A Man on an Island Ch. 03

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TaLtos6
TaLtos6
1,930 Followers

"Please text me to let me know you're alright. Please?"

He thought about that for a long time. He thought that he'd just ignore it, but he thought that it might hurt her. As ripped up as he was, Cale didn't blame Emma. Finally, he just sent:

"I don't hate you, Em. I understand why you did it." He was in bed and about to turn off the light when his phone chirped. He sighed and read it.

"Ur wrong. Gender means nothing. Love is love, stupid is stupid, cheating is cheating. I'm so sorry I hurt you. Stupid Em"

He hadn't even thought of a reply when it went off again.

"You're the best person I ever knew, the best lover I ever had. My best friend."

Oh God, he thought, she's killing me long distance now. He tried to shut off his phone, but Emma was quicker.

"Sleep & ride safe. I love you so much, I sleep in your sweater. Em"

Hundreds of miles away, Emma smiled for the first time in days as she closed her eyes.

Cale shut off his phone and went for a walk. He'd never really sat back to think about it before, but he supposed that he now had the time and the mind-set for at least a little introspection. Like a lot of places, he didn't have far to walk before he found himself in front of a liquor store in this one. He didn't drink much as a rule, but if this didn't qualify as a reason...

Back in his room, he thought things over. He'd never been one of those people who were what he considered lucky enough to have a whole lot of relationships. He'd never really told anyone, and in point of fact, he'd never made the admission to himself that was coming up inside him right now.

Cale grabbed the little notebook that he always kept with him. Sitting on the bed, he began to look back. Before he got very far, he smirked bitterly to himself and decided to be at least a little bit logical here, so he quickly made up a short-ish list of names, deciding to be brutally honest with himself. With the list made against the left side of the little page, he drew a line down vertically and then began to write outcomes on the right side. It took him no time at all and if nothing else, it caused him to realize something.

Going right back to his first shy attempts as a kid, every single serious relationship that he'd ever been in had come to the same end as what he was faced with here. There had always been somebody else who had been able to draw the other person away. Cale never thought of these things. He was busy just working and trying to live his life. With it all laid out here almost graphically before him, it was pretty sad.

What was worse, the last three – not counting Emma – had ended once he'd learned that he'd been cheated on and had forgiven the transgression - and accepted the promises that it wouldn't ever happen again. Every promise had been broken.

Every one, three times out of three.

What was it about him that made this happen? He wondered about it for a time, but then just shook his head. He guessed that he must not have been what they'd wanted. It fit somehow, he thought. He ended up staring at the opposite wall for a little while when he thought back to how he'd always tried so hard to try to forget and start fresh when the other person asked for another chance. He sighed.

Those had always ended the same way; with a painful repeat performance. Well, painful for Cale, anyway.

There had been his wife, two girlfriends after her who hadn't lasted long, and now Emma. What made this one the hardest for him was that in spite of everything, he really thought that this one would work. He finished his drink and tossed the ice cubes into the bathroom sink, but then changed his mind and decided on another. Once he'd poured the whiskey, he twisted the top on tightly and put it into one of his saddlebags. There was no point getting stupid over this.

The next morning at breakfast, Cale was astounded to read:

"Please say I'm still your friend. Em"

Cale rode on through the top of Texas, wondering. He figured that if it had been him who'd been found out, he wouldn't do much more than apologize and walk away, knowing that it was over, but he guessed that like a lot of things, he was just different in a dumbass sort of way. But Emma wasn't going to let this alone. Now he was hurt and confused.

Just peachy.

But he found that he was beginning to actually see the scenery now instead of a narrow band of road. He thought about his old sweater. Well it had served him well over the years, so it deserved to be next to those little beauties, he thought with a grin.

He was hauling ass today, hell bent for someplace. The clouds opened up on him, but he didn't much care. He'd gotten his rain gear on and was motoring. But he still had the emptiness inside him. One more day, he figured as he ate in the dining room of a nice and large motel, where the care of the management was obvious. He sat and wondered how many times he'd been in a place where they actually had a dining room – with staff. The place was done up in a friendly fashion, and yet, there was no tackiness to it at all. He was wondering how they'd done it when he realised that he was actually looking around himself again for the first time in days.

