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“Hey, Cillian,” she says as if we didn’t have a talk not so long ago.
“I told you not to text me anymore, Trina.”
“Come on, Cill. I was only congratulating you,” she says, her signature pout coming through loud and clear.
“You don’t get to do that anymore.”
“I told you I didn’t do anything. Why are you believing the woman who hid your daughter from you? She’s such a liar!”
“She showed me everything you sent her. I saw it all, Trina. You have no idea what that shit did to her and to my daughter!”
Trina starts crying. Countless apologies included in-between. Flopping back on the bed, I stare up at the stark white ceiling. How did I ever find anything appealing about this woman? She sounds like a shrill child, and I feel like a complete idiot.
I want a clean slate. A do-over. If I could call mulligan and start over, I would.
“Why, Trina? Why send her anything? And how the fuck did you even know her birthday or anniversary date?”
“I…” She pauses.
“Don’t try and think up a lie now, you’re fucked either way. Tell me the truth.”
“You never loved me,” she finally says.
“I never claimed to,” I shoot back.
“Yeah, but I wanted you to. I wanted what you gave her. What you wrote about her, I wanted those words to be for me.”
What I wrote?
“Are you fucking kidding me? You read my letters?”
Isla may have cut me out of her life, but I couldn’t do that same thing. Every time I wanted to share something with her, I wrote her a letter. None were ever sent, but I still wrote them and stored them in a skate box in the back corner of my closet.
Trina had no reason to know they even existed.
“How much of my privacy did you violate, exactly? It wasn’t enough that you took pictures of me while I slept, you went through my shit, too?”
“I’m sorry,” she cries.
“Fuck off, there is no apology big enough for the shit you’ve pulled.”
“You don’t mean that. We’ve been friends for years!”
“I sure as fuck do mean it. This is over, Trina. Whatever messed up fantasy you have going on in your head, it stops now. I want no part of it. And you were never my friend, were you? Not really, because the shit you’ve pulled is not what friends do. They don’t take advantage, they don’t interfere, they don’t lie and manipulate. I’ve spent weeks trying to piece together everything you’ve done and why. But what it really comes down to is that I want it to be over. Stay the fuck out of my life. Don’t make me tell you again.”
I end the call. There’s a heavy weight on my chest, pinning me to this spot with nothing but the blank white above me and my racing thoughts. Rubbing at it doesn’t ease the ache. This is the pain of guilt and regret that only time dulls, but I’ve lost so much to it already.
* * *
“You scored, Daddy!” Sadie bounds down the dock to me when I step out to meet her and Isla. She’s staying the night with me again, only the second time Isla’s let us do this without her. Pigtails bounce at her temples in little ringlets, her face alight with pride.
“Did you see it?”
“Yes! It was so cool!” She jumps into my arms and wraps her tiny ones around my neck.
“You’re so cool,” I tell her, then blow a raspberry on her neck before setting her down to run inside.
“I thought the neighbors would call the cops at how much she was screaming in excitement. She hasn’t stopped talking about it,” Isla says, her face a little sour even if the words aren’t.
