36. Chapter 36
OLIVER
I’m being punished.
Definitely being punished,
There was no other way to describe the torture of being brutally woken up by Theo, who saw it as an adventure to run into my bedroom and cannonball himself onto my stomach.
Vomit hurled up my throat as I safely, but quickly, put him to rest on the bed and rushed to the bathroom to purge my guts out.
The utter embarrassment of his running after me and patting me on the back, like he’d seen Min-Joon do in the past, filled me with regret. I clearly still wasn’t fit to raise a child, getting shit-faced like I did last night.
Guilt has me in a chokehold as I have no choice but to accept his touch and hug the toilet like a hungover teen after a night out.
The haunted memories of yesterday come flooding back, along with the feeling of someone hacking a drill against my temples, making me regret it more and more that I looked to alcohol for comfort.
What a fat mistake that was.
Yesterday hadn’t gone to plan at all, and I lost all control. First, my ongoing winning streak got shattered yesterday in court; the opposing side was far more prepared than we were.
There will be a follow-up trial in a few weeks, but I’ll never forget the heartbreaking look on my client’s face and the disgusting smile on her ex-husband’s. It took all I had to hold back and not wipe the floor with his face.
Being so distraught over losing, I left Nigel in Seattle to do recon and headed back home. I’d only admit this to myself, but part of the reason I probably lost this case was because of the dark-haired nanny consuming my thoughts.
I’d been treating her like shit all week; instead of dealing with the turmoil inside me, I pushed her away.
Drowning myself in work, instead of dealing with what matters.
The ultimatum Luna delivered to me on Friday never reached me until I was standing in that courtroom and the Judge banged on his gavel, declaring the case wasn’t going in my favour - It woke me up.
In that moment, all I wanted was to get back to her, to Theo, to our house and to the bubble of happiness we’d been living in before the devil herself came crashing in.
My mother’s presence had turned me back into that little boy who suppressed his emotions to function.
But that’s not who I wanted to be anymore.
I had to make it up to Luna, because she was right; I was a Surly Bastard.
But I think I could change, adapt to what she needs from me, because I selfishly need her in my life. Because I want her to stay, but to do that, I’d have to open up in a way I’ve never done before.
I had every intention of doing so, so much so that my heart was battling against my brain all nine hours of the flight back to London. But then that walking case of tear gas appeared, and the world went back to its dark, dreary place.
Bumping into the last person I wanted to, in Gatwick Airport - my mother.
She was heading towards the AMEX lounge before her connecting flight, and I collided with her when leaving the terminal.
We greeted each other with a glare, a common reaction given how our last encounter went, with us screaming at each other until one of my neighbours, Mr Ferguson, knocked on the door to ask if everything was alright, igniting my mother’s fear of being discovered, so she whipped on her disguise and slipped out without another word.
Having not heard from her since, I had every intention of walking past her like strangers when she grabbed my arm.
“We need to talk.” The four words that haunted my nightmares.
Every bone in my body told me not to follow her, to go home to my woman and child and not to the lounge full of free alcohol - yet I did it.
It must have been my last grasp of hope that my mother could be different.
That she was out to mend this tension between us.
That same hope I’d had ever since I was a child, flickering like a flame on a dimming candle. Little did I know that the moment she’d start talking, that flame would go out and bring forth a whole new kind of darkness.
“You were right that day. I don’t know, Theo.
I don’t know my own son, but I want that to change.
So, I want him back. Give up your parental rights and let me raise my son.
You have that life you so desperately sacrificed-” yet another string of words that scorched through me with fury.
She couldn’t finish that sentence because I made it clear there was no way in hell she’d get within five feet of my kid if she finished that sentence.
But being the mighty Joan Walters, that didn’t stop her. With the power to consume a room full of people, she had the lounge cleared, freeing it up for the two of us to have yet another screaming match about custody, lawyers, and who was the best person to raise Theo.
It lasted hours, and if it wasn’t for her flight to Turkey, who knows when it would have ended. Once Satan was gone, instead of coming home, I helped myself to the bottomless bar and drank away my sorrows.
The reason why I spent ten minutes throwing it all back up and why the sight of Theo’s scrambled eggs made me want to hurl all over again. But I swallowed it down and stomached the abusive sound of the blender making my hangover cure, but as I said, I’m being punished.
Yesterday was a snowball full of mistakes, and I had to suffer the consequences because of it. Losing the case, fighting with my mother, breaking my promise to Theo, and pushing Luna so far away. I was drowning with it all, and the hangover from hell was my fault and my fault alone.
While Theo munched on his scrambled eggs, beans, and toast, I lugged myself upstairs with my hangover cure in hand and chugged it as if my life depended on it.
Though it felt like my stomach was about to reject it any minute, I kept drinking as I walked into my bedroom to put my phone on charge.
It’d been dead since I landed yesterday afternoon, thanks to my mother; it slipped my mind that I’d need it.
“Have you even checked your phone since you got back here?” Luna’s voice looms in my head, as more and more memories of yesterday show me how wrong I was and how right she was.
Add reckless driving to the list of idiotic things I did last night.
No wonder she left this morning without a word, not that I would’ve heard her.
I was dead to the world until Theo came pouncing in, but I knew what I needed to do now.
What the importance of her words meant, and somewhat of an idea of where to start when she comes home from her Gran’s tonight.
As I make my way back downstairs, I glance back to look at her bedroom door.
Closed to the world, the very same way she’ll be when she’s home.
I expect she’ll do her best to give me the silent treatment and torture me in ways I know I deserve, but I’ve finally realised that Luna is worth that, and so much more.
