Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35440 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35440 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
I already feel so very tired, and it’s only just begun.
“Hey,” Calliope says, her voice a mere whisper, but it shocks me to my core that she’s initiating communication.
My neck twists, and I give her my regard, my expression unassuming.
“I’m glad to help you navigate through the medical part of it,” she tells me, sparing a glance my way so our eyes lock. “I promised your mom I would help out when I can...as things progress. If you can’t talk about stuff with them, you can ask me, okay?”
The gesture is appreciated, especially since I know she doesn’t want anything to do with me. It’s really not surprising, though. Even though Calliope must hate me for dumping her, she’s still the kindest person I know. It’s why she’s a nurse. She loves helping people and easing their pain, whether it be physical or the type that’s lodged deep in the soul.
I merely nod my gratitude at her and turn my attention back to the window, starting to mentally prepare myself for my reunion with my dying father.
Chapter 2
Calliope
Gritting my teeth, I stew over the unfairness of everything. Jim is dying from pancreatic cancer, his wife Brenda is falling apart, and now Rafe has returned home to witness it all.
Damn it all to hell, that man.
What I can’t figure out is why I feel so freaking angry. It’s not like I obsess about Rafe and what he did to me all those years ago. In fact, I manage to go days—sometimes an entire week—without thinking about him at all.
But it’s hard not to think about him some, despite how much I would love to just blot him out entirely. My family still lives beside his parents, and seeing as how I live only three miles away, I visit quite often.
Thus, I see his mom and dad...a lot.
Which means I’m reminded of Rafe and everything we had and everything he destroyed on a whim.
Sure, the rage has subsided over the years. I’ve gotten control of that. So when I do happen to think of him, it’s often in passing. I might be over at his parents’ house to say hello, and see his graduation photo on their mantel, thinking to myself: I wonder what Rafe’s up to. And then I put him out of my mind. Sometimes, I might think: I wonder if he’s caught a raging case of syphilis—which he’d deserve, and then I’ll hope that it’s super annoying and itchy.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. I’ve never been a vindictive person, and I don’t wish him ill at all. But, damn...I’m just so angry at him right this moment, and sitting next to him in my car isn’t helping matters at all. All of the ugly feelings are welling up inside of me and I’ll be glad when I can get away from him.
To say that Rafe broke my heart would be the understatement of all time. He didn’t just hurt me...he destroyed me. Crushed me so badly, he didn’t even leave fragmented pieces of betrayal behind. No...he ground me to dust and then just walked away.
It took me a long time to get over him, to acknowledge that he didn’t want me. Took me years to accept he didn’t think I was good enough to join him on his journey through the professional hockey league. And it took some major soul-searching to find a measure of peace within the world around me, validation that I was a worthy woman.
The way we ended things was so contrary to everything we’d planned for our future. Those plans had unfurled over the years as we grew up together—first pledging to always be best friends, all the way through the blossom of glorious love where we promised to be there for each other until our dying days.
So many memories for me to recall any time I want to take a journey through my past with Rafe. Us playing in the woods, picking mushrooms, and poking bugs with sticks. Me forcing Rafe to play Barbies with me, only to agree to play GI Joe with him as a compromise. Summers were spent swimming at the YMCA and going to movies. In school, from as far back as I can remember, he was always my protector because, for some reason, I was an easy target for bullies. Then, in fifth grade, the inevitable first and experimental kiss. We both thought it was horribly gross.
We tried it again in seventh grade, and it wasn’t so gross. By ninth grade, we were going steady and where one was, so was the other. Fingers laced, we’d strut the halls of our high school, and the message was clear to anyone that paid attention.
We were together, and always would be.
I went to every single one of Rafe’s hockey games when he played locally, usually hopping in Brenda’s minivan to ride with her. He was a hockey star, and I was popular by virtue of my association with him and growing into my odd looks in a way that people found striking. When he went off to juniors, I sometimes traveled with Brenda to see him as much as I could. We burned up the phone with calls, texts, and FaceTime. When he returned home after the season was over, we were inseparable, making up for lost time.