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.
The thought gave her the extra bit of will she needed to face the biggest challenge:
The bedroom.
She took a deep breath through her nose and slowly exhaled through her mouth before she opened the door. It was the room with the most memories. But she could do this. She had to. And after a handful of minutes, she was more depressed than upset, mostly by how little there was to put in his weekend bag.
He'd lived out of that bag. She hadn't even offered him a drawer. No wonder he complained about the lack of storage.
Gritting her teeth with determination, she looked around for anything she'd missed before she opened the closet. A pair of pants,three shirts and two suits squashed in at one end of the packed rack were the only things left. She threw the pats and shirts on the bed beside the open bag but took more care with his suits.
It didn't matter if they were the old off-the-peg kind he wore when he was stuck in a cubicle doing a job he hated or that he'd probably never wear them again. He'd always taken care of his stuff and she would, too, because it wasn't his fault he couldn't love her. He would if he could. He'd said so, hadn't he?
And yeah, that made her well up a bit.
Taking the first jacket off the hanger, she folded it neatly in half and smoothed the material flat before she placed it in the bag. But when she went to do the same thing with the other one, she felt a hard lump under her fingertips.
As she turned away from the closet, she dipped into the pocket to remove it so it didn't leave a crease. When she saw what was in her hand, she froze.
Lifting her head, she blinked to clear her vision, then looked at it again. It couldn't be.
Throwing the jacket aside, she plunked down on the edge of the bed and stared at it some more. There was no doubt where he'd got it, the distinctive pale turquoise box had Tiffany written in white letters on the top. She could be over-reacting. It could be earrings or a new chain for her locket, something small he picked up to make her smile.
That was something the old Oscar would have done.
'Open it,' his voice said in her head.
When she did, she forgot how to breathe.
Lifting it out of the box, she held it up in front of her face, turning it from side-to-side so it sparkled in the sunlight. It didn't feel right to put it on the hand it was meant to adorn, so she tried it on her other hand and it fit. As in, perfectly. As in, either he'd got incredibly lucky or it had been sized.
Her gaze flew to the jewelry box on her dresser. The opal ring that went missing. He'd used that, hadn't he? Meaning it was something he'd planned.
Why would he... surely, he wasn't fooling himself about their relationship to the point where...
The world turned upside, down.
Angling her head to adjust to the new perspective, she was temporarily blinded by the revelation she could have been stupendously wrong about what was happening between them.
What if he... he could have... then why hadn't he... and when he said she knew... she must know... and his voice had been all deep and rough and full of emotion... had he been saying?
Shit. What had she done?
She revisited their last conversation from his point of view and grimaced at how it might have translated to him. Had he seriously thought she was telling him how she felt, that she was saying she couldn't love him? Was that why he'd lashed out the way he did? Why hadn't he corrected her and told her she was being an idiot? Her best friend would have. Hell, even if he'd got what she was saying, he would have argued she had no right to tell him how he felt. And he'd have been right. But all he had to do was say the words.
Why hadn't he said them?
'Why didn't you?' the voice said in her head.
There was a tiny glimmer of hope on the horizon but that was all it took. Because yes, hope could be crushed, but there was a reason people never wanted to lose it. Hope gave her strength at times she didn't think she had any left. It encouraged her to take chances and reach for the stars, even on the days she couldn't see them. Hope let her believe things would get better, even when it felt like they never could be again.
Without hope, she'd been treading water to avoid drowning in a sea of despair. But with just the tiniest shred of it, she could stay afloat and swim to shore.
And that was shore as in Jersey because she knew exactly where to find him.
It was a risk. But it was one she had to take. One way or another, she had to know. And if, by some wondrous miracle, he'd bought the most beautiful ring she'd ever seen because he was in love with her, wanted to spend the rest of his life with her and had made a long list of plans for their future together...
Well, to be honest, she wasn't quite sure if she would kiss him or kill him.