Inseverable: A Carolina Beach Novel

by Cecy Robson

  My eyes widen briefly. Shit, is she pregnant? I’m trying to remember the last time she had her cycle, but at that moment panic fills me and I can’t. She’s on the pill, but . . .

  She wipes her eyes and stands when Mason begins his goodbyes. He and Sean are first, speaking quietly, and talking about meeting up in D.C. with Hale as soon as they can work out a weekend. They hug like brothers with Mason thanking him for always having his back.

  Sean releases him and slaps his arm. “Fire needs more wood,” he says, abruptly taking off and down the path.

  Hale and I exchange glances and watch him disappear. It bothers me that Sean’s taking it so hard. But what’s worrying me more is Trin. If she’s pregnant . . .

  Mason steps in front of me and offers me his hand. “Callahan, it’s been a pleasure.”

  I clasp his hand and shake it strong. “You’re a good man, Mason. And you’ll make a damn fine lawyer.”

  “Thank you,” he says, knowing I mean it. He turns to Trin and Becca when they walk toward him, lifting them both in his strong arms. “My girls,” he tells them quietly.

  Hale glances down the path, but there’s no sign of Sean. I’m scared shitless right now. I know I’m not ready to be a daddy. But I also know I love Trin, and that I’ll do right by her . . . and anyone else who comes along. Except I can’t talk to her about it until everyone leaves. So I step back and allow her a moment to say goodbye to her friend.

  “I’ll go look for Sean,” I tell Hale.

  “Thanks,” he says.

  I take off in a steady jog, but as I reach the end of my property, there’s Sean, rummaging for pieces of wood.

  He glances up. “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey,” I say back.

  I’m not a girl, and neither is Sean. I’m not asking him to pour his heart out or “share”. I’m going to gather some wood with him because that’s what men do. We wait in silence until someone speaks. Or we don’t speak at all.

  I’ve already gathered an armful of twigs before he says his first word. “Mason was the first friend I ever made. Trin might have been my second if you don’t count Eddie Gufferson who spent recess picking his nose. I think he’s running for office in the fall, hopefully he’s a lot smarter now than he was then.”

  “Hmm,” I say.

  “Did you know me and Mason were roommates in college?”

  “Yeah, Trin told me.”

  “Everyone warned us it would be the end of our friendship. Too much of a good thing, they said.” He adds another stick to his pile. “But they were wrong. We were buddies through school. But in college, shit, we became family.”

  “You’ll see him again, Sean. When people are that tight, they find a way to stay close.”

  He sighs. “I don’t know. Mason’s going places. He won’t just have a job; he’ll have a career―maybe even change the world for the better while I spend my life saving men like Old Man Perrington from erectile dysfunction.”

  “Someone has to, Sean,” I say, meeting him with a grin.

  But he doesn’t smile back. If anything, he seems worse. “How are you doing it?” he asks. “I mean, damn, I can barely accept my best friend being a state away, but how are you doing it?”

  I straighten, unsure what he’s talking about. “Doing what?”

  He shakes his head. “I know you and Trin haven’t been together long, but I can see what she means to you. How the hell are you going to let her go? Especially to some shithole country the Peace Corps will stick her in―”

  “What?”

  He freezes. “What?” he repeats.

  Steps close in behind me. I glance to my left to see Hale, but he doesn’t keep my attention.

  I toss my stack of wood aside and march toward Sean. “Tell me what you said.” He shakes his head, like he’s ready to bolt, but doesn’t answer. “Sean,” I say again. “What did you say about Trin?”

  “Shit, I . . .” He looks to Hale for help. Hale’s eyes are wide, but not because he’s shocked by what Sean said. He’s shocked by what he did. He told me something I wasn’t supposed to know―something apparently everyone else knew but me.

  “Trin’s going into the Peace Corps?”

  Hale shoves his hands in his pockets and moves to stand by Sean. “Callahan,” he says. “You really need to talk to her about this.”

  Yeah. I do. I storm down the path. Mason and his date are gone. Trin and Becca are sitting by the fire speaking quietly. They stop talking when they see me.

