Devotion and Desire

Chapter Nine

*I was just a lost soul who needed a home - I was filling a void with you.*
-Bayside, They're Not Horses, They're Unicorns

Callie's P.O.V.

I can't believe I hadn't realized the way Brian felt earlier. I couldn't believe I had missed all the signs. Was I really that blind, or did I just choose to be naive, not wanting to ruin a good thing? I couldn't be certain. 

Brian had been with me almost every single day and night since getting back from vacation. He had been helping with the kids - cooking for them, watching them, buying them things. He passed up real, actual sex with what I'm sure was a gorgeous woman in Miami, to have sex over FaceTime with me. He didn't sleep with any girls the entire time he was gone. He was taking me out for my birthday, buying me gifts. We were sleeping over each others houses every night. He said he loved me. He had crossed way beyond friends-with-benefits and was hovering dangerously close to boyfriend territory... and I had gotten so wrapped up, playing house with him, that I didn't stop him and set him straight. This was exactly what I had been afraid of from the very beginning; I knew it was wrong and I let it happen anyways. I should have stopped while I still could.

So was it my fault, or his? Was it anyone's? Maybe this was just inevitable, no matter how badly I'd wanted to believe my way could work and please everyone. Was being someone's fuck buddy doomed from the beginning - like I had thought originally? Was there ever a scenario in which that could work out without one or more people getting hurt? Not in my experience - and this particular case was no exception.

I wasn't surprised, exactly - even though I didn't see it coming either. Mostly though, I think that was simply because I'd wanted to turn a blind eye. I'd wanted this to work so badly, I ignored all signs of impending danger. So no, I wasn't surprised by the outcome. But what I did not expect, however, was how badly this would hurt. I felt the loss of Brian, so severely after he was gone and I had never hurt like this before. I had never experienced a mental or emotional pain this great before - ever. 

Not when my dad left, not when my mother died, not when my boyfriend of three plus years left me, immediately afterwards. I didn't cry for myself when I had to grow up and be responsible for three young kids at a moments notice. I didn't cry at my mother's funeral. I never cried once at the hospital, during any of my numerous visits to her room, as I sat there watching her die. Nor did I ever cry when things didn't work out with any of the guys I had given chances to in the past. This, right now, was by far the worst pain I'd ever felt.

After walking the entire way home from Brian's, I got in my bed, the blankets pulled tightly around me, curled in the fetal position, my mind racing a mile a minute. I would have loved to let go and open up to Brian. I would have loved to be a normal girl with a normal relationship with a guy she really had feelings for, and vice versa. But I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself that maybe there was some version of he and I that could actually work... so tonight... tonight I finally allowed myself to bawl my eyes out. 

I allowed myself to sob my heart out as I lay in bed and mentally said goodbye to what I had with him. Thinking about how attached I had grown to him, and thinking that I would never see him again, thinking that the kids would never see him again, I cried so hard and for so long, that my eyes all but swelled shut. I had given myself a horrible sinus headache; my temples were throbbing, and just when I didn't think it was possible to shed one more tear, I finally cried myself to sleep.

Brian's P.O.V.

Ghosted. Not just ghosted, as if that weren't already bad enough - but to be specific - ghosted right after I had dropped the L bomb. Karma was real - and she was a motherfucker.