Calico (16 page)

I’m suddenly so exhausted. My bones feel heavy inside my body, pulling me down into the mattress, refusing to let me move. Lying down is the worst idea I’ve had in a long time, but I can’t seem to muster up the energy to care. Callan’s out flirting with a girl in a bar or he’s sitting on a bench talking to his black-rimmed glasses wearing, blogger girlfriend on his cellphone, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Nor is there anything I should
want
to do about it.
 

Fuck him. Fuck him for coming back here. Fuck him for hurting and loving me, and looking so damn perfect, and for making me feel things I don’t want to feel.
 

And fuck
me
for what I did, too.
 

******

CALLAN
 

My brain feels like it’s been pickled in alcohol. Friday was not impressed by my behavior at dinner, but then again I don’t think she was impressed with any of us. She cursed under her breath as she got up and ladled gumbo into plastic Tupperware containers following Coralie’s exit from the house.
 

“Here. Take this. For the road,” she told me, shoving a container into my hands, and then a larger one into Shane’s. “Y’all can’t even have a civil conversation in my household, then you can leave until you’ve mastered the art of social etiquette.” She then unceremoniously booted myself, Shane and Tina out on the sidewalk,
hmmph
ing at us as she slammed her front door, and that was the last we saw of her. Five hours have passed since then. And those five hours have been filled with Tina screaming at me for being an asshole, Shane bundling Tina into their car and telling her to go home, and then Shane and me drinking our faces off at some new, fancy bar full of kids that wasn’t here when I left town last.
 

“Are you sure you want to go home now?” I ask, prodding Shane in the gut with my container of cold gumbo. We’re standing at the end of the driveway to my house, swaying like limp stalks of corn. “You’re wasted. Tina’s gonna kill you.”

“Tina won’t kill me. She’ll—” He hiccups. “She’ll kill
you
when she sees you next. She’s well aware that I know no better. Can’t be trusted, she says.”

“Hmm. Well, you’ll forgive me if—I don’t rush to hang out with your wife between now and the moment I leave this Podunk town then.”

“I get it.” Shane belches, thumping his chest with a clenched fist. “If I were you, I wouldn’t either.
So
. What are you going to do about…?” Angling his head toward next door, he waggles his eyebrows. “Y’know. Coralie Taylor, and the whole,
don’t ever speak to me again
thing?”

“She didn’t say I couldn’t ever speak to her again.”

“She didn’t need to. It was pretty damn obvious, Cal. She’d rather stick hot pokers into her eyes than have another chit chat with you, from the looks on her face when she was running the hell away from you.”

He’s right, and I hate it. God, my eyes are stinging like crazy. I’m so drunk and so tired, and the enormity of the day keeps threatening to take me out at the knees. If I let it, I’ll be smashing every single stick of furniture inside the house as soon as I walk through the door, and I don’t want that. I don’t want to get angry and violent, just because seeing Coralie for the first time in so long didn’t go as I’d hoped. It went precisely as I expected, and that, well…
 

She gets to be mad at me. She gets to be furious. Publishing that photo was a real dick move on my part. “You’d better get back to that pregnant wife of yours before she sends out a search party, baying for my blood,” I say, clapping Shane on the arm. He tugs me into a hug, jabs the knuckle of his index finger into my ribs, and then he walks off down the street, laughing quietly under his breath.
 

When I get to the front door, I find it open an inch.
 

The hell? After living in New York for so long, I don’t make the mistake of leaving the front door open. I just
don’t
. I’m practically OCD about it at my loft space, which makes the fact that
this
door is unlocked highly irregular. And worrying. When I was a kid, I used to play baseball, just for fun. I used to take one of Mom’s hessian shopping bags down to the bottom of the garden and collect all of the bitter cooking apples that had fallen from the trees there, and then Dad and I used to stand on the narrow boat dock at the end of our yard. He would lob the apples up into the air, and I would hit them, barking out snatches of laughter as the softened fruit exploded every time the cedar wood of my bat connected with them. The river that runs through Port Royal, snaking its way around the back of the houses on our street, would be littered with chunks of apple, and Dad would have this look on his face, like he figured he was the greatest father on the face of the fucking planet. The air would be full of sugar and sunlight, and I’d think maybe that he wouldn’t leave after all.
 

