Five Years Ago
SULLY
I’d missed three calls from my mom.
Three times she called.
Three times I watched it ring and let it go to voicemail.
Two texts that remained unanswered.
One angry voicemail.
I knew why she was calling, and I didn’t want to have this conversation.
I’d spent all goddamn night trying to figure out what the hell to do, and I hated the conclusion I’d come to.
I fucking hated myself, hated what Ellie had done, hated what this had come to.
I hated every last fucking bit of it, but the anger had begun to seep out of me.
So when my mom’s name appeared on my phone for the fourth time, I caved.
“Sullivan London, why on earth are you ignoring me? Ellie’s graduation is tomorrow, and I’m trying to make plans for—”
“I’m not going,” I cut in.
I didn’t recognize my voice. It sounded thick. Dull. Detached. I was watching myself from afar, confused by the stranger who’d taken up residence in my body.
“You’re not… What do you mean, you’re not going?”
“I mean—” I swallowed hard. “I’m. Not. Going.”
“What’s—” Nervous laughter filtered into my mom’s voice before it hardened. “Sully, what’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
Nothing was going on. I felt nothing. All the life had been sucked out of me, and I didn’t know who I was anymore.
“Obviously, something is going on.”
She was going to make me say it, wasn’t she?
“Ellie and I broke up.”
I stood and walked to the bathroom in my apartment on shaky legs, suddenly so fucking sure I was going to be sick.
“Please,” Mom scoffed. “No, you didn’t.”
I closed my eyes, trying to steady myself, push down the wave of nausea.
It feels unfathomable to me, too, Mom.
Eleanor was leaving.
After promising she wouldn’t, after telling me she’d wait so we could spend the next year together, after making plans for our whole goddamn life.
And now she didn’t want kids, she didn’t want me, she didn’t want this.
For some reason, she wanted me to figure out what I wanted, even though I was so unbelievably sure it wouldn’t ever fucking change.
I wanted her, and she wanted space.
So I was giving it to her.
Even if I hated myself for it.
“Mom, I can’t do this right now. I’m not fucking going, but I don’t care what you do.”
I slammed the phone down on the counter, physically unable to continue the conversation.
If Ellie wanted to go, I refused to hold her back. She confirmed for me last night that I’d already held her back once, and I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t make her stay.
All I could do was exist in some purgatory of foolish hope.
Hope that maybe one day she’d come back home.