Page 21 of Sunsets & Slow Dances

Today had been a little bit of a blur. It felt as if I was living in a surrealistic painting. Or maybe it was as if everything around me was happening at regular speed and I was either standing still or going at hyper speed; I wasn’t sure which.

This morning, when I’d come face-to-face with Callum and we locked eyes, I thought I was going to pass out. All of the oxygen was sucked out of the room. I wasn’t sure how long I’d stood there in shock without speaking, but I did know that after Principal Lewis and Callum left, the kids thought that Callumand I had had a staring contest, and I won. I went along with it because I didn’t have another explanation. I even let them break up into teams and have their own staring contests. To be honest, that had helped me out. I needed a moment, or a hundred, to compose myself.

Callum Knight at twenty-three was five-alarm fire hot. Callum Knight at thirty-three could register himself as a lethal weapon, and I wasn’t talking about his fighting skills in the cage. No. He haddangerouslevels of pheromones and sex appeal—Elvis Presley at his peak—when girls used to faint at his shows.

It wasn’t just his physical attractiveness, which was off the charts. His thick brown hair that my fingers were still itching to run through. His dreamy, copper eyes that in the sun had flecks of gold floating in them. His strong jaw peppered in stubble. His sensual lips were not too thin, not too plump; they were the Goldilocks beds of men’s lips, the perfect size. And I knew what he could do with them.

He’d become a man in the time we’d been apart. Which, of course, he had. Not that he wasn’t before, but there was a big difference between twenty-three and thirty-three. His shoulders were wider. His arms and chest were filled out. I’d also noticed some new tattoos on his neck and a few on his hands. I’d always loved his tattoos. He’d only had a few when we were together. Seeing the ones today that were visible with clothes on made me wonder what more he might have.

“Okay, everyone, push in your chairs and grab your backpacks from your cubbies on the way out.” I grabbed my lanyard and slid it over my neck. I could feel my pulse in my entire body. My heart was pounding so hard against my chest I was worried I might have internal bruising. Each step I took to the classroom door was taken on shaky legs that felt like walking on sticks of Jell-O. When I reached the door, I took a deep breathand did my best to compose myself and not show any outward signs of my internal panic attack.

“Single file line,” I instructed before pushing open the door.

The kids began to pour out into the hallway, seamlessly merging with the other students. I kept an eye on Matty not only because he was Callum’s son and was the spitting image of him, but also because I always kept a close eye on any new student the first day. I needed to make sure they always knew where they were going and didn’t feel confused or disoriented.

Thankfully, Matty seemed to be adjusting with no issues. He was tablemates with Ashley’s niece Luna, Callum’s friend Mark Lyon’s son Bryce, and Heather Dempsey, whose parents owned the drive-in movie theater. I’d watched the four of them playing hopscotch, wallball, and tag at recess. They’d all eaten together at lunch. And they were walking out together in a group now.

They were the brightest kids in the class, which meant he was most likely bright as well. I’d found that highly intelligent kids tended to gravitate toward each other.

“I have a new baby brother,” Luna told Matty proudly. “He’s three months old.”

“I have a new aunt.” Kids always had to one-up each other. Matty saw Luna’s baby brother and raised her an aunt. “Her name is Chloe. She’s thirteen.”

My heart ached to hear Matty talk about Mr. Knight’s love child so casually. Callum finding out his dad had a daughter with Danielle Marsh had blindsided him. He’d spent most of his life trying to earn his father’s approval only to find out that his dad wasn’t the man he, or any of us, thought he was.

Charles Knight was a larger-than-life figure in both stature and presence. He stood an impressive six feet six inches tall and had to be close to three hundred pounds. He was charismatic and had a magnetic personality that people were drawn to. He served as the mayor of Firefly Island for sixteen years,serving two four-year consecutive terms with a four-year break in between in which he served as city manager. He was loved, feared, admired, and respected, but he was not an easy man to please, especially if you were his son.

Callum spent most of his life trying to make his dad proud and never quite feeling like he did. He was good at football but not as good at football as Mark Lyons, who ended up playing in the NFL. He was a decent baseball player but not nearly as talented as Harlan Mitchell, who ended up pitching in the major leagues. He was smart, but his IQ was no match for Casper Montgomery, who graduated from MIT at age twenty with a degree in biomedical engineering, or Elias Russell, who graduated from Johns Hopkins with honors and two PhDs at twenty-four and was a pediatric heart surgeon.

Mr. Knight wasn’t thrilled when Callum left college before the end of his freshman year to pursue his MMA career. His dad, along with a lot of people from his generation, never understood the sport. Even though Callum was undefeated and had moved to pro in the short two years his dad was alive to see his career flourish, Mr. Knight made it known he considered Callum a failure and a disappointment. He never once attended a bout. Until the day he died, he maintained Callum was flushing his life down the toilet and was an embarrassment.

I spent years agonizing over whether or not Callum ever healed from the hurt his father caused him, if the inner child who was damaged by his upbringing had ever managed to make peace with his past. Not that it was any of my business.

“Cool,” Luna replied to Matty. “I have an aunt, too. Her name is Lee Lee.”

“I have an aunt named Leanne. She works here,” Bryce relayed proudly as he adjusted the straps on his backpack.

Leanne Lyons taught kindergarten at Firefly Elementary. She was three years behind me in school and had always had ahugecrush on Callum. She was about as subtle as a bull in a china shop, but I still wasn’t totally convinced about her feelings since I did tend to lean toward the jealous side of things. Then one day I was walking down the hall when Leanne opened her locker, grabbed a book, and a bunch of stuff fell to the ground. I kneeled down to help her pick it up and saw a notebook filled with her writing the name Leanne Knight, Mrs. Leanne Knight, Mrs. Knight, over and over again, each name with a heart around it

The admiration didn’t stop there. She also made several collages of herself and Callum. One might ask how she could possibly have that many photos of the two of them together. Well, she didn’t. She superimposed her head on a bunch of photos of me and him. If she were an adult, it would have been considered stalking, but since she was fifteen, it was just a crush.

I’m sure she was more than a little ecstatic that he was back in town. Too bad for her, he was in a committed relationship and getting married. Too bad for me, too. Not that he’d ever forgive me. I’d made sure of that.

We stepped outside to the pick-up line, and I saw Amos waiting at the curb, which was suspicious since it wasn’t his day for pick-up.

“Hey.” I smiled as I slid my glasses onto my face. “What are you doing here?”

“Are you kidding me? I’m not gonna miss the most anticipated reunion sinceAnd Just Like That.”

Amos shared my fanatic love ofSex and the City.

“Technically, that was a reboot,” I corrected him. “And I already saw him.”

He smiled. “So did I.”

“You did?”

“Yes, we had a reunion of our own.”

---