Page 100 of Sunsets & Slow Dances

As she walked down the aisle, Callum put his hand on my lower back. It wasn’t a declaration of love or some grand gesture, but at that moment, it was everything I needed and wanted. I spent so long living in the past and wishing for a different future, it was time I tried to just be in the present—which was a lot easier to say since Callum was here now…in the present.

36

CALLUM

I saton the steps of the gazebo that overlooked the town square, watching the sea of faces laughing, eating, drinking, and dancing at the reception. There were probably five hundred people in attendance, but it felt like half of Firefly was gathered to celebrate Zoe’s big day. When Austin was killed serving his country at such a young age and left behind a widow and toddler, she was adopted as the unofficial town’s sweetheart. The wedding reception felt more like a festival than a private affair. Every tree in the park had fairy lights dripping from its branches; ten food trucks lined the outskirts of the park, serving varied choices of cuisine and beverages; a band played at one end of the park and a DJ at the other; there were two large wooden dance floors, one in front of the DJ and the other in front of the band; an open-air photo booth; a caricaturist who’d captured Buzz’s essence so brilliantly I planned on framing the cartoon image; and a section of lawn games including giant Jenga, giant chess, and cornhole.

There were so many familiar faces as I scanned the crowds. My mom and Michael were on the dance floor with at least eighty other people listening to the pop vocal stylings of LadyGaga pumping through speakers instructing people to “Just Dance.”

Matty was with his friends Luna and Reece. The trio of troublemakers, a name Buzz had given the threesome when Luna and Reece visited Matty at the farm last week, were orbiting the candy bar, which was intended for guests to fill up tiny mesh bags and take home as favors. Hank assured me he would keep an eye on them to make sure they didn’t have to be rushed to the hospital from a sugar coma.

Buzz was cuddled up on a bench with his “lady friend” Agnes in what had to be the most opposites-attract romance of them all. Never in a million years would I have put the two of them together. Agnes spent her career as the town librarian. She retired at the age of seventy after fifty-two years of service but still volunteered at the library five days a week. If a movie were casting a stereotypical librarian, she would easily get the part. Her hairstyle and clothes had never changed in all the years I’d known her. She always had her hair up in a bun, black cat-eye glasses worn around her neck with a silver chain, a collared shirt with a cardigan, and a skirt that hit her mid-calf, which is exactly what she wore today. And Buzz, of course, was wearing his ‘church overalls.’

Chloe was with Kendall, AJ, and Ritchie at the open-air photo booth, which consisted of a backdrop wall of greenery with Zoe and Miles’ names in neon at the top and a table beside it full of props. I watched as Chloe laughed and talked with her friends as they donned oversized hats and mustaches. For the first time since I picked her up from Kendall’s house after arriving in Firefly, she looked like a normal teenager, without a care in the world.

This week, when I was down with the flu, we’d finally had a chance to talk—really talk. She’d asked me about our dad, and I told her what he was like, the good, the bad, and the ugly.Thankfully, I’d had a talk with my mom before my talk with Chloe, so I understood my dad in a way I never had before. After hearing what he’d done for my mom, I saw the man who I’d had such conflicted emotions about through an entirely different lens.

When I got home from the bachelor-bachelorette party, my mom was awake. I told her about Nadia’s confession that nothing had happened with Jerry, and she said she already knew. She explained that she’d gone over to talk to Nadia, and then she told me what they’d discussed. We stayed up the entire night. I cried; she cried. I wasn’t sure I had completely processed everything I’d learned yet, but it did explain a lot of things to me about my mom and my parents’ relationship.

Everything felt right in the world. For the first time since I got the call six weeks ago from Reagan saying Chloe’s mom had passed and she’d named me as her guardian, I felt like I could breathe. I felt at peace. I felt like my life had righted itself again.

Actually, it was a lot longer than that. This was the first time I felt at peace, and like my life had righted itself since I saw Jerry fucking Clemons bare-chested exiting Nadia’s house at six in the morning. Ever since that moment, everything I did, every decision I made, was just an attempt to distract myself and avoid the pain I was in.

I’d spent so many years focusing on my career and numbing myself to any real emotions. When I had Matty, I tried to heal the broken parts of me. I tried to be present with him. I tried to shatter the In Case of Emergency glass I’d constructed around my broken heart. But now I knew I’d done that by attempting to force a square family peg into a dysfunctional round hole.

There was no way Felicity and I would have ever worked out. It had only lasted as long as it had because I was so emotionally closed off; nothing she did affected me. That was not the example I wanted to set for Matty. I wanted him to seea healthy relationship or no relationship at all. He needed to see that families come in all shapes and sizes.

His family had a half-aunt in Chloe, or whatever the correct title a half-sibling had, a Nana Nora, a Buzz, and a community of people who felt like family. And I hoped he would have Nadia.

“So, I heard we’re stuck with ya.”

I looked up and saw Ray standing next to me.

“Yep. Looks like it.”

Using my shoulder for balance, he lowered down beside me on the steps. “Buzz told me you’re gonna fight Martinez.”

“That’s the plan.”

My team was going to be coming out here to train me. I’d been working on the details for housing and funding through sponsors this week, and I got everything finalized yesterday. My publicist would be announcing the news on Monday. I was excited to finally have my life in order so I could go all in with Nadia.

I’d been trying to get a moment alone with her, but she just kept getting pulled away. And I was tired of small talk, which was why I’d taken myself off to decompress away from the crowds. There was only so much socializing I could do.

“I know your daddy never did say how proud he was of you, but…that don’t mean he wasn’t; that just means he had a funny way of showin’ it.”

If this conversation were happening pre-mom-talk, I would have dismissed what Ray was saying as bullshit, but now I realized my father was a much more complex man than I knew him to be.

“You know how most people will be nice to your face but then nasty behind your back?” Ray continued. “Well, your daddy was the opposite with you. When you weren’t around, he bragged and bragged on you. Every time you came home with a report card and got on the honor roll or had twenty yards rushing or hita home run, or especially when you started fighting, he couldn’t stop goin’ on about how his son was breakin’ records. He knew all your stats, all the odds you beat. Seven to one. Five to one. How you were proving everyone wrong and?—”

“He knew my stats? He bragged about me?” I shook my head. There was absolutely no way in hell that happened. “He said I was a disappointment. That I was flushing my life down the toilet.”

Ray sighed, and his shoulders dropped. “You see now, that’s the worst part; he thought he was doin’ a good thing and givin’ you tough love. Buzz was a hard man when your daddy was a youngin’. He raised your daddy up believin’ that the world is harsh and cruel and no one owes you anything or cares about how good you think you are, and that was a lesson you needed to learn at home. Your daddy truly believed that to do his job and prepare you for the world, he had to break you down, put some fight in ya, and give ya some thick skin. But that’s not who your daddy was. Truth be told, your daddy was a softy. He was all heart.” Ray patted the steps to the gazebo. “This here is a perfect example.”

“What is?”

“This gazebo.”

“The gazebo?” I questioned, not understanding what the gazebo had to do with anything.

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