Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CALLIE
Moving to Southern California was all fun and games until I realized that the eight to ten hour drive—depending on traffic—to see my parents wasn’t as quick or easy as it seemed when I first applied to UCLA.
I couldn’t really jaunt to Geyserville for a quick weekend like I’d imagined myself doing.
I still flew up to our local airport occasionally or drove out for longer stays, but I didn’t see my parents nearly as often as I’d like.
Getting to spend almost two weeks with them in Scotland is the best Christmas gift this year.
Which is why nothing is going to ruin my day today, since I know my parents are flying in and will be joining us at Chateau de Gavin before lunch.
Not the fact that Gavin might have possibly—probably?—kissed me last night if I hadn’t been such an idiot and pretty much told him not to.
Definitely not the guilt that swallows me whole while I watch his parents sit at one end of the breakfast table and ignore the rest of our group entirely as they make their plans for the rest of the day.
Plans that include a cute holiday market a few towns over between Inverness and Glenbruar, but not any of us. Not even their own son.
I mean, heaven forbid they invite him along after he gives up his bedroom for them. Buys their house to dig them out of debt. Parents himself every time they neglected him for the first eighteen years of his life.
My piece of toast crumbles in my hand. Okay, my bitterness is showing. Take a breath, Callie.
“That Christmas market sounds amazing,” Luna says down the table, chewing on her eggs. “I haven’t been to a Scottish one yet. Should we go too?”
Jean glances up, surprised.
I don’t respond either, because I’m just as taken off guard.
Luna doesn’t seem to notice, though. She wouldn’t, since she doesn’t know the history here. “If you think Mom would like it, I mean. I think she would.”
“Mom would love it,” I agree. “We could go on the way home from the airport.”
Luna’s nodding, like this was her thought all along. “Besides, it’ll help them stay awake while they adjust to the time zone. So we’re decided?”
I nod while my sister takes her empty plate to the sink.
“I’ll go tell everyone. We should probably leave in fifteen minutes.”
“Great,” I call after her, my mouth full of food. She leaves me behind with Jean and Don and a silence that stretches awkwardly. My toast is nearly gone, so I scoop another bite of yogurt and try to eat fast.
Don leans closer to Jean and says something quietly.
She responds, equally quietly, and they carry on a conversation I am clearly not part of.
I have no idea what they’re saying, and that’s obviously the intention.
I would like to be anywhere in this house but here right now, including the room upstairs where Poppy is screaming at her parents, probably because she hates getting dressed.
Jean clears her throat. “We won’t be going to Inverness.”
“Oh, of course not. It’s such a drive.” I’m kind of wondering if she thinks our entire group will drive all the way out there to pick up my parents, but she can’t really think we’d waste so much gas, right?
It would be better for Luna and me to pick up Mom and Dad and everyone else can meet us at the market.
“So we’ll catch up later,” Jean says, rising from the table.
“If you choose to go to that Christmas market with us, Gavin can let you know when we—”
“I don’t think it’ll work out today,” Jean says. “But thank you.”
It takes all my patience to nod and say nothing more.
This isn’t my fight. It’s not my place to step in and point out how I think they should be giving their son more attention, and it’s definitely not my place to ask why they can disappear for so long, then show up and not even spend quality time here.
There must be more to the story than I know. It’s better to believe that than to accept they’re terrible parents.
I push away from the table and carry my plate to the sink to wash. “Well, have a good day. I better finish getting ready.”
“Bye, Callie,” Don says.
I’m entirely ready, but I can’t stay in this room any longer. When I leave the kitchen, Gavin is coming down the stairs with Rhys.
“Has Luna shared the plans?” I ask.
Rhys types into his phone, then slides it into his pocket. “You’re going to pick up Mum and Dad, and we’ll all meet you at the market.”
Gavin glances at his phone before sliding it into his pocket. “Would you like me to drive you?”
“You don’t need to do that, mate,” Rhys says. “Luna plans to take our car.”
“Won’t you need it to fit the bairns?”
Rhys rubs a hand over his jaw. He glances outside through the window, where the blue sky peeks through between white clouds. Snow covers every surface, melting from the trees and dripping in puddles on the ground. “If they could borrow a car, that would be grand.”
“Aye, they can.” Gavin looks at me. “Take your pick.”
Can I have the tall one with blue eyes and a killer smile? I pass the men to go for my thick sweater and pull it on, then fluff out my hair. That would make me sound crazy, so I smile and say, “Whichever one you won’t be using.”
Luna drives Gavin’s green sedan through small, winding roads toward the Inverness airport.
The ride passes fairly quickly while we catch up on everything that has been going on in Snowshill and the recent developments with Rhys’s new chef at the pub—a cousin of their friend Flo, apparently, who moved to town and needed a job.
“It’s nice having him home in the evening more often, especially now that we have Oliver,” Luna says.
“That’s romantic. When do you film for your channel?”
“When I find time. It’s been easier to have a routine since we moved into that cottage next to the pub.” She shrugs. “But we still spend a lot of time in The Wild Hare. Handing over any control has been harder for Rhys than he let on. He loves Nikki, but the pub is his baby.”
“I know how much you both love that place.” I take another sip of water.
“We really do. I wouldn’t have my family without it.” She gives me a goofy smile and tucks her long hair behind her ear. “So tell me about school. Mom says you’re halfway done now.”
My stomach bottoms out. Just the mention of the time I have left or the idea of returning to that campus sends me into a nervous spiral.
Every day I draw closer to the end of my trip, the gut-tightening anxiety seems to get worse.
If I get the internship to work with the youth program, at least I’ll be transferred to a different teacher for clinicals.
Kayla doesn’t have anything to do with the Youth Center.
But I won’t hear back on that until January.
“School is the same.”
