided against getting her MBA.
Until, a year into their relationship, she got pregnant with me. The day he found out I was growing inside her was the day he told her to abort me, then told her about his wife, two sons, and eight-thousand-square-foot house in Connecticut.
Why do I know this? Oh, my mother told me. You see, being abandoned while pregnant and having all the luxury you thought you were about to marry into ripped from you … well, it kind of fucks with you. My father’s actions, demands, and threats hardened my mother, until she was left a shell of the starstruck girl he plucked from that restaurant.
For almost my entire life, since I’ve been able to understand, my mother has drilled two things into my head; take birth control religiously, and never rely on a man for anything. I guess we could also lump in that falling in love would only bring destruction and sadness. She liked to harp on that one a lot.
I mean, I guess on the third count she was right. I’ve been nothing but miserable since Callum dumped me.
But I’m going to lose him. Really, truly lose him. In all this time we’ve been broken up, I never thought it was real. Yes, I’ve been in pain and my heart is broken, but some part of me always assumed we’d get back together.
What I saw at the bar, what he said to me outside … that proves he is moving on. That my window of being able to get him back is slim to none, if it even still exists. I’m in panic mode, ready to do anything to get Callum back. Even if I have to fake it, sit through therapy sessions, and convince some shrink I’m going to get better, I’ll do it.
If I have to show him I’m finally doing what he wanted me to, then I will. Because I have a very real feeling that I’m about to venture into the land of no return. Callum is going out with another girl, the first in his life besides me. That means something.
What if he falls in love? I don’t know how I’ll keep on living.
I guess my mother was right about it all. I should have never fallen in love, because look where it got me. But I’m too weak without him. I don’t know who I am anymore. I need Callum like my next breath. If this is the answer, I’ll bite the bullet and go to a therapist.
Taya races into my room, and I quickly shut my laptop.
“You have to come downstairs. Right. Now.” She sputters, her normally calm personality acting way more like my own at this moment.
“What’s wrong?” I breathe out a bored sigh, because I do not feel like moving.
“Callum is here with boxes. He’s moving back in.”
And … my stomach bottoms out.
7
CALLUM
The last few days have felt like a countdown clock to my death march.
In fact, I think I can hear that grim reaper theme music playing now, or maybe it’s the title song from Jaws. Because as I kick the front door to my old house closed, moving boxes stacked two high in my arms, I feel like I’m about to stroke out.
“Vin Diesel is definitely more badass than John Cena.” I hear Scott argue.
“Dude. Do you see John Cena? He could kick his fucking ass,” Gannon argues back. “But I know for a fact all these guys have stunt doubles.”
“Spare us your expert movie star opinion,” Scott answers.
Wandering into the living room, I maneuver the moving boxes to the side so I can see them. They’re sitting on our couch, the same rickety-ass contraption that many people have probably had sex on and has existed in this house far before we ever lived in it. A Fast and the Furious movie plays on the TV, an old fifty-inch that Taya’s dad loaned us when we all moved in.
It smells like a mix of Amelie’s famous lemon cake and stale beer, which I guess I can appreciate. This place hasn’t changed much at all since I moved out at the end of sophomore year, and there is comfort in that.
“Dude, a little help?” I say to Gannon, who is still arguing over the authenticity of the car chase scenes in the movie.
“Oh shit, didn’t even hear you come in!” He jumps up and takes one of the boxes, setting it on the couch.
“Why do we still have this couch? Didn’t we say we were going to take a black light to it?” I eye it suspiciously.
“Settle our argument. Who is more badass, Vin Diesel or John Cena?” Scott ignores me, still standing there with two huge boxes in my hands, and what I said about the couch.
“Vin Diesel, hands down. Also, John Cena just got there in terms of movies, so he has nothing to back it up.” I shrug, dumping my boxes on the couch.