“Dare I ask?” he replies with a confused look on his face.
“Nope. Don’t ask. Just slide a drink my way.” I grab my forehead. “And make it quick, please.”
“Bad day?”
“The worst. Bad doesn’t ev
en begin to cover it.”
I blame Lee for this, I can’t help but blame him. He should have been honest from the start rather than doing what he thought was right for me. Who is he to decide that anyway? I know what’s best for me, no one else. I wouldn’t have worked with Raelyn for a good reason and now I have been proven right.
Well, I suppose all I can do now is drink these woes away before they swallow me up whole.
My head is spinning, I’m barely even sitting on the stool anymore, everything is sloshing about inside of me. I don’t know how long I’ve been here; I don’t know what I’ve said. I’m just a mess. A numb, messy state. But it’s better for me to be a mess than it is for me to feel all of these confusing feelings Raelyn has on me.
“I’m going to call her,” I tell Ryan decidedly. “Give her a piece of my mind.”
“Who?” He looks panicked. Even I can tell that in this state. “Not your ex-wife?”
“Huh? No. Was I even talking about her?” I shake my head as he nods. “No, Raelyn.”
“The woman that you work with now? I know you told me a bit about her, but why are you calling her?”
“She needs to know… I have to tell her what she’s done to me. I don’t think she understands.”
I can see Ryan saying more to me, but his words aren’t sinking in. I have my cell phone clutched between my fingers and an idea forming in my brain. Right now, nothing else matters.
The cold air outside doesn’t sober me up. If anything, it makes me worse. My vision becomes intensely blurry making it challenging for me to see any of the words on my phone screen. That could stop me, but it doesn’t.
“Ah!” I press the phone to my ear. It’s ringing and I know that it’s to her. “Now you’ll see.”
It takes a while, ringing through, shaking my ear drums. Then it comes to the voice mail part.
“Raelyn,” I drawl, letting my anger out in an idiotic way. “You are ignoring me because you don’t want to talk about it, but we have to. We can’t just ignore it because it’s stupid. So we slept together. So what? Does it have to be a big deal? Do you need to run away and leave me to run everything by myself, hmm? Because that is weak as fuck, Raelyn. It really is. I thought that you were so much stronger than that. I guess not. I guess I was wrong.” I roll my eyes, as if she’s looking at me. “What’s the point of this, huh? You can’t put work first? I just don’t know what that says about you. You aren’t the person that I thought you were.”
The warm glow that comes from this message fades very quickly. Too quickly. All of a sudden, guilt floods me. Was I too harsh then? Did I say things that I shouldn’t have? Was I unprofessional?
Fucking hell, have I just wrecked things even more? Is the hole deeper? How are we going to drag ourselves out of it? So many questions and absolutely no answers. Being this drunk isn’t helping. I need to go back home and sober the hell up. Yet my feet are heading back inside the bar, to make yet another mistake…
12
Raelyn
I stare out of the window of the house that I grew up in, looking across the road where I used to play, yearning for a more innocent time where I didn’t have all these ridiculous problems that feel all consuming. I would much prefer to be a twelve-year-old, unaware of the horrors of puberty that are about to hit me, unaware of how hard adulthood was going to turn out, just content and happy with my own little competitive nature.
“Here we are.” Mom enters the room and hands me a mug of steaming hot tea. I smile as I take it from her, glad to have her. It was just her and I for the longest time. Dad died when I was young and she never seemed to meet anyone else. I never really thought much about it, but now I can’t help wondering why.
Was it because of me? She had a young child so she wasn’t focused on dating. Or was it because she met the love of her life once, I know that she absolutely adored my dad, she tells me all about their love, so perhaps no one else could ever compare. Or maybe there is just something unlovable about her and me. Or just me. There could have been guys but they might have been put off because of my existence.
“Thanks for the tea, Mom. It’s really nice.” I smile thinly at her.
“Well, the English always say it makes everything better. Perhaps there’s something in that.”
“Hmm, yeah you could be right. I do feel better for it. But that might be just because I’m here.”
There’s something so strange about being back at home that gives me a teenage kind of feel. I want to curl up on the couch with popcorn and fizzy pop, watching movies after a long night of homework and missing out. Knowing that Mom is in the other room, willing to help me at any time… I miss that comfort a whole lot.
“So, Raelyn. I know you said that you didn’t want to talk about it, but that was three days ago now. You must be ready to talk about things. You know I can’t help you unless you talk to me, don’t you?”