“I…I think about you all the time. You know. I love you,” I whisper.
But there is only silence stretching an ocean between us.
I go on, unable to handle it. “I know I really fucked up, love, but…”
“Lachlan,” she says tiredly. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does. It matters. You matter. I’m changing, I swear, I know I have a problem.”
She grunts angrily. “Yes you have problems. But I have problems too. My mother is in a fucking coma. Forgive me if I don’t care to hear your sob story right now.”
Ouch.
No blow in rugby has hurt quite like that.
“Okay,” I say raggedly. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she says. “Look, I have to go, I’m heading back to the hospital now. I’m just…this is my life now, you know? Just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“I could come over there,” I tell her. “I can help.”
“No, you can’t help.” she says quickly. “You can’t even help yourself. You stay where you belong. Okay. Look, I just can’t deal with you, with what we were, right now. Please just…don’t call me again. Don’t text me either. I can only handle one heartbreak at a time.”
I feel the last shred of hope inside me crumple into a ball, blown away by some cold wind, never to return.
“Bye Lachlan,” she says.
I can’t even move my lips to answer her back. She hangs up and everything I had with her is immediately severed. I can feel it, cutting so deep.
I’ve truly lost her.
My love.
I get up, grab my wallet and keys, and leave out into the night.
I go to the closest shop, pick up a bottle of Scotch, then go and sit in the park across from my flat. I sit there for hours.
I drink nearly the whole damn bottle.
When I wake up, I’m on the bench still and some man is trying to steal my shoes. I kick at him, catching him in the face and he runs off across the grass, jumping over a fence.
I stumble to my feet, leaving the bottle behind, and somehow manage to get inside my flat.
When I wake up again I’m on my stomach in the hallway.
A puddle of vomit lies beside me.
My vomit.
A few piles of shit and piss are near me too.
Thankfully those aren’t mine. Just poor Lionel and Emily’s, since I never took them out last night.
No, instead I did such a noble thing and got absolutely wasted by myself, chasing the sorrow Kayla left on me with an unending flood of Scotch.
I can’t do this anymore.
Brigs is right. I won’t get Kayla back this way and I probably won’t get her back any way, but one day, if I ever get a chance again, I can’t fuck it up.
I can’t fuck up my life anymore.
I have these dogs. I have my friends. My brother. My family.
I have all these beautiful, lovely aspects of my life and when I started out as a wee lad, I had nothing at all but a stuffed lion.
I started with nothing and was given everything.
And look where I am, drinking, feeling sorry for myself, trying to give it all away.
I slowly pick myself off the floor.
I clean up the mess.
Take the dogs for a very, very long walk, practically to the shore and back.
I talk their ears off, apologizing, drawing looks from passerbys as I usually do when I’m talking to dogs, but I don’t care. They need to hear it all. I need to get it off my chest.
When I get back I go straight for the medicine cabinet and for a brief moment I feel the guilt smash into me, threatening to drag me down again, and the Percocet calls my name, offering a rope, just as Scotch handed me a rope last night.
But it turns out the rope is no different from a noose.
I take the pills and though there isn’t much left, I empty them out and flush them down the toilet.