by D J Cook
“We're all good now, though, right, kids?” Stuart addressed Liam and Jade as he reassured Di. You could have bottled up the love around that table and sold it. I knew I would have bought some. My phone rang just as I pressed my fork into the crispy bacon that sat on top of the boiled potatoes. It was Farden.
“Do you mind if I get that? It's work. I don’t think I’ll be able to eat if I don’t.” Diane nodded. Bile churned in my stomach with worry.
“Tamsin, it's Ian.” I knew from the tone of his voice he was annoyed.
“Hey, Ian.” Before I could say anymore, he cut me off.
“I am absolutely disgusted at your behaviour in the hotel lobby today. In front of guests. I won't tolerate it. I know you’ve had a lot to deal with, and for that I am sorry but what you did was inexcusable…”
I was fired.
I hadn't worked my six month probation period. I was screwed.
I couldn’t stand there and grovel on the phone. I had to defend myself.
“You mean what Callum did was inexcusable?” I said, brushing off the blame, even though I had sworn. A lot.
“Callum has told me everything. I know what’s been going on. That still does not give you the right to treat the hotel, your colleagues and friends with such disrespect.” Ian had taken sides. Callum could never do any harm to him.
“Ian, when are you going to take your head out of Callum’s arse and realise he was meeting up with his ex-girlfriend while he should have been working? I'm done with this crap. I quit!”
I quickly hung up, not wanting to hear another word from Ian. Liam's family all looked at me, their mouths agape, aside from Jade who was still playing with her food, completely oblivious to the world around her.
I couldn’t be fired. I had to quit my job. It was damage control. I had to leave with a shred of my dignity intact. I’d tried to extinguish the fire that was my life, and it was working. The fire had been doused, leaving a pile of rubble surrounding me.
Fuck.
“I guess you want to know what Callum did, right?”
I sat in their lounge with my unconventional family. Jade was sat on Diane's lap, a true mummy's girl, dozing in and out of sleep while clinging onto her teddy. Stuart, Liam and I played a card game called Bullshit. We had to change the name, though, otherwise Jade would be shouting it at school. She was so easily influenced. So instead we shouted pineapple each time we suspected a cheater. Stuart won most of the games. He was hard to read, not like Liam who would act overly confident every time he lied about the cards he placed down. I thought about playing poker with him and the amount of money I’d win because of his awful bluff.
Then I wouldn’t need a stinking job.
It was nice to feel normal after I’d told them about what had happened between Callum and me. After a while, everyone went upstairs to sleep, Jade carried up the stairs by Stuart, limply resting on his shoulder.
“I’m gonna need to go shopping tomorrow. I don’t really want to be turning my thong inside out to wear.” I lay in bed wide awake next to Liam. I didn’t need to sleep. I was still rested from the nap I’d had earlier.
“I was thinking about that. We can go shopping, but you aren't buying clothes you already have. I'm going to message Callum now. I will pick up as much stuff as I can and throw it in my car,” Liam said, grabbing his phone from the bedside table.
I lay there silently. I didn’t want to know what he was saying or to be any part of it. Honestly, I didn’t want him to go. Liam was protective of me, a real brother figure. I half expected him to call Callum and yell, or go and egg his house. He didn’t, though. He knew that would stress me out. A few minutes later, Liam's phone vibrated on the table.
“It's sorted. I'm going tomorrow morning. Callum isn't working. Once I'm back, we can go for a wander around town." He grazed my arm to reassure me.
“Okay. Only if you treat me to a Starbucks.”
* * *
The next morning, I woke up to a vacated bed. Liam had already left to grab some of my things. I tried to ignore the anxiety that was creeping up slowly, and kept chanting things I had read.
It's out of my control.
I can only change the way I think about things.
They were correct. I had no control of the situation aside from my reactions, both physical and emotional. I threw on a pair of Liam's jogging bottoms and a t-shirt that was left on his dresser. He’d either left them out for me or couldn’t be bothered putting them away, either way, they were mine. I made my way downstairs to find Diane cooking breakfast on the stove—full English. She was a feeder, entirely my kind of woman.
“We can’t have you going hungry now, can we? The boys ate their's already.” Before I could ask where everyone else was, she continued. “Stuart took Jade to school and Liam went out to… well, you know.” I sat down at the dining table and watched Diane cook. A freshly poured coffee appeared next to me and I argued with her to let me wash up in return. Liam's car pulled up in the drive. You could hear the gravel crunching under his tyres from inside the house. He came bursting through the door with bags filled with my stuff and placed them in the lounge.
“Hey, you. I grabbed as much as I could,” Liam said as he continued to lug more in through the hallway.
“Thank you.” I leapt up and started to root through the bags to find fresh underwear.
“That’s the most energy I’ve seen you have for a while. Good sleep?” Once he’d asked, his eyes scanned me. “I see you’re already stealing my clothes. You have good taste. You could have worn mum’s, though. Actually, her bras are way too big for your perky pair.” He quickly grabbed my boobs, wobbled them playfully and ran upstairs, grabbing a bag on his way.
“That’s my boy,” Diane said, laughing and shaking her head as she put the dishes away.