She’s proven time and time again that she’s worth the battle, and if I have any chance of winning her back, that change must start with me.
****
I don’t take much pride in coaxing Theo into having a movie day instead of going out like we usually do. Transforming the sofa into its movie den feature and watching numerous Theo’s favourite, tedious yet enjoyable Disney films all day and a few rounds of the Super Mario movie.
I knew if we were to go out, we could miss Luna coming home, and I needed all the energy I could get for her return; this rest day was beyond necessary.
Luckily, Theo is a good child with a heart of gold. He may have made me watch the Super Mario movie three times in a row after watching Moana and Encanto, and play endless rounds of Mario Kart before dinner.
I sat through it without complaining.
We ordered Chinese for dinner, which Hua from our local shop delivered with a bashful smile.
I made sure to give her a big enough tip for her and her parents, and she even got a little cuddle from Theo, too.
During dinner, which felt sort of weird with just the two of us in the house, Theo did get a kick out of my chopstick walrus impression whilst he was munching on a spring roll, and after that it was time for his bedtime routine.
It wasn’t until I was done tucking him in that I realised I hadn’t looked at my phone since earlier.
Not being able to remember the last time I did that, apart from yesterday.
I’ve always been glued to that thing, and just as I was about to bask in how nice it was to be temporarily cut off from the world, my reality started to crumble beneath me.
32 MISS CALLS, 28 TEXT MESSAGES, 9 VOICEMAILS, 15 EMAILS
As I’m about to put out the fire, my phone rings. It’s Nigel, and the sound of my name leaving his lips was all I needed for me to realise I was sitting on a whole other bombshell.
“Oliver…” he sighs in relief, causing the acid in my stomach to creep up my throat.
“W-where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all day-” but the rest of his words become a blurt as I bolt down the stairs, discarding a slipper on my way and sprint to my office.
Round my desk and turn my computer on with so much force that I almost knock it off the desk.
“I-I’m fine, just a little banged up, but I’m about to catch a flight back and as for Luna…” Nigel’s words feed the silence as my web browser finally loads, and I click the very email he’s trying to brief me on.
My heart drops to my stomach, and Nigel tells me he’ll call once he lands. I hang up and dial her number.
It doesn’t ring.
Going straight to voicemail, yet I try it again, and again, and again. But nothing. Next, I call Macy. Never once have I called one of my employees outside of work or been equally desperate for them to pick up, but again, nothing.
Punching the care home’s name into Google, Tracy is the next person I try. This time, the phone rings, but it’s as if there is no one on the other end. I try Luna again a few more times until I’m left with radio silence.
Then I re-read the email, hoping, praying that I read it wrong. Begging that out of the mistakes I made yesterday, that I hadn’t made the biggest one of all. But there it is, typed in formal font, with an email I don’t recognise, showing words I so desperately wish weren’t true.
Subject: My Resignation
To: Oliverwalters@
From: LunaJackson@
Dear Mr Walters,
I regret to inform you that this is my 24-hour termination notice, effective immediately.
I am aware this violates several clauses within our employment contract, but I no longer see myself as fit to participate in this job any further.
Please accept my full wages as compensation for my abrupt leave, and deeply apologise for the inconvenience.
I appreciate your consideration for this opportunity and wish you all the best in the future.
Regards,
Luna Jackson
No matter how many times I re-read it, I refuse to believe it’s true, which is exactly why, instead of leaving the house to find her like I want to, I take myself upstairs, one heavy footstep at a time, to Luna’s bedroom.
Only now do I realise it’s been left open a crack. With a heavy heart, I push it open and find the truth in the lie I’ve been telling myself since the moment I opened that email.
The room is as bare as it was the day she moved in, and the faded smell of her perfume - Luna is gone. The drawers are empty, there’s no suitcase under the bed, and the bathroom has been rid of her fruit-scented soaps. It painfully feels as though Luna was never here in the first place.
Unable to stay here any longer, weighed down by the consequences of my actions, I head back to my office.
Torturing myself with her heartbreaking tone during the number of voicemails she left last night, reading through the many texts she left, begging to know if I was safe or why I wasn’t answering and the most painful of all, was watching the rapid dynamic of her emails.
Throughout the duration of yesterday, they went from her cheerful ‘Looney Luna’ handle to the cut-throat version of her ‘Luna Jackson’ handle.
In the space of a day, I’d not only destroyed the best thing that happened to me, but I had sabotaged things with the most kind-hearted woman I’d had the pleasure to know, and I’d shamefully joined the other men in her life who’d hurt her, in the most painful of ways.
Luna was gone, and it’s all my fault.
Something builds in my chest, like slow torture, and I try to keep it at bay, try to find a way to make this right, not to panic, but nothing works. No matter how hard I try to find a way out, I feel myself sinking lower and lower.
The longer I sit there in my desk chair, praying that Luna comes through the front door, unable to stay away, wanting to give us the chance I so desperately want.
But it doesn’t happen; that prayer goes ignored, and the darker the sky grows, so do my thoughts. I screwed everything up; there is no way out, and I can’t stay in this house any longer.
Feeling like I’m suffocating, and I want out, which is why, without giving it another thought, I hurl sleeping Theo out of the house, into the car and drive. My need for escape courses through me, wanting to be free from the torture in my chest and the pain in my heart.
When my phone rings, pulling me out of my thoughts, connected to the car via Bluetooth, I pick up to hear my best friend start that yearly tune. Wedging in the knife that had already pierced my wounded flesh. Forcing me to remember something I usually dread - and right now, it’s for good reason.
I can’t bring myself to a word; I hang up and know what my destination is. I turn onto the motorway with the most depressing thought in mind.
Worst Birthday Ever.