15. Callum #2
Tessa lets out a loud sigh. “Finally. I thought one of the woodland creatures went rogue and ate you up. We’re already halfway done painting the pumpkins.”
“We’re sorry to have missed—” Daniel appraises her pumpkin, which is a grayish color with a visible eyeball on it— “whatever that is.”
“Watch it,” Giovanni warns. “Tessa worked hard on this.”
“Grazie, amore.” She pecks him on the cheek.
Daniel moves onto Grace’s pumpkin, which is covered in various shades of muddy brown stripes. “Now this, on the other hand. It’s art. It’s perfect, just like you, Gracie girl.”
Grace blinks. “Oh yeah? What is it?”
Alarm flashes in Daniel’s eyes. Unless he’s guessing abstract rows of mulch, there’s zero chance he knows what it is.
“It’s… uh…” He scratches his neck. “It’s obviously a—hm. It’s obviously the best one here.”
“Valiant effort.” Grace rolls her eyes. “It’s a bee. But the stripes are all wiggly, and the yellow is mixing with the black. It’s objectively the worst one here.”
“A brown-belted bumble bee then. Plenty of those in the Midwest.” He kisses her on the crown of her head.
I open the bag of donuts and walk down the line to pass them out. Everyone but me reaches in to grab one. My stomach is still roiling from earlier. I can barely stand the smell.
“You don’t want a donut?” Peyton asks, standing up to greet me.
“I already ate one on the way here,” I fib. I don’t feel good about lying to Peyton, but I’ve never seen her so happy. Her eyes are bright, her cheeks flushed. She’s even bouncing a little on her toes, like she can’t contain her excited energy.
Tessa takes a giant bite of her donut and moans. “That’s it. I’m moving here.”
Little grains of sugar fall from Peyton’s lips. “Oh my God. This tastes even better than the funnel cakes we had at the fall festival in Coney Island.”
Tessa snorts. “You’re the only one who has positive memories attached to those funnel cakes, Peyton. The rest of us were throwing them up after the Whirl-A-Twirl.”
I turn toward Peyton. “Stomach of steel?”
She shakes her head. “Can’t do rollercoasters.”
“Are you guys talking about Whirl-A-Twirl Gate? I still get tagged in fan pictures of me hurling into a trash can whenever the Mustangs lose. Fuck.” Daniel starts handing out cider sippers. The bottles are shaped like pumpkins, with green flip-top stems and rounded orange bottoms.
“The Mustangs lose a lot,” Tessa mutters.
“Well, that’s because they don’t have the best current athlete who used to play for them on their team anymore,” Grace adds with a wink.
Daniel rolls his eyes. “Nice save, Gracie.”
“I don’t know what ‘save’ you’re talking about. It’s a fact, not a feeling,” she replies with a smile.
“Gio, do you want a cider sipper?” Tessa turns her head. “Where did he go?”
“I’m down here,” he responds from a squatting position at her back, zeroing in on the bottom of her wool coat. “You have a fraying hem.”
She turns around to caress his cheek. “Loose threads aside, do you want a cider sipper?”
“What’s a cider sipper?” Giovanni asks.
Everyone groans except for me and Giovanni as Tessa launches into a lengthy explanation for her husband.
After Giovanni has been thoroughly educated on cider sipper lore and the pumpkins have been painted—a finished bumblebee for Daniel and Grace, some sort of gray feathery pattern for Tessa and Giovanni I don’t quite understand, and, much to my chagrin, a mechanical-bull-cowprint for ours—we all watch the pig race.
Giovanni gets selected by the announcer to ring the starting cowbell.
He looks less than enthused but grins when Tessa whoops and hollers from the bleachers.
Grace’s pig wins, we all celebrate with caramel apples, and then it’s time for the Thompson crew to head out.
Tessa hugs Peyton. “I’m gonna miss you, girl. I wish we’d planned for more than a day, but I think Mom’ll kill me if we spend any more of our trip away from home.”
Peyton pulls away and grabs her hands. “I’m really grateful you stopped by at all with the travel you have going on.”
