by J. C. Hayden
“And after today I know you’ll never be able to…” I shook my head again, fighting the tears, fighting the feelings, fighting everything. “We said no strings,” I said, my voice reaching a kind of calm as I met his eyes. “I agreed to it, but now I can’t… I can’t separate it anymore, and I know you don’t want more than a fuck, so I can’t do this.”
I finished, and I stared at Brody as a myriad of emotions crossed over his face, most of which I couldn’t read. And I waited, probably foolishly.
I waited for him to say that I was wrong, that there were feelings, that he felt them, that no strings was stupid, that he wanted more, just like I did, that he was sorry for earlier, that he was just afraid of the feelings he was trying to avoid. I waited for so much, so many words, so many feelings.
And they never came.
I shook my head, not even feeling sad, just feeling nothing. Feeling empty. I turned to go, still probably waiting.
When I reached the door of the planetarium, I turned the knob so it would lock automatically. It was almost out of habit that I did it. Callum and I had done it so much over the years.
My back was to him as I said, “I’ll see you around,” and then I pushed through the door with what was left of my broken and shattered heart.
Chapter FOURTEEN
The following weekend was the annual end-of-term spring festival—my final spring festival as a Klein student, I thought sadly as I walked toward the town square with Callum at my side.
We walked in relative silence—the comfortable silence of old friends. Callum occasionally remarked on the weather or what booths and stalls he wants to stop at and what he hoped to buy while I just listened, trying to feel happy again.
As we walked along, my thoughts mostly strayed to Brody and what had happened last weekend.
If I had been going through the five stages of grief, I would have been somewhere in between anger and bargaining.
The primary emotion was anger. How dare he. How dare he treat me like he had after the soccer match, first and foremost. I had been so worried about how things might be between us in public. That had been one of the things I had worried about from the very beginning. The best part about Brody was how incredibly laid back and go-with-the-flow he was. He would smile at me casually when we saw each other on campus, make small talk with me when he saw me with my friends, never making anything between us awkward or uncomfortable, never making me feel like I had to outright lie to my friends, but most of all making me feel silly for even worrying about it in the first place. We were adults, just like Brody had said when we’d decided to continue sleeping together. We could handle this.
I knew we weren’t an item. I knew that I wasn’t his girlfriend and that things between us were casual. That was the deal we had made. But what wasn’t apart of the deal was Brody openly flaunting other girls he had fucked or was fucking or would fuck in my face. I had assumed that our conversation via text weeks ago about not being with other people was serious. I thought we were on the same page. And even if we hadn’t had the conversation, I didn’t think it was crazy or unreasonable to think that he wouldn’t sleep with other people or pursue other people when he was actively sleeping with and pursuing me.
Maybe he wasn’t sleeping with Tabitha. Maybe he never had and maybe he never would, but that thought made me even angrier. Because if he didn’t have some kind of relationship with her, why was he making an effort to throw her in my face? Why was he making an effort to intentionally hurt me?
Maybe he didn’t know—and this was where the bargaining crept up—maybe at the time he hadn’t known that it would hurt me. We had never discussed our no-strings fling out loud since that first night together. Maybe we should’ve had the exclusivity conversation in person, rather than via text right before we both masturbated while on the phone with each other.
Good God.
Obviously we should’ve been more explicit about it, because even though we talked about so much when we spent time together, the one thing we never discussed was us. So many times I had just wanted to burst—“What is this? What are we doing? How long will this last? When you look at me like that, what does it mean?”—but we never had. Maybe because we’d said all we needed about keeping it casual, but I knew that it was really because I was too afraid of what he might say, what he might do.
And then I got angry again.
Because even if he didn’t know, he should have. He should have at least known that what he was doing might hurt me because even if we weren’t in a relationship, he didn’t have to act so coldly toward me, so brazenly callous, wrapping his arm around that girl and essentially laughing right in my face.
And then, after that, the nerve to follow me on campus, invade my privacy in the planetarium and… well… what had happened in the planetarium wasn’t entirely his fault, and why didn’t I take the opportunity then to tell him how I felt? Instead, I’d fucked him and then told him right after that I couldn’t separate the feelings anymore. I should have said more, said what exactly those feelings were, told him then that it was more than casual to me, that he meant so much more to me than keeping our relationship secret in his apartment, that I was worth more than that, that we were worth more, that I wanted more, that I wanted him, that I didn’t want us to end after the school year ended, that the time we’d had together wasn’t enough! I wanted him to know—
“Catrina?”
I jerked out of my thoughts and was shocked to find that we’d made it to the town square already, and Callum was looking at me expectantly.
“What?”
“I asked if your dad was working at Murphys’ Musings today.”
“Oh.” Was he? “I’m not sure.” God, I hoped so. Because all of the sudden what I really needed, even if I couldn’t really admit it, was my parents. Even if I couldn’t unload everything on them, I just wanted to see them and take comfort in their presence, in their love for me, hear my dad’s voice, smell my mom’s familiar scent. God, I really just wanted to go home.
