Calliope
Sisters are, complicated.
Calypso: Where are you?
Me: Why?
Calypso: Because I’m waiting for you at the museum doors.
I nibble my bottom lip. Annoyed at how she doesn’t text me for an entire day and then suddenly it’s text after text.
Me: I left already.
Calypso: With who?
Me: Does it matter?
Calypso: More than you think…
Rolling my eyes I toss my phone in my bag irritated by her sudden need to know everything. Who the hell does she think she is?
“Everything okay?” Soren glances over at me, I can’t see his eyes past the sunglasses.
“Yeah, Calypso is just being, well Calypso.”
“Siblings are a pain in the ass.” His thumb does that weird tapping he does right before he asks me something. It’s a tell I’m starting to learn about him.
But then he just says nothing. Letting the conversation fade into an eerie silence.
“You’re quiet today.” And for some reason, it bothers me. Soren, my ultimate nemesis. His quiet bothers me.
He hums tapping his thumb again.
“Bad day?” Why am I of all people enforcing small talk.
“It was,” he glances over at me. “Enlightening.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
The silence settles over us again but luckily my ringing phone shatters it.
I answer before I think better of it. To be honest Soren is throwing some weird vibes at me and I’m looking for the distraction.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?”
“Calypso.” Why I glance at Soren I couldn’t tell you. Just that him knowing I’m talking to her is important somehow.
“No seriously where are you?”
“On my way home,” I hedge because she wants me to tell her who I’m with.
“Who’s driving Callie?”
“Why are you suddenly so worried about it?” I test that bond that used to simmer beneath my veins before it suddenly just flickered off. Sometimes I feel it, other times I can’t.
Right now I just feel static. Like there’s a radio in my head stuck on AM.
“I just,” she pauses as I hear a car door slam. “Are you okay?” She blurts out. “I’ve got this feeling.”
“Twin telepathy or indigestion?” I’m leaning on indigestion.
“This is serious.”
“Then just tell me, Calypso.” She’s giving me a headache with this.
When she says nothing, I hang up on her.
“Is she always this overbearing?” Soren asks, pulling onto my street.
“No.” I decline her next call. “I haven’t even heard from her all day. So I don’t know what her issue is.”
“It’s odd, you say?” He grunts pulling up to the curb.
He’s still acting weird as he parks.
I wait a moment, I know it’s weird but. Soren has always gotten my door. I can call him my nemesis all I fucking want. But he is a gentle man and there is this part of me that’s interested in him.
Even though I messed around with Vex this morning. Gods that already feels like ages ago.
He sits there, engine idling, fingers still tapping that rhythm on the steering wheel. I realize I’m waiting for something that’s not coming.
“Are you going to get my door or should I just sit here until we’re both old and gray?” I finally ask, trying to keep my voice light.
Soren turns his head slowly toward me, sunglasses still hiding whatever’s in his eyes. “Maybe I’m reconsidering my gentleman status.”
“Well, reconsider faster.”
He cuts the engine instead of answering, and for a moment we just sit parked on the street. I’ve never seen Soren hesitate before. It’s unsettling.
“What happened today?” I ask, genuinely concerned. Because I’m starting to like Soren and I think… I think I might care. “You’re acting weird.”
“Define weird.” His voice is flat. Almost emotionless in a way that makes my skin prickle.
“Like you’re not the Soren who stepped beside me in that store last weekend.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“I just.” He pushes his sunglasses up his head. His eyes are bloodshot. Whatever happened today it’s gotten under his skin and here I am making it about myself.
“Hey.” I reach out and touch his hands, I don’t know when I got comfortable with him. Though that’d be a lie. It absolutely was when he stood up to James. “You don’t owe me this.”
I grab the door handle and get out of the car on my own, a strange feeling burning inside of me. One I haven’t felt in a long time.
Empathy.
No, no. It’s more than that.
Soren unhappy? It bothers me.
So I slam the door and walk away. Both for him, and for me. Because there I was making his emotions my fucking problem and that’s how I lost myself to James. And I swore I’d never do that again. I’d never pour into a well that didn’t pour back into mine.
Is that what Soren is? Is that what he’s doing?
Pouring into me.
I don’t know.
All I do know is that I want to give him pieces of me and I should just stick to hating him.
My phone rings again.
I answer it mid-ring as the keys dangle from my door. “Calypso, I will hurt you.”
“Just, don’t invite him in.”
