34.
Rich
The phone rings early the next morning, sometime just after nine. Though it’s the first morning in several weeks where I’m not already drunk, I’m still in no mood to talk when I pick up.
“I already told you,” I bark into the receiver. “I’ll think about it, but I’m not promising anything.”
“Uhh…” a familiar voice answers. “Sure thing, buddy.”
“Sorry about that. Thought you were someone else.” Though I’m racking my brain, I can’t place who it is I’m talking to. “So, uhh…what’s up?”
A hearty laugh comes booming through the phone. “So you don’t remember me, then? How about our big Hawaiian friend who tried to kill you?”
“Cal? Is that you?”
“The one and only. How are you, Richie?”
“Cal! Oh man, it’s been too long. How the hell are you?”
“You know. As good as always. Nothing to complain about out here in paradise where every day is just as good as the last. How about you? You doing okay?”
“I’m alright. Not up to too much. Just drinking some coffee and watching the sun rise over the water. You know how it goes. Damn is it good to hear your voice! You’ve been on my mind a lot lately.”
“It has been a minute, hasn’t it? Anyways, I saw on the news that you aren’t going back for another season. Is that true?”
“I’ve been tossing the idea around. But yeah, I don’t think I’m going to. Kind of tired of it all, you know?”
“I remember that’s what you were saying. A shame giving up all those millions. But hell, I know you have more than enough by now. What are you going to do instead?”
“Not sure yet. I’ve been writing a bit.”
“What sort of writing?”
“Fiction, mostly.”
“Well, would you look at that! Rich Anderson, next great American author!”
I laugh, Cal’s mirth contagious. “Well, we’ll have to see about that. Might find out that all those concussions I got over the years only left me good for throwing balls down a field.”
“I doubt that. Anyways…” Cal trails off. The silence that follows gives me the feeling my Hawaiian friend isn’t just calling to catch up.
“Alright Cal. Out with it. What’s your real reason for calling? Aside from missing me, of course.”
“Well…”
“Come on. Spit it out, kid.”
“Alright.” I hear him shift the phone from one ear to the other. “You remember that photo, right? The one that was somehow leaked to the press, the one that led Charlotte to you?”
“Of course I remember. I really can’t thank you enough for helping me out with all of that. I don’t know how I would have gotten out of there without your help.”
The memory of that day was as fresh in my mind as if it had happened yesterday. After my showdown with Becca in the lobby, plenty of pictures of which had found their way to the press in the following weeks, I had spent the rest of the day locked in my villa. Around dusk, Cal had come knocking, a tray of food in his hands and an idea in his head. Using his knowledge of the island and its services, together we had booked me a flight on a private charter for that very same night. Near midnight, the resort finally quiet, Cal had snuck me out of the employee entrance and driven me to the airport to see me off. Even with all of our precautions, we had almost been caught by a gaggle of paparazzi waiting near security. Thanks to Cal’s quick thinking, along with the grease to be found in several crisp hundred-dollar bills, I had gotten through unscathed, though I had found myself aboard my plane before I had had a chance to properly thank him. Oddly enough, it had never occurred to me to call, a fact that I was definitely feeling guilty about now.
“Yeah, so anyways,” Cal goes on. “It turns out it wasn’t Becca.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. It wasn’t her who released the photo.”
“Who was it then? She was the only one with that photo. How else could it have gotten out?”
“The IT guy.”
“The IT guy?”
“Mmm-hmm. Apparently, our guy at the resort had our system set up so he could go through everyone’s emails before they were actually sent out. The little pervert was looking for naughty photos. You know, the kind every couple takes on their honeymoon. Anyways, as it turned out, he was a big football fan, so when he saw the photo—Becca was sending it to a friend in a message about her trip—he had instantly recognized you. So he sold your picture to the media, in the process revealing the name of the resort. Ba-da-bing ba-da-boom!”
On the other end of the line, I hear a lighter spark to life. It’s followed by the sound of water bubbling. Seemed Cal was at home partaking of his peace pipe.
“Are…are you serious?” I stammer.
“I am,” he says, exhaling what I know is a lungful of smoke. “Crazy, right?”
“I…” So many terrible things I’d said to Becca! What was it I had called her? Greedy? A leech? Just like every other woman?
“So yeah,” Cal continues, his tone telling me he understands clearly the implications of what he’s just told me. “Maybe you should call her, Richie. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I’m on your side in all of this. You did say some pretty mean things to her though.”
“I…I don’t know.” I run a hand through my hair for lack of anything better to do. Though I want to reach for the bottle of rum in the freezer, I won’t. “Honestly, I’m still pretty hurt by how she treated me after she found out who I was. It wasn’t cool at all what she did, regardless of what I accused her of.”
