Only Oscar (Wattys 2022 Shortlist!)

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was her first Independence Day away from home, but the last thing Callie wanted to do was celebrate. 

She cried so much on her first night without Oscar it was hard to believe she had any tears left. But in the following days they just kept coming, sometimes at the most random times. She missed him. So. Damn. Much. And she desperately needed her best friend to help her through the heartbreak. 

Worse still, she discovered a tub of ice-cream eaten with one spoon didn't have the same effect. Though, to be fair to the ice-cream, it took three tubs of different flavors for her to reach that conclusion.

By day five, her best friend would have said it was time to pull herself together. Enough with the crying already. No guy was worth so many tears and if he couldn't see how great she was, it was his loss. She should be pissed at him for hurting her and get mad. 

So, for a while, she did just that. She cursed him for lying to her, most of all with his tenderness and attention to detail in the bedroom. She called him several far-from-flattering names for the hope he'd crushed and the dreams he'd shattered. She even hated him a little for not loving her enough to stay and fight for what they could have had. Would it have killed him to try?

And, just like that, she was crying again. Because, in his own way, he had tried. What was worse, looking back, she could see between all the secrets he kept and her vain attempt at being someone she wasn't, they'd both been lying to each other. 

Why he'd kept those secrets was something only Oscar knew, but from Callie's point of view translated as distrust. If he believed in what they had, really believed in it, he wouldn't have hidden who he was from her. 

Deep down, he must have known she wasn't the one for him. On a subconscious level, he'd probably known for a long time. Part of her wished he'd figured it out before she fell in love with him.

Of course, when the girls discovered the reason she wasn't going to Jersey, they invited her out or offered to come around and lift her spirits. But she wasn't up to that yet. She didn't want to humiliate herself in public by sobbing into a cocktail. And if they came around and got her dirty, stinking drunk, she knew she'd ugly cry all over them. 

Not that being home alone did her any favors.

There were little reminders of him everywhere and every time she found one, it set her off again. So, while the sun shone outside and the rest of the city's inhabitants spent time with family and friends, she decided to pack up his belongings. Seeing him to hand them over wasn't an option but she could leave them at his place while he was in Jersey.

'Chicken,' the old Oscar's voice whispered in her head.

She didn't argue with him. Instead she forced her sorry ass off the sofa, took a much-needed shower, got dressed and told her reflection that day nine without him was officially the first day of the rest of her life. She could do this. She was her mother's daughter, after all. So, after a fortifying breakfast of sugar coated donuts and a can of Diet Coke, she padded barefoot down the hall and started in the bathroom.

Toothbrush, wash-kit, the shower-gel she'd only sniffed a half-dozen times in the last three days and there was nothing in the laundry hamper because when she found a T-Shirt of his in there on the second night without him, she'd worn it to bed.

No tears, so good start.

He hadn't left much in the kitchen/living room. A couple of computer magazines, a jar of the coffee he preferred, which she decided to keep because it was open and tasted better than hers, and a phone charger. No problems there and her eyes were still dry. Maybe she'd finally cried herself out.