I squeezed my arms around her small back and held her close, pretending she was mine. “I can’t do it either. Maybe it’s not healthy.” I stopped, choking on my words. “No, I know it’s not healthy, but I can’t do it. I can’t leave you.”

She cries harder. “Can we still live together, Callum? Do we,” she gulped. “Do we stay married?”

“I think we remain roommates. If you can do it, I can do it,” I said, coming to terms with what I must say next.

“And our marriage?” She asks, tearing her face from my t-shirt and peering up at me.

I close my eyes and sigh loudly. “I think we should divorce,” I say thickly.

The word hangs in the air like a noose. A new wave of pain inundates me

“I’m so sorry, Callum,” she said. “I wish I could change how I feel.”

Me too but I wish more that I wasn’t so in love with you. But I don’t say it. I can’t. It’s too fresh to say the word out loud.

“Shh,” I say, wrapping my arms tighter around her torso. “Me too,” I whispered.

Chapter Fifteen

Boo

Callum

Harper and I met our insurance adjuster at our burned down apartment. Seeing it in the light was so much worse, making Harper and I all sorts of crazy depressed. We took our check to the bank and stood in line, together yet alone with our thoughts. Things were extremely awkward now that our friendship was so defined. We had no idea how to act around one another. I could only hope that these new boundaries would be what it took to help me fall out of love with Harper, though I knew that was unlikely.

I accidentally bumped into her and apologized like we were strangers. She waved it off as an accident and refused eye contact whereas before she would have stomped my foot in playful response and laughed whole-heartedly. I wanted my old Harper back. Then again, the old Harper drove me crazy with want.

After the check was deposited, Harper and I agreed with a strange sort of politeness that we should look for a new apartment...one with two bedrooms since ‘we make a little bit more money now, we can afford it and that will allow us privacy’, she’d said, leaving a rotten taste in my mouth but I mindlessly agreed. We looked for new apartments and found a decent one in a building similar to our old one, lots of old history, lots of tile and wood and plaster. This one had a doorman though, which was nice.

We got a two bedroom with two full bathrooms, making it possible never to see one another once during a school day. I’d have to get used to it sometime, I guessed. Slowly weaning myself off of her seemed like a good idea in my head but my heart couldn’t help but thump wildly in protest. The week we were off school, we did our work at night, never seeing one another except once when I needed to get a water from the fridge and Harper happened to come out as I did for the same. We clumsily danced around the other when I tried to leave and she tried to enter, both laughing stiffly. I basically sprinted toward my room and never emerged after that.

Furnishing the apartment was equally painful, although sleeping on a real mattress after enduring two years on a sofa bed was sort of nice. Beds were the first thing we bought and it was much easier since it truly didn’t have to be a joint decision. When we entered the store, we went opposite directions. I couldn’t decide on which one I wanted and needed so badly to get Harper’s opinion but couldn’t dredge up the nerve to bother her. She already knew I was in love with her, no sense in making myself look more pathetic.

For the rest of the apartment, namely the living room, we went to the Ikea in Brooklyn, deciding that fishing for ‘cool pieces’ was too much work since we were in the thick of school and the whole John Bell thing. Plus, we would never be able to recreate our old apartment because firstly, that took two years to accomplish, hunting little used furniture stores and the weekly trips to the flea markets and secondly, and most importantly, the old apartment was a piece of the old Callum and Harper. The new Callum and Harper were reserved, neither having an opinion anymore and therefore creating an Ikea explosion in our living room. A one stop shop. I have to admit, it was really nice looking but we basically took a catalog room, pointed to it and said, ‘we want this’ to a sales associate and had it delivered.

Also, since we had to replace both our wardrobes, we gave one another five hundred a piece and visited a few stores on our own. In a rare moment of unusual friendliness, after Harper came in to our Ikea vomited living space, we took one look at each other in our clothes and burst out laughing. Both of us had feet clad in red Chucks, distressed jeans, and vintage t-shirts. She went to change so it wouldn’t be weird and came out in a freaking skirt, which I’d never seen her wear before of her own volition and wish she hadn’t started since her rejection of me that night at Charlie’s. Any headway we had made with our moment was completely gone when I saw her in that skirt and boots, effectively sending me to my room for the rest of the evening.

We put the apartment in a completely different name from ours. That was a recommendation from the police department. It was harder than I thought to list the apartment in someone else’s name but somehow we managed. We also couldn’t go to one of The Ivories’ biggest shows because John had yet to be caught. I was prisoner in a torturous cell that week. I was Loki and she was my snake.

When it was time to return to campus, Harper became extraordinarily chatty, chattier than even before our incident and I found myself venturing to her side of the apartment, leaning against her door jamb as she explained to me how she was going to be walking to her classes now, since a new route had to be determined. I had yet to see her bedroom. This was a lot more feminine than her old room, lots of textured fabrics, velvet, Dupioni silks, crazy patterns, a lamp I noticed from our old apartment that must have survived the fire.

I entered without asking and stopped short. “Can I come in?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said, sighing. “You don’t ever have to ask.”

I smiled sadly and walked over to the lamp.

“It survived, did it?”

“Yeah,” she said, walking over and running her hand along the fringe. “I didn’t tell you?”

“I knew some stuff did but I never bothered to find out, too depressing, I guess.”

“It’s depressing but at the same time makes me feel a little bit better knowing he couldn’t destroy everything.” Yeah, he destroyed the only thing that really mattered, though, I thought. She stopped talking but continued twirling her fingers in the fringe. “I - I never really thought you would forgive me for what John did to us.”

The blood rushed to my face in frustrated anger. “Think about what you just said, Harper, it’s what John did to us. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this, but I don’t blame you for his craziness. Shit happens. He fixated on you and that’s not your fault. Please believe me when I say this, Harper, because I don’t want to keep reassuring you about it. You need to start believing it yourself.”

She nodded, giving me a half-smile.

Tags: Fisher Amelie Sleepless Romance
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