Calina had been home in Cameron for a few weeks now. Her plan to continue to be normal around Jeff had fallen through in every sense of the words. They'd grown so apart from each other, that Jeff didn't know what to think. The first few days of her being home, he had asked her if she were drinking, or if she were under the influence of something. Under the influence of anything. Little did he know that the only thing she was under the influence of was Randy Orton.
Jeff was so desperate to find an answer from her, that when she was gone from the house or sleeping, he began looking through her bags. Just when he was going to give up searching the fruitless canvas bags, one bag of hers caught his attention. It was a small rectangular reddish-pink glittery bag. He picked it up from the bottom of the suit case and pulled open the Velcro flap. It was a bag in which she kept the little amount of makeup she used, so it was to his surprise when he saw papers piled behind the black mesh pocket.
He unzipped the pocket and pulling out the neatly folded papers. Receipts are what they looked like, but this looked too neat to be average store receipts. Looking through the layers, he started reading what he began to realize were ticket stubs with receipts wrapped around them. Plane tickets? Jeff was more confused as ever. Then he saw it. An unsealed envelope that was tucked beneath the clear plastic pocket, buried from sight under the makeup.
She was over at Matt's at the moment, and he took the time to grab her phone from the nightstand. He knew something was wrong by the way she guarded her phone from him. It was something she'd never done before. In fact, they had shared a phone at one point. So he was more than shocked when he realized that she protected the contents more frequently now. Since her guarding began, she had bought at least two new phones, each replacing the one before it. But now he had the current one in his hands.
He scrolled his thumb down call after call, almost sickened at the name he saw. Incoming and outgoing calls, his name appeared time after time. All the text messages, sent and received, his name again appeared more than anyone's. His heart dropped when he took the contents out of the envelope, reading where the destination was to.
He heard the front door open and close, along with his dog barking in excitement. He roughly piled everything together and made his way to the kitchen where she stood.
"Hey, babe," she said to him, with what he knew was a fake smile. He would have known that even if he hadn't found the papers in which he tossed on the counter before her.
"What is that?"
She stared blankly at the papers she couldn't believe he found. "Where did you get those?"
"What are they, Cal?"
"Jeff - "
"I can't fucking believe this." He turned from her, hands running through his hair. "Who is it? Is that what you've been hiding? Huh? All these months of doing shit behind my back, you've been flying to see someone?"
"Jeff," she repeated as she took the papers.
"Who the fuck is it!" he shouted out, whipping back to face her again. He grabbed her arms, pushing her back into cabinet. "You won't even tell me, will you? Won't even tell me that you've been fucking Orton? Can't even tell me, can you?"
"I'm sorry, Jeff," she whispered out. "I wanted to tell you."
"But you didn't! I had to find out by going through all of your shit," he said as he shoved her harder into the cabinet. "You're going to go see him in three days? When were you going to tell me that, Cal? I got to look through that fucking phone that you hold into your chest to find shit out. You think it's safe to leave it laying around when you think I won't be back, right?" He shoved her again.
"I'm sorry!" she screamed out as she felt her head bang against the cabinet door. "I wanted to tell you!"
"Do you love him?" Jeff asked, his eyes pleading with her to tell him a negative answer. Pleading for her to tell him that he was the only one she loved. "Do you fucking love him?"
She could no longer contain the wall of tears that broke down. The sobs that came from her answered his question and confirmed his worse fears. She reached out to him as he stepped away from her.
"Jeff, please," she cried out. "I love you."
"You do? That's funny, because I don't show my love to you by fucking other women."
"Just listen to me, please."
"Listen to you? I don't even wanna talk to you."
He escaped her grasp, disappearing into the bedroom she knew they'd no longer share. She didn't want to follow him. She didn't want to admit that he'd found her out before she was remotely ready to tell him. She wanted to make it out that her seeing Randy had been after their relationship. She screamed out, still crying loudly, as she slouched over the counter.
"Cal?" Matt's voice came from the front door. "What happened? What's going on?"
The look of concern and pure confusion on Matt's face sent her into a dizzy spiral. She didn't want to deal with them all knowing. Not right now. Maybe not ever. But having grown up with these guys, it was going to be much harder than she could ever imagine to simply disappear from their lives.
"Matt? What's going on?"
He turned to face Shannon, who had walked up behind him. "I don't know. Cal is crying and I don't see Jeff."
"He's in the bedroom," Cal managed to choke out between the sobs that just didn't seem to let up.