He went to his room pulled out his phone and, cursing the small screen on the phone, he composed several texts and saved them as drafts so that he could send them one after the other. He hated himself for doing this, but right now he wanted to be left alone.

"I know you're sorry. All my fault."

"I was the one who pestered you."

"Mail the will to me or toss it. I don't care."

As he sat looking at, but not watching the TV in his room that night, Cale came to a decision and called Josh, telling him a lie that he hated himself for to say that something had come up with a project at work and that he was heading back. Their reunion would have to wait for the following summer. He hated to do that, but he knew that he wasn't going to be anywhere near the sort of company that Josh deserved in a brother right then.

Josh understood. He even knew that Cale was spinning him a tale and he called Cale on it, getting the truth out of him and saying that he knew the feeling and that it was alright.

Right after that call, his phone clamoured for attention.

"Very sorry again I hurt u. Words don't work. Will do anything 2 make it better. Anything."

He looked at it. What the hell now? It chirped again. Cale actually chuckled. The confined space of a text message was causing her to sound Japanese or something. Another chirp, and he read a continuation of the previous message.

"I mean that. My boobs ache for you now. All of me hurts. All my fault."

That one made him hurt in several ways just for reading it, but there was another right after it. "Where r u?"

Cale looked at the screen for a long time, long after it had gone dark. He didn't suppose it made any difference now: "Near Tucumcari, NM, going west."

The next one shocked the hell out of him, and they were coming fast.

"Need you alive & in my arms. Give me 1 chance. Never let you down again."

"Luv u 4evr Cale, till I die. Nevr stop. If u can evr luv me again, pls say. I NEED my Cale back."

Cale frowned at that one. If she'd needed him that much, then why had she taken the chance that she had? He thought of himself as a simple man, but even allowing for what he guessed were the more complicated people out there, he'd never have done it, no matter how complicated he might imagine her personality to be.

He felt his shoulders sag. It was Emma, sweet complicated Emma. He almost pressed the call button. It was what he ached to do. As he fumbled, trying to get his large work-hardened fingers to find the tiny button, he saw the notebook on the nightstand along with his bike keys and looked at it very sadly. He dropped the phone onto the bed and picked up the notebook.

People do what they do for the reasons that they do them – or not, he thought.

Most of all, people do what they've always done.

Based on the script that he saw before him, he knew what would happen again eventually. And even if it didn't, what he was looking at here told him that he didn't have it in him to even think about going through even one more repeat where he offered his hopeful forgiveness and tried to hide the lack of trust that he'd always have in him if he did. He hadn't started out this way, but it was sure home to him now, wasn't it?

He knew that this was his shortcoming. Another in a long, long list apparently. It was a little new for him, he guessed, but it was there, right on up there with his other shortcoming – the one where he'd struggle sometimes to get off the fucking island in his head and then wonder why he'd tried.

Well, he was at that moment, he thought. The one where he'd always caved and offered the other person their chance to do it to him again. They always did; the proof was on the little pages of the notebook in his hand.

He picked up the phone and sat down on the bed. If there was one thing that Cale believed about himself in matters of his heart, he knew that whatever choice he made would be the wrong one. What he wanted to do was throw the device against the wall in frustration and hurt. But he didn't do that. He turned his phone off. He didn't want to see anybody; hear or read anyone's begging to allow them to hurt him again, nothing.

He wanted nothing.

He pulled out the bottle and after slowly drinking it all while thinking things over and trying to look forward, Cale was a little glad that it wasn't a big bottle, because he didn't have that many things to think over. He went to bed.

------------------------

The next day, he decided to just ride around a little to get the cobwebs out of his mind so he paid for another night at the motel and climbed onto his bike. The phone went into one of his saddlebags, right at the bottom and he didn't look at it again. After that, Cale felt better and had the beginning of a rough sketch for how he'd move on as he rode, enjoying the scenery.

