“I just wanted to remind you of a better day,” she said quietly. “I know I was shitty to you. I wasn’t thinking of how it would feel.”
“Yeah. It doesn’t bring back happy memories because you gave me six months of shit afterward. Thank you. That’s enough now. So leave off, will you?”
“Hey, what if I want to see you again and just be friends, instead of this nastiness between us?”
He sighed, loud enough for her to hear it.
She said, “Come on. I’m not trying to get back into a relationship with you or anything. It just, it feels wrong to have this animosity between us.”
He snorted.
“I know. I know,” she cried out. “It’s my fault. I did this. I get it, but I’m trying to undo it.”
“Some things you can’t undo,” he said quietly.
She groaned. “You don’t have to be so literal. Obviously I can’t go back and erase everything that I did. I wish I could, dammit. I really wish I could. But I can’t, so I’m doing the next best thing and trying to make amends. Just let me make amends.”
“Fine. You’ve already thanked me. You’ve now sent a gift, and that’s enough, okay?”
“Seriously, you really don’t even want to hear my voice anymore?”
“Do you remember the shit you pulled? My keys that you gave away and the tapes? The tapes you have not returned.”
“I told you that I deleted them.”
“Yeah, you told me a lot of things, but how am I supposed to believe you?” She hesitated, and he went on. “You blackmailed me into helping find your nephew with those tapes, and then you told me that you didn’t have them anymore.”
“I never took any. It seemed wrong.”
“At what point in time did you think it was wrong?” he asked. “We were in my house, in my bed, and you were taping my nightmares. Thanks for that. I can never trust you again. So, if I can’t trust you, I don’t want you in my world.”
“Oh,” she whispered. “I never thought of it like that.”
“No, of course not.”
She said, “I would have done anything to help get my nephew home.”
“Yeah, have you looked after him since?”
“No. My sister won’t even let him out of her sight for a minute.”
“I wonder why?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” she said.
He just waited for reality to seep in.
“Look. Okay, I didn’t keep as close an eye on him as I should have. I get that, and, believe me, I’ll be trying to convince my sister that I’m sorry for the rest of my life. But, at the same time, I don’t want to be punished for it forever.”
“Nobody wants to be punished forever,” he said quietly, “but what you also have to understand is that some things are forgivable, and some things are not. And, sure, all the shit you pulled on me since we split up, it’s forgivable, but I can’t trust you, and I don’t want people I can’t trust in my world.” And, with that, he hung up.
Of course it made him feel like shit afterward, but how else was he supposed to get the idea across that she wasn’t coming back into his life—no matter what? It didn’t make him feel any better to know that he was being a shit about it, but the message did seem to finally get through to Caitlyn.
Plus, what he’d said was true. If he couldn’t trust someone, they wouldn’t be invited into his world. And, after what she’d said about the tapes, yet another version, he still wasn’t sure she was being truthful.
But he wasn’t certain how the hell he was supposed to find out. It’s not like he could ask her for the tapes again, since she’d just say she didn’t have them. And again, that just reinforced the fact that he couldn’t trust her. The simple act of speaking to her would be seen as,Let’s get back together.
He sighed, as he sat here for a long moment, staring at the bottle of wine. Then he brightened. He quickly changed and decided he’d have a shower later. For now, he would walk downstairs, maybe go for a run, and stop for takeout at the new little place around the corner after all.