He did, though. He left. I never hit apples out onto the river again, though I kept the baseball bat. As the man of the house, I knew I had to protect my mother; I kept the bat stashed in the narrow gap between the front door frame and the bookcase in the hallway, which is where it still lives, gathering dust.
 

I reach for it now, curling my fingers around the age worn wood, scanning the inky blackness with unfocused eyes. I can’t see shit. I’m fairly fucking drunk, and try as I might I cant seem to get my vision to adjust to the dark. Turning on a light could be a fatal decision, though. If someone’s lurking out there, waiting for me to stumble past them so they can smash a lamp over my head, the last thing I want to do is help them out by showing them exactly where I am.
 

God. Why did I have to get broken into tonight of all nights? I’m going to be raging mad and hung over in the morning. I’ll probably be up for a fight then. Now, I feel like I’m about to pass out at the foot of the stairs. I manage to plant one foot in front of the other as I crash around the lower level of the house, searching for intruders. Whoever has broken in is either seriously nimble and silent as a ninja, or they’re not down here. Each room is emptier than the next.
 

Second floor it is, then. I try not to make any noise as I tiptoe up the stairs, but the old wood creaks with each and every step. The bathroom window is still tightly sealed closed. I’m beginning to suspect that the wind somehow blew the front door open (highly unlikely), but then I see my toothbrush in the toilet bowl and I
know
someone’s been in here. Someone with a perverse sense of humor.
 

Fuckers.
 

I lift the bat high over my head, ready to go to town on whoever I find in my bedroom, but when I kick open the door, I immediately recognize the small, balled up human being in the middle of my bed. I’ve found her this way so many times before, back when we were teenagers.
 

The toothbrush makes sense now.
 

I made enough noise to wake the dead when I belted the door open just now, and yet Coralie sleeps on, unaware that I’ve been stalking around the house like a madman for the past ten minutes. I lower the bat, feeling the tension fizzing in my veins a second ago, melt away to be replaced by a strange, hollow feeling.
 

Coralie is lying on my bed. Why?
Why
the fuck is she lying on my bed? She screamed at me at dinner, ran out of the house like I was the devil incarnate and she couldn’t wait to get away from me. And now, she’s let herself into my place and she’s climbed up onto my bed and fallen asleep, like it’s the most normal thing in the world? There have been times back in New York, or Cambodia, or Iceland, or wherever I seem to find myself in the world, where I’ve returned back to my bed and wished I’d opened the door and found her like this. I was shooting pictures in Zimbabwe for a Time Magazine piece once; I’d had the worst fucking day, held up at gunpoint while Carl, the journalist’s car was ransacked and then firebombed. Carl and I were forced to stand on the side of the dirt road and watch as our only means of transportation went up in flames. We’d kept our mouths shut. I hadn’t made a peep when our attackers had ripped the camera from around my neck and passed it around their group, holding the viewfinder up to their faces cautiously, as though they expected to see awful, magical things through the glass. In some countries the camera would have been smashed on the ground, but not in Africa. Everything’s worth something in Africa. I knew I’d be able to buy the Canon back at the local market in a couple of days’ time if I held my tongue, so I did. Carl and I had to trek eighteen miles back to our basecamp in the blistering heat. By the time we got back to the run down hotel we were quartered at, I was too exhausted and miserable to even walk through the door into my room.
 

I knew she wasn’t going to be there. I knew she wasn’t, and yet a part of me hoped somehow, impossibly, she would be. I didn’t want to walk through the door and realize that I was alone, still without her, and so I’d stood in the hallway for three hours with my forehead pressed against the peeling paintwork, and I’d tried to breathe through the pain.
 

Here and now, back in Port Royal, I can’t seem to process the image of Coralie finally asleep on my bed. I take a step toward her and it hits me how marvelously, ridiculously drunk I am.
Fuck
. I want to wake her up. Talk to her. Figure out what’s brought her here. Something really shitty must have happened for her to make her way inside this house, so close to her father’s place next door. I can’t rouse her when I’m in this state, though. It would only make her mad. I take the corner of the duvet on my bed and fold it over, covering her, and then I back out of the room, pulling the door closed behind me.
 

