Just For You

She’s right, I know she is. I shouldn’t give up everything out of anger. If I don’t contact Lucie now then I might lose the opportunity to be a dad to Logan. That’s something I’ll definitely regret. My pride isn’t worth losing everything for. I think I can get over what has happened, especially if I make the most of now. I might have missed out on a lot, but I might’ve missed out on it anyway. I might have left to go abroad anyway. In a way, Lucie took that guilt away from me because she made the decision for me, she took on the burden.

I do want to call her, I need to speak to her, so I grab my cell phone out of my pocket and I scroll through the numbers. It takes me a while, I think I might be a little more intoxicated than I first thought, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I finally know what’s right. I have finally made a choice and this time it’s definitely the right one. If I don’t forgive, I’ll be bitter and twisted forever, and if I do I can start again, have a chance. I can be the person that Lucie and Logan need me to be.

32

Lucie

Ring, ring… ring, ring… ring, ring…

I stare at the phone screen, trying to work up the courage to answer the call. This is the last person that I thought I would hear from today, so this call is absolutely terrifying. After everything that happened earlier, I thought that we were set with where we stood on things, but now… well, now I’m not so sure.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” Mom asks me curiously while making a cup of tea. “Who is it?”

I stare up at her through my eyelashes with wide, panicked eyes. “It’s him, I whisper. “Kade.”

“Oh…” She doesn’t know what to say either, which is probably because I explained the entire argument to her just after it happened. She knows how furious Kade is about me keeping the secret. “I see…”

“What should I do?” I beg her. “Should I answer? What if he yells at me some more?”

“He might do,” she replies, sounding as helpless as I feel. “But he might be calling to apologize. As scary as it is, I suppose you do owe him the chance to say whatever he needs to say. Even if you don’t like it.”

I nod, agreeing with her even if I really don’t want to and I head towards the front door. I need to be alone when I take this call, since I don’t know what I’m going to face. I need the privacy of outside. I don’t hit the answer button until the cold air washes over me and it makes me absolutely wide awake.

“He… hello?” I stammer. At first, I don’t hear anything but a lot of background noise. “Hello?”

“Hello? Lucie? Is that… that you?” My heart sinks, he sounds wasted. I’ve been getting myself all sad and worked up all day and he’s been out partying like he used to all the time. “I need to talk to you.”

As he hiccups, I roll my eyes. I thought that he’d changed, that was the whole point of this. He was supposed to be more grown up and better. It seems that I’ve been duped again, led o believe that he’s a much better man and it was all to get me into bed again. As soon as it started to get heavy, he reverted to the real him.

“Don’t you think that’s something that we should do in the morning? When you are sober…”

“Oh no, don’t be like that. I’m not… erm, I am not in the place where I will still be a dick. I get… understand what I did earlier was stupid. I should have…” He trails off, and for a moment I think he’s gone. “Oh, yeah, sorry, Lucie, what was I talking about then? Something I’m supposed to have done, right?”

“Kade, this isn’t something that we should be talking about while you’re drunk in a bar. This is a child’s life that we’re talking about here. You might not like what I’ve done, but I only wanted to protect him.”

“You don’t understand.” Clearly the words that I just spoke didn’t go in at all. He seems to be at that drunken stage where things just wash over you. “I meant it when I said that I love you.”

I slide my eyes closed, unable to deal with that part of things right now. I need to work out what his intensions are with Logan first. His love for me can’t be the most important thing anymore. I might like it to be, but it isn’t. It’s all about my son. The sooner he realizes that, the better for all of us.

“This isn’t about that, though, is it?” I let one single tear roll down my cheek. An intense feeling of sadness threatens to destroy me. “And if you think it is then I really can’t speak to you because I have another priority.”

“No, I know, this is about… this is about Logan, I know that, of course I know that. It’s just… it isn’t easy to find out like this and I know it must have been hard for you too, but you got to be there from the start.”

“This needs to be something that we talk about face to face and while you are sober…”

I’m disappointed that he’s acted in this way and that he’s contacted me to let me know that he’s being an idiot. It isn’t right. Surely, he understands, even through his intoxicated brain that this isn’t right. Is he doing it to upset me further? To let me know how little he respects and cares about me? I don’t get it.

“No, no, I need to talk about it now,” he replies breezily. “I didn’t get to say what I wanted to before.”

“You said plenty, thank you very much,” I say bluntly. “I think you made your feelings very clear.”

“Yeah, okay, so I wasn’t the best.” He shrugs as if this makes it okay. “I was a bit thick, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t get to talk now, does it? I should still get to… get to… get to…”

He’s forgotten where he’s going with this, again. This conversation is getting a little tiresome if I’m honest. I already know that it can’t end up in a positive place, so I don’t know why I keep letting it happen. I need to find a way to politely put a stop to it so that we can have a much more civil conversation tomorrow.

“If you would like to come around in the morning, then I will have all the time you like…”

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