What if I fucked up beyond repair?
What if I’ve really, truly lost her?
Bloody hell.
What did I do last night?
So I wait. I sit down on the couch and I wait and I wait until it becomes less about waiting and more about fighting. Because it’s guilt again and it’s hate and it’s shame and they’re coming around, trying to pull me under, smother me until I can’t take another breathe.
And out there on the street, in the nearest store or pub, there’s something that can take me far away from all of this pain. It’s even singing from the bathroom medicine cabinet, the Percocet, another way to numb it all away. I can’t pretend that I’ve not been popping a few of those every single day.
I put up a good fight though. I hold my ground, even though I know it would make the physical pain going away. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve thrown up already this morning.
Even as noon nears though, she hasn’t returned and I have no choice but to go to practice. It’s the last thing I want, the last thing I need. I don’t want to see the accusing looks of my teammates, I don’t want to feel guilty all over again, I don’t want to move a fucking muscle because of how sick I feel.
But I can’t fuck up absolutely everything in my life.
I slowly get ready and then leave Kayla a note on the hallway table in my chicken scratch handwriting.
I’ve gone to practice. Coming home straight after. Please don’t leave. I love you. We can work through this, please stay and wait for me.
I stare at it for a moment and the words sounds so soulless and futile, as if they could ever convince a woman like Kayla once she’s made up her mind. But I leave it there anyway because it’s all I can do.
***
Practice is unbearable. If it weren’t for people like John and Thierry, like my coach who seems to believe in me no matter what I do, even when I fuck up, I would have turned around the moment I stepped on the pitch. I would have just walked away. I’ve been through so much but everyone has a breaking point and today would have been mine if I hadn’t had a few supportive faces there.
The good news is that Denny will be fine. I guess being a bit drunk before the game helped in my favor because when I bowled into him, it wasn’t a direct hit against the joints. He wasn’t at practice though, which was a good thing because I’m not sure if I could have handled that, but Alan says he’ll return in a few days, ready for the big game. I don’t know what I would have done if it turned out one of our star players couldn’t play. As it is, I’m not playing in the first game anyway according to Alan, so we really would have been fucked going against Glasgow.
The drive from the stadium to my flat seems to go on forever. I’m kneading the steering wheel the whole time, knuckles white, afraid that Kayla won’t be there when I return. Is it possible that she just left and caught the next plane out? Maybe sticking around for her bags wasn’t worth it. Maybe fleeing me, the scene of our destroyed relationship, was the only way out for her. If she had her passport in her purse, it’s all she would have needed to vanish.
I can’t blame her. For all I know my hopes might all be in vain, that I’ll walk in my flat and see her beautiful face. Right now she might be somewhere over the Atlantic. Right now she might be heading back to her new life without a backward glance over her shoulder. Maybe that’s why my calls aren’t going through and my texts aren’t being delivered. She’s in airplane mode, heading far, far away.
The last time I was around her I didn’t even look her way. What if that was the last time I’ll ever see her again? What if my last memory of her is of me feeling too shameful to even glance in her direction? If I had known that would be the end, I would have grabbed her, held onto her with every ounce of strength I had. I would have stared at her so deeply that I wouldn’t know where I end and she begins.
I would have done everything differently.
I would have never given her an excuse to leave.
I have to pull over the car, motorists swerving past me, honking. I don’t care. I can’t even be right now. The thought of losing her so soon, without even a goodbye, is debilitating.
I stay like that, trying to breathe, my head resting on the steering wheel, parked illegally. I stay like that until I find the courage to keep on going and face my truth, whatever that truth may be.
I find parking around the corner from my flat and head on up. Outside the door I wait and listen, hoping to hear some kind of movement inside that will put an immediate end to my suffering, at least on one level. If she’s still here, I still have a chance to right things.
I quickly unlock the door and step on inside. Lionel comes running over, begging for me to scratch him behind the ear. I crouch down, absently petting him, trained for any sort of sound.
There. From the kitchen. The fridge door closing.
Hope sings from somewhere deep within me.
I head straight on over there and see her standing with a glass of juice in her hand. She’s staring at me like she’s been waiting, her hair stringy and hanging around her face. Her eyes are red and puffy and I can feel every ounce of pain that’s radiating from her like poisonous sunbeams.
“I thought you were gone,” I manage to say, dropping my bag to the floor.
She watches me for a moment, her face contorting momentarily. “I tried to.”
I lick my lips, unable to say the right thing. The only thing I can say is, “Kayla, I’m sorry,” and it comes out in a harsh whisper.
She raises her chin, trying to keep it from trembling and all I want to do is stride across the room and hold her in my arms and promise her that everything will be okay.
But I stay in my place. Because I know to hold her right now would be hopeless.
“What are you sorry for?” she asks flatly.
“For what happened?”
“And what happened? Do you remember?”
Guilt has one foot on my lungs, slowing pushing down. I shake my head. “No.”
Her face pinches together. “Then why are you sorry?”
“Because,” I cry out hoarsely. “Because I know I got drunk and I know I was in a mood and I know I did something very, very wrong. I don’t know what but…I can feel it. I can feel what you must have gone through. It’s sticking in me, like knives, and I can’t shake them loose.” I pause, trying to breathe. “I know I hurt you. And you can’t know how sorry I am for that. For everything wrong I’ve done.”
“But you don’t even know,” she says breathlessly, as if in disbelief. The look in her eyes is another kick to the gut. “You don’t even know what you’ve done, what you said. You don’t know the person that you become.”
“I have an idea.”
She gives me a bitter smile. “Oh no, I don’t think you have any fucking idea. You are nothing like this man here. You’re not you. You’re someone else, someone I hate.”
Hate.
“You’re the fucking devil, that’s all I know. Mean. Horrible. You stare at me like you don’t even recognize me, you talk to me like I’m someone else and no matter what I say, how I reason with you, nothing works. It’s like I cease to exist to you. How can I handle that you? How can you promise I won’t see that side of you ever again?”
I want to promise. In my desperation I want to promise her everything. But I know I can’t. Because if I promise it and it happens again, I won’t get another chance.
“Listen, love, please. I am going to do whatever I can to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
“You said your addict days were behind you. They aren’t. And you know it.”
But the thing is, I didn’t know it until now. I’ve been making too many excuses, too much justification for years. As long as I kept my career, as long as I wasn’t on the streets, as long as I seemed okay to everyone else, then it wasn’t backsliding. I wasn’t like the junkie anymore. I wasn’t powerless and enslaved to something beyond my control. I wasn’t Lachlan Lockhart.