Sunsets & Slow Dances (Firefly Island: Southern Nights #4)

1. Nadia

1

NADIA

No drinking. No dating. No dick.

Today was the first day of the new year, and I was taking Dry January to a whole new level. Instead of the traditional one-month abstinence, I was taking a year-long sabbatical from my chosen vices. In addition to cutting out alcohol, I was going to practice sexual sobriety as well as relationship-seeking sobriety. I’d always heard of ‘the power of three’ or ‘the rule of three,’ and I decided to go big or go home. I wasn’t sure why that number held such significance, but I needed all the help and good juju I could get.

One might argue that dating and dick were the same thing, but they were not. I’d been on plenty of dates where a dick was not involved, and I had had a few intimate times when there was no wining and dining prior to my close encounter of the D kind. So, my resolutions stood.

Eager to get my intentions in tangible form, I picked up my dry erase marker attached by string to the whiteboard mounted beside my refrigerator. Typically, I used the board to jot down what I needed from the grocery store or reminders for upcoming appointments, but now it was going to have a multi-purpose use. It would be my vision board.

After removing the cap, I spoke each one of my new rules aloud, “No drinking. No dating. No dick.”

Once I finished writing my rules, I put the cap back on and leaned against the kitchen counter. I slowly inhaled through my nose and exhaled through my mouth, doing my level best not to empty the contents of my stomach into the original farmhouse sink.

As I stood concentrating on my breathing, my entire body ached like I had contracted the bubonic plague. My legs were wobbly and weak. One second my mouth was drier than the Sahara Desert, and the next, a wave of nausea crashed over me, and it would fill with water like a dam burst, signifying I was about to puke. My head felt like my big toe the time I stubbed it on a brick wall when Cody “The Cootie Monster” Crawley was chasing me in the first grade trying to kiss me; it throbbed, radiating with pain.

The first of my ‘magic three’ resolutions was born purely out of self-preservation because at the ripe old age of thirty-two, like Danny Glover’s character Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon —which, for the record, is a Christmas movie—“ I’m too old for this shit .”

Last night, I hit rock bottom, and now I was determined to eliminate the three things in my life that no longer served me. I was going cold turkey on every behavior that contributed to the hallucination that had shaken me to my core, the vision that had sent me into a spiral of anxiety, the apparition that sucker punched me and knocked the wind right out of me—my sighting of The Ghost of Exes Past. The man who, when I was twelve years old, stole my heart on the Firefly pier with a package of Big League Chew bubble gum, and never bothered to give it back.

I probably wouldn’t be so upset by my delusion if it hadn’t seemed so real. If I closed my eyes now, I could still see him. Thick chestnut brown hair, chocolate brown eyes, a broad chest, tattooed forearms peeking out of a long sleeve thermal shirt and a strong jaw peppered with a five o’clock shadow; six foot two inches of chiseled Adonis perfection .

Last night, I was minding my own business, enjoying the night out, when I glanced across the bar seconds before the clock struck midnight and saw Callum Knight in all his sexy glory. Then I blinked, and he was gone. Poof. Vanished into thin air. After recovering from the shock, I quickly realized it was a figment of my overactive imagination. Sure, it was a very hot, very sexy figment—but a figment, nonetheless.

Callum Knight hadn’t stepped foot in Firefly Island in over a decade since the day we broke up for good. If he were back in our small island hometown, I would be the first to know. And I hadn’t heard a peep. Sure, I’d been out of town over Christmas on my annual ski trip to the Catskills, which I took every year, so my friends didn’t feel obligated to invite me to their holiday celebrations since I was single, with no family to speak of. But I got back to town yesterday afternoon in time to get ready for my NYE date, which I spent at Southern Comfort, the sole bar in Firefly, with my three besties and their significant others—not to mention half the town.

So, again, if Callum Knight were back in Firefly, someone would have clued me in on his arrival. Which meant my mind was playing tricks on me. Dirty, rotten, cruel tricks. Was I six vodka sodas and three shots deep when I saw him? Yes. But unlike Jamie Fox’s 2010 summer anthem, I was not blaming my midnight mirage on the alcohol. Or at least not totally on the alcohol. Which was why I was cutting all three of the contributing factors to my delusional imaginings out of my life.

