Reese: Go fuck yourself!
PICK UP YOUR GODDAMN PHONE!!!!!
MESSAGE ME THE FUCK BACK!
I ZIP-TIED YOU TO THE STOOL IN MY SHOP! WE WERE MORE THAN FRIENDS AND YOU GODDAMN KNOW IT!
The last text I received was five minutes before I checked my messages.
Who are you? Why did you do this to me?
My eyes filled with tears. I shouldn’t have hung up on him. Not only were we not together, I left him with crazy pieces to what must have felt like an unsolvable puzzle.
I panicked.
I panicked because I was angry at the Costa Rica situation.
I panicked because I didn’t have time to talk.
I panicked because I couldn’t see his face and he couldn’t see mine. I thought he would remember pieces of our intimacy when I could give him a look, and he could maybe see at least what I felt for him even if his feelings for me at the time were still missing. He wasn’t supposed to be so far away.
With her.
And her lingerie.
And her sexy dress.
And her sleeping in the same bed with him.
It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. Life seldom did.
I didn’t have time to call him, but I needed to do something.
Don’t be mad. PLEASE don’t be mad. PLEASE let’s talk about it when you get home. I love you.
After I sent off the text, I grabbed a glass of water and stared at my phone, waiting for him to read the text or text me back.
Nothing.
Maybe he was getting a massage. With her. But that at least meant he wasn’t so mad he no longer cared to reply to me.
My short break ended, and I had to get back to work without a response from Fisher. Just … a bunch of angry all caps messages from him.
How did I never think about our texts? How did he not scour through all his messages right after his accident to piece together some missing memories?
I’d imagined so many scenarios. Memories lost forever. Retrieved memories. The possibility of him remembering something big about him and Angie. And that something taking him away from me. What if she would have been pregnant?
But never did I think our time together would be the pulled thread that threatened to unravel everything. And it ate at me the rest of the day. I couldn’t think of a worse scenario than him being angry and confused because of me and Angie being the one there to comfort him.
On my way home, I called him, hoping he wasn’t at rehearsal dinner yet.
“I can’t talk now.” That was how he answered his phone.
My heart clenched and a new round of tears stung my eyes. “I love you. I’ve loved you for so long.”
“I can’t talk now.” His voice was so cold.
“When can we talk?”
“When I’m ready.”
I swallowed my shaky emotions. “Are you with Angie?”
“She’s still in the shower.”
Still … what did that mean? They were in the shower and she stayed after he got out? It made me feel nauseous.
“I couldn’t talk earlier. I was late for work.”
“Well, I can’t talk now. I guess we’ll talk if or when it works out.”
“If? Don’t do this. Don’t cherry-pick pieces of your past and try to piece them together by yourself. Making assumptions. Nothing about us was simple.”