“What the fuck does that even mean, Calypso.” I push my door open and just like that. I feel so fucking alone that my body just won’t move past the threshold. It’s just me in this apartment. No other body, no one to talk to, touch, feel.
Just. Me.
“Please Callie, you owe me nothing but do this one thing for me.” She pauses and I hear honking in the background. “Don’t invite any of them in. In fact tell Vex he’s never allowed in again.”
“Seriously what the fuck has gotten into you today?” I still haven’t entered my apartment. From here I see my bed neatly made. The aroma of coffee lingering in the air. And the soft whispers of the television on.
I leave it on, so I don’t feel so alone in my skin.
It hasn’t helped yet.
“I just. I need you to be okay.”
Tears burn in my eyes. Calypso has no idea what those words mean to me or how much I wanted her a part of my life over the years. But it was like when we turned eighteen she just, disappeared. She couldn’t be bothered with me. Only seeing me at family functions.
I don’t fucking work like that.
I wanted a relationship with her.
And she just suddenly shows up now?
“I’m okay.” I hear myself say still staring down that hallway.
“Promise?”
“Pinky.”
“I’m bringing ice cream.” Then she hangs up on me.
I glare at my phone for a moment, the screen going black. I’d rather look at the screen than my little apartment.
My sister on her way.
Soren hiding in a car.
And I can’t go in.
Instead I toss everything inside. Flick my heels off and slip my feet into cozy shoes and I leave.
I want to go in. I really fucking want to go in there. But I can’t. Not with the television on low, not with the doors open and the whispers echoing around me.
Something just says no and I turn around, go out the walk, and walk down the street in a trance-like state.
Inside my world rumbles and it takes far too long before I figure out what it is.
I feel rejected in a way from Soren. Then with Calypso I feel like I’m only good enough now because she’s ready to build that relationship. But where was she when, when I fucking needed her?
I had no one.
No one but my own thoughts and my own prayers that just went unanswered. My world fell down around me and she wasn’t there.
I’m on the bus leading me back to the place I called home. The one that probably still holds some boxes of my things on a basement shelf somewhere. Stuffed away where Amber won’t ever have to look at them.
I left everything.
Just walked away.
Not once did I return to this street, this cul-de-sac with perfect houses, and perfectly manicured lawns.
Not until I’m stepping off the bus and wandering in a neighborhood I once called home.
Everything is the same, I’m not the same. I’m different.
I make sure I’m across the street when I walk by, I make sure the sun is past the horizon before I peer into the windows. And I make sure I hide in plain sight on a bench.
The house is clean. It’s the first thing I notice. The trash isn’t laying out front like it always did when we were married. The garden doesn’t look like someone grabbed seeds and tossed them with a prayer and a water pail.
It’s perfect.
And yet, hell.
I don’t know how long I sit there staring at the windows, and the grass and the fence.
Long past normal. The bench leads to a walking path. But it’s still in a neighborhood where people talk and whisper. And some of these people know me.
But I can’t find it in me to care.
When I was a little girl Calypso and I used to dream of our wedding. Of our lives with that one person who saw us. I had this vision of my husband carrying me over the threshold. Of laughter that spilled out of the walls. Of a love so deep that the world would blush in happiness for us.
Reality was more painful.
I fell in love sure.
He never carried me over the threshold. And most days I spent bracing for the next hurt. And yet somehow seeing this home all I want is the comfort of those four fucking walls right now.
But they hold no comfort for me.
A car rolls up what feels like hours later. Red and obnoxious.
Calypso rolls the window down, her face twisted up and a sniffle echoing between us.
“I got your favorite,” she says.
For the first time I tear my eyes away from that house. The one he now lives in with her. I tell myself I only get into the car, so no one thinks Calliope Cantemir has lost her mind again.
“Do you want me to stay a little?” Calypso asks me as I slam the door and the scent of leather ripples in the air.
“I don’t know.” I look to her my heart breaking a little. “Why now? Why do you care now?”
“I was the trigger,” she says with a nod of her head. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
“Which time.” I twist in my seat and glare at her. Because everything inside me needs somewhere to go and it wants to aim all that anger at her and I’m not even sure I give a fuck over whether that’s right or not.
“All of them.” Keeping the car in park she turns to me right there on the street that broke me. “I’m sorry I left after high school leaving you with our parents. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you started dating James to tell you what a piece of shit he was. I’m sorry after you lost—”
“Don’t.”