Damien
THIRTY
NOW
After almost a week of ignored texts and calls that went unanswered and unreturned, I almost didn’t answer when Callum called.
But I was a sucker and I was weak, and Bowie was going to kill me if I let Callum off the hook for ghosting me.
I answered the call with every intention of calling him on his bullshit, but the voice that greeted me was tight and frantic and not at all okay.
“Did you know?” Callum asked. He was nearly hyperventilating. “Did you know?”
He sounded broken, and any bad feelings I might have had about him ghosting me went out the window. Somehow, some way, this had something to do with Sam.
“Did I know what? You’re going to have to give me a little more to go on.” I was already on my feet and heading for the door. I stuffed my feet in my shoes and grabbed my keys. Whether he wanted me there or not, I was going to him.
“Did you open your envelope? What’s inside?”
“I haven’t.” Cold dread washed through me. “Callum, what was in your envelope?”
My heart slammed against my ribcage like it was trying to escape. The keys shook in my hand, but I managed to get the fob to unlock my car for me.
He’d gone quiet except for his heavy, irregular breathing.
“Callum, listen to me. Deep breath. Okay? Follow my count. Deep breath. One. Two. Three. Four. Hold it.” I counted him through a couple more rounds of box breathing until he sounded steadier.
“He… the envelope. There wasn’t a note, Damien. Not even an explanation. God, he was such an asshole.” Anger surged through Callum’s voice, hardening it.
“Callum, what happened?” I wanted to go to him, but it would take a couple hours to get there and yet I couldn’t make myself start the car yet. Not until he told me what the fuck he was talking about.
“I opened the envelope.”
His voice was small now, tired and defeated in a way that I hated. Callum had always been good. Soft. Kind. He didn’t deserve whatever it was that Sam had done to him.
“What was in the envelope, Callum?” If I had to nudge him every step of the way, I was going to.
“It’s… they’re not mine. Sam’s parents. They’re not my parents.”
“What? That’s bullshit. Of course, they’re your parents.”
“Not according to the DNA results Sam left me.”
“That’s what was in your envelope?” You could have knocked me over with a feather. “No fucking way is that even real. He had to be punking you.”
The silence that followed my statement sat on me like a dead weight. Whether it was a lie or the truth didn’t matter. What mattered was that Sam had found a way to ruin Callum, even from the other side.
“What if he’s not?” Callum’s voice was more fragile than I’d ever heard it.
“I’m on my way.” I started my car, threw it in reverse, and was backing out of my parking space before he could even respond.
“You don’t have to.”
“I’m not letting you face this alone. I have my letter with me still. We’ll open it together. Did you want to stay on the phone with me?”
“I don’t want to be a distraction. Just… hurry, please.”
“I’ll be there as soon as possible. And for what it’s worth, Callum, no, I didn’t know. If this is true, it’s not anything Sam confided in me about.”
“I believe you. I’m sorry I yelled.”
“Hey, don’t apologize. I’d have yelled too. I’m going to go now, but I’ll see you soon, okay. Remember to breathe. And call me if you need to.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
I hated hanging up, but I made myself do it anyway. The two-hour drive felt like it might as well have been a two-million-hour drive. By the time I got to Callum’s house and pulled into his driveway, I’d been through every possible scenario in my head. In all of them, Sam was a liar and an asshole.
Since the funeral, the letter he’d wanted me to have sat in my glovebox untouched. And were it not for Callum’s crisis, I might never have opened it. Sam had stopped being important to me a long time ago, and the more I learned about him, the more I was kind of glad that we hadn’t stayed friends.
I grabbed the envelope and headed for the front door. It swung open just before I knocked and revealed a disheveled Callum. His hair was sticking out in every direction like he’d spent the past two hours tugging at it. He also looked like he hadn’t had a decent sleep in days.
Everything else was forgotten as I stepped inside and tugged him against my chest. Callum let out a shuddering breath, and then he was clinging to me, crying against me. Big, soul-deep sobs that shook his body and made his knees weak. But they could be weak, because I was here to hold him up now.
I didn’t talk. Didn’t tell him it was okay, because it wasn’t. It was fucked up if it was true, and it was fucked up if it wasn’t. And, honestly, I wasn’t sure which one was worse.
“Show me.” I kissed his hair and even when he pulled away, still sniffling, I didn’t let go of him. He leaned against me and motioned to the living room where some crumpled papers sat on the coffee table.
“I got mad,” he explained when we reached the coffee table. He picked the papers up and handed them to me.
“They’re wrinkled, not burned. So you did fine, I’d say.”
The results looked official enough, not that I had much—or any—experience with reading DNA results.
