26. Callum
26
CALLUM
It had been a week since I’d left Nadia sleeping peacefully in her bed in the early hours of the morning, and I hadn’t seen or spoken to her since. I wanted to, but I hadn’t had a moment to spare. Hank was behind on two jobs, and with the flu going around, everyone was dropping like flies, so both crews were working crazy overtime. I was getting home late, showering, grabbing a few hours of sleep, getting up, and doing it again. But tonight, I got off work early and invited myself over for dinner after she said she was free and we could talk.
“Watch out,” I told Peanut, who was under my feet as I carried out steamed carrots and macaroni and cheese to the table I’d set for dinner on the deck.
After placing them on the table, I grabbed the tongs off the side of the barbeque and plated the chicken that I had been grilling for the past fifteen minutes. I set the platter in the center of the outdoor dining table and checked the time; Nadia should be arriving any minute. Nerves were bubbling up inside of me like carbon dioxide in a can of soda left in a hot car right before it explodes. I felt like the week we’d spent apart was the steam in a pressure cooker with no release valve. I was hoping tonight’s dinner would defuse the situation.
Looking around, I double-checked to make sure everything was perfect. I made one of her favorite meals, had a good bottle of wine, string lights hung, which she’d talked about several times, and the table was set.
I leaned across the table and was lighting the candles as the screen door slid open. I turned around and saw Peanut rush across the deck to greet Nadia. I watched her bend down and give him a kiss on his head.
She was wearing baby blue sweatpants and a matching zip-up hoodie. I wondered if she’d already gone upstairs and changed, but then I remembered it was casual Friday at school, and most of the faculty wore loungewear. Her hair fell over her shoulders in soft waves, framing her sweetheart face. After greeting Peanut, she looked up at me, and I saw that the blue hoodie matched her eyes perfectly. Her lips were a deep raspberry shade, and she licked them nervously as she stood back up. It was taking an extreme level of self-control not to walk over and kiss her.
Every time I saw her, she got more and more beautiful. I always used to think that I would build up an immunity to her beauty, but the opposite happened. The more time I spent around her, the sexier, cuter, prettier, and hotter she became.
“Wow.” Her eyes widened as she took in the string lights she had in her garage that I hung up over the deck. She walked to the center of the deck and beamed at the farmhouse table, which I set for dinner, complete with an entree, veggie, rolls, wine, and three pedestal candles in the center for ambiance. “What is all this?”
“Dinner. Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Starving, but you didn’t have to do this.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Yes, it is. This looks amazing.”
“You look amazing.”
Her head dipped as she brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear. I loved the moments when she got shy. They were so few and far between. Most of the time, Nadia was in your face, take no prisoners, bold, and shameless, and I loved that side of her. But that was the side she presented to the whole world, and I believed that was the side she’d had to create as armor for self-protection and preservation growing up in the house with her mom, who treated her more like an equal than a child and who brought a parade of men through their lives and homes.
The softer, sweeter, more vulnerable side of Nadia was not something she showed to many people. She trusted me enough to let me see her with her guard down, and I always felt honored to be one of the few.
I pulled out a chair as she took her seat. Once she sat down, I started to pour a glass of wine for her, but then I remembered her resolutions. “Wait, I forgot, you’re not drinking. Do you want me to get?—”
“Wine doesn’t count.”
“It doesn’t?” I questioned.
“It’s basically grape juice,” she reasoned.
“Right.” I continued pouring, amused at her logic.
As we filled our plates, she asked, “When did you learn to cook?”
“On the job training.”
Her head tilted as her eyes narrowed in a quizzical gaze.
“Single dad,” I explained.
“Oh, right.”
That was as good a segue as any. “I heard you met Felicity.”
“Yes, I did.” She cut a piece of chicken, lifted the fork to her mouth, and when she took a bite, the sounds she made were those of a foodgasm. “Oh, my gosh. This is sooo good.” Nadia’s head dropped back, and her eyes rolled up into her head.
“How was she?”
“Mmm.” Nadia made a non-committal sound as she chewed. Once she swallowed, she diplomatically replied, “She was…fine.”