After a fearless inventory this morning, I realized I’d wasted so much time over the past decade dedicated to meeting ‘the one’ that my brain was inventing fabricated scenarios that I’d imagined happening. I was starting to believe the things I’d hoped for. Not in the manifesting sense, in the fit-her-for-a-straitjacket sense. It was my own fault. I only had myself to blame.

Which brought me to number two on my list. If I added up all the time I’d spent thinking about men, texting men, waiting for men to respond, analyzing their messages when they did respond, signing up for apps, spending time on apps, going through photos on apps, matching with men on apps, chatting with men I’d matched with, DMing men, responding to men who slid into my DMs, planning dates, getting ready for dates, going on dates, and going on weekends away, it added up to roughly more than six weeks out of the last year. Six. Weeks. That’s 42 days, or 1,008 hours, or 60,480 minutes.

Any way you break it down—weeks, days, hours, or minutes—it was a lot of time. When I thought of all the things I could have done in that time, it made me even sicker to my stomach than I already was.

I’d always wanted to learn another language. According to the experts, it takes 480 hours to reach a novice proficiency level of a language and 2,400 hours to reach an advanced proficiency level. I could have reached intermediate proficiency level. Instead, I had a lot of boring interactions, a few funny anecdotes, a handful of horror stories, and a drained bank account.

Time wasn’t the only thing wasted; there was the money I’d spent. Besides the dating sites I’d joined, there were the clothes, the gas to get to wherever the dates were, the activities, the drinks, the dinners, and the trips. Typically on first and second dates, I went Dutch. And since I hadn’t made it to many third dates, my bank balance had taken a hit. Which was not great considering the farmhouse I lived in was built over a hundred years ago, and even after being here for two years and investing fifty grand into updates and repairs; it still needed close to twenty grand in renovations. Which I calculated I’d spent close to that amount on my social life this year. The long weekend away I spent in the Bahamas with a guy I dated for two months cost me five grand when he “lost” his wallet, and I had to put the hotel on my credit card and pay for our meals.

So, that explained why I was giving up the first two D’s of, drinking, dating, and dick. As far as the third D, physical touch had always been my love language. Some people got their love tanks filled by spending quality time with people. Others felt seen and valued when they received gifts. There were those who found themselves fulfilled when people did things for them in acts of service. Some were recharged by being told how beautiful, smart, witty, brave, kind, or generous they were in words of affirmation. I’d always found that my Energizer Bunny battery ran on touch, not just any touch, the touch of someone who stimulated all of the attraction simulators in my brain. So, there had been times I’d hooked up with people, not because I’d been interested in having any sort of relationship with them per se, but more because I’d just needed to feel close to another person. I needed intimacy to get my fix. My love language fix. It was an addiction, which was very unhealthy.

I only minored in psych, but it tracked that touch would be my love language since I came from a single-parent home with a mom who was not only emotionally distant, she also never hugged me. Not once. The other parental figure in my life was my grandfather, who left me the house I was living in when he passed two years ago. He helped raise me and was a hardworking, honest man, but he came from the old-school way of thinking. He believed men didn’t talk about their feelings and certainly didn’t show their feelings by being overly affectionate or affectionate at all.

Not that I was complaining. He wasn’t a bad man; he was just emotionally unavailable. He’d raised my mother as a single father, and I’m sure there was generational trauma from her not having a mother, which was passed down to me. She didn’t know how to be nurturing or caring. She never once told me she loved me or made me a lunch to take to school. Even in kindergarten, I washed my own clothes, packed my own lunches, and walked to school.

My phone dinged, and I looked down to see that I had matched with someone on Cupid Connect. It was one of a half dozen dating sites I was signed up to. Being the hopeless romantic I was had its pros and cons. The pros were that I continued to have blind faith that I would find someone. The con was the six weeks I’d wasted in one year in my fruitless pursuit.

I picked up my device and deleted all six of the dating apps from it. I didn’t even care that I still had months that I’d paid for and was ‘wasting’ that money. I needed to go cold turkey. For the next three hundred and sixty-four days, I was going to be living a life of sexual sobriety, relationship-seeking sobriety, and substance sobriety.

