18. Callum
18
CALLUM
“I still can’t believe you grew up here.” Miles Ford leaned over, lined up his shot, and hit the cue ball, knocking it clean across the table, where it clipped the red seven, which caused it to roll and sink in the corner pocket. “That’s so crazy!”
He wasn’t the only one who was surprised by things. When I heard that Miles and Zoe were engaged, I was shocked. Not because he was an A-list movie star and she was a single mom, widow, a nurse from a small town, and eight years older than him. No, I was shocked because I never thought Zoe would marry again after Austin died. The two of them shared a kind of love that was so special, so rare, I thought it might have ruined her for other relationships.
Unlike me and Nadia, who were always fighting and then making up, those two were glued at the hip from the day they got together. Even when she got pregnant at sixteen, they handled it so maturely. What they had was so real. They were soulmates. It was a once-in-a-lifetime, true love. But I was happy to see that, in her case, lightning had struck twice.
From what everyone around town said, she and Miles seemed to have the real thing. He adored her, and she equally adored him. I was happy for both of them.
I wondered if I would ever have that with anyone. Anyone other than Nadia. I also wondered why we’d never been able to get it right when we were together. Why we’d broken up so much. I told myself it was just because we were young, but Zoe and Austin were the same age, and they hadn’t had our issues.
“How do you two know each other?” Dawson chalked his cue.
“I trained with him for six months before I shot Caged.”
“No shit?! I loved that movie,” Dawson enthused.
“It really is a small world.” Harlan tipped his beer back.
“Small world,” Skittles, the parrot, squawked behind me.
“So, what’s the plan?” Harlan pointed his question at me as he chalked his cue. “Are you going to move back to Arizona after Chloe finishes the school year?”
“I don’t know.” I honestly had no clue what the best thing was for her.
I felt a slap on my shoulder before I heard, “Boy, I heard you were back in town. I was wonderin’ when I’d see you!”
When I turned around, a warm feeling of nostalgia washed over me. “Hey, Ray.”
Ray’s once thick, tightly curled black hair was now salt-and-pepper. He stood about a foot shorter than me at five foot three and was a hundred pounds soaking wet. He’d never let his slight stature get in the way of his luck with the ladies, though. He had moves like Fred Astaire and was a smooth talker with more stories to tell than LeVar Burton from Reading Rainbow . He was born and bred in Firefly and lived above the bar for over fifty years. He worked odd jobs as a handyman/jack-of-all-trades and had seen this place through three owners, including James Comfort Sr., who bought the business over thirty years ago. When James Sr. passed away a couple years back, his sons Hank, Billy, and Jimmy Comfort inherited both the bar and Ray with it.
Ray, James Sr., Sheriff Dawson, my father, and his lawyer, Jennings Abernathy, used to hold weekly poker games in the back that I would attend because my mom worked odd hours as a nurse and midwife. Ray rescued animals that were deemed ‘bar mascots,’ and I would always keep myself occupied by hanging out with them.
The current ‘bar mascots’ were Skittles, the foul-mouthed parrot, and an Insta-famous pig named Kevin Bacon. But when I was growing up, he had a bearded dragon named Minnie Mouse, Axel Rose the goat, and Cleopatra the python.
He sighed loudly. “Sure do miss your old man.”
That made one of us . I wish I had the capacity to compartmentalize the man I loved and idolized as a young child vs. the man I was never good enough for as a preteen and teenager vs. the man I discovered was living a double life who was a lying, cheating, hypocrite who had another family as a young adult. But I couldn’t separate my feelings for each one of those men. They were all tangled into one big ball of confusion, disappointment, and betrayal.
“Heard what yer doin’ for Chloe. Your old man woulda been real proud.”
“I’m not doing it for him.”
I hoped that people didn’t think I was doing this out of some misplaced loyalty to a man who’d made me feel like I wasn’t good enough from the age of eight on and then ended up being a piece-of-shit cheater. I was doing this because I didn’t want Chloe to go into care. That was it. That was the only reason.
“Still.” Ray patted my shoulder one more time. “Good to see ya.”
“You, too.”
I watched as Ray headed into the back of the bar. Seeing him again brought up memories of my dad. How could it not? This entire town did. Unlike with Nadia, they weren’t all good memories. On the bridges that go over the canals, I saw his red face yelling at me to run faster when I was training with the team, calling me lazy and weak. In the Piggly Wiggly, I saw him telling the cashier and butcher that my grades were slipping and that he wished I had two brain cells to rub together. On the pier, or in town square, or on the beach, or on the street, I saw him tell anyone who would listen that he was twice the size I was at his age, and I needed to spend more time in the gym if I was ever going to make anything of myself or become a ‘real’ man.
Everywhere I looked, I saw him.
“So, what’s the deal with you and Nadia?” Harlan chalked up his cue before leaning over the table and aiming for his shot.
