Page 40 of Sunsets & Slow Dances

Chloe was right about one thing; we did make a cute couple. I wondered if she was right about the other thing. Were Felicityand Callum broken up? Even if they were, would that matter? So much time had passed since we were the kids in the photos, but even now, after all these years, whenever I looked in Callum’s eyes, this is where I went. I went back to being a girl on the pier in a photo booth with my first love.

It couldn’t be that simple. Nothing was ever that simple.

14

CALLUM

I glancedaround the kitchen as I rinsed off my hands under the tap water. Spending my days in Nadia’s house without her here, spending time with her dog and cats, was like getting to spy on her life. I sort of felt like a peeping Tom—a peeping Tom who fixed things. Being surrounded by her belongings, her array of plants, the photos in frames of her friends and from her school, and the novelty mugs that ranged from silly to raunchy, which was basically Nadia in a nutshell, that were on her drying rack beside her farmhouse sink all combined to give me an insight into who she was as an adult. It made me feel closer to her, yet somehow even more distant at the same time.

Even though we’d been together during our college years, we’d spent a lot of those years apart. We never went to the same college, not that it would have mattered because after my freshman year, I quit to pursue my MMA career. Since I was an amateur, my schedule was crazy. I had six to eight bouts per year and spent all the time in between recovering or training. Nadia stayed on the East Coast to go to college, and I was on the West Coast with my trainer.

Technically, we were together, but long-distance definitely didn’t do anything to help us with our off-and-on status. We broke up more often, and it took us longer to get back together. Still, we made it all the way to her senior year.

A week before my dad passed, we’d broken up, but I wassurethat, like all the other times, we’d get back together. But that didn’t happen. My dad died, and my entire life fell apart.

I stared out the window at the back deck that I’d repaired and resealed. A flash of what our lives would have looked like if we had gotten back together and stayed together played in my mind’s eye. In vivid detail, I saw our friends laughing and talking with two or three of our own kids running around with their friends kicking balls and jumping over sprinklers. I smelled the delicious aroma of meat cooking on the barbeque. I heard our song playing as we continued our tradition of slow dancing at sunset on the deck just like we used to talk about doing when we had our own backyard as teens, slow dancing at sunset on the deck at Slice of Heaven.

No.I couldn’t think like that. If we’d gotten back together then I wouldn’t have Matty, and he was my entire world. Things worked out exactly how they should have.

My phone alarm went off, snapping me out of my stroll up what-could-have-been way, which was the opposite of a walk down memory lane. I pulled my phone from my pocket and saw it was a timer I set to remind me to pick Matty and Chloe up from the after-school art program they’d both gotten into. My mom had been doing the drop-off and pick-up all week, but she had a hair appointment tonight. Chloe’s school counselor emailed me about the program the weekend I got to town, saying it would be a really good fit for her because it used art as therapy.

I agreed because I could use all the help I could get in that department. Thankfully, they had classes for all ages, so shenominated Matty for a slot too, since he transferred mid-year. So both kids were there.

“See you tomorrow, Peanut.” I leaned down and gave him good scritches under his chin.

His entire backend wiggled, and his tongue hung out of one side of his mouth. He’d spent the entire week following me around like a shadow. After I had Matty, I wanted to get a dog, but Felicity claimed she was allergic. I was starting to suspect she lied, considering she’d done several collabs with people who had dogs, cats, rabbits, and horses. She spent weekends at their houses, went on trips with them, even been on shoots and done promotions in ads with a variety of animals and never seemed to have any issues.

Over the years, I’d begun to think her problem with dogs and cats had more to do with her aversion to their shedding and drooling because she hated having hair on her clothes and thought that slobber was disgusting.

On my way to pick up the kids, I thought about all the little things I’d overlooked with Felicity and wondered why I had. The most obvious answer was I wanted Matty to have a family with parents who were together, but the truth was, we weren’t together. Maybe for the first year after Matty was born, we were, but after that, Felicity had been gone as much or more than she’d been home. I justified her absence by saying it was for work or because she was overwhelmed and needed to take care of herself, but there came a point when I had to face the fact that she wasn’t interested in being a mom or partner.

Now that I’d seen Nadia again, the reason I’d stayed in my relationship with Felicity for so long, why I never cared why she was gone, and why I’d overlooked so much had become clear to me. I overlooked things about her because I didn’t love her. It never bothered me that she wasn’t around because my life was easier when she wasn’t home; I preferred it. She was notan easy person to cohabitate with. Her mood swings caused me emotional whiplash. If she didn’t get enough engagement on a post, it would ruin her entire day. If she read comments from trolls, she would obsess over them and go down a very dark rabbit hole. If she saw other influencers collaborating together without her, she felt left out and would have a meltdown. From one moment to the next, I never knew if she was going to have a good day or a bad day. One comment, one poor-performing post, one envy-inducing collab, and her world imploded.

But none of that mattered to me because I didn’t care. It didn’t matter to me what she felt. I knew she would never hurt me; shecouldnever hurt me. Being with Felicity, raising a family with Felicity, was safe because no matter what, she couldn’t destroy or devastate me. She didn’t have that power.

I pulled up to Artistic Horizons, and through the window, I saw Chloe andNadia.

“What the hell?” I muttered aloud to myself.

It was a small town, but this was getting crazy. I went to drop Matty off at school; Nadia was his teacher. I went out on my first job with Comfort Construction, and Nadia opened the door; she is the homeowner. And now I come to pick up the kids from their after-school program, and who is working at the front desk? Nadia.

If I believed in signs, I would say these were all flashing neon arrows pointing in Nadia’s direction.

I got out of my truck and headed up the stairs. When I opened the door, Chloe and Nadia both turned their heads to look at me.

“Hi.” Nadia smiled.

The second I looked into her eyes, all the anxiety I’d been feeling just melted away. “Hi.”

I looked over at Chloe and did a double take in disbelief. She was smiling. At me.

“Matty’s in the back.” She clapped her hands together. “I’ll go get him.”

Chloe practically skipped down the hall, leaving Nadia and me alone.

I wasn’t sure what was more shocking, the fact that Chloe smiled at me or that Nadia was here, just like at school and on my first job. “What are you doing here?”

I winced, hoping that hadn’t come out sounding rude.

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