New Year. New Me. I set my phone down, and there was a loud knock on the door followed by barking.

“Peanut, shh.” My four-year-old fawn pug rushed to the front door, the one male in my life who had never disappointed me. His nails clicked on the original hardwood flooring as he tapped loudly at whoever dared to stand on the porch.

Jelly, my five-year-old calico cat who was sunbathing on the back of the couch that sat along the front bay window, stretched her legs out in front of her and rolled over as she let out a low growl expressing her irritation at the noise. Her sister Butter, who was perched on the top of the cat tree in the front room, ignored her brother’s battle- bark cry entirely. The only sign she’d even heard him was the flattening of her ears against her head and an irritated flick of her tail.

As I passed by the mirror hanging in the entryway, I did a double take. My long blonde hair was a tangled mess piled on top of my head, which was ironic since the first graders I taught often compared me to Rapunzel from the movie Tangled . The smoky eye I’d applied to go out and ring in the New Year had now migrated south, and it looked like I’d gone a few rounds in the ring and come out with two shiners. My naturally ivory complexion had turned paper-thin and white. Forget a Disney princess; I looked more like Casper the Friendly Ghost.

I opened the door and immediately regretted not donning sunglasses before doing so. I lifted my hand to block the glare as I hissed at the sting. Maybe I wasn’t a ghost; perhaps I was a vampire because the sun was definitely burning my eyes.

“Good morning,” Ashley chirped brightly, clearly not as hungover as I was. Although, come to think of it, I didn’t remember her doing any shots, unlike the rest of our foursome. And she seemed to be nursing only one drink all night.

“Is it?” I squinted at the bright sunlight, still blocked by the back of my hand.

“I come bearing gifts.” Ashley lifted a paper bag from the Dreamy Bean Coffee she was the most artistic and stylish. She’d just finished launching a new clothing line, and she’d even nicknamed her husband Big when she met him.

Daphne, the latest member to join our band of sisterhood, just moved to town over the summer. She was a former TV producer and very type-A, independent, and hardworking; she was our Miranda.

Zoe, a single mom who was very nurturing, motherly, wholesome, and believed in one true love and happily ever after, who got her fairy tale ending not once, but twice, was Charlotte in our friendship squared.

The 60,480 minutes might have given me away, but in case they didn’t, I was clearly the Samantha of the foursome, hence Ashley’s skepticism over me going cold turkey on dating and dick.

“You’re not going to date anyone for a whole year ?”

I thought it was funny that that was the stipulation she was most caught up on.

“Yes.”

“But you love dating. It’s like your favorite pastime. If flirting were an Olympic sport, you would have a gazillion gold medals.”

She wasn’t wrong. Not to toot my own horn but toot toot . I was a pretty good flirter. If there was a masterclass, I could teach it. TED Talk? I was your gal. Actually, there probably was. Maybe I should start a YouTube channel or write a book.

“Nadia,” Ashley got my attention.

“Sorry, I got distracted.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I want to focus on me this year. I deleted all the dating apps off my phone.”

I opened my phone and slid through the home screens to show her that all the apps had been deleted.

“Wow. That’s…great. I love that journey for you,” she quoted a line from one of our favorite shows, S chitt’s Creek .

I smiled as I prompted, “So, back to last night.”

“Right, okay, you weren’t making much sense.” She shook her head. “You were talking about some big mistake you made and wishing you told the truth and how now it was too late because too much time had gone by.”

Shit . This was another reason drinking was a bad idea. If I were going to open my closet and introduce everyone to the skeleton that had been living there for the past ten years, I’d rather do it when I was stone-cold sober.

“You started getting upset,” she continued. “You were crying so Declan and I took you home.”

“I was crying?”

Ashley nodded.

Now that she mentioned it, my memory was jogged. I had flashes of Ashley behind the wheel and her and Declan supporting me as they helped me up the steps.

Color me mortified.

I prided myself on not being the sloppy friend. Even in college I was never the one who people had to pour into a cab to get home or hold their hair while they barfed in shrubbery. Last night, seeing all my friends in happy, loved-up couples dropped me smack dab in the loneliness desert, and I was so thirsty I saw my first love mirage. It was all too much for me.

I reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry that I made you cut your night short.”

“Don’t be. I was ready to go,” she assured me. “I wasn’t feeling that well anyway.”

“I feel like death warmed over. I have been teetering on the edge of puking all morning.”

“So have I.” A tiny grin lifted at the corners of her mouth as she placed her hand on her stomach as she glanced down.

I’m not sure if it was her smile or the way her gaze dropped, but something had my bestie spidey senses tingling, telling me that we were not nauseous for the same reason. I thought back to the night before, and all the puzzle pieces fell into place, and the picture became clear. Ashley hadn’t taken any shots. She’d gone to the bar to get her own drinks and nursed them all night. And she drove, not Declan.

“Ash, are you…?”

Her head sprang up, and her expression made me feel like I just got caught with my hand in the cookie jar.

That reaction was all the confirmation I needed.

I gasped as my hand flew over my mouth. “You’re pregnant.”

“What? How did you…I just found out yesterday. I haven’t told anyone but Declan and Skylar.”

Declan was Ashley’s husband, and Skylar was her sister. I felt honored to be the third person she told. Even if I did sort of force her hand.

“That’s amazing!” I stood up and hugged her tightly. “Congratulations!”

I might not have any sisters by blood, but I had an amazing group of friends in Ashley, Zoe, and Daphne. They were my soul sisters. I hugged her tightly as tears pricked my eyes. Her life hadn’t been easy; her parents died when she was nine, and her sister raised her. Her boyfriend of twelve years cheated on her with her best friend, whom he got pregnant. It was nice to see a good person get the karma they actually deserved. But now she had Declan, and she was going to be a mom.

“So are you going to hold off on Artistic Horizons?” I sniffed back my emotion as we both lowered back down in our chairs.

Ashley, who double majored in art and psychology, was starting a non-profit after-school program for kids in kindergarten through twelfth grade to use art for therapy and also self-expression. She’d asked me to come on as the program manager, and I’d gladly agreed because the renovations on this house were not going to pay for themselves, and teaching was not the most lucrative of occupations.

“No.” She shook her head. “Everything is still on track. I’m not going to postpone opening. Declan isn’t too happy about it, but I’ve waited so long to do this. It’s been my dream since I was a little girl.”

I loved seeing how protective Declan was over Ashley. I knew if he had his way, she’d be covered in bubble wrap in her bed the entire pregnancy. He just wanted to protect her and keep her safe. It was actually quite sweet.

Another knock sounded at the door, and Peanut began barking again as he scrambled to the front door.

“Are you expecting someone?” Ashley glanced over her shoulder as she began to stand.

“No.” I was up out of the chair before her.

Peanut beat me to the door. “Sit. Stay,” I instructed him as I opened it.

When I did, I found Will, my date from the night before, standing on my porch. His sandy blond hair that had been tousled was now disheveled. Dark circles exaggerated the hollow beneath his eyes. The crisp button-down white shirt he’d worn the night before was completely unbuttoned with his undershirt half tucked into his wrinkled slacks. He looked as if he’d had a rougher night than I had, and that was saying something.

“Hey.” His greeting landed somewhere between sheepish and flirtatious.

“Hi,” I said flatly.

“I just wanted to make sure that you got home okay.”

I wasn’t sure how the night ended between us, but I had a feeling it hadn’t gone well. I remember we’d kissed at midnight, but then I had a fuzzy memory of a disagreement. Something about him wanting us to hookup in the bathroom, if I recall.

“Yep. I did.”

“I know that things sort of got heated last night, but?—”

“It’s fine, Will. Don’t worry about it. Really.”

I started to shut the door, but he stopped it with his hand.

“Let me take you out to lunch, or brunch.”

“I’m not interested, but thanks.”

“Come on, please. Don’t be like that.”

“I’m not being like anything. I don’t want to date you. Thanks for stopping by and checking on me.” I shut the door in his face. The last thing I wanted to do was waste more time on a man.

Nope. This was a new leaf. My dry D January was going to be my dry D year.

No drinking.

No dating.

No dick.