The only thing that he wanted now was to find another job and he knew that he was well-enough known in his trade that it wouldn't be much of an issue. There was another thing that he'd decided and he implemented that change right away.

Cale felt as though his island was on its way to becoming a fortress, and though he didn't want that, he seemed to be powerless in it. He only knew how he felt. The world could go to Hell anytime now.

Cale didn't want to play anymore.

With the decision made, all that Cale had to do was to get through the last part of his life, he guessed. He's said it to himself to get a bit of distance and it didn't work. He just rode around, trying to clear his mind.

That didn't work either and all that he succeeded in doing was to get himself lost. It took him no time to find himself off the highway and onto roads that looked as though they came from out of nowhere and went right back there – in the other direction, of course. He looked around. Wherever he was, this wasn't anything like the town where his room was.

He pulled into a bike dealership and decided to ask for some directions. The directions that he was given made no sense to him, but he listened carefully. As he was on his way out, he noticed the diner next door, so he walked over and bought a take-out burger and fries, not really wanting to see anyone. The directions that he received there were no better.

As he walked back a little slowly trying to hold onto everything while working on maybe trying for a slurp of his cola since his mouth tasted like the floor mat in the back seat of a taxicab, he saw a woman eating a hot dog while walking around his bike as she checked it out. Bikers are bikers the world over, he thought. He didn't mind, though he didn't want to talk to her. For once, it wasn't too bad here on his lonely beach.

He headed for a picnic table and just sat on the top of it with his feet on one of the benches. As he ate, he looked at the woman.

She knew that he was there, he thought – she had to, but she showed no sign of being aware of his scrutiny. She was a little lanky and he placed her age at about maybe forty at a stretch. He noted that her skin color was very dark, and a quick glimpse at her features told him that she had perhaps more Mesoamerican blood than maybe the average New Mexican with a Latin heritage. She looked something like an artist's conceptual drawing that he'd seen once of an Aztec family in a textbook when he was in school.

Not that he was exactly an expert in such things, but the feeling that he got was that her people long ago had come from the middle of Mexico or maybe as far south as Honduras or maybe Nicaragua. She would have been called pretty in her younger day, but Cale knew better.

To him, she carried a totally different kind of appeal – and he was in no mood overall for anyone's appeal, but Cale was the sort of person who looked to see faces from different cultures. He'd just always liked that. He tried to read people in an unobtrusive way if possible. It was a safe hobby on his island.

Not that it mattered in the least at the moment, but to him, she was a totally different kind of beautiful woman. He thought that he could see what she might have looked like as a young woman, but it amazed him that her beauty now must have been something that she'd grown into or something. And she was tall at maybe 5 foot 8 or maybe 9 inches tall. It didn't fit the general type in his head, but then who said that his head was right and more often than his idiot heart?

She was dressed in gear far more fitting to the biker sub-culture here than he was wearing, with chaps over tight black jeans, and wearing a black leather vest with what looked like faded colors on the back, but they were so old that he knew little of them and he sure didn't recognise them.

What caught his eye was her hair. Jesus, he thought, it was long. Though it was tied in a long thick ponytail, it still reached just about to her slender ass. Cale didn't much care, but she was nice to look at in a wild sort of way. And then he recognized her. She worked at the motel that he was staying at. He'd caught glimpses of her working at different jobs there.

He'd been looking at the dirt for a moment as he ate when it came to him and he thought that if anybody could give him directions back to his motel...

He looked up and she was looking at him.

"Very nice machina," she said, with a strong Spanish accent, a little around a small mouthful of hot dog and with a smile wrapped around all of that. She finished the last bite of the hot dog and began to walk over to him, looking at him a little curiously.

"I know you," she said as a semi went past and blew tons of dust around in its wake. "I see you before, Senor."

Cale shrugged, "I'm staying at a motel that I thought was around here, but I'm a little lost. I'm sure that I've seen you there, too."