“It’s understandable though, right? She had just met you, after all. How do you think you’d react if you had just spent an incredible week with a perfect stranger only to find out that his ex-girlfriend was accusing him of assault? Especially as that was the tamest of her accusations.”
“I guess…Still, she could have talked to me though.”
“Oh, no doubt about that, buddy. She messed up royally, too. All I’m saying is that what she did is understandable. That was some heavy shit Charlotte was telling the world about you. If I had to guess, I’d say Becca wasn’t being entirely truthful with you about her romantic situation. She kind of had the look of a battered woman about her. Or at the very least, a woman who had just had her heart broken. It was probably too much for her to have you—this musclebound knight in shining armor—ride in only for her to find out that maybe your armor wasn’t as shiny as she’d thought.”
“Still…”
“Life’s too short, Rich. It’s too short to keep pointing fingers. I’ve seen a lot of couples at this resort over the last several years and I gotta say I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people look at each other the way you and Becca did. If you hadn’t told me that the two of you had just met, I’d have guessed you’d been together for years. Everything about you and her just screamed soul mates.”
“You’re high, Cal,” I say, laughing.
Cal chuckles. “Maybe. Probably. One hundred percent. But it doesn’t negate what I saw. You know how much I’d kill to have something like that? Even with my ex, who I loved more than I’ve ever loved anyone, I never felt the way I could see you did. And then how torn up you got afterwards!”
“So you think I should reach out to her?”
“I do.”
“I’m just not sure it’s worth it. Shouldn’t love be easy? Shouldn’t it be simple?”
“Really, Rich? Since when has anything in life been simple or easy? How old are you now? Thirty? Aren’t you old enough to know better than to ask such a dumb question?”
“Alright, alright.”
“Anyways, unfortunately, as much as I want to keep talking, I’m going to have to let you go. Gotta run. Gotta be at the resort in twenty minutes.”
“Should you have smoked beforehand?”
“Ehh, I don’t see why not. All I’m doing is pouring drinks for old people. I can do that whilst asleep. Anywho, think about what I said, bud. Remember: life is too short. You have to do what makes you happy! Just like you’re doing with football. Happiness doesn’t come to you; it makes you chase it. Don’t let something slip away just because your ego is getting in the way. We’ll talk soon, okay?”
“Sure thing. And Cal, really. It’s been just great to hear your voice. Don’t be a stranger.”
“Same right back at you, my friend. Alright. Gotta run, Richie boy. I’ll call you in a few days. Don’t forget: you have to chase happiness!”
The line clicks, Cal gone. Hanging the phone back on the hook, I place my hands flat against the kitchen counter, my eyes unfocused as I run back over what I’ve just heard.
So it wasn’t her then. I think a part of me had always known that. Or at least had hoped it were so. Was that not why I couldn’t get her out of my mind? As much as I didn’t want to admit it, Becca was with me every minute of the day. It was why I had been drinking so much. Drinking had been the only thing I could think to do to keep her out of my mind. Even then, the alcohol had barely helped, seeing as more often than not I had dreamt of her upon passing out. And it had always been the same dream. The two of us on the beach in Hawaii, my arms wrapped around her, her soft lips pressed to mine, her—
I shake my head. Even now I was desperate not to think about her. The hurt, the pain of those last few days at the resort—it was as fresh as ever, as if it the cut had been inflicted not twenty minutes ago.
Was Cal right? Should I reach out to her? What about how she had treated me, all the pain she had caused?
Or was it as Cal had said: that her reaction had only been natural?
My eyes not registering a thing, I walk into the living room and over to my recliner. Back and forth my thoughts race. Call her. Don’t call her. Should I call her? Can I forgive her? Haven’t I already? Is it worth it? Can it ever be the same? Was the love I’d thought I’d felt for her real? Do I even know how to love? Should I call her?...
And on and on it goes, like water roiling on the stove.
Time begins to pass; I have no idea how much. Several hours at least. Long enough that the sun has time to crawl up one side of the sky and make it halfway down the other. Though my stomach has long been cramping with hunger and my throat is as dry as dust, still I don’t move. It was best to face these thoughts now lest they haunt me forever.
I’m finally snapped out of it by the ringing of the doorbell, the shrill buzz shaking me from my paralysis. My first thought is that it is Becca. Somehow she has found me and is come to save me from myself. But I know that this is ridiculous. More than likely it was the boys again, or some fan here to beg for an autograph. The latter had happened more than a handful of times.
