“Can’t wait. I love you, too.”
“Goodbye, amor.”
“Bye, baby girl.”
Ending the call, I opted to scroll through all the previous very special pictures to deal with my hard-on before getting a jump on a night packed to the gills with studying.
Isla warned me not to study too hard, but I rarely listened to her regarding that. And this last round of mid-terms of my senior year was going to be a beast, so I studied like a mother fucker until all the words on the pages started to blend together.
I ultimately passed out at my desk and woke up the following morning at around 8:15 with paper stuck to my face.
My first exam of the day was in only fifteen minutes, and cue freaking the fuck out.
I leaped out of my chair and paused only long enough to grab a handful of pens and pencils before I darted out of the room and sprinted back across the street to the campus.
It was between my second and third exams that I realized I left my phone in my room, but it—and all of Isla’s delicious, special pictures—were just going to have to wait.
By the end of the day, I was starving and exhausted, but I was done for the rest of the week, and that meant a mother fucking nap of epic proportions. At least, it meant a nap after I enjoyed the pictures.
When I finally got back to my room, I checked my phone and saw nothing from Isla, which was uncharacteristic, but not entirely alarming or surprising. It was still early in New York, and she’d gone to a party the night before. She might have been out late the night before and was too tired to pose for provocative selfies when she got home, and she was probably still sleeping. So, I went to sleep, too.
But when I woke up… still nothing from her.
I called her, but it went straight to voicemail, which was also a little weird, but no cause for serious alarm. After all, even with as much as I missed her constantly, I wouldn’t ever have described myself as clingy, and neither would she.
Malachi Sterling: hey baby girl, call me when you get a chance. Love you. xx
I didn’t hear from her for the rest of the day. Her phone kept going to voicemail. I kept leaving messages.
Malachi Sterling: Isla, I’m starting to worry a little. Call me when you can. I love you.
It wasn’t until I woke up on Sunday morning that I received a reply. I squinted through the sleep in my eyes at the message preview on the screen.
Isla Reyes: sorry babe. I got rly rly busy over the weekend but here’s a pic to make it up to u.
I smiled at her use of the word babe. She never called me babe, and the contrast to all the amors and cariños was cute.
Upon opening the message, however, all the cute of it went up like mother fucking ball of flames.
There was a thread of several messages sent in hasty, rapid-fire succession. And attached to the first one was a filthy fucking photo. But this filthy fucking photo was unlike all the previous ones because it wasn’t a selfie Isla had taken of herself.
Someone else took this photo. And she wasn’t alone in it.
It looked like a screenshot from a fucking porno.
Isla, completely naked, on a bed, with two random guys.
One gripping her ass while he fucked her from behind, and one in front of her, fisting her hair while she sucked his cock.
My veins flushed with ice, and my gut bottomed out, and there was no way.
There was no fucking way.
There was no fucking way that was my Isla doing that with guys who weren’t me.
There had to be an explanation.
And right below the first message were the rest of the messages, and therein was the explanation.
Isla Reyes: oh shit
Isla Reyes: fuck i didnt mean to send that one
Isla Reyes: i can xplain babe
Isla Reyes: listen babe i hate that u found out this way but heres the thing
Isla Reyes: i just didnt know how to tell u any of this and im sorry this is how it came out
Isla Reyes: im just realizing that ive missed out on a lot of life experiences by only being w/ u my whole fucking life and i need the chance to see whats out there
Isla Reyes: i didnt know how to tell u and i was going to talk to u during the break
Isla Reyes: i already fucked up by sending that by accident but tbh its necessary
Isla Reyes: i dont want to lie to u anymore so there it is
Isla Reyes: i know ur mad at me and u can be mad. thats fair but i need my freedom
Isla Reyes: i need my freedom. i dont want to cause problems w/ our families and i think it would be best if we just didnt talk after this
Isla Reyes: if u rly love me like u say u do youll let me go and not try to start shit w/ me over this
Isla Reyes: i cant do it anymore babe. this is just how i need it to be
Isla Reyes: im turning my phone off
Isla Reyes: dont call. itll be easier this way for both of us
Like mother fucking hell, I wasn’t going to call.
And I called, and I called, and I called.
But just like she said, her phone was off, and all I got was her voicemail.
“Isla,” I wheezed into the phone, lightheaded and sick to my fucking stomach, “what the fuck… what the fuck… what the actual fuck is going on? This doesn’t even make sense. Who the hell are you right now? You can’t drop a bomb on me and then just turn off your fucking phone!”
I hung up and pitched the phone against the mattress as I paced furiously in circles around my dorm, sweating like a mother fucker and swallowing the urge to retch.
But, no. It didn’t make sense. And I just needed to talk to her, and there had to be a better explanation than just I need my freedom to see what’s out there.
“Isla,” I tried again, desperation strangling my throat with tears that threatened, “you have to call me. We have to talk about this. I will not believe any of this if you don’t fucking call me! If you fucked up and made a mistake, we can work through it. You don’t have to throw away our entire fucking lives over one stupid mistake! It’s not worth it! Nearly two decades of our entire lives are not worth throwing away just because you did some stupid, meaningless shit! I’m not letting you off the hook for this, and you’re not going to fucking hide from me just because you’re scared to face what you did! We can fix this, but we can’t fix anything if you don’t call me!”
But she never did.
She never turned her phone back on. She never replied to my messages. And the longer she was silent, the more my disbelief shifted to rage, and then rage shifted to total numbness.
I don’t even remember the last month of classes.
I didn’t even show up for graduation.
My parents obviously noticed that, and that’s when I had to explain to them that sweet little Isla, whom we’d all known and loved our entire lives, had somehow secretly transformed into a horrifying alternate version of herself and had done the unthinkable. They didn’t even believe me at first. But after I showed the messages to Philipp, and he vouched for what Isla did, they finally resigned to the fact that our collective relationship with the Reyes family was likely over by extension.
A week or so after graduation, I bought a one-way plane ticket to Australia. And from there, I got on a smaller plane to New Zealand, made my way to Fiordland, found a remote, private cabin in Milton Sound, and that became my home for a year.
The first night in the cabin, I got drunk on a bottle of very fine single malt scotch and passed out on the living room rug. The second night, I lit up some very fine cannabis, lay on a blanket spread out on the stony shore next to my cabin, stared at the sun setting behind the mountains and over the water, watched the stars come into view, got high as fuck, and cried like a fucking baby.