CALLUM
The Living Years - Mike + The Mechanics
“Areyou sure you want me to read this?” Alejandra chewed her lower lip as he turned his laptop toward her, opened on the letter his biological father had personally written for him. “It seems like something pretty important. If he wrote a letter to you, I bet he wantedyouto read it.”
“I don’t really care what he hoped for, Alejandra. I want you to read it because I need to pace around the apartment, and I need to process everything.”
She sighed.
“Are you okay with it, Eira?” she pressed, looking at the phone propped on the coffee table, where his mother was listening to the entire conversation.
“Absolutely.”
That seemed to calm her frying nerves. She seemed even more nervous than he was. The day before, she had confessed how what had happened between him and Mick in the last days had made her think about herself too. “Self-centered, I know,” she had excused herself with a sheepish smile, but what came after had somehow made sense.
Alejandra had been a career-driven athlete. Medals and awards were her reason to live before the injury, and it had become an obsession that could have somehow destroyed whatever had been going on between them. Realizing that the injury had been life-altering, in a good way—because she could still surf at her own time, and she had the chance to get to know him—had been extremely important for her. And he had seen it in her bright green eyes, how the cloudy feeling she had in her brain every time she spoke about her future had somehow lifted.
“Alright, are you all ready?” Alejandra asked again, sitting cross-legged on his couch.
He had been devouring her pussy just half an hour before. He had needed to take the edge off as soon as they had returned from the restaurant with Leonor. He needed her, and sex was a good way to take his mind off whatever Mick had written in that letter.
Callum nodded, scratching his stubble, and his mother confirmed from the phone. Taid was probably around, but he wouldn’t remember unfortunately.
He settled his eyes on London’s landscape as Alejandra cleared her throat and started to read.
“Dear Callum, I’m sorry I rushed away like that in Ericeira. I should have been a grown-up, a mature person, and I could have handled it better… but as your mother can confirm, I was never great with responsibilities.”
A scoff came from his mother on the phone. He had written that letter recently—he had mentioned Ericeira. Did he mean to talk to him if death hadn’t found him?
“I spent years chasing waves, winning medals, running from my responsibilities to the point I had no idea how to do anything else. I didn’t know how to reconnect with you or Leonor—if you are reading this, I’m pretty sure you met her by now. I didn’t know how to accept the fact that my recklessness in youth had changed the lives of two women and their children. As much as I know I’m your biological father, I don’t think I could ever be considered your real father, someone who cared about you more than the money I sent you all these years.”
It was his turn to scoff. At least he had the decency to understand what a real father should do.
“When I saw you in Ericeira, I wasn’t prepared. I could have handled it better, but you didn’t seem to know who I was, and that threw me off. Was I dreaming? Had Eira never told you who I was? Had she never cared about me?”
“Bloody hell, Mick,” his mother muttered from the phone.
Alejandra shared a sympathetic smile with him, then continued.
“I didn’t know how to react, and I did the only thing I knew how to do—run. I didn’t know you knew Alejandra. I didn’t know you were involved in the surfing world. Weren’t you an accountant? I had to keep tabs on both of you… because from a distance you were just numbers, and now… you were in front of me, looking nothing like me. For a bit, I hoped you would look like me, maybe turn into a surfer and keep up my legacy. But I could see you were more interested in the surfer next to you than the waves, and that’s the first indicator you weren’t a surfer. Because while she looked at the waves, you looked at her.”
Alejandra paused.
“Poetic,” he joked darkly.
“This letter is nonsensical,” Alejandra declared.
“Keep reading it, please.”
She sighed and continued.
“What I’m trying to say, very badly, is that even though I didn’t raise you, I had this hope that my son would look at me. Leonor is an amazing surfer, fearless and brave, and I thought you would do the same. But that’s my fault. Maybe life would have been different if I had raised you, if I had taken care of what I’ve disrupted. When Eira told me, I could have gone back to Aber, but I was scared. I needed those medals, the money, the awards, the recognition, but now…I’m here, in this house in Malibu with no family, no one who truly cares about me but a joint I keep smoking, hoping it would bring me some kind of joy.”
“Gosh,” his mother gasped. “Did he kill himself?”
“No,” Callum said. “He accidentally overdosed, apparently. The cops in LA said so. Don’t feel pity for him, mam. He made this decision.”
And even though he was being harsh, and even though he was saying those words, when Alejandra met his gaze, he could see the way her eyes softened. She saw behind the wall—how, somewhere deep down, knowing they could have met and maybe fixed something, there was a version of this he might have wanted.
