Meeting Mr. Wright (21 page)

I
WAKE
up to a soft rapping against the door and sit up, having to squint my tired eyes against the too-bright sunlight that’s streaming through the windows.

“Callie?” The muffled voice belongs to Amy. It’s soft and tentative, very motherly. Something about it makes tears well up in my eyes, and I’m surprised I have any tears left considering I cried myself to sleep last night. My entire face feels swollen and hot.

“Yeah?” I say, my voice all deep and raspy.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, thank you. I’m all right.” She’s going to know that’s a lie, but I guess I can’t have everything.

“When you’re ready, come on into the kitchen and I’ll make you something to eat.”

“Okay.”

Despite how awful I feel, I really am hungry, so I shuffle into the bathroom and turn the faucet to as hot as I’ll be able to tolerate. Steam fills the room before long, helping me clear my head. I step beneath the spray and let the water wash the past day away.

Even though I do my best not to think about Nate, the more I try to avoid it, the more my traitor mind conjures up the look on his face when he’d smile at me. The salty sweet taste of his skin, the way his lips felt when they were pressed against mine. The water washes away more tears as they fall, and I wonder how I could’ve ever let him walk away? But…how could I have asked him to stay? Even now I can feel every broken part of me just barely hanging on, and if that’s all I have to offer him, maybe this is all for the best. I worry that I’m going to vacillate over this decision for the rest of my life, long past the time when Nate will have moved on, and long past the time when I should have.

I don’t even bother to dry my hair; at this point I’m too exhausted to care about what I look like. I pin it up in a loose bun and slip on my most comfortable clothes, then I walk out of my bedroom and make my way into the kitchen.

Amy’s sitting at the table, writing in a red leather-bound journal. She looks up at me with a sympathetic expression, then closes her book and walks over to the coffee maker. She pours me a cup and sets it on the table, then she walks over and wraps her arms around me, enveloping me in the kind of hug that only a mother can give. Here come the tears again, only this time I don’t try to stop them.

Amy lets me cry, gently rubbing soothing circles along my back. I just can’t believe the kindness that seems to run in this family. I’ve hurt her son—she must know that I did—and yet here she is, comforting me.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and it comes out like more of a cry than I intended it to.

She leans back a bit, bringing her hands to rest on my upper arms, giving them a gentle squeeze. “Oh, sweetie. What ever for?”

“For Nate.”

Amy looks at me for a long while, her brows pulled together like she doesn’t even know what I’m talking about. But she does know, I’m certain of it.

“He left early because we had a fight.”

She smiles, looking down at the table. “That’s not why he left,” she says. “Without knowing you as well as I know my son, Callie, I’d venture a guess that you’re both prone to rash decisions when it comes to protecting your heart.”

I sit back in the chair, completely stunned. I try to find some words to tell her that she’s wrong, but she’s not. Even I can’t deny that.

“Trust me, Callie. I don’t pair people up, and I’m not a meddling mother. I want my children to find happiness on their own; I’ll never try to force it on them, ever. I don’t believe that you need to be in a relationship to be happy. And if
you
, Callie, are happy with your life the way it is, then that’s wonderful. But I’ve seen the way that you look at my son, and I’ve seen the way he looks at you. There’s something there, but you both have to want it. Being alone is great, but sharing your life with someone is great, too.”

I swallow down past the painful lump in my throat, willing the words out of my mouth. “I was sharing my life with someone,” I tell her, although I suspect she already knows this. “He turned out to be a person that I shouldn’t have shared my life with.”

She takes a deep breath, smiling as she sighs. “I think we’ve all been there.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You have?” When I look at her and Jack together, it’s difficult to believe that there was ever anyone else for either one of them.

“Absolutely.”

I wrap my hands around the warm coffee cup in front of me, waiting for her to tell me her story.

“I suppose I should give you an anecdote about my past romantic failings, and somehow convince you that Nate’s the most perfect man on the planet, that he’d never hurt you. My son is a good man, Callie. He could make anyone’s life wonderful, but it’s not my job to convince you to love him,” she says, reaching out and taking my hand in hers. “Life offers no guarantees, so I can’t offer them to you either. But when you meet someone you want to share your life with, the guarantees won’t matter to you. You’ll look at that person and know that being with them is worth the risk, and only then will you be willing to take it.”

I nod, leaning forward and taking a sip of coffee, letting the warm liquid soothe my throat.

“You have a plane to catch in a few hours,” she says, smiling. “And I told Gabby that I’d start planning our trip.”

“Your trip to New York,” I say, completely letting go of any notion that she’d still invite me to come along with them.

“
Our
trip to New York, Callie,” she says patiently, like she absolutely refuses to let me have any angst over it.

“But what about-”

“It’s going to be the three of us. You, me and Gabby. And you’re going to have the time of your life regardless of who you’re dating. Besides, you’re not the kind of woman who lets a man ruin her fun, are you?”

I laugh and shake my head, even though I should correct her, because for far too long I have been exactly that kind of woman. Somehow, though, I have a feeling that I won’t be for much longer.

I
T’S BEEN
three weeks since I’ve returned home from Virginia, and nearly everything about my hometown feels different to me since I’ve been back. It’s too bright, it’s too hot, it’s too…everything. Something shifted in me while I was away, and I’m not sure if anything will ever be the way it used to be. Is that a good thing? Is it bad?

