Chapter 12
chapter twelve
Jack was placating me. I knew that. He knew that.
Everyone in the entire universe knew that, but he was being a good friend and not voicing it.
We’d gone to most of the bars on this side of the city and even checked outside a few places where AA meetings were regularly held.
We’d checked the subway and a few other spots that appeared to have decent shelter.
There was no sign of Tobi so far, and it made me feel like shit. Complete and utter shit because here I was, wasting precious time Jack wouldn’t be able to get back in this lifetime. All because I had a baseless hope that maybe Tobi would be sitting at one of the corners we came across.
Jack sighed as he turned down the road, heading toward Fire and Ice. “I don’t know, Cal. We’ve been at this for a while, and we haven’t seen a single sign of him. None of my bar buddies have seen him, either.”
I knew what he wasn’t saying. I could hear it in the undertones.
He didn’t think this was worth our time anymore, even if Tobi was worth everything to me.
“I know. I’m sorry.” My eyes were glued to the window, searching for even a glimpse of a hint that Tobi existed around here somewhere.
“Let’s just go down here, and then we can turn around.
I have a meeting in the morning anyway. I need to get home and in bed at a decent time. ”
The sun had started to set, making Jack break out his signature car sunglasses. “What’s the meeting about this time?”
“I think Crew and Price are really considering the idea of opening another location. I think it’s in their best interest, but we’ll see. They didn’t give us an agenda.”
“Do they know anything about what’s going on with Tobi?”
“Fuck no.” I blew out a long, deep breath as we got closer to the restaurant.
Once this street ended, so would our search for the night.
I didn’t want us to reach the end. I didn’t want to be done searching.
“I’m not telling them shit until I have more to tell.
I don’t know if I could handle the look on Crew’s face. ”
Jack slowed as we got to the stop sign at the end of the street. He took in a deep breath and pushed the turn signal to the right. “Well. Let’s get you home for the night, okay? We can’t canvass the entirety of Crescent Planes in one night, unfortunately.”
He was right. I hated that he was right. I didn’t want him to be right. What I wanted was to find the last piece of a life I’d imagined a thousand futures for, only to leave it all in the past before it ever began.
But Jack was right.
So I didn’t say anything else as I pressed my face against the window, still searching, still looking for any sign I could latch onto.
I didn’t so much as blink, even as tears found their way down my cheeks.
I refused to sniffle. I refused to show just how broken I felt.
As the world got darker on our way back to my house, I stared at my reflection and couldn’t help but wonder.
I wondered about the futures I’d made up in my mind.
Each one had a ring on my finger and a nice, big house to come home to.
We’d order takeout because we’d been cooking all day and couldn’t stomach the idea of doing it again at home.
We’d sit on our big L-shaped couch and watch the same movie from our first official date and simply exist in each other’s presence.
Maybe he’d even be okay with me wrapping my arm around him and pulling him into my side for a short cuddle session.
Chinese. We’d get the shittiest Chinese takeout from down the street. The kind that made our breath smell and hands swell from how much salt was in it. We’d eat and laugh and cuddle and brush our teeth before we shared a goodnight kiss, and everything in the world would be okay.
Would I have looked different than I do now? Would we have Fishbowl in our laps and a Swiffer mop by the door for when he got too excited and peed?
Who would I have been as Callum Weaver instead of Callum Stanton? I wondered if I’d ever get to find out.
I was so fucking late for the meeting. Crew was definitely going to kill me, and if he didn’t, Price would do it for him.
We were supposed to be there at the ass-crack of dawn, but I’d gotten so little sleep during the night that I’d slept through my first two alarms and just barely woken up from my third one.
The moment I threw my car into park, I grabbed my wallet from the passenger-side seat and went to reach for the keys to the back door.
Which…I didn’t have. I groaned, banging my head against the back of the headrest. They were still on the coffee table at home.
Crew was absolutely going to murder me now.
Of course, that meant I was banished to the front door, since the room we used for meetings was closer to the front than the back. Less of a walk for someone to come get me.
After racing to the front door, I went to fish my phone out of my pocket when I heard something behind me. I turned my head, realizing it was just someone passing by. Once they’d walked away, though, I saw something. Something familiar.
Just across the street were two buildings.
In between those buildings was an alleyway where they kept the dumpsters.
I paused, squinting my eyes as I tried to make sure I wasn’t just seeing what I wanted to see.
To make sure I wasn’t imagining it because my brain so desperately wanted it to be true.
There, sitting on the ground beside the dumpster, was Tobi.
He had his backpack in front of him, his arms wrapped around it, and his head leaning against the wall behind him.
I didn’t even realize I was walking over there until I was halfway across the crosswalk, my steps getting faster and heavier the closer I got.
He was close. So close, yet so out of reach.
Was I even allowed to reach for him anymore?
The burning question I didn’t fully have an answer to.
I walked until I was right beside him. He didn’t even look up at me. “Tobi.”
He blinked. The only acknowledgment of my presence so far.
“Tobi.” I shuffled in front of him a bit, trying to block his view of…whatever he was looking at.
“Callum.” His voice was hoarse. Why was his voice so hoarse?
Now that I was in front of him—now that I’d found him—I wasn’t sure what to say. Stalling for more time, I leaned against the opposite wall and slid down it, wincing at how cold and wet the ground still was. He wouldn’t look at me, but I looked at him.
