Chapter Text
He should have called. The truth of this keeps smacking him around, even though it seems, on the surface, like a case of all’s well that ends well. But being resigned to how things seem—acting on how things seem—seems, in retrospect, like it might be a pretty stupid strategy. If he can even call it a strategy.
On the surface, she could have called him. On the surface, anyone one of them could have called him. The boys, the Captain, even Lanie could have picked up the phone at any point from Memorial Day weekend right up till now. Because even if Beckett was mad at him—completely irrationally mad at him under the circumstances, by the way—is that any reason for all of them to be irrationally mad at him? What are they, a high school clique full of mean girls? It seems like they might be. It seems like they are—or at least were—all irrationally mad at him like a high school clique full of mean girls.
The force of all that anger makes him want to dig beneath the surface. Oh, it doesn’t make all of him want to do any such thing. A sizable part of him wants to rail against the unfairness of it all. A very large part of him has crusted over with a case of Vintage Richard Castle, and Vintage Richard Castle is in the business of feeling hard done by. That part of him would certainly like to drag his much-abused ego homeward in search of sympathy over their mean-girl shenanigans.
It’s not really an option, though, and much as he’d like to think that he is taking the high road, sympathy on the home front—sympathy over the whole thing—is just not really an option. His mother, Alexis . . . they don’t know about the anger, irrational or otherwise.
Oh, his mother suspects. She’s pieced things together and has not bought for a second the idea that Gina + Hamptons + an entire summer is either the act of a vengeful god or the direct result of his stupidity. And Alexis, preoccupied as she is with her own communications-based drama, has sent her share of searching looks his way. But the official story on the home front has centered on the vague assertion that he’ll go back to the precinct after the book tour.
But even if there were comfort to be had, there’s a not un-sizable part of him that wants to do battle with Vintage Richard Castle and dig beneath the surface. Because he knows he should have called, and not just called her weeks ago when he got back to the city. He should have called the boys, or the Captain, or even Lanie. He could have, at any point, called any one of them, and . . . what?
This is the part that’s hard. All the parts of this are hard with Vintage Richard Castle beating his manicured fists against the inside of his skull and crying Not Fair! But this is the part that’s really hard. He could have called any one of them at any point from the long Memorial Day weekend onward and he thinks now that there would have been news on the Demming front. He has no evidence for this—for an extremely early breaking news story featuring nobody’s favorite robbery detective—other than the sheer force and magnitude of their irrational anger.
It’s impossible to imagine that coming on suddenly or recently. It’s impossible to imagine it being sustainable if she had spent any part of the summer in the flaccid arms of Tom Demming. He has a sinking feeling that she spent no part of the summer in those arms, and a positively shipwrecked feeling that he finally understands the electric intensity of that last conversation between them.
And if he had called—if he had found out for certain that Demming was a thing of the past almost before he’d had a chance to be a thing of the present—then . . . what?
This is is a question he can’t answer any more than he can explain why he didn’t call. He genuinely didn’t think to do it. Not on the surface, anyway, and his summer has been all surface. He has existed in fits and starts—writing for long enough stretches to annoy even Gina with his hyper focus. He has thrown himself into every social activity with energy bordering on manic, then withdrawn to sit alone by the pool, staring into the middle distance, with his mind a carefully cultivated blank.
He has let Vintage Richard Castle have free rein, and he doesn’t know if Vintage Richard Castle has been punishing her or simply feeling epically sorry for himself. He doesn’t know what Vintage Richard Castle might have done if he’d gotten a tip by wire that Detective Beckett was once again in the market for a pair of arms to spend the summer in.
Would he have sold the house in the Hamptons with all the furnishings, plus Gina, still in it and gone racing back to the city? Would he have cackled in triumph at her suffering and done absolutely nothing different? Would he have hung up the phone and carried on with the very important business of being Vintage Richard Castle?
There’s no clarity beneath the surface. The landscape is pocked with questions he can’t answer any more than he can answer the question of why he didn’t call. But he’s felt the force of their anger. He suspects it might not be complete irrational. But even if it is—even if they are a clique of mean high school girls—it’s not like there’s a prize for being the jerk most affected by irrational anger. It’s not like he’d want to win it if there was. He’s felt the force of their anger, and he’d very much like to never feel it en masse again. So he’ll keep digging.