“Girl, shut up. I canhearthe blush in your voice. It’s the tattoos, isn’t it?”
My free hand goes to my cheek, and as my best friend predicted, it’s inflamed. Because, yes, Callum still looks good even after all these years. The added tattoos have made him lookdarker and a little scarier, but I’ve always loved the edge he has. While he’s been charming to me from the start, he wasn’t that way with everyone else. He was personable and approachable, but always with a mysterious air around him. He still has that, maybe even a bit more now, and I would have been a fool not to notice it.
I clear my throat. “I told him I’m going to stay.”
Another pause from Talia, then, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Honestly?” I exhale heavily. “No. But I feel like I need to, you know? Even if it means…”
I don’t say the words out loud, but she knows exactly what I’m getting at—even if it means we officially end things.
“Can I be candid with you?”
I laugh lightly. “Haven’t you always been, Tally?”
“Yes, because someone needs to.” I can faintly hear her blinker in the background, and based on how long we’ve been on the phone, I’m sure she’s getting close to the school. “You know I love that you went to London. Hell, I was the one who pushed you to apply for the internship in the first place. You did the thing, and I’m beyond proud of you for it. Yes, it dredged up a bunch of other shit, and you were gone longer than you ever intended to be, which has made things harder with your husband, but…”
She drags out the last word, then sighs, and I steel myself, knowing there’s a chance I’m not going to like what she says next.
“I think you’re doing the right thing by seeing Keller. I know you wanted this to be a quick trip, in and out without any incidents, but I also think it’s time. It’s been three years. You can’t run from a hard conversation forever, you know.”
Idoknow. I’ve tried. More than once, actually. I attempted to fill it with the internship, then writing. Then again with travelingthe world and exploring places I only thought I’d ever see in the movies as I wrote blogs and articles for various publications. None of it worked. It was all wrong, and it did nothing to fill the void I felt in my heart. It didn’t erase him, and it certainly didn’t erase how he made me feel.
I think that’s the worst part of this all. Through everything, my feelings for my husband have never wavered. It was everything else that felt off and compounded into something more. Callum was never the problem. I was.
“Chlo?”
“I’m still here,” I say. “Just…thinking.”
“I’m sure this is a lot to process.” She has no idea. “Do you want me to come out there? I can. I could be on the next flight out.”
“I love you for that, Tally, but no. I need to face this on my own. I created this mess, and it’s up to me to clean it. Besides, you apparently need to take care of my sick nephew.”
“I swear, if that little twerp isn’t even sick, I’m grounding him for a week. Maybe even two.”
Her words are nothing but a threat. They always are when it comes to her son.
Talia surprised me by announcing she was pregnant during our second semester of freshman year in Denver. In retrospect, I should have seen it coming. There were signs for a solid month before. Her eating was off, she wasn’t sleeping well, and her emotions were all over the place, highlighted by the fact that she cried because she got a ninety-eight on a paper instead of a one hundred…and she still had the highest grade in the class.
Pregnant or not, she didn’t let it stop her. I was sad when she transferred back to Tennessee, but I understood. She kept up with her classes, had my adorable pseudo-nephew in the fall, then picked up right where she left off. She even graduated a whole year before I did.
I asked her who the father was, but she maintained it was a one-night stand. She said after she told him about the pregnancy, he signed away all rights, and that was that. Of course, I still have questions, but none of them matter because none of them will change how good of a mother Talia is.
“I’ll take your silence as you not believing me,” she says, and I chuckle.
“No, I definitely don’t believe you, but that’s not why I was quiet. I was just thinking about college.”
“College? Ugh. Why would you want to go back there?” She pauses. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
Thinking back on that time always brings up so many memories. While some of them suck, like that jerk Shawn Hicks making fun of my period, there are so many others I don’t ever want to forget. College is where Callum and I fell in love, where he proposed, where we made promises of forever. I don’t let myself slip back to those days often, but right now, I need them. I need to remember that things can be good between us again.
Talia chuckles. “Keller was so annoying, the way he used to flirt with you in class all the time. I was trying to learn, but it was hard with you making eyes at each other.”
“We were not making eyes at each other, whatever the hell that even means.”
“You know exactly what it means. Heart eyes. All in love and shit before either of you was willing to admit it. It wassogross.”
