13. Nadia
13
NADIA
Do. Not. Spy.
All day I’d had to actively fight the urge to ‘check in’ on Peanut, Butter, and Jelly. Typically, I only pulled up the pet cam app during my lunch hour just to make sure there weren’t any major cat astrophes since the felines liked to destroy toilet paper, pillows, mail, and basically anything they could get their paws and fangs into. They were a dueling duo of tiny Tasmanian devils.
I’d been pulling up the pet cam a minimum of a dozen times throughout my workday. If I had even a minor excuse to look at my phone, I tapped on the app. It was a compulsion. If it were just today, that would be one thing. But this had been going on all week. The frequency of my ‘check-ins’ wouldn’t be an issue if it were Peanut, Butter, and Jelly, who I was seeing on my screen, but it wasn’t.
Every day, I’d been sneaking peeks at Callum working in my home. I spied with my little eye Callum sanding my hardwood floors, removing my kitchen cabinet doors, laying new treads on the staircase, and painting. I hadn’t seen him working on my bathrooms because I didn’t have pet cams in those rooms. But I did have one on the window that faced out to the backyard and a doorbell cam, so I had seen him working on the front porch and the deck. Even though the temperatures were in the fifties, he’d taken off his shirt to work, and dear lord.
It felt so wrong that I kept watching him like a creep, but I couldn’t help myself. It was Callum. And he was in my house.
My finger hovered over the icon for the app once again, even though I told myself not to, my thumb pressed down on it. The screen filled with the image of him talking to Peanut, who was lying down beside Callum while he painted the kitchen cabinet doors. All week he’d been having conversations with Peanut, Butter, and Jelly, which was adorable. Even the cats, who didn’t like anyone, followed him around like the feline Pied Piper. It shouldn’t surprise me that Callum attracted pussy.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Callum told Peanut, who was staring up at him with huge, adoring puppy dog eyes. “I just want to do what’s best for her, but I really think she doesn’t want anything to do with me. I don’t want to make her life any worse. I don’t know why her mom thought I should be the one to take care of her.”
Guilt washed over me. This was a private conversation. These were his private thoughts that I shouldn’t be listening to. This was clearly about Chloe. I felt so bad that he was struggling. I wished that I could be a sounding board for him. I might not have the answers, but this was the sort of thing we used to talk about.
My thumb hovered over the home button to close the screen when I heard my name. Well, not my name, but I heard myself being referred to.
“Your mom is the only one I want to talk to about it. She was my best friend. I miss her so much. You don’t know how lucky you are to have her.”
Tears sprung up in my lower lids as I heard the man, who I thought must hold some kind of resentment toward me, that he must strongly dislike me, say that he missed me and that I was his best friend.
The image on the screen disappeared and was replaced by an alarm notification indicating my shift was starting and I needed to go inside.
Shit . This was just getting good. I quickly silenced the alarm and pulled the app back up. When I did, I saw that Callum was no longer working on the cabinets. The light from the hall bath indicated he had gone to work in the half-bath downstairs bathroom. Peanut was dutifully sitting outside of it, and Butter was washing herself on the bookshelf beside the door.
I closed the screen and put my phone in my purse. On my way up the steps to Artistic Horizons, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Callum said. Not about me, well not just about me. I was definitely replaying him saying I was his best friend and that he missed me. But what he said about Chloe really broke my heart.
Chloe started classes at Artistic Horizons on Monday, and although I hadn’t spoken to her, she seemed like a sweet girl. I couldn’t imagine going through what she had. This had to be such a tough time for her. I’m sure it was making Callum crazy that he couldn’t fix things for her. That was sort of his M.O. He was a fixer. If someone he loved—someone he felt responsible to protect—was hurting or had a problem, he had to solve it and do whatever he could so that they could be happy again.
I wished there was something I could do to help the two of them, but unfortunately I only minored in psych.
When I pushed the glass door open and walked into the industrial and modern reception area of Artistic Horizons, Ashley was waiting for me, and she did not look happy.
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“What happened with Will?” she demanded before I even set my bag down behind the black steel reception desk with a reclaimed wood worktop. “I heard Callum choked him out on your front porch.”
She was the twelfth person to ask me about the non-incident that had occurred last weekend. It actually surprised me that it had taken this long to get to Ashley. Five days in Firefly Island was quite a long time. Although it made sense because she’d only been coming in to teach her classes and then going straight back to bed because she hadn’t been well due to the pregnancy. She hadn’t been out in town at all.
The story spreading like wildfire genuinely confused me. There were only three people who knew what happened on that porch. Myself, Callum, and Will. I knew that I hadn’t said anything, and I would bet a year’s salary that Callum hadn’t told anyone. So what I didn’t understand was why Will would go around spreading the fake news story. I didn’t understand what would possess him to say anything at all about what happened. And I really didn’t understand him embellishing the story by saying Callum choked him out. It wasn’t as if he came off looking good. He didn’t. If anything, he came off looking really bad.