  Trin stands, reaching for me. “What’s wrong, hon?”

  I step out of her reach. “Please tell me you’re pregnant,” I tell her, my voice harsh. “Please tell me that’s what you want to talk to me about.”

  She frowns, appearing confused. “I’m not pregnant. I had my cycle two weeks ago. Why would you . . .”

  Her voice trails when Sean and Hale appear. “Sorry, Trin,” Sean says. He meets her eyes briefly as he passes her and walks toward the front of the house.

  Hale pulls Becca up from her seat. “Come on. We have to go. They need to talk.”

  “What . . . oh, shit,” she says, as they pass us.

  Everyone knew. Everyone, but me.

  Trin’s breaths appear tortured and she’s focusing hard on the ground. But right now, she needs to focus me. “You’re going into the Peace Corps,” I say. “You’re going to be gone what? Two years? And you never thought to tell me?”

  A tear escapes her eyes. “It never seemed to be a good time,” she says.

  “You have to be fucking kidding me.”

  “Cal―”

  I hold out my finger. “No. No. We’ve been practically inseparable. Don’t stand here and tell me you never had a chance to talk to me about this.”

  “Callahan, you’ve been through a lot―”

  “No shit,” I snap.

  “Please, hear me out.” She tries to reach for me again. Again, I deny her. Her hands fall at her sides. “Baby,” she says. “When we’re alone, we’re always intimate. You tell me about the horrible things you’ve lived through, and I do my best to help you through them. I didn’t want interrupt you when you talked about your past―knowing how hard it is for you to open up. Nor did I want to ruin an opportunity to grow closer to you. So I kept my mouth shut, and waited for a good time that never seemed to come.”

  I scowl. “You’re telling me that we’ve never gone out, or sat around talking about life? That all I’ve done is bitch about the shit I’ve been through, or dragged you to bed―is that what you’re saying? No opportunities for anything else like, I don’t know, the truth? Just bitchin’ and fucking, right?”

  “Don’t say it like that!” she bites out. “Don’t belittle what we have―”

  “We’ve got nothing, Trin!”

  Her head snaps back like I slapped her. But as angry as I am, as much as could tear this whole place apart, I would never put my hands on her in anger. Never.

  But I can’t say she’s not killing me.

  “Please don’t tell me that.” Tears pool in her eyes. “Please.”

  “What would you like me to say, Trin? At least I’m being honest.” I hate the tears dripping from her face, and I hate that I’m the one causing them. But Jesus, the pain ripping through me is more than I can take. She’s leaving. She’s fucking leaving me.

  “The intimacy I’m talking about extends past our time in bed,” she says, placing her hand on her chest. “Every time we’re alone, I can feel us growing closer. The last thing I wanted was for something to wedge us apart.”

  “Like you leaving for two years?” I cover my face when she starts crying. “Goddamnit, Trin. You should have told me . . . You shouldn’t have kept something like this from me.”

  I settle myself in a chair, concentrating hard on the flames dying in the pit. Trin takes a seat next to me, but keeps her distance. When all that remains are nothing more than glowing embers, she edges closer and takes my hand in hers. When she squeezes it, I don’t squeeze back. My han
d simply lies between hers.

  “What has all this been?” I ask her quietly. “You introducing to me to your friends. Those suppers with your folks. All the times you fell asleep in my arms.” I look at her. “What did it mean to you? Was I just something to do to pass the time until you left?”

  “Of course not.” Her voice shakes, and her eyes so red, I know she hasn’t stopped crying. “This time with you has meant everything to me. I love you, Callahan―”

  I pull away from her. “Don’t,” I tell her, my voice splintering. “Don’t say that to me.”

  I bury my face in my hands. This can’t be happening. No way can she betray me like this. Not her.

  It takes me a long moment, but eventually I drop my hands away and force myself to speak. “When do you leave?”

  She stiffens beside me. “I was supposed to leave in two weeks. But I’ve been granted a short extension―”

  I don’t hear her last words. My blood is boiling and scorching through my veins like acid. I stand, anger shaking me down to my core as I stomp toward the house.

