37. Sophie
Sophie
“ O h nooo,” I cry out as soon as we get back into our apartment and I sit down to take off my shoes.
My completely destroyed shoes. “Damn it!”
“What? What’s wrong?” Clover asks, his eyes already scanning for an injury, but I only lift my foot up to show him the rip over the side of my Converse, announcing their death.
“My shoes. They’re ripped! Do you think I can get them fixed anywhere here?”
Callum bends down, taking my foot into his large hand and shakes his head. “I don’t think so, Sophie. This is right on the edge.” His thumb slides across the tear and a wave of sadness rolls over me.
I tip my head back against the wall, tears prickling at my eyes.
“Hey,” he says softly, his hand cupping my cheek. “Don’t cry, little menace, it’s just shoes.”
I shake my head. “No, they weren’t just shoes. My mom got them for me. For my sixteenth birthday. I’ve had them ever since.” A tear slides down my cheek because this was one of the last things that connected us.
“Oh, baby.” Clover’s arms wrap around me. “I’m so sorry.” He hugs me tight, giving me the safe space to let out all the emotions clogging up my heart.
And I let go, forgetting that I should be furious with him for spilling our secret to my brother like that.
It wasn’t the plan, and I wanted to kill him on the spot, but I also couldn’t deny how much better it felt to tell at least someone about it. Today took me through a range of emotions and Vassar’s parting words still ring in my ears.
“Guard your loving heart, Soph,” he told me.
It’s too late, but I didn’t tell him that.
However, the emotions stuck.
So, now, I just stand here, clinging onto my fake husband I wasn’t supposed to love, crying over shoes.
“Come, I want to show you something,” Clover says, but I don’t get a chance to move before his arms are lifting me and carrying me to the couch.
“It’s not done yet, but…” He trails off, looking sheepish as he walks over to the coat closet and digs in far and deep, pulling out a box I haven’t seen before.
“What’s that?” I ask, sniffling.
Clover silently hands the box to me, and I take it, curious. He sits next to me, watching me from the side.
Wiping a tear off my cheek with the back of my hand, I lift the top of the box and gasp.
“Wh-what…” My eyes lift up to Clover, then back to the box.
“It’s for you, but like I said, I’m not done yet.
I just thought you might want to see these, seeing as your favorite pair ripped.
Um”—he scratches the back of his neck—“I know they’re not as special as the other ones were, but I’m still planning to finish the embroidery over on this side.
” He motions to the side, but I freeze .
“F-finish? As in you’re the one doing this?
” I blink, not comprehending what he’s saying right now as I look at the brand-new white Converse with the most beautiful, colorful embroidery done over them.
The colors are vibrant, fresh, and remind me of Greece.
Of the colorful pops of flowers amongst the white and beige buildings.
The shining sea on a hot summer day. I can even see our expressive language and temperament written all over them.
“Um, yeah.” Clover blushes. He blushes, and I lose all ability to speak. “I haven’t done it in a while, but it wasn’t hard to pick up again.”
Not special?
Not. Special?
“Oh my God! Shrek! You’re making these with your own hands for me?” I blink back the new wave of tears that are just at the rim and watch him let out a groan at the sight.
“Damn it! You’re gonna cry, aren’t you?”
I nod, not even attempting to pretend otherwise. “I knew it!”
Before I can break down completely, he swipes me into his arms once again and into his lap. “Okay, now go ahead.”
And then I cry.
“Why are you doing this, Shrek?”
“Because I care about you, little menace.” He kisses the top of my head.
“You do?”
“Yeah,” he says softly, his voice tight. “I didn’t want to, I tried not to, but I care about you.”
“Why’d you try not to?” I tense, sensing that we’re on the brink of the one subject we’d been skipping around since the beginning.
His past.
“Because caring hurts, little menace,” Clover says quietly after a long moment.
I stay exactly where I am, only burrowing further into him, showing I’m here for him as he was for me. “I didn’t know you were artistic like this. What else are you hiding from me?”
“Sometimes I wish you could’ve met me seventeen years ago,” he says, and I detect a faint smile in his tone, but I don’t dare get up from my position.
“I was someone entirely different. Someone a lot more like Alec. Free, happy, a Casanova.” Callum snorts.
“At least that’s what Mom called me. I loved to have fun and to deliver it.
I dated, went out, and did all the usual things, and I drew.
I was quite a painter. Have you been to my sister’s house?
” I nod. “That painting for her daughter’s room? ”
I twist to look at him, remembering the most beautiful mural of lavender fields pained across the whole wall. “Oh my God! Shrek, you drew that?” He smiles sheepishly. “Stop lying, Callum Clover Lovinski,” I tease trying to lighten the mood and it works.
Clover chuckles.
“I know, shocker, but yeah, my life before was all fun and games until it wasn’t.” He pauses. “Until my girlfriend came over one night and told me she was pregnant.”
I gasp, despite myself.
What? I-I didn’t expect that and a cold shiver runs down my body because I sense the story doesn’t end there.
“It was a shock. For both of us. But I loved her, we had been together for a while already, so I got a ring and proposed, canceling my plans of moving out of Loverly Cave after school, and took up a few more jobs to save more money.”
