It was the fifth year since I broke up with Calliope, and the third since I fully let her fade away.
The hurt and sadness had long healed like the marks across my palms, thinning like dust in the breeze.
Returning home, I arranged the scattered sketches on the table.
Just as Arden said, I never went to university, nor touched that higher circle again.
Placing the drafts back into the drawer, I suddenly spotted a long-stored letter.
On it, in neat handwriting. “Rayne Zimmerman, personally.”
At the last line of that letter, she wrote she would leave everything to me, yet in the end, it was I who lost it all because of her.
My mind drifted back to the past.
Calliope and I were childhood sweethearts, growing up side by side.
We lived in nearby houses; in those days, she still had a warm family.
Later on, her dad’s company expanded, and he returned less.
She often slipped over to my place, saying that mine felt like home, and hers did not.
When she turned six, her dad cheated.
Her mom broke things across the house overnight and stopped caring for her.
During the divorce, her parents tossed her back and forth like a toy; neither wanted her.