  “Callahan, please.”

  I whip around. “Please what? When I told you I loved you, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to say because I was saying forever, and wanting it, and meaning it―even though I didn’t think I deserved it. But you made me think I could. You made me mean it just for you!”

  She stands inching toward me with her palms out. “I mean it, too.”

  “No.” I pitch her with a cold stare. “Your idea of forever stops in two weeks. Then you move on to the next person you have to save. Your next charity case.”

  Tears flow in streams down her face. “That’s not what you are to me.”

  “Aren’t I? Come on, Trin. It’s the reason you were drawn to me in the first place. You saw someone you thought needed saving. So you swooped right in didn’t you?”

  “Callahan, don’t do this,” she chokes out.

  “Don’t do what? Tell you the truth? One of has to.” My stomach is in knots. I should be curled over in agony. But my voice stays even and cold. “You were put on this planet to help others. You’ve said so yourself. And you have. You helped me. But your work here’s done and you can go.”

  “I don’t want to leave you,” her face is blotchy, and swelling with how hard she’s crying. I should hug her because I love her. But I can’t because no matter what she thinks she feels, she never meant it to last.

  “You don’t want to go,” I say. “But you will. Just don’t look back because I won’t be here.”

  I storm off into the house and slam the door, my head pounding so hard I can barely think straight. Somehow, I manage to grab my car keys and remember my wallet.

  This isn’t love, I tell myself. Love’s supposed to be forever, good, and gentle. It’s not supposed to drive a stake through my Goddamn chest. It’s not supposed to feel like my soul is breaking away in pieces.

  I rush out the door and into my truck, cranking the engine, not bothering with a seatbelt.

  My foot stomps on the gas as I peel away. The last image I catch in my rearview mirror is of my house . . . and Trin leaning over the railing, sobbing.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Callahan

  “What’s her name?”

  I look up from drinking my coffee.

  My mother rolls her eyes and takes another drag from her cigarette, while my sister’s son sucks his thumb on her lap. “Come on, Callahan,” she says, blowing the smoke over her shoulder, and thankfully away from the kid. “I haven’t seen you in two Goddamn years. You show up here, looking like shit, working at a job you can’t stand. If this ain’t about a girl, I don’t know what is.”

  I don’t remind her that the reason she hasn’t seen me before now is because two years ago, when I beat up her boyfriend for beating her up, she told me not to come back. Her new boyfriend, Perry, sits in front of the TV drinking a beer. He doesn’t say much, mostly because he knows I help pay the bills, and because he’s probably already drunk. To his credit, he’s not a mean drunk, not like the last few men in my mother’s life.

  “Her name’s Trinity,” I answer.

  “That’s a pretty name,” my niece Cassie says. She’s all of fourteen, dressing like she’s twenty, and typing away on a smart phone she shouldn’t be able to afford. Like her mother, and my mother, she’ll probably be pregnant by the time she’s fifteen. She looks up. “What’s her last name?”

  “Summers,” I mumble.

  “Is she pregnant?” Momma asks, taking another drag.

  “No.” The question shouldn’t upset me because Trinity isn’t pregnant, but it bothers me because in a way, I wish she was.

  I wasn’t ready to be a father. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have stepped up and married her. Not just because she was pregnant, but because I really love her, and it would have been my excuse to love her forever.

  Instead, I find out her idea of love and commitment didn’t extend past the summer.

  I left Kiawah and drove all the way back to Linden, Texas, stopping only for gas and the occasional bite of food. I think I was almost to Arkansas when I realized I didn’t have my phone. But it was too late to turn around, and by then, I didn’t see the need. Who the hell am I going to call anyway?

  So now I’m here, working as a bouncer because there’s not much else, and living at a motel because it’s better than living with the only blood I know.

  I lean back in the chair and look around the shabby double wide trailer. With the exception of the warped peel and stick tiles, this is almost the exact replica of the house I grew up in, and the one I lived in during high school. Nothing’s really changed for Momma. But for change to happen, you have to want it.

