Chapter 18 #2
“Anyway, yeah, I’m disappointed. In myself. Vic stirred something that felt like real interest or possibility for the first time in forever. I was excited about the what if, but now I think it was just me reverting to old patterns. Me being attracted to the push and pull, hot and cold.”
“Blech,” Carrie said, not unkindly. “That’s the problem with ‘doing the work.’ We overanalyze everything. We can’t just have a nice brainless time and a good screw anymore.”
“Truth.” Cal grinned, but the humor immediately fell away. “I was just surprised at how quickly I ignored my own gut and ignored things I learned in favor of . . . I don’t know.”
“A sweet smile, amazing eyes, a surprisingly big laugh, and great smell?” Carrie quoted one of his earlier descriptions of Vic back to him in a singsong.
“Yeah . . .” Great, he sounded like a big sad dope even to his own ears, but whatever. “I just . . . get lonely. Don’t you ever get lonely?”
Something flashed in Carrie’s eyes. Old hurt, he thought.
She shook her head. Not saying that she never got lonely, he understood, but more like she didn’t want to go there tonight.
He sometimes worried because she never really went there with him.
Maybe she told her girlfriends more? He doubted it.
“I just . . . I always looked at Mom and Dad and thought, why the hell can’t you just be nice to each other? Not fight about every little thing.”
Carrie nodded, eyes young and hurt, caught in the same place he was remembering back.
He shrugged. “And so I thought . . . I won’t be like that. I’ll just always be kind. Easy to be around. I’ll show love, and surely, the person I love will love me back. Then, when it didn’t work out with Twila, I tried again, thinking, okay, that was horrible—but I learned something.”
“Yeah, if only learning was enough,” Carrie said, voice sad.
“Exactly. So enter Eileen, who I thought was so different and yet, our relationship ended up being practically a carbon copy of mine and Twila’s.”
“I’m sorry . . .”
“Not your fault—not their fault. Not even really my fault. Like the beautiful words that are almost a cliché now… We don’t know what we don’t know. So years alone and I meet Melanie—”
“Ugh.”
Cal laughed a little despite how low he felt.
“No, seriously, I accept that you feel equal responsibility about things not working out with Twila or Eileen—but you were young and like you said, there was so much you, we, didn’t know.”
Cal nodded.
“Melanie, though? I don’t care how much trauma she had or what she went through as a kid or whatever you want to say to try to let her off the hook. People know cheating is wrong.”
Cal held up his hand to stave off a Melanie bashing session.
He felt a bit weepy. “Yeah, yeah—that’s not exactly what I’m trying to talk about here, though.
I always wanted one true love.” He winced, knowing how dumb that sounded.
He shrugged. “Instead, I have a chain of people I’ve loved who didn’t love me back. ”
“Because we were young and dumb and thought if we worked hard enough, loved deeply enough, self-sacrificed enough, surely they’d love us as much as we love them.
” Carrie shook her head too. “It’s just not how it works.
If anything, I think we were chosen because they could see we’d give and give, and they wouldn’t have to do a damn thing.
Maybe we had signs on our foreheads: damaged goods, so unloved, we’ll take your scraps. ”
Cal nodded. “So, no one can have a lasting relationship anymore? People used to. People had twenty, thirty, fifty-year marriages . . .”
“It was a different time, I think. Women didn’t have options, so even if you had a cheating, lying, mean jerk of a husband, you stayed—and then your kids made your 40th, 50th, and 60th wedding anniversaries into these big romantic symbols that they weren’t, they just weren’t.
There’s a reason ‘gray divorce’ is a social phenomenon now. Women are tired of men’s crap.”
Right. Jammy Red Roo had temporarily jammed the fact right out of his head that Carrie was about as anti-marriage as anyone could be these days. “Okay, so no marriage . . . but will you ever date again, find a new love?”
Carrie barked a laugh. “You’re presuming that I ever had love.”
“C’mon, it couldn’t have all been fake, not for so many years, not for decades.
” But from her comment seconds ago and their shared history of over-giving, well, maybe it was.
That was one of the hardest things about looking back at a relationship once it ended, Cal decided, trying to figure out what, if anything, was real and how much was just delusion and wishful thinking, or your own feelings projected onto someone else.
One of Carrie’s shoulders lifted in a half-shrug.
“I like to think I wasn’t living a lie for thirty-plus years .
. . but then I look at what happened, how he actually was, how he is, and well .
. . I don’t know. As for the rest of your question, absolutely not.
Less than zero interest. I will never put myself in the position to be hurt like that ever again. ”
And Cal got it. Did he ever. And yet . . .
“I just want to have someone to pour love into,” he said hoarsely. Shit, maybe he was drunk. “And have someone who will pour love into me back.”
“Aw, Callie . . .” Carrie’s sad eyes and her use of his childhood nickname revealed how deeply sorry she was feeling for him.
“I hope you find that, but that’s what I’ve been telling you for months .
. . you gotta pour love into yourself first. Be for yourself who you want someone to be for you.
” She giggled. “Okay, I’m sloshed. I don’t know how that last bit came out, but what I mean is .
. .” She launched into one of her favorite topics.
Cal had heard her “romanticize your life” shtick enough times that he got the general gist and even explained her own philosophy back to her.
“Yeah,” she said delightedly, pointing at him. “You get it.”
“You really are sloshed,” he said. Then they were both laughing, and even though he knew he hadn’t really solved any of his problems, at least he had a great sister and friend. It was more than a lot of folks had.
“Hey,” she said a few minutes later. “Did I tell you I’m thinking of getting a dog?”
She hadn’t, but the news made him happy.
“Cheers to that.” He lifted his glass. “And thanks for all this. I needed it.”