Chapter Ten Callum
Chapter Ten
Callum
Through the glass doors of her nice red brick apartment building, I can see Sophie glance over her shoulder, checking to see if I'm still here as she waits for the elevator.
Only when I see her get on the elevator do I pull away, satisfied that she's safe and sound.
The soft music on the radio suddenly feels like too much for my overcharged nerves. I need the silence. I need peace to replay everything that happened tonight.
When I first saw her at the door of Rivers & Rhodes, it felt like I could take a full breath of air for the first time today. I didn't want Sophie to feel obligated to come to the book club… but I had been hoping.
And, okay, I'd set out an extra chair for her just in case.
Mom had been grinning all day like she was in on some secret, but she wouldn't tell me what. She just gave me that mysterious little wave of her fingers and disappeared up to the roof for her nightly routine.
As everyone started showing up and taking their usual seats, I tried to keep the hope alive. When the time dragged on closer to eight, I tried to not let the disappointment show, even though it settled in my chest like an uncomfortable weight.
I went to the front door to lock up, and then Sophie appeared, looking like something straight out of my best dreams.
God, she was beautiful, breathless, dressed in a soft sweater and jeans, her dark hair falling around her face in waves. And she was smiling at me. A little shaky around the edges, but still there and true.
I felt frozen for a second, and my mouth moved before I could stop it, her name pouring out of me eagerly—maybe a little too eagerly. But I couldn't help it. The excitement that had flooded me was almost overwhelming.
She meshed with the group as I knew she would, welcoming the chaos. She jumped into the book conversation without hesitation, shared her own thoughts, and laughed at Tonya and Parker's over-the-top debate.
She was polite and kind, even when...
Paul O'Connor.
His name is sour, even in my thoughts.
It's a name I haven't had to think about in thirteen years.
At first, when Sophie said, "fiancé," I didn't want to acknowledge the sharp sting of disappointment that hit me. When she corrected herself, "ex-fiancé,” the wave of relief that followed I wanted to ignore even more.
Especially because it was obviously a source of great pain for her.
Then, cancer.
My heart dropped as cold fear struck me. Sophie met my eyes then, those beautiful, clear blue-green eyes, and she looked like she was searching for something.
Support. Strength.
I'd give that to her.
She laid it all out, and every word made me feel sicker. I could feel the devastation in her voice.
"Paul couldn't deal with the fact that I'm going to have to get my breasts cut off, and that I'll have to go through chemotherapy for the next three months and then radiation after that so he decided the best way to deal with it would be to sleep with his coworker and leave me—after I moved to this town where I didn't know anyone except his friends and his family, and now I have cancer, and no friends, and no fiancé so. .."
As soon as Sophie said the name Paul, I felt it start to connect in my brain. When she told Tonya his last name, it hit me like some twisted, cold, nostalgic wave.
Because I knew Paul O'Connor.
He was Starling Cove's golden boy, handsome, charming, good at football, and smart. He graduated a year before me.
And once upon a time, we were friends.
Or at least, I thought we were.
Friends of a sort, I guess. He never talked to me at school, but we lived in neighborhoods near each other, so we'd sometimes walk home from school together.
When it was just the two of us, we talked about books, movies, video games, and girls. He secretly loved the same old Fantasy TV series I did, and we'd have heated debates about it, usually ending in laughter as he turned off toward his neighborhood and I continued on to mine.
But even then, he was always glancing over his shoulder, like he didn't want to be seen with me.
I didn't have many friends. I was the chubby kid with the "weird witch mom," so my self-esteem made me cling to whatever version of friendship I could get.
We didn't really see each other after he went to high school, but when I became a freshman, I looked forward to maybe seeing Paul again.
He had changed from the last time I saw him. He was more confident and cared a lot about appearances. He made the varsity football team as a sophomore, which was apparently a big deal, and he was becoming friends with the older, popular crowd.
The walks home became few and far between, but when it was just us, it was fun. Paul was nice, and I liked to think that version of him was the real Paul.
But with high school comes hierarchy, and drama, and mistakes, and betrayal.
