Page 10 of Sunsets & Slow Dances

“Miss Shaw told Mrs. B, who told Mrs. Rojas, who told Edna Rice, who told Sally Burke, who told Bernie.”

I hated playing the telephone game. It was like six degrees of gossip separation. Caroline Shaw owned Pretty in Peach, the OG beauty salon in town, before Kendra Abernathy opened The Beauty Mark a few years ago, which Miss Shaw didn’t appreciate. She saw it as a personal slight and direct competition even though it served a much younger demographic since Kendra was forty years younger than Miss Shaw. I, myself, was not one of the Gen Z patrons of The Beauty Mark because Kendra never made any secret about the fact that she had a massive, Grand-Canyon-sized crush on Callum, something, much like Miss Shaw,Idid not appreciate.

But I digress.

For the over-forty crowd in Firefly, the salon also served as the gossip hub of the small town. Miss Shaw lived across the street from Southern Comfort, and one could find her on most nights sitting on her porch watching the comings and goings of the bar. Mrs. B, who owned the boarding house in town, had a standing appointment to get a blowout at Pretty in Peach every two weeks with Miss Shaw, where the two women exchanged gossip like state secrets. Sonja Rojas played in a weekly Mahjong game at the boarding house with Mrs. B and was also in a walking club with Edna Rice called The Pace Makers. Edna Rice and Sally Burke both volunteered at the animal shelter. Sally Burke worked at the post office with Bernie, who had been a postman for the past forty years. Bernie was my work husband Amos’s actual husband.

“Soooo.” Amos took a sip of his coffee. “I take it you won’t be seeing young William again?”

“Nope.” Especially since young William showed up on my doorstep New Year’s Day, he’d texted several times. Each time I’d made it clear to him, again, in no uncertain terms, I wasn’t interested. Unfortunately, he was one of those men who assumed I must be playing a game or playing hard-to-get. Iwasn’t guilty on either count. I genuinely had no desire to see the man again. So, I’d had to block him. “Actually, I won’t be seeing anyone.”

“Oh.” Again, Amos was behaving oddly. He lifted his mug to his lips and sipped before continuing coyly, “Didsomeonefinally lock you down? Have you traded in your single card status?”

From the moment Amos sat down, he’d been acting strange. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, but since the bell would be ringing in a few minutes, I decided to press on.

“Nope. The opposite. I’m a single pringle. I’m taking Dry January to the next level. I’m getting sober on steroids. I’m doing a substance, social, and sexual detox. My New Year’s resolutions are no drinking, no dating, and no dick.”

I waited for some sort of reaction. A gasp, maybe. A look of horror or even amusement. I’d settle for minor curiosity or just a follow-up question. But I got none of that. He just sat staring at me with a blank, unreadable expression on his face.

After a few seconds passed, he blinked and shook his head slightly. “Sorry, are you serious? I thought for sure you were kidding. I was waiting for the punchline.”

“I’m not. I tallied up all the hours, days, weeks,and monthsI’ve wasted over the years sincerely and earnestly trying to meet Mr. Right, and what do I have to show for it? Hangovers, several UTIs, and a bar set so low even Wile E. Coyote, flattened by a steamroller, couldn’t limbo under it.”

“Wow, that’s quite a visual.”

“I’m serious. My standards just keep dropping because I’m lonely, and I want to be with someone so bad that I realized I was starting to talk myself into settling.” I took a deep breath. “And I started seeing things.”

“Seeing things?”

I hadn’t told anyone about my Callum Knight sighting. Mainly because I’d been hibernating since NYE, and the onlyperson I’d seen was Ashley, and she didn’t know Callum because she hadn’t grown up here. The other reason I hadn’t let anyone in on the ghost from exes past sighting was because I didn’t want anyone to think I was actually certifiable. My mom had mental health issues, and I worried, sometimes, that I’d inherited them.

“When I was at the bar, I thought I sawCallum,” I whispered when I said his name, as if I was scared to speak it. I wasn’t sure why. It’s not like he was Candyman, and if I said his name five times, he appeared.

“Oh no.” Amos sat back in his chair and placed both of his hands flat on the desk in front of him. “You don’t know?”

My stomach dropped out from under me. “Know what?”

“I thought this was all…” He waved his hand in front of me. “I thought you were just building up to the big reveal.”

“Big reveal? What reveal?”

“Callum’s back.”

“What?” It’s not that I hadn’t heard the two words that Amos had just spoken; it was that they really weren’t computing.

“Callum Knight is back.”

My heart began to pound so fast and so hard I was sure that it was going to burst out of my chest.

“What?” I heard myself repeat the same word, but I honestly couldn’t manage to say anything else.

“Danielle Marsh passed away last week. Didn’t you hear?”

I shook my head no.

“Oh, that’s right. You were on the ski trip.”

Danielle Marsh was the woman who Callum’s dad had an affair with. No one knew about it until after his dad died, and he left provisions for her and the daughter that they shared in his will.

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