Chapter Thirty-Five
Kate
"It's not because of you," Fee told me as I shot her raised brows over my shoulder while stocking the coffee station in her office.
"Of course it is," I objected, closing the mini-fridge, reaching for the box of individual coffee pods, stacking them in their usual order. Plain, salted caramel, vanilla, mocha, decaf. Even though Fiona didn't understand the concept of drinking decaf.
But why drink coffee at all if you don't want the legal high?
"No, really, it's not. We'd already noticed a big downturn in his calls. And it took a really steep downturn the past few months. Then it went to nothing.”
"Fee," I said, snorting.
"What?"
"That's my fault too," I reminded her, voice getting a little squeaky at having to talk about The Incident.
You know, the months and months of making calls I knew I shouldn't have made.
My therapist gave me a stern look whenever I "detached myself" from my actions by calling it The Incident, but, well, sometimes a girl's got to fall back on her defense mechanisms.
"The market has shifted," Fiona told me, waving a hand. “I’ve been working on trying to move with the times for a while now. But Rush's job was never going to make the cut."
"Maybe his line wouldn't have gone so dead if..."
I couldn't bring myself to say it, to keep replaying it again and again and again. I'd finally been able to go the bulk of my day without having another panic attack over the whole thing.
"If you didn't really like how Rush gives the weather report?" Fee suggested, making a laugh bubble up and burst out. Fiona always was, and always would be, the queen of euphemisms.
"Yes, that," I agreed.
"All that raining. And earthquakes...."
"Fee."
"Oh, we're all girls here. I still call Hunter at work and phone smex him up. Keeps things fun. It's not a big deal. Or abnormal. If it was that freakish, we wouldn't have the booming business we have here."
"You never called in," I told her.
"I mean, no. But before Hunt, I was so wrapped up in my own fuckupedness—and, yes, that is the technical term—to invite any sort of intimacy with the opposite sex. OR any person at all, period. If I didn’t grow up like I did, if I didn't have the trauma associated with that like I did, maybe I would have craved that connection. Plenty of women have called Rush."
I never wanted to think about the other callers.
I knew they existed. Obviously. Or his job would have been gone a long time ago.
But acknowledging it took away from the fantasy world I had built.
Where it was something more than a job for him, where we had an actual connection instead of a business arrangement.
But they existed.
Were they women like me? Shy and lonely and desperate for even a vague facsimile of connection?
Were they just horny women who were too busy to go out to find men?
Women fresh off divorces, looking to dip their toes back into dating, but wanting to build their confidence first.
It didn't matter now.
His line was shut down.
The website had been revamped to remove all traces of a male phone sex line.
His desk had been taken over by a woman who used it to do live videos where she sat and ate whatever foods the callers requested.
"If they are going to pay me to eat a giant plate of pasta, I am going to take them for every penny they are willing to throw at me," Raina, the new girl, had said on her first day.
"I mean, it combines two of my favorite things.
Money and food. If I could just find someone to pay me to eat pasta while I binge-watch Youtube videos about van-life, I would be the happiest woman in the world. "
Rush's mug was even gone from the drainboard in the kitchen.
It was like he'd never existed.
Fiona had been quick to fill the hole he'd left behind, but I still felt the void. Around the office that seemed to be missing the balance that the light, masculine presence of Rush provided. But it was more than that.
As much as I hated to admit it, there was a void in my life as well.
I tried to convince myself that nothing had changed, nothing was actually missing.
But that simply wasn't the truth.
I don't know if I was ever aware how much of my day had started to revolve around my calls with Rush. I guess because they started so suddenly, they were sporadic for so long. It was easy to miss how I began to look forward to the call.
But with a little space, I could be more objective.
I would get home from work, go through the motions of my evening.
Talk to my mom while I straightened up. Run errands. Prep food and clothes for the next day. Then, finally, I would dive deep into a book until my eyes got blurry.
Then I would go through the motions of getting ready for sleep, climb into bed, turn off all the lights, and make my call.
It was what, I could now see, I was waiting for all day.
I'd always known I had been codependent in my close relationships. Obviously, with my mom. Then, in a lesser way, with my ex.
I guess I hadn't been self-realized enough to know—or didn’t want to see—that I had become dependent on Rush.