Murphys’ Musings was a shop that two of my dad’s older brothers had opened almost thirty years ago. It was sort of a novelty store that sold prank stuff, gag gifts, specialty items from nerdy movies and TV shows, and other silly odds and ends. It was basically like a Spencer’s without the sex toys, and it was home.
My dad had started working at the shop after one of his brothers died suddenly in a car accident before I was even born. There was a shop near the Klein campus, another one in my home town, and one in the city, and my uncle and my dad rotated which ones they worked at. But the one here, the one by Klein, that was home.
My dad had worked primarily out of the Klein shop and had often brought me along. I’d fallen in love with the school, the town, and the campus those summers I’d spent at the shop with him.
“Well, let’s go check,” Callum was saying. “I could use some fake vomit.” I shot him a look and he was grinning. “You know, just in case the finals aren’t going so well and I need an excuse to get out quickly.”
I rolled my eyes, fighting a smile. “Don’t even think about it, Jeffries.”
We walked together toward my uncle and father’s shop. I was lighting up with the feeling of relief, knowing that I might see my father and getting excited at the prospect of just getting a hug from someone I knew cared about me and would never cause me pain.
But when we got there, I didn’t, in fact, see my father, but my Uncle Stefan, who I was just about as happy to see as I would’ve been to see my dad.
“Kitty Cat!” Stefan hugged me tightly when he saw me, and I hugged him back even tighter, almost not wanting to let go, holding on for maybe a second or two longer than was strictly necessary. “Cal,” he said when we broke apart, giving Callum a firm pat on the shoulder. “Good to see you.” He looked back at me. “Where are your other two partners in crime?”
I smiled, nearly wanting to cry I was so happy to have my uncle standing in front of me, red hair streaked with gray, big
round red-framed glasses that clashed fantastically with his hair, eyes glowing in my direction, looking just as happy to see me as I felt to see him. “I’m pretty sure they’re both on dates,” I said with a laugh.
“Oh, God,” he said, shaking his head. “I remember those days.”
“Please,” Erika, my aunt and Stefan’s wife came around the corner. “Hi, Catrina,” she said with a smile.
We hugged, and I breathed in her familiar vanilla scent, and then Erika said hello to Callum and turned back to her husband, putting her hand on her hip and flashing him a look.
My aunt was, no other words for it, stunningly beautiful. She had deep dark skin that was completely unmarked and unblemished. Small, slightly upturned eyes that were caramel in color, and a full mouth that she always dressed up with fabulous looking lipsticks. Her hair was in braids and all the braids were then pulled up into an incredibly stylish updo with a colorful, patterned headband wrapped around. She wore a dark blue, long sleeve, cotton dress that looked incredible against her dark skin, and when she smiled her wide white smile, I swear she made the room a little brighter.
For his part, my uncle was pretty good-looking for a man his age. He was tall and lean with dark red hair like almost the entirety of my dad’s side of the family. He was wearing a khaki shirt that said “Murphy’s Musings” in the top corner and dark blue jeans that made him look young and hip. I had no doubt that my cousin, his oldest daughter, picked them out for him.
“Don’t act like you ever went on any dates when you were in college.” Aunt Erika looked at me. “This one was one that couldn’t be tamed.”
I laughed. “Really?” I definitely didn’t imagine my goofy uncle as a lady-killer.
Stefan rolled his eyes and Erika smirked. “Absolutely. Girls were always trying to ask him out but he wouldn’t give them the time of day.”
“That’s because,” Stefan interrupted, looking at Callum as if the two of them were united against Erika and me, “the one girl I wanted wouldn’t give me the time of day.”
“That’s supposed to be me, then?” Erika asked, looking disbelieving.
“Yep,” Stefan said. “She only had eyes for my brother.”
This time it was Erika who rolled her eyes, and then a slow smile crept on her face. “Maybe I was just confusing the two of you.”
My uncle who had passed was my Uncle Stefan’s twin brother. I was so happy that my uncle could laugh and feel joyful at the memory of his brother. There was a time when I was younger when I could remember my mother asking my brother and I not to even mention Uncle Sandy when any of my dad’s other siblings were around.
My dad had three brothers and a sister. His oldest brother was Nate, who lived in upstate New York. Then there was Stefan and his twin brother, the deceased Sandy. And last but not least was my Aunt May, who was married to Uncle Conrad, who were Gabe’s parents.
All four of us laughed and chatted for a bit longer about nothing in particular until eventually customers came over for both of them inquiring about different things in the shop.
Uncle Stefan was about to guide a customer to the trick handcuffs before he turned to me. “I think Roxie is around here somewhere, so keep an eye out.”
I agreed, and then Callum and I went to wander around the store and browse.
I knew this store about as well as I knew my childhood home, maybe even more so. Every time I entered, I was overwhelmed with nostalgia. When I walked through the aisles, it was almost as if I could see the ghost of a skinny little girl with red hair and blue eyes too big for her face, running after a gangly boy with wild black hair, while the faint voice of her mother or father rang out in the distance, telling them to be careful. When I walked to the second floor and saw the area designated for kids, I remembered sitting there with my brother Derek and little black-haired Gabe, playing Connect 4 and Dominoes until our eyes were practically dried out from how tired we were. I remembered spending summers here, gazing out the window and longing for when I’d be like those big kids who went to Klein. I’d been in this shop when I’d broken my first bone. I’d been standing in the alley behind the shop when I’d had my first kiss.