“How is Bekah?”
“Happy. Peter understands her, even though they’re so different, and he’s willing to help with her Seven Brides audition. It feels like the real deal. I don’t know if I’m more relieved or grateful.”
“Is he another theater geek?”
“One of my professors, actually.”
Luna gasps, which makes me smile.
“He’s young,” I say. “It’s not gross. And they’re cute together. It’s a good thing for her, but they’re very different.”
“And you? No guys since Alex?”
I think of Gavin holding me last night and how badly I wanted to sink into the blank oblivion he offered me.
It could be so easy to push everything in my head aside and let Gavin fill my mind instead.
But that’s what I always do, isn’t it? Find a distraction.
Enjoy the romance. Worry about my problems later.
The thing is, I don’t want to do that this time.
Maybe in the beginning I wanted to use the bucket list to get school and Alex and Kayla out of my head, but it’s different now.
Watching Gavin with his parents and feeling so helpless to make a change was beyond frustrating.
I need to do something. Take actionable steps to fix my situation.
Filling out the internship form was the first one, and it made me heady and powerful.
If I’m approved, I won’t report directly to Kayla anymore. Things will actually change.
“So there is someone,” Luna says. “Does he live in Scotland and have a beard and wear a kilt?”
“What kilt?”
“I mean, he probably owns one. Have you asked?”
“Who are we talking about?” I ask.
“You aren’t fooling anyone.”
“Anyone?” I repeat, a little too loudly.
Luna dips her head side to side in thought as the car slows for a stop sign.
“Okay, maybe just me. I know you best, so it could be less obvious to the others. I could see the way you two were looking at each other the minute we walked in that house. What happened over the snowstorm, and why did you feel like you couldn’t tell me right away? ”
“Nothing.”
“Callie, it’s me.”
“I know, and I’m telling you the truth. So far, nothing has happened. I taught him to play Garbage, we visited his neighbors, talked a lot…that’s it.”
“No kissing?”
“None.” I could tell her about the electrically charged hug, but that feels private. I’ve never had a hug make my knees weak.
Luna’s eyes narrow as she tries to read my expression. She breathes out, pulling onto the highway. “That’s a shame.”
“You wanted me to fall in love and move to Scotland.” It’s a statement because I can see through her like a vase of ice water.
“It’s a lot closer than LA.”
“My program doesn’t transfer, Lu.”
“Well, it’s not like you’d move here tomorrow.”
“I couldn’t move here for five years.”
Luna frowns. “You won’t kill my hope.” She reaches for the radio and turns it on.
Christmas music pours through the speakers, but she turns it down so it’s background noise.
“You know, five more years is a lot. Have you thought of stopping at a master’s degree instead of going all the way to doctor?
There’s a lot of good you can do with a master’s. ”
The very idea of stopping early and walking away with a master’s in psychology is much more appealing than she could know, but impossible.
“My school doesn’t offer it. The program is a doctoral degree, so I committed to the long term.
It sliced off a year, but it means I can’t quit or transfer or end early. ”
“So you’re stuck.” Luna shakes her head quickly. “Obviously not stuck. I mean, of course, you love it there.”
But I don’t. Now is my chance to tell her, too.
She couldn’t have provided a more perfect opportunity.
My heart races, though. Coming out with the truth to a stranger in a pub was one thing—I never thought I’d have to face that man again.
Telling my sister the truth means she will know how I really feel for the rest of time.
You can’t undo knowledge once it’s given.
But she is someone I trust, and her opinion is something I value. “I don’t, actually.”
“Don’t what?”
“I don’t love it there. Ever since Alex started dating Katie Potts, my faculty clinical supervisor, she has tried to make school impossible and slow for me.
She creates problems but in such a subtle way, I feel gaslit.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m actually making it up in my head, which is making me feel crazy.
It doesn’t even make sense, because she got the guy! So why does she have to put me down?”
Luna’s silent for a moment. “To keep you down, I’m guessing. She must struggle with low self esteem and worry that you have a chance at getting Alex back.”
“I don’t want him back.”
“It must not feel that way to her.” Luna chews on her lower lip. She tries to glance at me but has to look back at the road. “Why haven’t you said anything?”
“Gaslighting, remember? I spent so long wondering if a faculty member would really sabotage me, I convinced myself I was making it up. Then, when I was fairly sure I was right, it became this awkward realization that I have to put up with her for the next five years, and I need to find a way to deal with it.”
“Well, have you?”
“Yeah, I flew to Scotland and played house with a man in a kilt.”
She smirks at me. “What kilt?”
“I’m going to suggest he gets one.” I lean back and close my eyes. “I want to help kids, and I can do that with a master’s. Should I quit and go start over somewhere else?”
“You’d be giving up a whole year and a half of work for nothing.”
“I don’t want that.”
“So you put up with it for another four and a half years, and then you’re Doctor Callie Winter, and you can put UCLA behind you forever.” Luna shrugs. “It’s not like Kayla will be your supervisor the entire time, right?”
“Right.” I exhale. “If I get the internship I tried for, then my practicum hours will switch to this great youth center we have close to campus, and the woman who runs it is incredible. I’ve never actually met her, but she’s done a lot for the community, and she’s popular with the kids, which means she must be amazing. ”
“Sounds like a major improvement.” Luna pulls the car into the airport and shoots me a smile. “What are the chances you’ll get the internship?”
“No idea. But I got the application in on time, so I’ll find out in January. Just don’t say anything to Mom or Dad. I don’t need them worrying about me.”
Luna looks uneasy. “I get it, but they’d probably like to know.”
“Please?”
“Fine.”
“Promise?”
“Sheesh, yes. I promise. Now, while we still have privacy. I want details. What exactly has Gavin said and how can we get you that Scottish kiss?”