“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.”