Even if he was a fan of Callum, which he clearly was, getting his ass beat by him wouldn’t be something to brag about, would it? As soon as I saw the gleam of recognition in Will’s eyes, the next emotion was adoration. I forgot what a big deal Callum was in the MMA world. I’d done my best to avoid any exposure to him, so I’d remained insulated from his popularity.
“Nothing happened,” I explained as I sat down in my chair behind my desk. “Callum was there giving me an estimate. He’s working for Hank. Will showed up. I told him to leave. He didn’t. Callum asked him again, and he did.”
Ashley’s eyes narrowed, and she leaned across the desk. “I feel like you’re leaving a lot out. And by a lot, I mean all the good stuff.”
“I’m not. Really. Nothing happened.”
She stared into my eyes as if she was performing a visual lie detector test. Finally, her shoulders dropped with a sigh. “That’s disappointing.”
“You would rather there be a knockdown drag-out fight on my front porch?”
“Considering I’m knocked up and wifed up, my days of men fighting over me are over. So yes, I wouldn’t mind living vicariously through a knockdown drag-out fight on my bestie’s front porch with her childhood sweetheart and some borderline stalker who won’t take a hint.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” I grinned. “And if you think I’m going to feel sorry for you being knocked up and wifed up by the man GQ named the sexiest billionaire under forty, you are sadly mistaken.”
“Fair enough,” she conceded happily. “Soooooo, how’s it going between you two?”
“It’s not. I mean, we only really saw each other the day he came over to give me the estimate. Other than that, he’s been working while I’m at work and gone by the time I get home.”
“Oh.” I could hear the disappointment in her single-syllable word.
Her alarm went off on her watch, and she looked down. “Crap, I gotta get back in there.”
Ashley hired two new teachers this past week, and they were both running classes today, but she was sitting in to observe.
For the next hour and a half, I did my best to focus on the tasks at hand. I was putting a budget together for the next quarter and also getting a list of supplies we needed and possible donors to reach out to.
Before I knew it, I heard my name.
“Nadia?”
I glanced up and saw Chloe standing in front of me. I checked the time and saw that there was still thirty minutes left until her class was out. I’d seen her around town, and obviously coming in here the past week, but we’d never actually spoken.
“Hi.”
“I’m Chloe Marsh.”
“Hi, yeah, I know.” I smiled. “Is everything okay in class?”
“Good. It’s good. Ashley says I have an eye for realism, so yeah.”
“That’s great! I’m excited to see your work!” I enthused.
She glanced down at the floor as her weight shifted from one foot to the other. I sensed that she wanted to say more.
“Did you need something?”
After taking a breath, she spurted out, “Were you and my brother together?”
Out of everything I’d expected her to ask, that wasn’t it. “Um, why?”
Chloe pulled out a photo strip from her back pocket. “I found this in the room I’m staying in.”
She handed me the photo strip, and I looked down at it. It was one of the sets we’d taken on the pier in the photo booth the night we met officially. I was twelve; he was thirteen. I hadn’t thought about that night for so long. It was the same night we’d shared our first kiss. A month after that night, to the day, was the night Callum asked me to be his girlfriend.
I felt tears begin to prick my eyes. We’d taken two sets of photos that night, but I’d lost mine years ago. Seeing these brought back so many memories.
“Yeah, we were.”
“How long were you two together?”
“We were off and on from middle school until my senior year of college.”
Her jaw dropped in disbelief. “Why did you guys break up?”
“Um…” I couldn’t tell her the truth, that my mom got sick and I had to stay in town and there was no way that he could stay after finding out that his dad had another family. Especially not after she’d just lost her mom, and she was the other family.
“It just doesn’t work out sometimes.”
“He’s back now. Do you think you two will get back together?”
“He’s engaged.”
Her nose scrunched. “Is he?”
“I think so.”
“Matty said his mom’s been gone for a year.”
“A year?”
She nodded. “I follow her and she was in Italy this summer with Talia and Renee. And then she was in London, Australia, and Scotland with Rumi and Sapphire. And now I think she’s in Bali with Jasmine and Wren.”
It made sense that Chloe followed Felicity on social media. She was that age, and Felicity was a huge beauty influencer.
“I think you guys made a really cute couple.”
“Thanks, but?—”
“I better get back.” Chloe turned and headed back to her class.
When I realized I still had the photo strip in my hand, I called out after her, but the door shut.
I stared down at the photos of Callum and me. One was the two of us making funny faces, one was him kissing my cheek, one was him whispering something in my ear while I was giggling, and yet another showed us kissing.
Chloe was right about one thing; we did make a cute couple. I wondered if she was right about the other thing. Were Felicity and Callum broken up? Even if they were, would that matter? So much time had passed since we were the kids in the photos, but even now, after all these years, whenever I looked in Callum’s eyes, this is where I went. I went back to being a girl on the pier in a photo booth with my first love.
It couldn’t be that simple. Nothing was ever that simple.