Chapter 58
Chapter fifty-eight
Tom
New Year’s Eve. The shittiest one of my life.
Exactly one year ago, I was on the rooftop of The Golden Seahorse in Barcelona, screaming over the blaring music that this was going to be my best year ever.
My nose was full of white, cava spilling down my neck, and I was having this amazing shag, watching the Sagrada Familia as she’d lain her legs on my shoulders.
It was loud, chaotic, euphoric. I didn’t know what best year ever even meant. But oh, I found out.
The hard way.
Turns out, I wasn’t entirely wrong, just a bit na?ve about the fine print. Because it was my year.
I’d died. I lived. I loved. And now? Now I’ve died all over again. Just not in the dramatic, paramedic, paddles-on-my-chest kind of way like the first time.
No, this time it’s slower. Crueler. It’s a death that doesn’t stop your heart but leaves it teared wide open for you to bleed. Endlessly.
I went to bed early.
Like a pathetic cliché, I stared at myself through the ceiling mirrors.
Flash. Yosh tipping his head backwards.
Flash. Me on my own again.
Flash. The serpent coiling with each thrust.
Flash. My face in tears.
Flash. Legs wrapped around his hips.
Flash. Me. But in a thousand shredded pieces because I’d launched my alarm clock into it.
Fucking confronting mirrors.
I waited for New Year’s eve to pass. And I actually fell asleep with the shards of glass around me until the fireworks started.
When the first explosion rattled the window, I woke up in a daze. I crawled out of bed, searching for earplugs like some boring Grinch who hates joy.
The noise was everything I wasn’t: celebration, happiness, people laughing with friends and lovers, the promise of a fresh start.
I found my earplugs eventually, shoved them in, cleaned up the broken glass, and went back to bed. Half an hour later, I was staring at his name on my phone. Because of course, I'm a pathetic cliché.
“Happy New Year,” I typed. “I love you.” A string of kisses and hearts. Apparently, I’m that person now.
And then I hit send.
For a second I held my breath, thinking maybe this time would be different from the last couple of days. The seconds stretched, the reply didn’t come.
Happy New Year to me.
In the weeks that followed, I learned to live in the spaces between replies. I felt like a rejected dog waiting by the door, eager for scraps of attention.
When his texts came, they were late. Always late. Two days, sometimes three. And yet every damn time, I responded right away.
Pathetic was my middle name now. But I couldn’t stop. It felt like there was this unspoken rule that if I made him wait, he’d make me wait even longer. And I couldn’t handle that.
The texts became shorter. Colder. It wasn’t a conversation anymore; it was a post-mortem. Me asking. Him answering. Like this:
Jan 1st: Love, how was your New Year’s Eve? Miss you.
Jan 3rd: Had night shift. It was calm.
Jan 3rd: How is everything going at your place? Did they finish up the kitchen yet?
Jan 7th: No, not yet.
By then, the cracks were impossible to ignore. So, I pushed harder. Said things I shouldn’t have.
Jan 7th: Why does it take you days to respond to my texts?
Jan 8th: Do you still love me?
Jan 8th: Did you ever love me?
Jan 9th: Are you breaking up with me?
Jan 9th: I can’t believe you’re doing this after everything we went through. It’s not fair.
Jan 9th: It’s not fucking fair!
My pride was in shreds by the time I started ranting. And yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have gone there, but I couldn’t help it. The silence was louder than any of the fireworks from New Year’s Eve.
Jan 10th: Love, what are you doing to me? I can’t handle this anymore.
Jan 10th: Are you riding someone else’s dick? Are you fucking deep diver in jail, or what? At least don’t be such a fucking coward and talk to me if you want to be done with me.
Jan 10th: I’m sorry for my disaster life, and I respect if that’s too much, even for you, Joshua Fennbrae. But this is me. I can’t change that, but I have a lot to give. And if you just turn your back on me like that, it’s your loss. YOUR LOSS! You hear me?
I thought maybe that one would wake him up. Maybe I’d crossed the line so hard he’d have no choice but to finally give me something: anger, closure, anything. Instead, I got this:
Jan 12th: I was at work.
And after that text, I snapped. I swung my phone like a frisbee straight out the window and watched it arc beautifully before landing with a splash in the canal.
It wasn’t enough. I went full demolition mode, tossing out furniture, plates, and grandma's lamp. Anything I could get my hands on. The kind of disaster that only ends when your neighbors start calling the coppers.
Which, of course, they did.
When the police showed up, they wrote me a fine and gave me one of those get your shit together or spend the night in jail talks.
Not exactly how I pictured kicking off the first weeks of the New Year, but there I was.
And as much as I wanted to tell them where they could shove their fine, I couldn’t risk jail.
Not when I had bigger priorities. Like buying a new phone ASAP so I could text him to say that I loved him, that I didn’t mean any of the shit I said, and beg for forgiveness like the complete idiot I was.
Texting was all I had because he wouldn’t pick up the phone.
But lucky for him, giving up isn’t really my style.
I’m persistent. And smart. I remembered he’d given me the number to his pager back when I was at Arcadia.
So, like the delulu nutcase I clearly am, I started paging him.
Over and over. At times I knew he couldn’t ignore me.
During staff meetings, with resort guests, while he was teaching yoga classes.
And guess what? It worked.
Two days later, my phone rang, and for the first time in weeks, I heard his voice.
“Stop paging me, Tom.” He lost it in a way I could’ve expected. I imagined that annoying beep throwing him out of concentration for days.
“Start answering my calls,” I shot back. “Why are you ignoring me?”
Silence. I could hear him breathing, a deep inhale like he was trying to keep it together. Then came the swallowing. Tears, I realized. He was holding back tears.
When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse. “It hurts too much to hear your voice.”