It started with a girl named Lauren, my freshman-year lab partner. I had a crush on her. She was blonde and pretty, smelled nice, and always laughed at my dumb jokes. I thought maybe she liked me, too.
I told Paul about my crush on the way home one day and asked his advice. He didn't laugh at me or tell me to keep dreaming. No, he encouraged me, he said I should tell her. So I did, through a dumb, heartfelt little love letter.
God. I still cringe thinking about it.
What I didn't know was that Paul had been joking with her, with his friends, about me behind my back.
Lauren played her part. Whenever we were in class together, she was sweet and flirty. She would compliment the books I read and ask questions about them. She would smile at me in the hallway in front of her friends and then giggle with them when I passed. It was like they were in on a fun secret.
For two weeks, it was kind of magical. I could feel myself walking through the hallways with my shoulders up and my head held high, when before I used to shrink myself as much as I could. With my height and weight, I always felt like I already took up too much space.
But Lauren didn't like me.
She left a note in my locker, telling me to meet her at the park near the elementary school. Said she had something to tell me, that she wanted to talk about the note I left her, and signed it with: xo, Lauren.
I had thought...
I don't know, I just thought maybe something good was going to happen.
She was already standing with the rest of the popular crowd when I got there, her friends giggling into their hands around her.
The guys were smirking and playfully nudging Paul, who was smack in the middle of them.
He looked almost guilty, his smile not as wide as the rest of them, and he wouldn't meet my eyes.
Lauren cleared her throat dramatically and started reading the letter I gave her. My words, my feelings, were read aloud like the setup to a punchline. Every sentence, every line I'd rewritten a dozen times, spilled out of her mouth like a joke.
Then the name-calling started, the normal vicious taunts—fat, weird, loser. I was humiliated, and that moment told me everything I needed to know about Paul O'Connor.
I turned and ran straight home and went right to my bedroom. My mom and dad had come to check on me, but I faked being sick for the rest of the week. My parents could tell something was wrong, but didn't pry and let me stay home. Going back on that Monday was torture.
I had to switch biology partners because Lauren and her friends would laugh whenever they saw me, reciting words from the letter.
If I saw Paul and his friends walking down the hallway, I ducked into the bathroom or turned the other way. I was late to class too many times that year because of the reroutes I had to take.
I never talked to Paul again, and he never tried to apologize.
Whenever I tried to tell my parents about what happened, the words wouldn't come, shame choking me.
That is when I started shedding my baby weight, working with my dad on his contracting jobs, along with shooting up six inches over the year. By my Sophomore year, I towered over all the guys in my grade, and the name-calling stopped.
And, like my mom always says, karma has no deadline.
By senior year, Lauren noticed me again: taller, broad-shouldered, and more confident after a few blessedly bully-free years.
I wasn't cruel to her. It's not in my nature to be cruel, but Lauren had tried to get my attention, and I just looked right through her.
She tried talking to me, and I pretended not to hear.
She left a note in my locker, and I gathered it with the rest of my trash and threw it out right in front of her.
She tried, again and again, all the way up until senior prom.
And I gave her the time she deserved from me—none.
I made her feel invisible, the same way I wanted to feel when she threw my feelings back in my face.
Eventually, she stopped, we graduated, and she went on to marry Brent Turner. She divorced him after two years when she caught him with her sister in their marital bed. Brent and her sister are now married with a kid on the way, and Lauren moved away from Starling Cove and hasn't been back since.
That was the juicy gossip in town for a while that I found out through Tonya, who found out through a client of hers. Which is exactly how gossip around this town travels.
Starling Cove isn't super tiny—just incredibly nosy—and everyone likes to know everyone's business.
That's how I know that karma didn't really come for Paul.
After he graduated from high school, I never saw him again. I heard he went off to college, got his Master's degree, landed a cushy government job and was engaged to a pretty girl he met at college.
I didn't know that the pretty girl he was engaged to was Sophie.
I figured she was new in town, but so were Bailey and Jane at one time.
Starling Cove is right on the water with an easy commute to Boston, attracting those who need access to the city but want to live in the suburbs. I figured Sophie was one of them.