I need coffee. I need a giant vat of it, and I need it mainlined into my body right now. I can’t fuck this up. I
can’t
. If she wakes up, gets angry with me and bails, it’ll be the last time it ever happens. I know it.
 

******

I dream that I’m drowning. When I wake up, I’m gasping for air, clawing at heavy blankets that lie over me, and Callan is sitting in his mother’s old rocking chair next to the bed, watching me. There’s a stern look on his face and a baseball bat resting over his lap. He rolls it back and forth, up and down his thighs.
 

“You used to sleep soundly,” he whispers. “Everything was so,
so
fucked up, and you used to sleep so soundly.”

An empty coffee pot sits on the bedside table next to my head. My heart starts thumping out of my chest when I see the mug resting on top of the battered copy of Catch 22 next to it. It’s a mug I remember well. I bought it for Callan when we were sixteen, just after his mother was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I can’t even look at it.
 

“You know, I have every right to be mad at you, too,” Callan says softly. He looks tired. The dark red shirt he wore out to dinner at Friday’s house—seems like forever ago—has been unbuttoned to reveal a plain white t-shirt underneath. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his stubble is somehow thicker than it was at dinner. I want to crawl out of the bed and right into his arms.

Instead, I whisper, “What?” My voice is hoarse and croaky.

“You,” he says. “I’ve been sitting here, looking at you, and it’s been fucking brutal, Coralie.” He shakes his head, averting his eyes. I get the feeling it’s the first time he’s looked away since he found me here, in his house, in his bed. “For a very long time now, I’ve been thinking about what I would say to you to make you forgive me. I’ve been thinking about all of the arguments I could use to make you see that I didn’t deserve you walking out on me.”

I don’t feel ready to be upright, but I have to be. I’m at a disadvantage right now, lying down, so I haul myself up into a seated position, wincing as my head starts to thump. “And? What did you come up with?” I ask.
 

He shrugs. “My plan of attack has always been profuse apologizing. I figured I would just say I was sorry until you really
felt
it, really believed that I
meant
it. I’d offer to walk over hot coals for you. Do anything and everything to make up for the hurt I caused you.”

“But then?” There is definitely a
but
. I can hear it in his voice.
 

Callan picks up his mug and drains it, tipping it up so that nothing remains. I’m guessing from the sour face he pulls that the coffee he’s been drinking has grown cold. “But then,” he says, “I sat myself down here and watched you freak out in your sleep, and I realized something. I realized that I have every right to be mad at you, too. You
lied
to me, Coralie.”

Heat flushes my face. I feel like shit. I drank a hell of a lot earlier, and it seems as though my hangover is kicking in early. I shouldn’t feel this bad, though. It’s not my stomach or my head that’s making me feel terrible right now, though. It’s panic, fear and shame. “What do you mean?”

Callan leans forward, resting his chin in his hand. “You lied to me. For two years, you lied to me and said you were hurt from
playing fucking sports
? I was your boyfriend, Coralie. You told me that you loved me. You swore nothing would ever come between us. You said you were mine. You know what that means, don’t you?”

I can’t fucking deal with this. Having him here, looking at me this intensely, talking to me this way, saying these things to me, it’s bring back way too many memories. It’s making me hurt in a way I haven’t hurt for a long time.
 

“I do,” I tell him. “It means that we were stupid kids. We were never going to work out, Callan. We were bound to fall apart at some point.”

“Fucking bullshit.” He says this quietly, nonchalantly, like he’s asking me to pass the salt or something. “We were always going to work out. We were never just stupid kids, Coralie. When Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, he didn’t even come close to what we had. You know I’m right. No, it
means
that you were my responsibility. I was your boyfriend. I was the guy who was meant to look out for you and take care of you, and you didn’t give me the fucking chance. You lied to me, told me you were
fine
. You told me your father was okay with you, over protective, sure, but okay. When all the while he was manipulating you and hurting you in places no one…” He chokes on the words. “No one would ever see. I should have fucking killed him for what he did to you. I should have fucking torn him limb from limb. I should have kept you safe, but you took that opportunity from me.”