dead wrong (l.h)

"but retrospect couldn't help us back then"

chapter fifteen
luke

8:43 PM
Monday, October 3

I was half asleep on my couch with Mean Girls playing on the television when my phone began to ring. I pushed myself up from my laying position and reached for my phone that was facedown on the coffee table in front of me. I turned the screen toward me and felt a wave of anxiety rush through my body as I read Calum's name.

I scrambled to pause the movie before answering the call.

"Hey," I answered seconds before holding my breath; my nerves were getting the best of me as I waited for him to speak. Other than a text or two, I hadn't talked to Calum or Evelyn since seeing them last Wednesday.

"Hey, man," he responded. "What're you up to right now?"

"Oh, uh..." I glanced toward the television before shaking my head to myself, "Nothing. Nothing at all."

"Perfect," Calum said through a breathy laugh. "I was calling to see if you might wanna come to my place for a little while?"

"Yeah, man, I'd be down," I told him, yet felt embarrassed by how the words clumsily left my lips. I really felt that I didn't know how to talk to Calum correctly anymore. It was a work in progress. "I can be there in no time."

"Sounds great," Calum said but jumped to say something else before I could think about ending the call. "Do you still sing any?" His question intrigued me; my eyebrows furrowed as I sat up fully.

"Of course I do... why?"

"Before everything went down, probably three or four months before you and Evelyn had your last fight... do you remember that song we were working on?" My lips parted as I thought back to the year prior; I knew exactly what Calum was talking about, but the song he was referencing hadn't crossed my mind since everything happened. "Because I was cleaning through a ton of my shit and I found it in one of my notebooks; I thought maybe we could revisit?"

I closed my eyes for a moment as I allowed myself to remember as much as I possibly could about the song; it was a song about Evelyn that I had primarily been writing, but Calum had been helping me clean it up and work on the melody.

"I'd love to, actually... if you'd want to."

"Get your ass over here... and bring one of your guitars." Before I could even respond, Calum had ended the call. I took a deep breath in before bringing one of my hands up to my face. I pinched the bridge of my nose as I started to mentally prepare myself for exposure to the past feelings that the song was bound to cause me to reexperience.

I pushed myself up from my couch and walked over to the far right wall of my living room; I grabbed my favorite guitar off the wall before placing it in its case. With my case in hand, I stuffed my phone in my back pocket and then grabbed my keys. On my way down to my car, and throughout my entire drive, I tried to remember the tune of the song. Part of me was scared to revisit such feelings, but I also knew that Calum's want to revisit probably had an ulterior motive. There was something else this was going to result in, at least. That much I knew.

Over the past year, all I had done was write songs about Evelyn. But the lyrics look a lot different than they used to; past songs about being the happiest I had ever been were suddenly replaced with my apologies, self-pity, and feelings of complete regret. Every time I sat down to work on a song in the last year, my past and present feelings for Evelyn were the only things that came to mind. Thinking about the change in our relationship dynamic haunted me.

When I pulled into the parking lot of their apartment complex, I couldn't help but take notice that Evelyn's car was parked in its usual spot. I bit my lip at the sight of the all too familiar car before putting my car in park and getting out; I grabbed my guitar and made my way inside before walking up the first two flights of stairs. I walked up to Calum's door and knocked my knuckles against the wood.