She smirked a little, "I spend too much time there, I think." She reached for the edges of his open jacket and opened them, looking at his T-shirt. It was just a white T-shirt of a beer advertisement back home. There was a large red maple leaf in the middle of it and only two words underneath that which read 'I am'.

Her smile grew a little wider, "Tourista," she nodded, "You are in the wrong place to be wearing that shirt, my friend. This here is not the – best part of this area to be in. Some advice to you - do not be here at night. Comprende? You understand?"

He nodded, "Thank you, uh, Senora." He suddenly felt as though he was a lot farther south than he was here. It was a strange sort of feeling to him, but it felt a little nice. "Could you please tell me how to get back to the motel?"

She kept that small smile on, but she was looking at him with more of that curiosity of hers. "So polite," she smiled, "How long will you stay, if I can ask?"

"I wanted to leave today," Cale said, "but I didn't feel like it, so I went for a ride – and left my map and GPS in my room. I don't know anymore. Maybe I'll leave tomorrow - "

"Or the day after," she finished it for him, "Another piece of advice; do not stay too long, or you will be trapped. Stay another day at least, and I can get you a discount on the room. I seldom meet people who interest me." The way that she said it made him look back over their short conversation and he found that she seemed to be rather confident in a way that bordered on ... fearless, he thought. It looked really good on her.

"What did you mean that I'd be trapped?" he asked her.

She frowned a little, "This place is like a tar pit. You know what I mean by the word? It traps you. That is how I came to be here. I will lead you back if you wish. One moment, por favor," she said as she began to walk to a pack of parked motorcycles.

The one that she stepped over to made his jaw drop a little. As a general guide, the way that their engines were made pointed to the relative age of a Harley. His was known as a 'blockhead'. Before that, they were called 'shovelheads' and hers was older than even that, being a 'panhead', though there was nothing about it which said that it was tired.

Cale felt as though he was looking at something from out of the sixties as she threw her long leg over a wild-looking chopper and folded out the kickstarter pedal. That machine was older than most electric start Harleys and none of them had had kickstarters in a good long while.

She pushed it through a little with the pedal slowly, feeling where the engine was in its cycle, and then she pulled herself up with the handlebars and kicked it through. The old beast lit off in one kick, and Cale had the distinct feeling that the machine knew better than to embarrass its owner by being stubborn. The way that it gleamed even though it wore its share of dead bugs and dust told him who likely did the wrenchwork required to keep it alive. She sat back then and pulled on her shorty helmet.

A moment later, she rolled up beside his bike, waiting politely as he got his stuff together before they motored off together. Cale followed her, wondering if he'd just stepped back in time into the set of a really cheesy movie, but she smirked after a moment and broke the spell. Apparently, this was his adventure of the day, and he'd had none of that feeling for a while, just meeting the people that a bike would get you to meet. Cale still felt like shit, but riding with somebody got him out of the dumps just a little bit.

She led him to a small little community that just seemed to jump up out of the dust as they came over a rise and he heard her gear down so he followed suit. He pulled up next to her as she shut her bike off, "Can you wait for me here for a moment, senor?" she asked rather politely and Cale nodded.

"I will be no more than a minute. Please stay on your bike. If you get off here, it will require a lot of explanation on my part. I do not mind it, but I wish to save us time."

He nodded and shut his ignition off. He was alone then – at least he felt alone. Everywhere that he looked, he saw faces looking back at him, and none of them looked very friendly. Cale had a feeling a little like having fallen off the map somehow onto another one, but on this gameboard, he was the wrong kind of game piece. Other than a few quiet words and smirks in his direction, no one moved.

The woman came back out with a smile on her face as she said goodbye to an elderly woman. She was balancing eight tightly closed white paper bags in her arms as walked to her bike. Setting a few of them down on the saddle, she opened a saddlebag and began to put them inside very carefully. Aside from Cale, almost every other person there was Hispanic plainly – except for one man, a rather sallow-looking man who now began to walk over from a truck wearing Texas plates.

TaLtos6
TaLtos6
1,930 Followers