  My thumb skims over the handle of the chipped ceramic mug Momma mixed me some Sanka in. I’m not sure why I’m here. I guess I simply needed to leave, to feel like I still had someplace where I belonged. But who am I kidding? I’ve never felt like I belonged with my mother, my family, or anyone else.

  Except maybe with Trin.

  Cassie perks up, her attention fixed on the screen of her phone. “Is this her? Oh, my God, Uncle Callahan, is that you?”

  I glance at the screen when she shows it to me. It’s a picture of me and Trin at a veteran fundraiser her daddy asked me to attend. I didn’t want to go. But I knew he wanted me there and that it was important to Trin. So I went, and spent more time with her daddy than I did with her.

  Owen is a good man. We made the rounds with him introducing me to men who had served in Vietnam, Dessert Storm, and Iraq. Yet the one thing that he did what really struck me was what he did the morning of the fundraiser.

  He took me to a barbershop that belonged to a man whose father had served in the Korean War. Understanding that some men will always see their sins staring back at them in their reflections, he purposely didn’t hang mirrors in his shop, and only offers small handheld ones when asked.

  I had my first haircut in a long while, and my first shave with a straight razor. I also had my first real look in the mirror in what seemed like forever. I couldn’t recognize the young man staring back at me, and neither could Trin.

  She answered the door when I knocked, smiling politely. She started to say, hello, until I winked at her and she realized it was me beneath that clean-cut face and Army blues. Her eyes flew open, half a second before she launched herself into my arms.

  “Damn, baby,” she’d squealed.

  I was thinking the same thing when I saw her in that dark purple dress and her hair all done up. She laughed when I couldn’t stop staring at her. “Didn’t know I could clean up so well, did you?” she had teased.

  No, I did. But like always, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  Her father was being honored for his work with U.S. vets. But somehow, Trin and I ended up with our picture in the paper. It was the same photo Cassie’s showing me now, the one the photographer took of us while we were dancing. Trin’s smiling in my arms and resting
her head against my chest as I hold her close.

  “Yeah. That’s her,” I answer.

  Cassie clears her throat and reads the caption out loud. “Socialite Trinity Summers dancing at the Charleston County Veteran’s fundraiser with Iraq war hero, Callahan Sawyer―”

  “Socialite?” Momma mashes out her cigarette and snatches the phone from Cassie’s hand. She scowls as she takes in the picture. “You went out with a rich girl?”

  The way she asks is more of an accusation than a question. Her scowl deepens when I don’t answer. “Shit, Callahan. You could’ve been set for life. Instead you’re here, taking up space in my kitchen.”

  “I wasn’t with her because she comes from money,” I snap.

  She raises her eyebrows. “So then what was it? Love?” She huffs. “Love doesn’t pay the bills, Callahan. It just leaves you knocked up with a bunch of kids you can’t afford.”

  Yeah, like me and my sisters were to her.

  She shakes her head, her eyes narrowing. “Maybe you should’ve knocked her up. Then you’d be in a big fancy house, with big fancy servants, and not with those so far beneath you.”

  I push away from the table, taking my cup with me and dumping it out in the sink. At my house, or Trin’s, I would’ve washed it by hand, or set it in the dishwasher. Here, I just add it to the pile between the baby bottles and plates caked with leftover SpaghettiOs.

  My mother’s words hit me hard. It’s not that I think I’m better than her or anyone in my family. It’s more like I know I don’t belong with them.

  I reach in my wallet and drop a few hundred dollars in front of her.

  “You’re leaving?” she asks, her eyes fixed ahead where Perry’s begun to snore.

  “Yeah, I am,” I answer.

  She reaches for another cigarette and pops it in her mouth. “You’re not coming back. Are you?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m not.”

  She huffs again. “Maybe that’s a good thing,” she says, lighting the cigarette and taking a long drag.

  Regardless of what she says, and the way that she says it, I think she knows I’m better off without them and away from this life they’ve carved out for themselves. But my mother and I have never been close enough for me to ask. So I’ll do what I’ve always done: send her money, and keep my distance. Like I said, for change to happen, you have to want it. And looking at her, and my sisters, I know I don’t want this.