When the doorbell rings a second time, I push myself up from my chair, my bones aching from having been still for so long. I shuffle over to the front door. A peek through the peephole presents me with a woman I don’t recognize. A fan then, and a beautiful one at that.
Though I don’t much feel like talking, it doesn’t look like the woman is planning to go away anytime soon. She has that air of determination about her. Just as she’s about to press the doorbell again, I pull open the door.
“Oh, hello,” she says, her hand dropping to her side.
“I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “But I’m not really in the mood today to sign any autographs or—“
She holds up a hand to stop me.
“Oh, I’m not here for that,” she says. “I’m here because...” She swallows heavily, her cheeks reddening.
“Yes?” I prod, my curiosity sparked.
“Okay.” Brushing back a strand of red hair from her face, she exhales slowly. “I’m here because…well…it’s kind of hard to explain. Do you mind if I come in?”
“Uhh, sure,” I say, not entirely sure why it is I’m agreeing. All I know is that something was telling me to trust this woman. “Would you like something to drink?” I ask as I step to the side and wave her in.
“No, thank you. Do you mind if we sit?”
“Of course not. Come on, the couches are perfect for such a thing.”
Leading her to the loveseat in the center of the living room, I drop down onto the couch opposite.
“So,” she begins after a moment, her hand smoothing some unseen crease in her jeans. She’s sitting on the edge of the loveseat, her back ramrod straight, her feet flat on the floor. “Might as well just come out with it, huh?”
“Might as well.”
“Well…okay…umm…honestly, I’m not really sure how to start. First off, my name is Sophia.”
“Hi, Sophia. I’m Rich.”
She giggles. “I know that.”
“So? You’re here because…”
“Right. Okay. Well, I’m here because…of…umm…well, I’m here because of Becca.”
At the sound of Becca’s name, it’s like a bomb goes off in my head, a second in my heart. Becca? What did this woman have to do with Becca?
“Becca?” Though I’m trying like hell to stay calm, my voice wavers and cracks.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“What about her?”
“Okay—ugh, she’s going to kill me if she finds out I was here!—umm, so Becca is my best friend.”
“Right…” Now that she mentioned it, I did recall Becca speaking several times about a best friend with a name like Sophia.
“Right. Well, as I said, I’m her best friend. And I’m here because…well…well, I’m here because Becca is still really beat up about everything that happened between you two.” The dam broken, the words are spilling quickly from her lips now. “Of course, she won’t admit this, but I’ve known her long enough to be able to tell. Ever since her return from Hawaii, she just hasn’t been the same. She’s restless and sad most of the time. Listless, I’d call it. It’s very clear to me that she’s still hung up on you. So…that’s why I’m here, I guess. I can’t stand to see her like that. I’ve tried telling her to reach out to you, but her pride is too big to allow her to do it. So I decided instead to come here and see if maybe I could convince you to reach out to her.”
“Uh…umm…”
“I know it’s strange what I’m telling you. And maybe I’m being completely inappropriate. Or maybe you’ve already moved on and don’t think about her anymore. But I know she thinks about you a lot. The first time she told me about you, I could tell something was different. I’ve never seen her talk about any other guy the way she did about you. You were the light she needed so badly after losing her Mom and after all that happened with Rob.”
“Rob?” The memory of Becca murmuring Rob’s name on the ride back from the reef fills my mind. How happy I’d been to have to asleep on my shoulder!
“Her ex.”
“Uh…”
Sophia’s eyes widen. “Oh…you didn’t know about Rob, did you? Shit, now she’s really going to kill me! Anyways, Rob was the boyfriend that broke up with her right before she left to Hawaii. Frankly, it was a relationship she should’ve gotten out of a long time ago. He was a total jerk. Anyways…that’s not why I’m here. I’m here, as I said, because I want to know if you feel the same way about her.”
“I…I don’t know. I was really hurt by how she treated me when she found out who I was.”
“Completely understandable. I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes Becca can be…overemotional, to put it mildly. But I also think she was just really scared after having so much hurt piled onto her in such a short amount of time.”
“I guess…” If I had thought my mind was racing before Sophia’s arrival, it is nothing compared to the Daytona 500 unfolding in my head now. My thoughts are flying so fast I can’t keep up with them. Wasn’t this exactly what I’d been hoping to hear, what I’d just spent the entire day dreaming about?
“Can I ask you something? And I hope it doesn’t offend you.”
“Go for it.”
“None of those stories were true, were they?”
“Of course not.”
“I thought so. I can tell. And Charlotte, your ex?”
“She found me because of that leaked picture. I was terrified when she showed up and didn’t know what to do when she sat on my lap. She’d knocked on my door not ten minutes before Becca came by.”