But there it was.
All the classic signs.
The low self-esteem he helped build up, the reactivity that happened when I obsessed over a turn of phrase he used that likely meant nothing, the dysfunctional communication—meaning none from me in this case—, and intimacy issues that I convinced myself he was helping but when I knew it very well was likely only making it worse.
Losing those calls was like losing a support system I hadn't been aware I'd been so dependent upon.
Each night when I went home was worse than the one before, leaving me feeling frustrated—in all the ways one can be frustrated—, then annoyed with myself, then lonely, and finally... sad.
It was ridiculous, but true.
I was sad because I couldn't call Rush anymore and listen to him tell me about his day, about what show he was watching and enjoying lately, about some new song he loved that I immediately ran to add to my playlist.
Maybe it was worse, too, because we'd spent so much time together in the woods. It took the fantasy into more of a reality, blurring the lines that had always made the situation just shy of toxic for me.
Because, now, I not only missed the calls, but I missed the chance to play board games with him, to talk about books, to help clean up after a storm with him, to cook for him then watch him clear his plate.
It should have been better that he was nowhere around, that I didn't have to see him, hear his voice.
It wasn't, though.
And I felt like each day was getting worse and worse.
My therapist was on the case, trying to help me work through it, move on from it.
It should have been helping.
But I didn’t want to move on from it.
That was the kicker, I guess.
I wanted him in my life.
Even though I knew I couldn't have him.
My heart swelled in my chest as my phone rang on the coffee table while I tried to read the same page for the fourth time. It wasn't my mom. I'd already talked to her. She was going out with one of her work friends. She wouldn't be calling again.
I'd blocked my ex.
My bills were paid.
So, of course, my mind went to ridiculous places.
Like maybe Rush was calling.
Like he'd shown up to check on me when I hadn't been to work.
But, I reminded myself, that was before The Incident.
It wasn't him calling.
Of course, it wasn't.
But the person it was seemed almost as unlikely.
"Fee, is everything alright at work?" I asked, my mind already racing over everything I'd done for the day, week, month, trying to figure out what could have possibly gone wrong, what I could have messed up.
"What? Oh, yeah. Work is fine. I think. I mean, you're not using the stock room to, like, cook meth or something are you? 'Cause then we might have a problem. Especially because you wouldn't think of including ya girl in on those shared profits."
"I think you need more space than the stock room has to cook meth," I told her, getting a laugh out of her.
"Yeah, no, I was just calling to chat."
"To chat? With me?"
"I'm bored. My man is helping one of his many brothers build something or another or grunt over a car engine. Who the hell knows. They’re doing manly things.
And my kids all have lives. Like, who do they think they are, right?
So I am sitting here all alone and bored. So I wanted someone to talk to."
"But, don't you have, like, a huge family?"
"They all have like a bajillion kids. And businesses. And I already know all their stories."
"I, uhm, I don't really have any stories," I insisted.
"Oh, you have stories. Everyone has stories."
"I kind of, you know, don't. I live a really quiet life."
"Well, what about that asshole ex of yours?"
"How do you know he's an asshole? Fee?" I asked when her silence stretched long enough to be suspicious.
"Alright. Look. It isn't a big deal."
"The fact that you have to preface it like that says it probably is a big deal. What did he do?"
"He came in once looking for you. You had run to grab more milk. And he was a little inappropriate."
"A little inappropriate how?" I asked, stomach churning, realizing there was another embarrassment in my life that I had been blithely unaware of, hadn’t gotten a chance to stress over for weeks or months.
"He just has a big mouth, Kate. He said some things. And then I said some things back because, well, you know me, I don't play that shit. And then he left."
"He said some things like...about me?" I asked, feeling nauseated that maybe he'd told them what he had thrown in my face about being cold in bed, maybe he'd quipped about how it was ironic that I worked in a sex business when I sucked at sex or something like that.
"He said some things about me," she corrected.
"He hit on you?"
"It's not a big deal."
"It is a big deal. I'm so sorry."
"Ah, yeah, you're not the one who did it, so you don't need to apologize. But, yeah, that was how I knew he was an asshole. I did a little jig inside when you divorced him. You can do better."