This shop was like home, and I breathed it in, feeling safe and content within its walls.
Callum and I were looking at stands full of magic tricks when Callum moved to stand close to me.
“Catrina.”
I looked up at him and found him staring at magician’s top hat with a frown on his face.
“Are you okay?”
My stomach did a small nervous flip, and I took a breath and counted to two—something my mother had taught me years ago as something to do when you were faced with something unpleasant. “What do you mean?” I replied.
“All week you’ve been…” He looked at me and my stomach flipped again. “Really sad. Do you want to talk about it?”
I looked off to the side, staring at nothing in particular. The truth was that I did want to talk about how I was feeling. Desperately. But I just felt like I couldn’t talk to Callum about it, not this. It was strange because I couldn’t remember there ever being a time when I didn’t tell Callum something that was happening in my life, and I couldn’t remember him ever keeping anything from me, that I knew of, of course. We told each other everything, but I just didn’t think I could tell him this. So instead I settled for telling a couple half-truths.
“I honestly… I don’t even know why I’m sad,” I said, still looking off to the side. And it was true. I had known that Brody and I would eventually come to an end, but I couldn’t control my feelings of heartache and devastation, not when I felt the way I felt for him. “I’ve just felt really… lost lately. I don’t know.”
“Before this week, though,” Callum said, sounding like he was working out what he wanted to say as he spoke. “You were so… different. I don’t know, you just seemed different. I mean, I wasn’t seeing much of you, but when I did… I don’t even know what label to put on it.” I turned to look at him and saw him fidgeting with a trick magician’s wand that kept making farting noises when he moved it. It almost made me laugh despite the seriousness of our conversation.
“But then all of the sudden this week everything changed.”
“I haven’t been around as much as I should,” I said. Callum looked at me, his eyes just a bit sad. “I’m sorry, Cal.”
“It’s not even that,” he said. He turned more toward me and moved closer so that I had to tilt my head back slightly to meet his eyes. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”
I shook a bit. I was afraid that if I went a few more moments, I would unleash everything like an explosion from a volcano, and it would pour all over both of us until we were buried.
But he was one of my best friends in the world, and I desperately needed to work through all my thoughts and feelings. I knew he would listen, but for some reason I just couldn’t. Because I could feel a shift in our relationship. Something had changed over the last month or so, and I couldn’t blame Brody or my relationship with Brody, but something was different. It was holding me back. But I needed—
“Catrina!”
I nearly jumped out of my skin and tore my eyes from Callum when I turned and saw my extremely pregnant cousin waddling toward me.
“Rox!”
I had never been more grateful for my family and their extremely diminished sense of boundaries than in this moment.
Roxanne was gorgeous just like her mom, and even more so at nine months pregnant. She was huge—having twins—and her toffee-colored skin glowed even more than the brightness of the store. Ever since I could remember, Roxanne had always been changing her reddish light brown hair into various hairstyles. Right now, her hair was in numerous long skinny braids down her back, that she flipped over her shoulder when she strode toward me. She was wearing a long floral dress that somehow both matched and clashed with the sleeves of tattoos on each arm.
She looked amazing. And she was smiling widely as she
moved to pull me into an awkward one-armed hug, cursing her unborn babies as she did so.
“I can’t do anything with these damn things,” she said, holding her stomach. “Can’t even hug my favorite cousin. Come here, Callum.” She gave him a one-armed hug as well and then went back to holding her stomach.
“Mom forced me to come in today because she knew it’d be busy,” Roxanne said to me. “So at least I got to see you. How are you? My boyfriend is around here somewhere, but dad’s been keeping him busy all day, poor guy. He works all week and then my mom forces him to come, too, and do manual labor. But he doesn’t mind, says maybe if he does work for my parents they’ll be convinced he’s not a good for nothing since he’s not married to their pregnant daughter.”
“Nobody thinks Alex is a good for nothing,” I said, shaking my head as I was able to a few words into Roxanne’s ramblings—a miraculous feat.
“Well, I know that and you know that. And everyone also knows that the reason we aren’t married is because of me,” she said. Then she huffed, and I knew I was in for a rant. “Marriage is just so antiquated, everything about it. It won’t make us more committed to each other. We’ve been together for ten damn years, marriage isn’t going to make a difference at this point. I’ve got his children in my freaking uterus.”
Roxanne had been with her “boyfriend” Alex since she was sixteen when they started seeing each other in high school. He was completely different from her in almost every way—the very definition of opposites attract. Where Roxanne was a free spirit—a blues singer who spent most of her nights in lounge clubs in downtown Boston—Alex was about as straight-laced as they got, an accountant who ran a solo firm in the suburbs. Seeing Alex, it never made sense that these two were together—he was tall and pale with plain brown hair but with striking blue eyes. The most exciting thing he ever wore was a plaid blazer that Roxanne had bought him.
They were total opposites but they were obsessed with each other. It was adorable.