And then the dam bursted. Everything he’d held in for weeks came pouring out so fast, I had to remind him to breathe between sentences.
That’s when I realized he hadn’t ignored me because he was mad or done with me. He just didn’t know what to do with the situation. It reminded me of the first time I went to his house and he awkwardly pretended the mess around him wasn’t there.
I let him talk. I listened. And when he’d poured everything out and ran out of breath, I asked if he still loved me.
He reacted like I’d just proposed, with a nonstop stream of yesses and, after that, even more apologies.
I think what he needed at that point was reassurance, so I did my best to give him that. Then, gently, I suggested something I’d never imagined saying to him.
“Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to go back to therapy.”
He told me he was seeing Erin for psychiatric treatment, that they were trying some new medication, and that he scheduled with his psychologist outside Arcadia as well.
He was trying to find his balance again, but he found that hard with the situation between us, pressure at work, and the construction at his place that offered unpleasant surprises on a daily basis.
So I suggested striking at least the first thing off that list.
I told him we were okay, as long as he promised to keep communicating. And yes, to use his goddamn phone, because he was missing out on all the sexting.
I made that joke to keep things light, and that’s when I got rewarded with a genuine little laugh.
I told him we’d talk everything through once I was back on the island, but he didn’t need to worry about anything right now.
Then I suggested again that he could stay in my room at Palm Oasis on his days off, where the walls were painfully white and the breathable percale sheets I bought for us were even whiter.
He liked that idea, and so did I, mostly because it meant Calvin could keep an eye on him for me.
With that part of my life calming down, I could turn my attention to why I stayed in Amsterdam in the first place: reconnecting with my daughter.
Effy and I grew closer every day, and I made sure to slow down and feel grateful for that.
We went for walks in the park and talked for hours. About now, about the past. About everything and nothing.
She loves deep conversations. Sometimes she’d say something and I’d catch myself smiling, recognising that same tone, that same way of thinking. I’ve had a crash course in deep conversations these past few months.
We shared coffee to go, watched the black swans in the pond, and chatted with people who passed by.
Normal Amsterdam life. And her sharp, wicked jokes… oh my god, they cracked me up. I’d just beam at her and think, yep, that’s my daughter. Mine.
We also went shopping for baby stuff together, which was somehow both terrifying and hilarious when the shop assistants assumed I was the father-to-be.
We bought a cradle and set it up in her room at Joan’s apartment. Somewhere between the manual and the screwdriver, the conversation took a serious turn.
Effy asked about Yosh, if he was my first boyfriend since she’d always seen me with a harem of girls around me.
I said yeah, he was. Yosh was my first actual relationship I wanted to commit to. That was all I wanted to give her at that moment.
I asked her how things were between her and Luca. She gave me a wry smile, said there was no her and Luca, and there never would be.
My brain glitched for a second, but she quickly explained that romantic relationships weren’t really her thing, that she felt a different calling in life. Devotion, she called it. Doing things her way.
She laughed and said, “Have you been blind all these years? Luca and Alex are a thing.”
I dropped the screwdriver, and my jaw went with it. Calling me blind was too generous. Drunk and emotionally absent covered it better.
I had questions, of course, but I wasn’t foolish enough to ask them out loud. Like who the father of the baby was. That felt a bit too close to generational heritage.
After finishing the cradle, Effy took my hand and placed it on her belly.
She didn’t realize she was handing me my own heart in a coffin. The little thump under my hand was so small, so alive, so real. There it was, my baby’s baby.
I held back the tears. Barely. But the second I closed the door to my apartment, they flooded over my face. I didn’t even make it to the couch. I sank onto the floor in the hallway and stayed there, back against the door, sobbing like the mess I was.
It took me an hour to convince myself there was nothing wrong with calling Yosh.
I had this idea in my head that I was supposed to be strong for him and I didn’t want my shit adding more stress to him.
Healthy behaviour? Not really. But I still called him, telling myself it was just to hear someone whisper something soft in my ear. Nothing more.
Well… I cried, and I threw everything of the last twenty years out. It started with what really happened with Emily that night in the forest, and it ended with that little kick I’d just felt under my palm.
He let me talk without interrupting. No advice, no fixing. He made little sounds every now and then to let me know he was listening. A hum or a soft “mm” when I shared some of the more ugly parts.
At some point I realized he was also listening to how I was breathing. Every time I started to feel too much, he slowed his inhales on purpose, and made it loud enough for me to hear through the speaker. In. Out. In. Out.
He didn’t need to tell me to follow along. My body did it on its own. Stupid smart body.
I think I ran out of words after about an hour. At that point, I shared most of my life story. I had given him pieces of me over the last couple of months, but this was the extended version. Or perhaps the uncut version. However you like to name it.
He said he was glad I called. That I shouldn’t have gone through this alone. He explained me feeling Effy’s baby was a trigger for deep locked up pain to come to the surface. He said something like, your body is reacting because it remembers.
I’m not quite sure, but he said feeling all of this was okay. More than okay.
Knowing that calmed me, because I was feeling extremely overwhelmed by it.
After that, the exhaustion ran over me and I gradually dozed off on the floor.
Cold, uncomfortable.
Strangely enough, Yosh’s onyx pendant warmed my chest as if it were glowing. I swear that’s what I felt.
When the morning light broke through the curtains, I picked myself up from the hallway floor and started my day like nothing had happened.
It felt almost nostalgic, since I’d done that for so many years when the silence was torturing me.
But this time it was different. He was there, on the phone.
He must’ve heard me waking up, because he whispered a soft good morning and asked if I was alright.
He didn’t leave my side after I fell asleep.
That was exactly the kind of reassurance I needed from him. It made me believe that, even after this messy split, we’d be okay.
My mind was already drifting to Avalon, to the thought of us finding our way back to each other on the island that had become my new home.