14. Damien
FOURTEEN
damien
NOW
Kissing Callum was fucking stupid.
Inevitable as breathing, but stupid all the same because now I was trapped in a tiny waiting room of a tiny law office with Callum sitting next to me.
The only other chairs were occupied by Cal’s parents.
They looked… well, they looked like they’d seen better days, that was for sure.
They were pale and gaunt. Time had aged them, of course, but I had a feeling the events of the last week had more to do with their appearance than time itself.
Sitting in that small office that smelled vaguely of cheap air freshener was some kind of torture. The long walk back to my hotel hadn’t alleviated any of the topsy turvy feelings that churned in my stomach since that kiss last night.
That fucking kiss.
It was like coming home. Like breathing. Like opening a window after a long winter and letting the fresh air pour inside. It illuminated me and highlighted the fact that I’d never gotten over him.
Not even close.
Fucking Sam.
Discovering that he’d pretended to still know me.
That he’d told lies and half truths about me, knowing they wouldn’t check, fucking hurt.
What really stung was that Callum hadn’t known they were lies.
Sam had lied about where I lived. That was not only a massive falsehood but easy to disprove, considering Sam had told him about my business.
Had Callum bothered to check, Sams’s deceit would have unraveled.
The door to the lawyer’s office swung open. Blake Sheridan’s family had been around this town as long as it had been on the map, and Blake looked nearly old enough to be one of the founding fathers. I wondered if his bones were as brittle as he looked.
“Step inside,” he said, stepping aside so we could file into his office. At least it had a little more space than the waiting room but not by much. We let the parents take the chairs that sat across from the desk. Callum stood behind them, one hand on each of their shoulders. A pillar of support.
I stood off to the side. An outsider as always, only invited to be here because of Sam.
I never knew he was sick. That he’d beaten it, which made his sudden death seem especially cruel now.
“First of all,” Blake said, sliding in behind his desk. He carefully lowered himself into his chair. “I want to offer you my condolences for your loss. It’s never easy to lose a loved one.”
“Thank you,” Sams’s mom said, her voice quiet and shaky.
I wanted them to skip the small talk, the thin veneer of my patience cracking.
Callum was in the same room as me, ignoring me again.
I fucking hated it. Hated being ignored.
I’d been ignored as a kid, as a teen, and not so much as an adult because I drew boundaries about that shit.
I’d rather be punched in the face by Callum than be given the cold shoulder.
I had to force myself to listen to Blake as he rattled off a bunch of legalese about Sam’s affairs and how these protocols had been set up when his cancer looked like it might win.
“Sam didn’t leave behind a bunch of money.
” Blake shuffled through a stack of papers on his desk and pulled a sheet of paper out of a folder.
“The amount shown here is the balance of his accounts which, after everything goes through probate, will be approximately sixteen thousand dollars. Sam would like his parents to have that. He also had instructed that his car be sold and his parents get the proceeds from the sale.”
There was no car, though. The car had been a total write-off from the accident. I listened while Blake prattled on about that for a few minutes.
Blake rifled through more papers, then pulled a series of envelopes out of the folder.
“Upon his passing, he instructed me to deliver these letters to each of you. Mister and Missus Weeks, these are for you.” He handed over two unremarkable-looking envelopes.
Crisp white rectangles that trembled in their hands as they took them.
Sam’s mom put hers on her lap and traced the edges of the envelope with her fingers like if she tried hard enough, she’d be able to feel Sam there.
“There’s also one for Callum Weeks. And one for Damien Flynn.”
“Do we have to open them now?” I asked, my voice strangely empty. Cold.
“I have been assured that there is no time-sensitive information in the envelopes and that you can read them at your own discretion. He simply wanted you to have them.”
The envelope wasn’t anything special. Pristine. Light. Whatever he’d written hadn’t been a long letter. If it was even a letter at all. I gave it a shake and deduced that it was not, in fact, a glitter bomb.
It dawned on me then that this could have been mailed. I didn’t have to come back for any of this circus. But my proximity to Callum made it hard for me to be angry about that.
Which was good, because what the fuck, Sam? You made me cut Callum out of my life, then you cut me off. And now you drag me all the way back here for something that you could have mailed.
“This could have been an email,” Callum said, echoing my thoughts. I turned and stared at him, seeing the way all the light vacated his eyes. “I—shit.” The envelope crumpled in Callum’s hand, and I watched him close his eyes and try to regain his composure.
Callum turned and headed for the door, and he was gone before anyone could say anything. John started to stand, but I shook my head. “I’ll go. You two should stay here, deal with this. I’ll go talk to him.”