There was so much distance, despite being so close I could touch his foot with mine if I moved just one more inch. So close. So far. So much cold and empty space between us.
I looked to the side and noticed an empty glass bottle. It looked similar to some of the whiskey Jack had in his bar. Tobi had already been drinking. “Why’d you leave?”
“Why would I not?”
I narrowed my eyes at him, wishing he’d just fucking look at me. “You agreed to come with me. You agreed to get sober. You didn’t even tell us anything. I just showed back up, and you were gone. Again.”
His shoulders lifted and paused, hanging in the air for a moment too long before they dropped. Was he drunk right now? Or close to it? “The promises of an alcoholic are usually as empty as their bottle.”
“Is that all you are now? An alcoholic, wasting away for the fun of it? You know you could have something, Tobi. You have to know that. If you’d just let me hel—”
“Help me? Is that what you’re about to say?
” His head jerked up as he cut me off. Those big, sad, brown eyes were finally staring straight into my soul, and there was something new in them.
Anger or hurt in the form of an entire forest on fire.
Big blazes, followed by suffocating smoke.
“Change me, Callum. That’s what you’re tryin’ to do.
You’re tryin’ to make me fit the mold you want me to have.
If who I am now ain’t enough, I’ll never be enough. Sober or not. In your life or not.”
I shook my head, closing my hands into fists.
I needed something to hold on to, even if it was my own skin.
I needed something to keep me grounded, or a new disco would begin, and I wasn’t sure how easy it’d be to get out of.
“Oh, I’m sorry for giving a fuck about your health.
I’ll never do it again.” I scoffed. “You were always enough, Tobi. More than enough. You have always been everything.”
“Was. I was everything. And then I left. And I’m not the same person. I told you that. I told you I ain’t the same.”
“But your heart is the same.”
He huffed a weak laugh, no more than an exhale through his nose. “No, it isn’t. It isn’t the same. If you can’t accept that, that’s not on me; that’s on you.”
My heart started to beat faster as a numb, tingly feeling spread across my tongue and down my throat.
Did he not love me anymore? I hadn’t stopped loving him.
Not truly. I’d never been able to get past a first date with anyone because my heart was already too full of Tobi.
Tobi. Tobi. It’d always been Tobi. “The least you could’ve done is tell me.
Do you know how worried I was? Jack and I spent most of the day searching for you. ”
“So what, you could drag me out to your house and make yourself feel better because then you could nurse me back to the person you used to know ten years ago?”
“Make myself feel better? This isn’t about me!” There was a pit in my stomach. A black hole, sucking everything that made me who I was into it. “This is about you. What’s best for you. I don’t want the you from ten years ago. I want the you now, however that looks.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Fucking how?”
A smirk crawled across his lips. “Wow. The fact you can’t even see it. You really haven’t changed a bit.”
My eyebrows pinched together as I leaned forward before realizing that the smoke was still coming, the fires were still blazing, and I was in danger. Danger of burning alive. Of hearing the truth as he saw it. “What does that even mean?”
“You didn’t even notice, Callum. That I’d pulled away.
That I’d been havin’ panic attacks in your bathroom every fucking day.
That I started packin’ shit from your dresser drawers into one of your duffel bags.
You didn’t notice that somethin’ had changed, and then I left.
I left, and you say it was out of nowhere.
It wasn’t out of nowhere. You just didn’t notice the signs I gave you. ”
My throat got tight. Really fucking tight. If I’d tried to speak, I'd have burst into the tears that were desperately trying to come through. My eyes went blurry, Tobi nothing but a vague shape against a red brick background.
At that moment, I didn’t know who I was speaking to.
I swallowed, trying to force the screams I wanted to let out back down into my chest. “That’s not fucking fair. That’s so not fair, and you know it.”
He looked down at the ground below him, picking up a stray rock.
I watched as he turned it in his hand, inspecting it.
“It ain’t fair for you to try to change the person I am now, either.
You’re comin’ at me with all these things you want from me, but do I want it?
” The rock skipped across, hitting my shoe as he flicked it away.
“No. I don’t. We all have things we don’t wanna admit to ourselves, Callum.
Whether it be failure or—in my case—a complete and utter lack of giving a shit about my well-being.
I get it. But I can’t change. Not right now.
Accept that fact or leave me the fuck alone.
I don’t wanna owe nobody, and I definitely don’t wanna owe nobody for shit I don’t even wanna do. ”
Failure.
Failure.
Failure.
I’d failed him. Was that it? Was that the point he was trying to make?
Had I somehow not noticed, like he said, and failed him?
Was that why he left? God, I felt sick. Too much spit was starting to pool in my mouth.
It was thick and warm, and my stomach was curdling as I thought back to every moment leading up to the day Tobi left and never came back.
Had I been blind to it? Or had I just convinced myself everything would go back to normal because that was what I wanted?
I didn’t think I had enough strength to keep fighting with him. Fighting, as if helping wasn’t all I’d wanted. Heal. Rebuild a connection I knew we could have because we’d had it before, even if it was just as friends.
I’d been so fucking desperate to have him, I’d ignored the way time could really change things. So I nodded. “Okay. If I do that, if I accept where you are, can I still see you?”
He took a moment to say anything, his eyes looking off to the side. “Sure.”
At least that was a start. A start to what, I didn’t know. I couldn’t really think through the fog in my head, the uncontrolled fire spreading in his eyes, or the bile that was trying to crawl up my throat. Maybe hope had done more bad than good.