“I meant what I said about Waterton. You look good here. But, if you and Callum ever want to escape back to New York to see me and the pigeons, Daniel and Grace are visiting on New Year’s Eve, and we’d love to have you, too.
Wouldn’t we, Gio?” She asks the question over her shoulder, where Giovanni and Daniel walk our way—Daniel wanted one last bag of donuts for the trip home.
When the two of them reach us, Tessa frowns. “Although, there’s only so many giants we can fit in our apartment at once.”
“We’ll make it work,” Giovanni replies.
Daniel nods. “Looking forward to it.”
“Me, too,” I add. “It was great meeting all of you.”
“You, too,” Daniel says loudly, pulling me in for a hug.
I clap him on the back. “Thanks for everything.”
“Take this,” he whispers near my ear, discreetly placing a business card in the palm of my hand. “I want you to call me if you ever need to talk.”
I pull back and look at the card. “So, I should call your office and…”
Daniel slowly tilts his head. “No, this is my personal number.”
“Holy shit—sorry. I mean, thanks. I’ll, um, definitely only use this if I need to talk. About… my stuff?”
A pinch of confusion forms between his brows. “Right. That’s, uh, what I said.”
Not only am I still slightly rattled from the panic attack and the weight of my omission from Peyton, but now Daniel Fucking Thompson gave me his personal number.
Carter’s gonna lose his shit.
After the Thompson siblings head out, Peyton and I wander the festival grounds. We bet on the plastic duck race (her duck wins), we do the strength test (I get it all the way to the top on the first try), and we debate whether kettle corn is better than regular popcorn (scenario-dependent).
As the night comes to a close, Peyton leans closer to my side, and I curl my arm around her shoulders. These casual, impromptu touches mean everything to me, knowing how far she’s come, how much trust she’s placing in me.
“Thanks for introducing me to your friends,” I say quietly.
“Everyone loved you,” she replies.
“Did Daniel say that?” My question is genuine, but Peyton laughs.
“Daniel, huh? If I knew I’d be competing with Daniel for your attention, I’d have never introduced you to him.”
I shake my head. “There’s no competition. Only you.”
“There you kids are. We were looking for ya,” Dad says, jogging to catch up with us near the entrance.
“Actually,” Ma adds, closely following him, “we’re looking for the twins. We’ve lost them.”
“Which set?” I ask dryly.
“Your sisters. Lila and Logan are with Cait.”
“Oh. Clementine will be fine.”
“That’s not nice, Cal,” Ma chides.
I shrug. “What? Clover has the survival instincts of a paper bag in a rainstorm. Better to cut your losses now.”
Dad snickers. Ma shakes her head and wraps me up in a hug, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I’m so happy to see you here again. You should be really proud of yourself, Cal.”
“Thanks,” I mumble into her shoulder, though I don’t feel proud of myself. If I told Ma the truth of what happened today, maybe she wouldn’t be as eager to compliment me on a job well done.
Ma steps back and hugs Peyton next. Peyton stiffens briefly, and I wonder if I should step in.
With her friends, touch didn’t seem to bother her at all.
But I’m not sure how comfortable she is with my family yet.
Before I can finish the thought, she visibly relaxes and leans into the hug.
Her eyes close, an expression of joy mapped across her face that likely matches mine.
I know she doesn’t have the deepest relationship with her parents, and I don’t mind sharing my own if Ma makes Peyton this happy.
They break their embrace, and I loop my arm around Peyton’s waist to prevent Dad from sweeping her into a hug. “Well, we have to get going. Best of luck finding your daughters.”
They wave us off, and Peyton and I walk out of the festival side-by-side.
She releases a happy sigh. “If I could describe my perfect day, it would’ve looked nearly identical to today. Thank you. For meeting all of my friends, for being you, just… Thank you, Callum.”
I feel simultaneously better and worse about my decision not to tell her about my trigger. I’m glad I didn’t burden her with what happened and bring down her mood. At the same time, I know that I need to open up to her soon.
We both slow to a stop in front of her office, and she turns to give me a hug.
I kiss the top of her hair. “Hey, Pey?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to run into me tomorrow?”