Milly gave me a tight, watery smile. She looked like she was about to collapse on the spot.
Callum wasn’t in the waiting room, which I didn’t blame him for. I rushed out of the office and scanned the area for any sign of him. I looked left, then right, trying to see which way he went.
“I’m right here.”
I turned around so fast I nearly fell over.
Once again I was following Callum around, but I couldn’t help it. Seeing him had been the only good part of this whole shit show.
He was leaning against the wall of the building, no doubt getting the back of his jacket dirty, but he didn’t seem to care so I didn’t bring it up.
I didn’t know what to say to him, though, so I just walked over and stood next to him, mirroring his body language.
It felt like an eternity before he spoke again.
“An envelope. Can you believe it? He was fucking dramatic.” Callum exhaled a heavy breath. “Did you read yours?”
“Fuck no,” I said. “Not here. Not yet. Maybe one day.” Maybe never. Truthfully, there was nothing Sam could say from beyond the grave that I was even remotely interested in hearing. It was likely a bunch of bullshit anyway. I slid the envelope into my back pocket.
“Are you going to read yours?” I asked, eyeing the envelope as Callum shook his head.
“Maybe. Not today. I don’t—I can’t.” He cleared his throat. “Not today.”
I took a deep breath in, then let it out slowly. “Did you want to go get shit-faced?”
Today was as good a day as any to break my long-standing rule of not using booze to deal with my feelings. I was tired as fuck of trying to be put together when all I wanted was to fall apart.
“That’s a terrible idea.” Callum closed his eyes and leaned against the building. He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, all of the air whooshing out of him at once. “Let’s do it.”
I almost couldn’t believe he said yes, but then he opened his eyes and looked at me. I could tell he was exhausted, sad, a million things big and small all at once.
“I don’t want to be around people, though.” Callum grimaced like the word people was contagious.
“So we get smashed in my hotel room.” Oh, now that was a bad idea. Me and Callum, alone, in a hotel room, both mired in the thick of it.
He looked at me for a long moment before nodding and pushing away from the wall. “Okay. Okay. Yeah, let’s… anything beats being in that house right now.”
We hopped into my car, and Callum was kind enough to ignore the trash in the back seat that had accumulated during the drive here.
Our first stop was the liquor store, where Callum chose a bottle of vodka that probably tasted like lighter fluid but would absolutely get me hammered.
After the liquor store, I stopped by a pizza place and grabbed a large pepperoni pizza, knowing that later we’d need something to sponge up the alcohol.
Under any other circumstances, I might have been able to drum up some excitement for the fact that Callum Weeks was in my hotel room. As it was, I could only feel an unsettling sense of dread, like there were more shoes waiting to drop.
Callum sank down to the floor and leaned against the bed. Cracking open the vodka, he took a sip from the bottle and immediately winced.
“Strong?”
“Disgustingly,” he replied. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he then held the bottle up for me to take. Against my better judgment, I sat down next to him, shoulder to shoulder. And I took the bottle.
“To Sam. I stopped missing you a long time ago.” I took a sip, grimaced, then spoke again. “To Sam. I hope it’s not too hot where you ended up.”
After taking another sip that burned all the way down to my toes, I passed the bottle back to Callum, who didn’t acknowledge that I’d basically said his brother had gone to hell.
Callum raised the bottle. “To Sam. Fuck you.” He took a long drink, grimaced again, then passed it back to me.
In spite of myself, I laughed. “I’ll drink to that. Fuck you, Sam.”
I took a smaller sip this time as the booze warmed me up from the inside, making everything suddenly softer.
“What do you think is in the envelope?” Callum asked after a few more shots.
I didn’t know about him, but I was feeling every drop of that booze. Shifting around, I grabbed the pizza and placed it on the floor between us.
“I don’t know. He was your brother.”
“He was your best friend.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, he was my best friend, and he froze me out for the past ten years. We were strangers now, Callum.” Just like Callum and I were strangers. Only, it didn’t feel like we were. There was this familiarity that lingered, even after so many years had gone by.
To stop myself from doing something stupid like kissing him again, I grabbed a slice and took a bite.
“You should eat,” I suggested after I devoured half a slice in three seconds.
“I’m good for now,” he replied. Closing his eyes, he leaned against the mattress. I watched him for a few minutes until I realized that he’d fallen asleep sitting on the floor of my hotel room. I left him there, staring at him like some kind of lovesick creeper.
Time had changed us both, but also not really. He still looked like my Callum. The Callum who kissed like a dream and had the laugh of an angel. Who taught me to swim and how to not be afraid of the water.