Yep. That’s my boy.
Coffee ran through my body like it had been injected intravenously. I had the energy of a five-year-old once we got back from town. It was either the Americano or the sugar syrup that I’d requested for extra flavour. I’d even handed a few CV's out in town after updating it on my phone and printing it before we left. I had to get my life back on track. Being at Liam's house wasn’t a burden to anyone and I loved it there, but I couldn’t stay forever. I needed a fresh start—a new chapter in my life to forget about Callum, even though I knew it would be hard. He had become such a huge part of my life, and Mum had adored him. All for nothing. One thing I could guarantee: Liam would be right by my side and the only constant I needed.
There was a small knock at the door.
“Get that for me, sweetie?” Diane asked Liam, even though it was an order.
“Ugh fine. Why am I always the one who has to answer the door.” Liam moaned while getting up from the couch. I looked at Diane and she rolled her eyes in a funny way.
“Drama queen,” she said, and I had to agree.
“Tamsin, door!”
Someone was at the door for me? I didn’t need three guesses. I knew who it was. Callum stood on the doorstep, soaked from the rain that had caught Liam and I off guard walking around town that morning. Liam walked past me and made it clear he was going to be in the next room if I needed him.
“Why are you here? I thought I’d made it clear. We are done.” I had calmed down a lot since then, but not enough to greet him properly. I stood by everything I’d said.
“Tamsin, please listen to me. I didn’t tell you that she’d made contact and I'm fucking stupid for that, but believe me when I tell you there is nothing going on between Louise and me.” I could hear the pain in his voice. He was begging for mercy; he didn’t have to be on his knees.
“Really? She was wearing the ring you proposed with.”
“What was I supposed to do, Tamsin? Snatch it off her? Rip her ring finger right off? It was her choice to keep wearing it, not mine,” he said, losing his cool.
“Fair enough, but you’re still an idiot for not telling me she’d travelled all the way from blood
y America to come and see you. It's insane.”
“She didn’t come from America to see me. She lives in the Cotswolds somewhere. She lived in America for a while, though. She lived in New York for years with her dad while he was out there for work. She went to school there, too. That’s why she has such a strong American accent. I knew she was from the UK, but I thought she’d moved to America permanently. That’s why I couldn’t find her all that time. I was looking in the wrong place.”
“That fills me with so much love and joy. I'm made up for you,” I said sarcastically.
“Please, T, I'm not done.”
“Well, I am. I told you before and I'm telling you again. I'm done. You lied. Worst of all, you needed time to think. If I really meant so much to you, you would have told me straight away and not needed to think at all.” I slammed the door in his face. A sigh escaped me as I rested against the door. The worst was over.
“She was pregnant,” I heard from the other side of the door.
She was pregnant?
The thought echoed, repeating on a loop.
They have a child.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
With my back against the cold wooden door, my body limply slid to the floor.
Callum has a child.
A growing pain spread like wildfire throughout my body. I had been upset about him lying. He was an idiot, but somehow I’d still had hope that we would work things out. Hope that he would explain, apologise, and we would work through the mess that had become our relationship. Hope that I would be able to move back to his fancy house. Hope that I'd be able to get a new job, kiss him goodbye in the morning and hello in the evening. Hope that we would live our lives together, but separate. Separate in our careers—working together was doomed from the start—but together in love. That hope had vanished into thin air. I couldn’t be the third person in a relationship, living each day as number two with his love child coming first. That was without even the mention of Louise. She could use that poor child as a puppet in whatever master plan she had for Callum, just to get her claws in. I needed closure. I needed to hear him out, give him what he wanted and close the door on what we’d had. I got up and pulled the door open.
“Does this mean we can talk?” Callum asked softly.
“I’m not going to make you choose, Callum. You have a child. I’m not going to be the person who gets in the way of a family,” I said, getting straight to the point. It was like ripping off a plaster. Quick and painful.
“I don’t have a child. I did. It's so hard to say it without saying it.”
“Say what, Callum? I don’t understand.”
“She had a miscarriage. Louise. That’s what I needed to think about. That’s what I needed to process.” He paused for a while. “I was going to be a dad, T.”
It was the first time I’d seen Callum cry. He still looked pretty, even though he was soaking, shaking to the bone.
I’d been wrong.
Wrong about Callum.
Wrong about Louise.
I was the idiot, too quick to snap. Too fast to judge.
“I’m so sorry.” I apologised for a multitude of reasons—for his loss and Louise's. I couldn’t imagine the pain they must have gone through. I was sorry for jumping to conclusions and not hearing him out. Sorry for tossing away a relationship that mattered more than I wanted to admit to myself.
“It's hard. I didn’t want to bring you into this. I know I should have told you, but with everything else going on, I didn’t want to make your load heavier than it already was.”
Each time Callum spoke, I imagined holding him. I wanted to take his pain away, just like he had done for me.
I love you.
I wanted to say it, but I couldn’t, not yet. I held back.
“Louise is doing alright, too. She had her family around her once it happened. She was trying to protect me. That’s why she left. I can't cut ties with her.” He was shaking. This was his only demand. He still wanted to speak to Louise, but was worried to hear my response.