“So you’re not still seeing her?”
“Hell no. I told her to leave me the hell alone. In fact, when I got back here, I immediately applied for a restraining order.”
“I see. By the way, it wasn’t Becca who leaked that photo, just so you know.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Coincidentally, I actually just found out this morning that it was the tech guy at the resort. Apparently, he was reading everyone’s emails. He recognized me and sold our picture to the paper.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, another question, though I’m not really sure the best way to phrase it...”
“Shoot.”
“Do you still like Becca? Like like her like her?” Sophia giggles. “God, I sound like such a junior high school girl.”
“Well…” I sigh. Might as well be honest, right? It wasn’t like I had anything left to lose. “Yeah, Sophia. Yeah, I do still like her. But as I said, I’m pretty hurt by what happened. We spent a really great week together. Probably the best of my life, if I’m being honest. I’ve never felt the way about a person as I did about her. It was like…like getting hit by a meteor or something. And that’s why it hurt so much when she reacted the she did. It really sucked, you know?”
“I’m sure it did.”
Taking a deep breath, I continue, “I spent a lot of time thinking about her since then, a lot of going back and forth about what was the best thing to do. I feel terrible for the things I said about her when I thought she’d been the one who had leaked that picture. But I promised myself a long time ago that if someone wanted to walk out of my life, I would let them. And that’s exactly what she did, just walked right on out like we hadn’t just spent the most wonderful week together. I don’t think I’ve ever been so hurt.”
“But you can see why maybe she acted that way, right?”
“Of course. As a self-proclaimed reasonable man, I understand.” Every muscle in me itching to move, I get up from the couch and begin to pace back and forth. “I don’t know…to be honest, hearing all of this makes my heart thrill. And yet it scares me, too. I don’t want to get hurt again.”
“That’s only natural. Still, I think you should reach out to her.”
“You really think so?”
“I do. What do you have to lose? As I said, I know for a fact she’s still beat up about it. Actually, it was just this week that I finally forced her to talk about you. She didn’t say much—actually, just sort of the same thing you told me—but I could tell. As much as she likes to pretend she doesn’t, the girl wears her emotions on her sleeve. I’ve never seen her so sad, which means it’s still very important to her. So I do think you should reach out to her. I can’t promise anything, of course, but I’m a big believer in fighting for the things your heart wants. And judging on how you both talk about each other, I think you should go for it. Love is hard to come by in this world. One should never let go of it so easily.”
“I don’t know…”
“Well...” Rising from the couch, Sophia slings her purse over her shoulder. “Just think about it, won’t you? Now, I’ve got to get going—I have to see a man about a dog—but if you decide you do want to see her, give me a call. I’ll make sure she’s around. Here, put your number in my phone.”
Pulling her phone from her pocket, she hands it to me. I type in my number and pass it back. A moment later, I hear my phone buzz in the kitchen.
“There,” she says, slipping her phone back into her pocket. “Message sent. And that’s that. Now, why don’t you show me out of this very swanky apartment of yours?”
I follow Sophia to the front door, feeling as I walk behind her as if I’m moving through a thick fog. What a day this has been! And here I thought it was going to be a day like any other when I first rolled out of bed!
“Okay, Rich,” Sophia says, turning to me when we reach the front door. “I’m off. Again, whatever you decide to do, don’t tell Becca I was here. She’ll kill me, and then I’ll have no choice but to kill you.”
I laugh. “No wonder you two are best friends. You’re every bit as feisty as Becca.”
“Why do you think we get along? Anyways, Richie—I hope you don’t mind me calling you that—have a good one.” Rising up onto her toes, Sophia pecks my cheek. “I sure hope I see you again. You’re a good soul. I can tell. Take care, okay?”
“You too. Be safe on your way back to Portland.”
“Always.”
I wait until the elevator doors have closed behind Sophia before shutting the door. Alone once more, I turn and face the empty apartment. I look down at my hands; they’re shaking. With a deep, rattling breath, I sink to the floor. What a day! What a crazy goddamn day!
I’m more confused than ever. What was I supposed to do with this new information? Should I do as Sophia had suggested and reach out to her? I certainly wanted to; that much was clear. I missed Becca dearly and wanted nothing more than to feel her in my arms again. But I was still so hurt. The last thing I wanted was another wound. Still…
Drawing my knees up to my chest, I rest my face in my cupped hands and let out a groan. How was I ever going to make sense of this whirlpool? Where to even begin?
“Shit!” Raising my head, I bang the back of it against the door. “Shit, shit, shit!”
Why did love have to be so damn complicated?