Matt looked at her the whole way into the bedroom, where he did indeed find Jeff. He wasn't exactly in the state he expected.
"What's going on, Jeff?" she heard Matt ask.
"She's fucking around on me, man! I told you! I fucking told you there was something wrong with her!"
Calina continued to cry as she found her way over to the couch and sank into it. Shannon walked over to her, sitting next to her as he gingerly put an arm around her.
"I fucked up, Shan," she said after her cries had subsided a bit. "I fucked up. I should have ended it with him. I didn't want to hurt him. I really didn't."
"Bullshit!" Jeff's voice seemed to resonate throughout the house. "You did!"
She looked up to the bedroom door down the hallway where Jeff was trying to burst past the arms of Matt which held him back into the room.
"Do you want to go somewhere else?" Shannon asked her.
She shook her head, wiping at her puffy eyes. "No, I'm going to pack."
"Yeah, that's what you fucking do! You fucking pack your shit up and leave!" He tried again to push past Matt's arms. "You're a motherfucking liar!"
"Well, if she's going to pack, Jeff needs to get out of the bedroom," Shannon pointed out to Matt.
"I won't touch her," Jeff said in a calmer voice to his brother. "No, I won't attack her. I'm not like that, Matt. You know that."
Matt managed to move his younger brother out of the room, keeping him away from Calina as she slipped into the bedroom to repack her belongings. She pulled out two more of her big luggage cases from the closet and filled them with all of her things. By the time she stepped back out, Shannon was helping her tote three large suit cases and a couple of smaller bags out to her car.
"Thanks, Shan," she said as she turned to the tattooed man. They quickly loaded the bags into the trunk space. Shannon didn't want to know the wrath that Jeff was to become. He'd seen how much rage and anger he had when a fan of his was stalking Calina. Shannon didn't even know the whole story, but he knew it was nothing good.
"""""
"You what?"
"I can't," he repeated, still just as unbelievable.
"Why the fuck not? Do you know what I've sacrificed? The lifetime of friendship I had. The comfort zone he was to me for most of my life," she said with anguish. "And you won't divorce her?"
"Cal, I never said I would. We have a daughter together. I can't just break my family up."
"So, what? It was just fine for me to break up my life?"
"You aren't married to him, and you don't have any kids together. Yours was much easier than mine."
"Easier? If letting go of a lifetime of love is easy to you, certainly you can divorce her."
"I have a daughter. It's not so simple." He sat back on the couch, putting his arms behind his head. "That doesn't mean that I don't want to be with you. Believe me, you're everything I want. Samantha just happens to have my first child. I can't push her to the wayside, regardless of me loving her or not."
The sudden shouting outside of his locker room door broke their conversation. Randy stood at the banging on the other side of the door.
"Get the fuck off me!" the female voice said. Calina's heart sank down to her feet. It was Samantha. "Randy! Open this fucking door! No, get off me! Randy!"
"Stay here," Randy said to Calina, then went to the door. He didn't even have a chance to attempt to keep her out before Samantha burst through the door. "Hold on now, Sam."
"No! Cal, how could you?" She pushed past Randy, marching towards Calina. "You pretended to be my friend? You watched my child? She considers you to be her aunt, and you do this to me?" The few tears that streamed down Samantha's face didn't phase her as she continued to question the woman who stabbed her in the back. "Why?"
"I'm sorry, Sam. I didn't mean for it to go on this long."
"This long? How long?"
Randy cleared his throat. "A couple of months."
Samantha looked to Randy. "So what? It was just going to be a one time thing? Once was all right, as long as your wife didn't find out?" She turned her attention back to Calina. "And Jeff was just supposed to be okay with it too? The girl he grew up with, wanted to marry and have kids with? Was it worth it, Cal? To ruin two lives?"
"No," Calina said as she broke down again. She turned away from them and sat on the edge of the couch cushion near the arm of it. Randy couldn't stand the sound of hearing her cry. Even with Samantha finding out, it still didn't make him feel bad enough about it to want to leave Calina. He stood in front of his wife, urging her to look at him.
"Was it worth it, Randy?" she asked, her eyes searching his for some sort of answer.
"I love her, Sam. I wanted to tell you, but how was I supposed to tell the mother of my child that I no longer felt the same for her? How was I supposed to tell you?"
"By being a man!" she cried out. "I have to find out from messages that Jeff forwarded to me? I have to find out that you love another woman from hearing voice mails and – and – and reading text messages!"
