Page 45 of Shameless Vows

Isla Reyes: listen babe i hate that u found out this way but heres the thing

Isla Reyes: i just didnt know how to tell u any of this and im sorry this is how it came out

Isla Reyes: im just realizing that ive missed out on a lot of life experiences by only being w/ u my whole fucking life and i need the chance to see whats out there

Isla Reyes: i didnt know how to tell u and i was going to talk to u during the break

Isla Reyes: i already fucked up by sending that by accident but tbh its necessary

Isla Reyes: i dont want to lie to u anymore so there it is

Isla Reyes: i know ur mad at me and u can be mad. thats fair but i need my freedom

Isla Reyes: i need my freedom. i dont want to cause problems w/ our families and i think it would be best if we just didnt talk after this

Isla Reyes: if u rly love me like u say u do youll let me go and not try to start shit w/ me over this

Isla Reyes: i cant do it anymore babe. this is just how i need it to be

Isla Reyes: im turning my phone off

Isla Reyes: dont call. itll be easier this way for both of us

Like mother fuckinghell, I wasn’t going to call.

And I called, and I called, and I called.

But just like she said, her phone was off, and all I got was her voicemail.

“Isla,” I wheezed into the phone, lightheaded and sick to my fucking stomach, “what the fuck… what the fuck… what the actualfuckis going on? This doesn’t evenmake sense. Who the hellare youright now? You can’t drop a bomb on me and then justturn off your fucking phone!”

I hung up and pitched the phone against the mattress as I paced furiously in circles around my dorm, sweating like a mother fucker and swallowing the urge to retch.

But,no.Itdidn’tmake sense. And I just needed totalk to her,and therehad to bea better explanation than justI need my freedom to see what’s out there.

“Isla,” I tried again, desperation strangling my throat with tears that threatened, “you have to call me. We have to talk about this. Iwill notbelieve any of this if you don’t fuckingcall me! If you fucked up and made a mistake, we can work through it. You don’t have to throw away our entire fucking lives over one stupid mistake! It’s not worth it! Nearlytwo decadesof ourentire livesare not worth throwing away just because you did some stupid, meaningless shit! I’m not letting you off the hook for this, and you’re not going to fucking hide from me just because you’re scared to face what you did! Wecanfix this, but wecan’t fix anythingif youdon’t call me!”

But she never did.

She never turned her phone back on. She never replied to my messages. And the longer she was silent, the more my disbelief shifted to rage, and then rage shifted to total numbness.

I don’t even remember the last month of classes.

I didn’t even show up for graduation.

My parents obviously noticedthat, and that’s when I had to explain to them that sweet little Isla, whom we’d all known and loved our entire lives, had somehow secretly transformed into a horrifying alternate version of herself and had done the unthinkable. They didn’t even believe me at first. But after I showed the messages to Philipp, andhevouched for what Isla did, they finally resigned to the fact that our collective relationship with the Reyes family was likely over by extension.

A week or so after graduation, I bought a one-way plane ticket to Australia. And from there, I got on a smaller plane to New Zealand, made my way to Fiordland, found a remote, private cabin in Milton Sound, and that became my home for a year.

The first night in the cabin, I got drunk on a bottle of very fine single malt scotch and passed out on the living room rug. The second night, I lit up some very fine cannabis, lay on a blanket spread out on the stony shore next to my cabin, stared at the sun setting behind the mountains and over the water, watched the stars come into view, got high as fuck, and cried like a fucking baby.

And I cried.

And I cried.

And I cried.

And my treacherous fucking mind could only think of how unspeakably beautiful the mountains and lake and stars were, and how much I wished Isla could see all of it, andhow could she do this to me?

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