“What do you know?” He scowls.
“You’re not the only one whose mother died. Our situations might not have been the same, but I understand what it feels like to lose someone you love to something you can’t control.”
His glassy eyes track my movements. “She would be ashamed of me.”
I rear back. “What? Why do you say that?”
“Because look at me.” He grabs a trophy and launches it in the opposite direction. It slams into a tower of boxes before clattering against the floor.
“Stop it!”
“Why? It’s not like any of them mean anything.” He repeats the same thing with another trophy, but this time, it smashes into a wall before snapping in half.
“Enough!” I shove the other two trophies away before he destroys those too. “Get angry. Get loud, but don’t get violent. You’re better than that.”
He throws his hands in the air. “Am I? Or am I just biding my time until I turn into him?”
He doesn’t need to clarify which him he is speaking about because I already know. It’s written all over his face.
My chest pinches, the tight sensation making each breath I draw painful. “The only thing you two have in common is an addiction issue.”
“You’re right. Because unlike me, my father is successful. He has a legacy. What do I have?”
“For starters, a heart.”
He frowns. “Who cares? What has that gotten me in the long run? Pain? Misery? Disappointment?” He looks up at the ceiling with a sigh. “I can’t get a single thing right. My whole entire life has been one failure after another, and I’m so fucking tired of pretending it doesn’t bother me.”
Cal steals a fragmented piece of my heart in that moment as a single tear slides down his cheek. A tear that wrecks whatever last bit of anger I have toward him today.
Tomorrow, I’ll be angry about him being drunk in the house.
But today…
Today he needs a friend.
I pull him into my arms and wipe away the tear, banishing it from existence like it never happened. “You haven’t failed at everything.”
“Name one thing.”
I don’t miss a beat. “You made it into the NHL.”
He scoffs. “Only to lose my spot a few years later.”
“So what? Not many people can say they even got that far in the first place.”
“I didn’t even win a championship.” His voice sounds so small. So unsure. So broken.
It tears me up inside, knowing someone as vibrant and lively as him can be riddled with this many insecurities.
Sometimes it is those with the loudest voices who struggle the hardest.
“Life is about perspective. Until you change yours, you’ll always be tied to this.” I hand him the vodka bottle.
He clutches the bottle with a death grip.
I lock the image away in my head, reminding myself that no good can come of Cal and me being around each other. Even after all these years apart, he still hasn’t put in the work to change himself.
No matter how much I love him, it was and never will be enough so long as he doesn’t love himself.
That much I know to be true.
Cal must have gone on a drunken shopping spree yesterday because there is no explanation for the ten packages that show up on my doorstep the next afternoon. The labels on the boxes range from the most expensive luxury department store in America to some French names I can’t pronounce, let alone recognize.
“Please sign here.” The delivery man hands me a clipboard.
I text Cal once he leaves.
You have a delivery.
His reply is instantaneous.
Cal
Be right there.
Perfect. At least this way, we can talk about what happened yesterday and get something straight.
I had planned on speaking to Cal once he came over this afternoon to work on the attic, but he never showed after I came home from work.
It doesn’t take him long to pull into the driveway with his fancy car. Not sure how he plans on fitting all those boxes inside his trunk, but I wish him the best of luck regardless.
“Hey.” He doesn’t remove his sunglasses.
I cross my arms. “Hi.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “About yesterday… Thanks for checking on me.”
My lips tug down into a frown. “I don’t want you getting drunk inside of my house again.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it. If I find you like that again, then I’m calling a moving company to bag your stuff for you.”
His head hangs and his sunglasses slide down the bridge of his nose, revealing his bloodshot eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Apologizing doesn’t mean anything when you have no intention of fixing the problem in the first place.”
His hands clench by his sides. “You’re right.”
“I am?”
He looks up, and the tick in his jaw has my heart sinking in my chest.
I don’t want to hurt him, but I have a kid to think about. There is no way I want Cami to find Cal stumbling about the house, drunk and incapable of controlling his emotions.
She deserves better than that.
"I have a problem. An addiction.”
My mouth opens only to shut a second later.
“I know I’m powerless over alcohol. They taught me as much in rehab and AA. But I can’t ignore how ashamed I am, knowing I’m only slightly better off than I was six years ago.”
My eyes burn.
He takes a deep breath. “I can’t quit drinking completely yet, but I’ll limit myself for you. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have, and what happened in the attic was unacceptable and pathetic.”
Oh, God. My whole chest aches.
“Okay?” he asks.
“Okay,” I rasp.
He releases a heavy exhale before grabbing the largest box from the pile and turning toward his car. With the size of his trunk and back seat, he only manages three boxes before he runs out of room.
Rather than stick around, I slip back inside, leaving him to sort out the rest of his packages, along with how the hell he plans on tackling the attic without drinking again.
12
ALANA
It only took Cal two days after the attic incident to schedule a meeting with the appraiser. I didn’t have an option to say no, especially when Cal went out of his way to plan it around my school schedule.
Cami promised to stay upstairs in her room and play with her toys, so long as I order pizza for dinner tonight. It’s a fair price to pay for her cooperation. I’m not ready for her to ask me questions about the house, especially when there is a risk my plan might fail.
Doubts about Violet’s idea sink in, eating away at my confidence as I near the front door.
All you need to do is make it impossible for Cal to sell the house.
Easier said than done, the antagonistic voice that always speaks up at the most inconvenient times replies.
I roll my shoulders back and open the door. “Hello.”