"I wanted to tell you, Sam. I did. And I'm sorry that I didn't."
"Do you want to be with her?" She saw Randy's jaw clench and unclench, and she already knew his answer. "Fine," she said nodding her head. "That's fine. Papers will be served to you."
"Whoa," he said, pulling her back when she turned to walk away. "Papers? Sam, I don't want a divorce."
"You just think I'm going to let you be with another woman?"
"We can't, Sam."
She snatched her arm away from him. "You should have thought about that before you did it. About your family. About me, and about your daughter."
Randy watch her hastily wrench open the door and disappear. He paced around in front of Calina for a few moments before she spoke.
"I can't do this, Randy."
"What? What do you mean you can't do it?"
"I can't. I've hurt Jeff and I've hurt Sam, and I didn't want to."
"It's a little too late to try and pull back now." He stood with his arms crossed, watching her cry before the reason why she was hesitant now hit him. "You didn't know he wanted to marry you, did you?" He sat down next to her, exhaling deeply.
She shook her head, her manicured hand still to her mouth, and whispered, "No."
He nodded his head, looking down at his hands in disbelief. "So a little promise about him wanting to marry you makes you want to crawl back to him?"
"What?" she said looking at him.
"I thought I meant more to you than that, Cal. If Sam never found out, or didn't care, I'd be fine with spending my life with you."
"Was I always supposed to be stowed away to you then? You were never going to tell her. I guess it didn't matter to you. You would have been fine if you could have your cake and eat it too."
"And what did you think would happen, Cal?"
"That we would start a family!" She stood, leaning her head against the cool lockers, trying to subside her massive headache. "I didn't want it to go this far. You were just supposed to be something on the side to me too."
He jumped up to stand next to her, placing an arm around her. "But we love each other now."
"So why hide it?" she whispered. He walked away from her, as if he didn't have a real answer for her. She watched him pace around the locker room, her mind wracking any possible answer he would say. But his answer never did come.
The night ended, and the left in silence together. Calina didn't even want to bother going to the hotel room, as she opted to sleep on the bus. Randy didn't even protest. Didn't even ask why. And as she lay on the bus, barely sleeping at all, she questioned why she let the situation even get this bad. Not caring to try and sleep anymore, she pulled out her phone and called the number that belonged to the one person she had loved since childhood, not able to stop herself from crying as she heard his voice mail.
"Hey, Jeff," she said softly. "I don't want to tell you that I'm sorry anymore. It seems so pointless now that the damage has been done. I didn't mean it to be like this though. I should have controlled myself better. I should have thought of you more. You've been my life for most of my life, and above everything else, I just wanted you to know that I still love you. I just hope that you'll forgive me." She sniffed as she heard the beep indicating that the voice mail was done recording, and plopped her phone down on the bed next to her as she fell back and silently cried herself into a sleep.
"""""
He listened to the voice mail she had left him for probably the tenth time now. They hadn't spoken to each other in a week. And to be completely honest, he didn't want to talk to her. Not right now. But he knew he would eventually get over the hurt he felt from her betrayal. He had been going through his closet, pulling out several of the numerous photo albums they had together. Picture after picture of memories together. For so many years, it was just him and her. Just the two of them.
He still couldn't wrap his mind around why she had done it, and there was a part of him that knew he'd probably never know. All he really knew was that he wanted his Cal back. He wanted her to be next to him in life. As he flipped through the endless pages of them, he hoped that he would be able to see past the person that broke his heart. He knew that wasn't really her. That wasn't the Calina he had grown up with. And he made a promise right in this moment to work out any issues they had. To work on himself so he could be better, and move on from this nightmare.
"""""
The house was newly built within the past year, and she stood from her car not being able to contain her excitement of seeing his new home. He seemed to want to keep talking to her when she had spoken to him earlier that day. She shut her car door, slinging her small jean bag over her shoulder before making her way up the stone walkway. It was to her surprise that he opened the door before she was half way up to the door.
"Hey," he said to her as she bounced up the steps.
"Hi." She could tell in his green eyes that after all she put him through, he still had love for her. "Short hair," she said, lifting her arm to touch his freshly cut hair. "Looks good."
"Thanks," he said running a hand over his short locks. "Come in." He moved to the side of the door, holding his arm out to the inside of the new house.
She stood in front of him for a moment, looking over his face. "Thanks, Jeff."