“Let’s sit down and take a good look at these.” My own envelope was shoved into my back pocket where I did my best to ignore it for now. Its turn would come soon enough.
I sat on the couch and pulled Callum down next to me. I gathered him close and let him lean against my chest, using it as a pillow while I searched the internet for the company that was on the letterhead of the test results.
My heart sank when I discovered that they did exist. If this was a lie, it was a well-crafted deception.
“Well, the company this came from is legit. They were established in the early 2000s when DNA testing was branching out into the consumer market. So, either the results are real, or Sam is an excellent liar. And there’s another thing to consider, and that’s that Sam might not have had your DNA tested against your parents.
If he wanted the results to not match, all he had to do was get anyone else to take the test. Easy-peasy. ”
“God, he was such a douchebag.” Callum exhaled, sounding less shaky now. Less distraught and a little angrier than he’d sounded earlier. “Did you bring your letter? What does it say?”
“I have it, but I haven’t opened it.” Shifting around, I grabbed it from my back pocket and carefully unfolded the envelope. It was still sealed, but no longer as crisp as it had looked when it had been handed to me.
“It can’t be worse than mine.” Callum offered and a pang of guilt stabbed me in the heart because I knew he was right. No matter what was in this letter, it couldn’t be worse than his.
For one, I was no longer emotionally invested in Sam in any way, shape, or form. Our friendship had been dead and buried for years, and I had no intentions of digging it up. Not even if he’d have lived.
And yet my hands still trembled when I tore the envelope open and my heart still crashed against my ribs as I took the papers out of the envelope.
Mine was a letter. Written on yellow legal paper in Sam’s tidy block printing.
“For the record,” I said as I unfolded the papers all the way. “Your brother was a fucking asshole. For this and for everything else.”
He was a jerk and a manipulator, and we’d let him do it and I hated myself for that. But I’d been so filled with guilt from sneaking around with Callum behind his back that I’d have believed that unicorns existed if he told me that was the price I had to pay to earn his forgiveness.
Forgiveness was never on his agenda. Looking back, Sam had always been a jealous friend. He didn’t like hearing stories about me hanging out with other people. Not even if I was only hanging out with other people because Sam was off being super student, local role model, and chick magnet.
To Sam, I’d been a toy that he liked to play with, and he refused to share me so that he could pull me off the shelf and dust me off whenever he wanted to use me again.
I shifted around and put the letter on the coffee table and smoothed it out when my hands wouldn’t stop shaking long enough to read it.
I put my hands on the table on either side of the letter and started reading out loud.
Damien,
If you’re reading this and my “brother” is there, fuck you both.
“Well, we’re off to a good start.”
If Callum is there, to him I say yes, the results are real. Ask Mom and Dad about it sometime. If Callum isn’t with you, well, I’d be surprised to be honest. Was my body even cold before you fucked?
“Probably not.” Callum scoffed. “God, he was such a bastard.”
I glanced at the next words, then at Callum before turning my eyes to the page again to continue reading.
Yes, I’m an asshole. But you were my friend first and yet you chose Callum. Just like my parents chose Callum. Just like everyone always chose Callum. Callum is so responsible. Callum is so kind. Everyone loves Callum.
Fuck Callum.
And fuck you.
I’m not sorry I broke you two up. I don’t wish you well.
I don’t want you to be together now but have no doubt that you’ve already fucked each other’s brains out and then quickly realized that there were some lies told and some guilt placed to keep the two of you from getting back together before now.
I wasn’t supposed to grow up in Callum’s shadow. He wasn’t supposed to be there. And everywhere I went, I was compared to him. He was the golden child. The good one. I was the wild one. The loud one. The problematic one. And yet I was the real one. But somehow I wasn’t good enough.
“Talk about revising history,” Callum said.
Disbelief and disdain dripped from his words.
Next to me, he tensed, his whole body going rigid like he was squaring up for a fight.
“Did he live in the same house as me? Mom and Dad were always on about how great Sam was. How responsible of him it was to work so hard every summer.”
Sam had written more, but I wasn’t sure I was interested in reading it yet.
He’d talked about the lies and the guilt he’d used to break us up and keep us apart.
Not that it had been hard to keep us apart.
Neither Callum nor I had exactly fought him on it.
We’d both loved Sam, and he’d known that.
He’d used it. He’d planned on it, in fact.
“Your parents clearly have some secrets. I think it’s safe to assume that maybe we don’t know everything that went on.”
Callum snorted. “You think? I mean, if this is true…”
My heart broke on the sound of his voice cracking.
“Then who the fuck am I?”