I knew what that fine meant. It meant Felicity was being herself, which was anything but fine. But I didn’t want to spend the night talking about Felicity.
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you—” Nadia began to say.
“So I wanted to talk to you,” I spoke at the same time.
“Go ahead,” I encouraged her.
“No. You first. You were the one who said you wanted to talk.”
I wanted to argue so I could hear what she wanted to say, but when it came to being stubborn, I would swear that there was some mule in Nadia’s DNA, so I didn’t see the point.
“Okay,” I agreed.
Nadia took a deep breath, and her lips pursed as her shoulders straightened. It was obvious she was bracing herself for something, but I wasn’t quite sure what.
“Earlier this week, I got a call from my manager, and there’s a fight coming up this summer. If I take it, I could be in a much better place financially for me, Matty, and Chloe long-term, but I don’t know if that’s the best thing for Chloe in the short term. Part of me feels like it’s the right thing to do, and she’ll be okay in the long run. But another part of me feels like taking her away from her friends, from the only place she’s ever known, would be equally if not more damaging. But the money…the money is not something I can just walk away from. And I don’t even know if Chloe wants to live with me, I mean permanently.” I took a deep breath. “What do you think?”
She continued staring at me; her expression hadn’t changed since I started speaking.
“What?” I asked, not able to read her body language.
“Sorry.” She shook her head slightly and blinked. “I just…that wasn’t what I thought you were going to say. It wasn’t what I thought you wanted to talk about.”
“Oh.” My brow furrowed. “What did you think I was going to say?”
“I thought…nothing,” she sighed dismissively. “So, you’re not sure if?—”
“No, wait, what did you think I was going to say?”
She bit the inside of her cheek, the way she always did whenever she was contemplating something, and then blew out a breath. “I thought you were going to talk about us, about the other night, because, you know, Felicity is in town.”
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” I felt like an asshole not addressing the night we’d spent together. “Yes, of course, we should talk about that. I guess I just…I don’t know; ever since I came home, you’re the person I want to call and talk to about everything. I didn’t realize how much I missed you. Not just the physical part, but being able to tell you things and talk them out with you. You were my best friend. I missed that. I missed you. But, you’re right, we need to talk about what happened.”
“No, no, nooooo.” She drew out the syllable as she shook her head. “We do not need to talk about what happened. Um, so this fight you were offered, you said it would set you up financially?”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t like the fact that she’d moved on so quickly from wanting to talk about us. Historically, Nadia always wanted to talk about everything . She tackled issues like she was Warren Sapp facing Marshall Faulk, she took them head-on and body slammed them. So why was she deflecting now?
“When was the last time you had a fight?” she asked as she scooped a bite of the macaroni and cheese onto her fork.
“Didn’t follow my career, huh?” I grinned, hoping to disguise the fact that it stung a little, knowing that she hadn’t.
For some reason, I thought she might have, out of curiosity, if nothing else. I’d kept up with her as much as I could through social media. I’d seen every post, watched every reel, and read every story.
Her eyes met mine, and the look in them stole all the air out of my lungs. “I couldn’t.”
There was so much emotion—so much feeling—behind those two words. She took another bite, and then another.
We sat eating in silence before I finally got the courage to ask, “Why not?”
After chewing and swallowing, she put down her fork and lifted her eyes to meet mine. “Do you want the truth?”
“Yes, because, unlike Tom Cruise, I can handle the truth,” I teased.
Her lips curled in amusement, but then her expression turned somber once again. She took in a shaky breath. “It was too hard to see you. I just…missed you too much. It hurt too much. To go on with my life, I had to try and forget you existed.” She shook her head, and tears pooled in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like?—”
“No, don’t apologize. You didn’t say anything wrong. I’m glad we’re talking about this.”
“So am I.”
She sniffed and took another bite of her mac and cheese. For the rest of the dinner, we talked about her work at the school. I wanted to ask her about the guys she’d dated. I wanted to ask her about the night she’d spent with Jerry Clemons. I wanted to ask her if she missed me, but I didn’t. I was scared to know the answers to those things. The sun was beginning to set on the horizon as we drank our wine and each gave Peanut bites of chicken.