Regardless, it doesn’t take me too long to get back into the bland, boring routine of my everyday life here. Every morning I wake up, turn on my computer, and I work until late in the evening. Some people (like Gabby) might call it avoidance, but I call it drive. The more clients I have, the more money I’ll make. The more time I won’t have to dwell on all the ways I know I’m messing up my life.

My mother comes home every night and makes me dinner like I’m still a child. I hate it, but I can’t make myself leave. I’m stuck in this strange holding pattern that I can’t get out of—or won’t get out of—and it’s the most uncomfortable and maddening thing I’ve ever experienced. I hang out with Ben and Gabby a few times after they get back from their honeymoon, and I can tell that they both want to call me out on my jackassery, but they’re not quite willing to do that yet. Maybe there’s a waiting period for calling your friend out on being an idiot. Because the more I think about it, the more I think maybe I was being—
am
being—an idiot when it comes to him.

When it comes to
Nate
. I don’t really let myself think of his name that often, because those four letters are what seems to send me into a tailspin of self-pity. Not the thought of his beautiful, smiling face. Not the thought of the way he touched me. Just his name.

It’s not until my mother catches me looking at the wedding photos that Gabby emailed me earlier in the day that she finally broaches the subject. She knows something’s been bothering me since I’ve been back, and she’s enough of a mind-reader that she probably knows it’s a guy. She’s always been over-the-top with her motherly intuition, which is completely maddening (and helpful) at times.

It’s a candid shot that does me in, one of me and Nate dancing, smiling at each other. He’d just said something funny—I can’t remember what it was—and I was looking at him like he was my sun, moon and stars. If I wasn’t one of the people in that photo, I would’ve guessed the two of them were very much in love. Maybe we are, and I just need to let myself feel it, I don’t know. What I do know is that looking at this picture makes my chest ache, makes it difficult for me to breathe. I had him right there within reach, and then I willingly let go.

“Is that him?” Mom asks, casually swiping a dishtowel across the kitchen counter.

“Who?” I reply, no doubt setting off her overactive bullshit detector.

She sighs. “The one who’s got you looking like the world stopped making sense.”

“He’s not the one who made me look like this,” I tell her. My mother looks at me in a way that is uniquely hers. She knows me as only a mother can; she can see all the little idiosyncrasies that make me…well, me. She knows me right down to my bones, which makes hiding things from her particularly impossible, but I’m telling her the truth this time. “I’m the one who made myself look like this, Mom, although he does have something to do with it.”

She tosses the dishtowel on the counter, pulls out the chair next to mine, and sits down.

“His name is Nate,” I tell her.

That’s all I say, and my mom’s eyes widen, waiting for more information. Information that I’m not sure I want to give to her. “How’d you meet?”

Of course she’d ask me that. Of course she would.

I sigh. “I don’t want to tell you that.” I realize immediately that I should’ve just made up a story, but I can’t lie to her. I never could.

“Why not?”

The question hangs in the air around us for a few seconds before I finally answer. “Because I’m afraid you’ll think less of me.”

“Impossible.” She says that word with such conviction that I’m sure she’s right.

“I met him at the airport on my way to Gabby’s wedding. There was a weather delay, and we…spent it together.” I don’t really want to elaborate, but my mom’s a smart woman; she understands what it is that I’m not telling her.

“Oh.”

“I didn’t think I’d see him again, which…yeah, I guess doesn’t make this sound any better. I just…I wanted to put something,
someone
between Ethan and me.”

Mom nods slowly, taking all of this in. “Why was he at the wedding?”

“Turns out he’s Ben’s brother.”

Mom’s not as shocked about this development as I would’ve thought she’d be. Instead of offering me a reply, she just looks at the picture, and a soft smile pulls at her lips. “You love him,” she says.

“I only knew him a week.” I don’t even try to deny what she said, because what’s the point?

“If you feel it, you feel it, Cal,” she says, squeezing my hand. “What difference does it make how long it takes?”

“Nate said the exact same thing.”

“He sounds like a smart guy,” she replies, smiling.

“How can I trust it?” I ask.

“Why is a love you feel right away more trustworthy than the one that takes time to grow?”

“Because that love is rooted in something,” I tell her. “I wouldn’t be worried about waking up one morning and not feeling it anymore.”

“Love is love, Cal. It’s not about how long it takes you to feel it, it’s about how much effort you put into it to make it last. Don’t act like it’s something that just happens. It’s something that you have to nurture.”

I sit back in my chair and think about what she just said. My relationship with Ethan fell apart because he wasn’t willing to nurture what we had. If I’m honest with myself, it started to die long before the cheating. But did I nurture it, or did I treat it like something that was just a given once it happened? I liked being with him, I put effort into that, but what did I do to make our love grow? Did I do anything to give it roots? I had list of things that I thought should happen once Ethan and I started dating. We’d get serious, move in together, get married, have children, and then spend the rest of our lives together. But I wasn’t really investing in a life with him, I was checking off a list. I’m not to blame for the way the relationship ended, but I am to blame for not putting more into it. Although now I’m beginning to realize that may be a blessing in disguise.