I could call up a woman and try to distract myself. I could . . . try to replace her. My brothers’ words rip through my mind, leaving a trail of awareness behind.
I can’t replace her. I don’t want to. Hell, I couldn’t.
There’s no way to switch her out for another woman. It would take two, three, maybe even four to amount to all the things she’s becoming to me.
Before I can contemplate that too much, my phone rings. I don’t even look at it. I just answer it, my brain too fogged up by my realization to think straight.
“Hello?” I ask, preoccupied.
“Graham?”
The phone wobbles in my hand and I almost drop it to the floor. Surely I’m wrong. I must be so twisted over Mallory and stressed out that I’m imagining things. That has to be it.
“Graham?” she asks again. Her voice is clear this time and exactly how I remember it.
I force a swallow, my emotions strung all over the place. I’ve waited to hear her voice for years, wondering what I would say to her. Now that she’s on the line, I have no idea what to say at all.
“Vanessa?” I ask.
“It’s me,” she says breathily. “I wasn’t sure if you’d remember my voice.”
Images of her lying in my arms, of her smile, and then of her husband’s face standing at the end of her bed flip through my mind. My stomach knots.
“Why are you calling me?”
“Lincoln’s wedding is all over the entertainment channels and magazines. He looks so much like you did back then.” She pauses. “How are you, Graham?”
“Vanessa, I . . .” I scrub my hands down my face, searching desperately for some calm in the center of this storm. “So you see my brother on television and you think, ‘Oh, I’ll call up the guy I fucked over years ago’?”
She’s taken aback by my tone, and frankly, so am I. Whatever I thought I’d say before isn’t what I’m feeling right now.
“Where’s your husband?”
“We split up a while ago,” she admits. “I should never have married him in the first place.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” I say. “You probably fucked him up too.”
“What?”
The anger I’ve felt towards this woman boils to an all-time high. “Did you have no conscience at all? You were married, Vanessa. Married. Do you have any idea what that even means?”
“Graham . . .”
“Then you fuck with me, both literally and figuratively, because it wasn’t good enough for you to get my cock. You had to go worm your way into my life, cause problems for me with my family.” The more I say it out loud, the clearer it becomes.
“I loved you!”
“You didn’t love anyone but yourself. I doubt you even understand what love means.” As the words tumble from my lips, I laugh. “I didn’t understand what love meant until recently.”
A long pause settles over us, my outburst giving us both time to think. I remember all the ways I felt about Vanessa and all the ways I feel now towards Mallory. They’re completely different. Black and white. But one wasn’t love and the other . . . might be on its way there.
“I was thinking I might be in Savannah in a few weeks. I thought maybe we could meet up. Say hello.”
“No.” It’s a simple answer, a one-word shut down.
“You don’t even want to think about it?”
“Vanessa, I wish you the best. I can honestly say that with no reservations. I hope you have a terrific life and get everything you want. But none of that has anything to do with me.”