“I understand. Of course I do.” How could I not? She’d done nothing wrong, aside from stalking Callum but I guessed if I’d been in her shoes I would have probably done the same, or worse.
“I’m not here for an apology. I understand the way you reacted. I'm here for you. I want you to take me back. Take back all those things you said about us being done. I need you, T. I need your shoulder to cry on, just like you’ve cried on mine. I need you next to me in bed so I can stop thinking about what could have been and think about my life with you. You have been through so much crap that would be unimaginable to most people. Some of it with me, some without. Let’s promise to go through the rest together?”
He was such a smooth talker and knew exactly what to say. His heartfelt words made goosebumps rise on my skin. His expression said it all, too. If words could sweep me off my feet, then those were the ones.
“Can we have each other without the crap please?” I lightly mocked his question, but a beaming smile appeared on his face.
“Fine by me.” Callum moved closer, his arms widening to hold me as beads of rain fell from them. It had been around twenty-four hours since I’d last seen him, but for some reason, I craved his touch more than ever. I'd missed his smell and the warmth that surrounded us. I’d missed grazing my fingers across his chest, down to his abs, and I’d missed his fingers lightly stroking the bottom of my back. His lips pressed against the crook of my neck, and as he let me go, I could still feel his touch lingering on my skin.
“I know you aren't here for a sorry, but I am. I take back what I said about you and Louise. I jumped to conclusions. I was exhausted. I couldn’t process anything else aside from what I was already thinking. I want you to know that I'm going to get an appointment at the doctors. I need some help. I've been drowning and part of me still is. Liam is my life jacket and you are my whistle; I just need a boat.” Admitting to myself that I’d been drowning was one thing, but talking about it was another. It was hard to get the words out, but I felt accountable to Callum, to myself. There was no going back. I had to get help for sure.
“I’m sorry for not seeing you were drowning. You put on such a hard front that sometimes you are impermeable. Cancer was eating you up emotionally, and it’s been forcing you to make irrational decisions. It isn’t like you, T.” Callum stroked my hair as he continued. “I’m here for you and I’ll support you in whatever adventures you want to go on. Whatever journeys you need to take, I’ll be by your side. I'm not losing you again. You have me… and Liam.” Callum looked up and smiled as Liam stepped around the corner. Callum mouthed ‘thank you’ to him, like him being there was some sort of set up. It was. Of course it was. They had been conniving together like two best friends.
“Coming in for a brew?” Liam asked, and Callum looked at me to ascertain whether it was okay.
“Coffee okay?”
We must have sat together for a couple of hours. The mess of the past disappeared over time, and it was like normal. We introduced Callum to the game Pineapple—game after game he became easier to read. Callum couldn’t stop talking; in fact, Liam and I were acting as his medicine, numbing his pain as our infectious laughter echoed through Liam's room. Jade nipped in every few minutes once Diane had picked her up from school. She would talk our ears off until she got bored, and then she’d come back a few minutes later with something new and interesting only a five-year-old would find fascinating, like a paper clip or a piece of bubble wrap.
“What's with the fancy costume over there?” Callum asked, pointing to a sequin dress in a sky blue colour that sparkled underneath the ceiling light.
“Ahh, the blue one is a custom order I'm doing for a drag queen from Chester. She's held a gay night for nearly twenty years, and she wanted a bespoke dress for her anniversary night,” he said naturally, like it was no big deal.
“That's awesome…”
“I’ll say. Oh my god, this is amazing,” I jumped in, cutting Callum off.
“Is it for Miss Mirage?” I asked, already one hundred percent sure it was her. She was the best-known drag queen in Chester while we were at university and long before.
“Yeah, who else?” Liam exclaimed.
“So what does this mean? I can’t believe I didn’t know.” I knew why I didn’t know. I was too busy wrapped up in my own mess and I’d neglected Liam.
Not anymore.
I was incredibly proud; this was huge.
“Well, I've also reduced my hours at The Tap. It's about time I did something that relates to my degree. You know how much I love fashion. I guess this is just a twist on the couture fashion I used to design in university.” Liam did love fashion. He would always read my mum’s trashy magazines and in high school, he'd save up his money to buy the latest edition of Vogue. He would spend hours drawing stunning silhouettes.
“I’m so proud of you. How did this come about?” I asked, more and more intrigued, catching up on a part of his life that I’d zoned out of.
“Oh, I slept with him,” he said casually.
“LIAM!”
“What? It got me the job, right?” He laughed. “Instead of an awkward morning after sex, we got talking and it turned into a job opportunity. A well paid one for that matter. The dress making, not the sex. I pride myself on not charging for that.” He winked at Callum, hoping for a reaction. Callum flirted back. I’d have been worried if I hadn’t known he was comfortable with his sexuality.
“Well, I can't say anything. I don’t even have a job and I can’t exactly have sex with someone to get one,” I said, looking at Callum, teasing him. “But no, I'm glad I quit before Ian fired me. New beginnings and all that.”
“Ian wasn’t going to fire you. You know that, right? He may have been the angriest I’ve ever seen, but he told me he was just going to suspend you for a while. He didn’t want to lose you for good. You’re one of the best at Farden.”