“Nothing.” I modulated my tone and maintained a completely blank expression, void of all emotion.
Any sort of slight reaction would be read into and dissected. It didn’t matter that I was hanging out with the guys; they could be just as, if not more, gossipy than the ladies.
“You guys talk about old times?” Dawson dug a little deeper. “Take any strolls down memory lane?”
“Were you and Nadia together?” Miles asked.
I nodded.
“Those two were like watching a soap opera in real life,” Harlan filled him in. “They should have had their own reality TV show. They were constantly breaking up and getting back together and then breaking up again.”
Nadia had issues with jealousy when we were younger. If she thought I even looked at another female, I would either get the silent treatment or worse, she would dump me. It never lasted long, though. And honestly, I sort of thought it was cute when she got all worked up. I knew she didn’t mean anything she said. Her mom was not the best to her; she wasn’t very motherly, and neither was her grandfather. Whenever she’d get upset and freak out, I could see that it was just because she was afraid I was going to leave and to protect herself, she had to beat me to the punch. That’s why I never left. No matter what, I always stayed. Until she crossed a line that made it impossible for me to.
That’s why it hurt so much when I saw Jerry Clemons getting dressed, leaving her house at six o’clock in the morning. I’d gone over there to get back together, like we always did. I never thought in a million years that she would hook up with someone else. Especially not Jerry Fucking Clemons.
“You know she hasn’t been with anyone since you left,” Harlan said.
“What?” I spun around toward him.
“I mean, she’s dated,” Harlan clarified. “But she hasn’t been in a relationship. Not since you.”
“She hasn’t?” I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
Nadia was someone who needed to be in a relationship. Or at least, she had been when I knew her. She needed affection and support. Thinking of her being alone all these years actually upset me. Not that I wanted to think of her being with another man; that thought made me physically ill. But I also didn’t want to think of her being alone.
“So what happened between you two?” Miles stood waiting for me to take my shot.
“Just…life.” I bent down and lined up my cue to the ball.
The conversation moved on to talk about the bachelor and bachelorette parties, and the wedding, both of which Miles invited me to. Before long I was headed back to my truck to finish my work at Nadia’s.
I hit my fob when I heard my name. I turned around and saw a brunette woman with emerald green eyes. It took me a second before I recognized her. It was the person who had caused at least fifty percent of my breakups. Kendra Abernathy. She never made it a secret that she had a crush on me. She took every opportunity she could find to flirt with me, as well as took it upon herself to create her own opportunities if there were none to find—which did not sit well with Nadia.
Kendra Abernathy was the female equivalent of Jerry Clemons. I’d briefly considered sleeping with Kendra after I’d seen Jerry coming out of Nadia’s house. But I couldn’t. For one thing, I would never use someone just to get back at someone else. And also, I never wanted to hurt Nadia; no matter how much she hurt me, I still loved her.
“Hi,” I greeted her as platonically as I possibly could.
Kendra’s full lips puckered as she lifted up on her toes, kissed me on each cheek, then wrapped her hands around my neck and plastered herself against me in a hug so tight it made me feel claustrophobic. “I heard you were back in town. I was hoping to run into you.”
I patted her back awkwardly using only one hand, then took a step back from her.
When she lowered back down, her hand slid from my neck to my shoulder and down onto my chest, where it rested in the center.
“How’s Felicity?” Her voice dripped with saccharine-sweet insincerity.
“Good.”
Before Kendra’s parents, who owned half of Firefly Island, bought her the beauty salon, Kendra was a beauty influencer who came out with a diet pill that ended up causing liver and kidney failure, which ended her social media career. In her influencer years, she and Felicity ran in the same circles despite Felicity never setting foot in Firefly Island.
“Are you two still together? Every time I see her post, she’s in a different country.”
“She travels a lot.”
She stepped closer to me, her hand still resting on my chest. “I heard about what you’re doing for Chloe. I think that’s so amazing.”
“Thanks.”
Even though Nadia and I weren’t together and I was in my thirties, I still felt like I was sixteen and doing something wrong speaking to Kendra. She’d been such a trigger in our relationship that I was practically looking over my shoulder to see if anyone could see us.
“How long are you going to be in town?”
“I’m not sure.” I stepped back, and Kendra’s hand dropped.
“Well, we should get together. Catch up.”
“Maybe.” I continued walking to my truck. “I gotta get back to work.”
I hopped in and backed out, leaving Kendra standing in the parking lot waving. As I drove to Nadia’s, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Harlan had said. Why hadn’t she had another relationship? Did that mean something? If it did, what?
All these years, I’d just assumed she was with someone. Several someones. I knew Nadia. She loved being in relationships. I would have classified her as a serial monogamist. If I was wrong about that, I wondered what else I was wrong about.