I stay quiet.
“It was an unusually rainy season that early spring, and all our friends kept talking about how high the water was getting at the pier in Santa Cruz. They wanted to see it. So did Bianca, my fiancée. She begged me to go with them, but I couldn’t.
” He clears his throat. “I-I got angry that she didn’t understand I needed to stay and make money for our growing family.
And I might’ve also been bitter that she was having fun while I wasn’t.
So, we got into a fight, and she left with our friends by herself.
Everyone could tell the storm was getting worse, and within three hours, the power in our town was cut.
An hour after that, I got a phone call.” Clover’s voice trembles at the end, and I clutch onto him harder, holding him as he lives through the horror of his past once again.
I should’ve never let him go there again. I knew, I sensed it was bad. I just couldn’t imagine it…like this. That’s why none of his fr iends or family ever talk about it. That’s why I’ve never heard even whispers of his tragedy. They’re protecting him from reliving it.
He doesn’t have to continue. I can put two and two together.
He lost them both.
That day, he lost the woman he loved and their unborn child.
“Caring hurts,” I whisper, understanding now and he nods against my head.
“Yeah. Caring hurts. And so does guilt.”
“But it wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t it? If I were there, I could’ve saved her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I should’ve stopped her from going in the first place. And to think I was jealous…” he spits out, disgusted with himself all these years later.
“You were young, Callum,” I say, using his first name, because it somehow feels wrong to use the other now. Like it doesn’t belong in this story. “You were young, and no one can blame you for that.”
“I blame me for that. I was supposed to be a father. I was supposed to be grown up. Yet, I failed even before I got a real chance to be that. I’ll never forget that day.”
His quiet words pierce through the silence of the night, ringing loud and clear inside my heart.
He still carries that day in his heart.
He still carries them in his heart.
I swallow the lump of emotions I have no right to feel. “Why did you choose the Navy?” I’d think he’d want nothing to do with the water after that.
“Because I hated it. I hated the water and in my teenage maximalism I wanted to prove something to it. I wanted to blame it for taking them away from me, but soon after I joined and started training, I realized there was only one person to blame here.”
“Callum…” I squeeze his arm.
“I stayed for sixteen years, silently daring it to take me as well. To claim me but it wouldn’t.”
My heart cracks and bleeds for this sullen, strong man sitting here. For all the pain and guilt he’s carried with him all these years .
“Of course, it wouldn’t. The ocean knew you had to meet a crazy woman yelling at her TV soon enough. It didn’t want to rob you of all that fun.” The joke slips out of me as a knee-jerk reaction.
It’s what I do when the situation around me feels too heavy. It’s my way to escape the reality, and I can sense Clover needing that escape.
Him. And me.
Once again, it works because his chest shakes with a silent chuckle. “Of course, it did.”
I burrow deeper into his warmth, chasing away the cold tentacles of the past crawling over us.
“Thank you for listening,” he adds softly, pressing his nose into my hair, his hot breath like honey over a bleeding wound.
The only problem, honey is no use for bleeding wounds, and I’m not sure he has anything else that could be used in this case.
“It’s the least I could do for you making those Converse for me.” I go for that unflappable smile again, raising up from his chest.
“How do you do that?” Clover asks, shaking his head while a smile grazes his lips.
“Do what?”
“Make me want to smile when I feel like dying on the inside.”
My chest squeezes with such intensity that I want to scream, but I don’t. Instead, masking it with more humor.
“I can’t tell if it’s a good or a bad thing.”
This time the smile reaches his eyes as he tucks a loose strand of my hair behind my ear and kisses my nose. “Good, little menace. Definitely good.”
The heart that was supposed to keep me alive…received another cut, losing its color.
I-I need to get away from him. I can’t sit here any longer. I can’t ask another question or answer any of his. I-I can’t.
I’m aware how selfish I’m being.
I’m fully aware. I know tonight’s not about me. Callum shared something so deep, so raw with me, he trusted me with that information and yet I can’t stop the bleeding inside my chest .
“I know it’s not that late yet, but I think I’m ready for bed,” I tell him, needing to keep up my facade for a little while longer.
“Then let’s go to bed,” he agrees, taking my hand he leads me to the bedroom and within moments, his soft lips are on mine.
And I want to cry.
I want to scream and rage and cry so hard it would fill up every corner of my soul.
And I want to pull away, stop this kiss because now I know the truth.
Now I know he’s not kissing me because of me. He’s kissing me to put a Band-Aid over his own pain.
I had this naive notion that maybe, just maybe, he could fall for me too. I never admitted it out loud or even in secret to myself. I never admitted it, yet it was living inside my heart from that first day we were married.
Until tonight. Until it crashed and burned under the weight of his past.
He can’t fall in love with me because there’s no room for me in his heart. Not when it holds all that grief, love and guilt for her, them .
I should pull away. I should stop before I lose all the life inside my heart, but I can’t.
If he needs my life to feel alive tonight, I’ll gladly be his Band-Aid one more time.
Vassar was right, I have no idea what I’m doing here.