“Five years ago,” I told her, after finishing my final bite.
“What?” Her gaze lifted to mine.
“My last fight was five years ago. After Matty was born, I needed to have more income stability, so I started working in construction. I did both for a while, but then, Felicity kept taking off on more and more trips and being gone for longer and longer periods of time. She would flake when I thought she would be there, and I realized I couldn’t do both, so I retired. Martinez was the last person I fought, and it was a split draw. I always said that the only way I’d come out of retirement was if he did, and he has.”
“Are you ready to fight him? I mean. ready, as in being in shape. I mean, I know you’re in shape , but are you in fighting shape?”
“No,” I admitted. “I’m not. At my age, I’d have to start training right away. Which means I’d have to go back to Arizona.”
I watched intently, waiting to see what reaction, if any, she had. For a second, I thought I saw a flash of disappointment. It was brief, and she quickly disguised it, but it was there. I’d bet my life on it.
“And I wouldn’t just be going back to live a normal life,” I explained. “I’d be training, which isn’t a nine-to-five or even five-to-five schedule. It’s grueling physically, mentally, and emotionally. I don’t even know how it would be possible as a single parent.”
She was quiet for a beat before asking, “What about Felicity?”
“What about her?”
“She’s here, so I thought you guys were?—”
“We’re not,” I quickly set the record straight. “Felicity and I are over.”
“Does she know that?”
“She knows it. The question is whether she wants to admit or accept it.”
Nadia seemed to take that into consideration before asking, “Does Chloe know?”
“Does Chloe know what?”
“That you and Felicity aren’t together, that Felicity’s not going to be her sister-in-law?”
“I don’t know.” I couldn’t remember if we’d talked about it. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“You should tell her.”
“Why?”
“Just trust me. You should tell her.”
“Did something happen? If Felicity did something to my sister, I need to know,” I demanded, feeling myself getting worked up. If there was one thing I did not tolerate, it was people messing with my family, the people I loved. If Felicity did something to upset Chloe, Matty’s mom or not, she was going to find another place to stay, and we were going to get custody in writing so she would have her court-appointed times and could not just show up out of the blue and disrupt everyone’s lives.
“It’s not like that. Trust me.” Nadia reached over and touched my forearm as a sweet smile lifted on her perfect lips. “Just tell her, okay.”
I took a deep breath and exhaled. Nadia had a way of calming me down quicker than anyone else did. I’d had to learn to self-regulate, which I’d done in therapy, but one touch from her, one look in her eyes, was equal to twenty minutes of meditation. She healed me.
“Why are you smiling like that?” I asked her.
“I like seeing you so protective of Chloe. She’s really lucky she has you as her big brother.”
As I stared into Nadia’s gorgeous blue eyes, staring back at me with adoration that was completely undeserved, I could see the setting sun reflecting in them. I stood up and held out my hand.
She looked down at my hand and then back up at my eyes. “What are you doing?”
“We’re on a deck in your backyard. The sun is setting. It’s just like we talked about. Remember?”
Her eyes sparkled with anticipation as her lips pulled in a private grin. “There’s no music.”
I pulled out my phone and synced it with her Bluetooth speaker system. I’d used it a lot on the days I’d worked out here. When the first few notes of “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” began to play, the smile on her face spread even wider as she placed her hand in my palm. She rose from the chair, and I snaked my arm around her waist and pulled her against me. Her head rested on my shoulder as my hand ran up and down her lower back. The curves of her body fit against mine like the missing puzzle pieces to my life.
We swayed together as the sun set and fireflies began to spark with life around us. This was all I’d ever wanted in life. The simple moments like this. Dancing at sunset with the woman I love in my arms.
For the past ten years, I’d been chasing something to fill the void Nadia left. First, it was success. When I got success, I tried money. When I got money, I tried a family. Now I knew the only thing that could fill that void Nadia left was…Nadia. It was her; it was always her.