“Grandpa is wise. You know that. He’s right.”
“But why?”
“Because we didn’t have the answers she needed, kiddo. We could make her comfortable and make her laugh, but we couldn’t help her remember. If you woke up one day and couldn’t remember me, or Grandpa, or your friends, wouldn’t you do whatever it took to try to get those memories back?”
Asher looked down at my bed sheets. “Yes, but you can’t always remember everything. Sometimes, you can only remember the big things. I don’t remember everything about Mom.”
“It’s impossible to remember everything.”
“I know,” Asher said.
“Do you remember how she always used to smell like cookies?” I asked.
Asher looked up at me and nodded. His frown turned into a smile. “Yes.”
“And how she used to sing you to bed at night?”
“Yes,” he said again, his grin stretching.
“Do you remember how much she used to hate it when I scared her? How she would scream and chase after me? Or how she used to keep a hair tie on her wrist, but somehow never had one when she needed it?”
Asher giggled. “Yes.”
I pulled him in for another hug. “We can’t remember everything, Ash, but we have to hold on to the memories we do have. And Lina deserves to be able to go looking for those memories, right?”
“Right,” Asher said. “And maybe she’ll come back when she finds them, and she can tell us all about it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “And we’ll be here for her if she does.”
Asher beamed at me, and then he jumped off the bed and tugged at the blankets. “Get up, Dad! I’m hungry!”
I laughed. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah!”
“All right. Well, how about we both get ready, and we go out for breakfast this morning? What do you say? You feel like pancakes or something?”
“Pancakes! Pancakes! Pancakes!”
I shook my head at my very energetic child, who shot off down the hall to change and brush his teeth. I hopped in the shower, knowing I had only a few minutes of peace before Asher was bound to come back and shout in my ear about pancakes again.
I went as fast as I could, and by the time I was out of the shower and dressed, Asher was back in the hall, running back and forth, shrieking with excitement.
We left within fifteen minutes, and I drove us to our favorite little breakfast diner down the street. The waitress, Tiffany, was a young woman who adored Asher, and she always brought him three coloring sheets and a brand-new box of crayons whenever we came.
She also brought his chocolate milk and my coffee without us having to order.
“What’ll it be this morning, boys?” Tiffany asked as she plucked her notebook from her belt and flipped it open to write our orders down. Asher had his head down and was coloring in the New Year’s themed image in front of him.
I smiled up at her. “A kid’s stack of pancakes for Asher, and the Morning Special for me, please. Thanks, Tiffany.”
“No sweat, Callum. How was your guys’ Christmas?”
Asher looked up. “It was awesome! I got a toy truck, and it goes super fast! And Santa ate all the cookies we left out, and Rudolph ate almost all the carrots. And we got a real Christmas tree and everything.”
“Wow.” Tiffany smiled brightly. “It sounds like you had the perfect Christmas.”
“What about you?” I asked her.
She shrugged one shoulder. “Oh, you know. Same old. Saw some crazy family members I’d been avoiding all year, spent too much money, drank too much wine, and ate too much turkey. But,” she dropped her voice and leaned toward Asher, “Santa was good to me too this year. He got me exactly what I wanted.”
“What was it?” Asher asked.
Tiffany winked. “A new pair of very pretty, very expensive boots.”
“Boots?” Asher asked, cocking his head to the side. “That sounds boring.”
Tiffany and I both laughed as she folded her notebook back up. “Well, I wouldn’t want a toy truck, and you wouldn’t want boots. Doesn’t that impress you? Santa knows how different we all are and still knows exactly what to get us. Pretty cool, huh?”
Asher nodded. “Yeah, that is cool.”
Tiffany wandered off to fill other customers’ cups of coffee as Asher and I colored in his drawing. By the time we were done, it was a brilliant wash of colors, and I told Asher we would take it home and put it on the fridge. Then he moved on to the next sheet.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“I miss having a mommy.”
I nodded. “I know, kiddo. I miss your mom, too. Every day.”
“Lina was nice. I think Mom would have liked her.”
I nodded and tried to smile, but I couldn’t. “I think she would have too.”
34
Lina
Dandelions. There were so many dandelions.
They sprouted up from the grass all around me, their green stalks vibrant and stiff and unmoving in the breeze that swept across my cheeks. I reached for one, pulled it free of the rich brown earth, and watched as it turned into a yellow rose in my hand.
I must be dreaming.
The petals of the rose curled at the edges and then fell off to be carried away on the wind. One after another, they drifted away, being pulled toward something across the open green field that I couldn’t see. They danced in the air in front of my eyes, and I found myself walking barefoot across the grass and soil.
The earth was warm between my toes. Comfortable. Safe.
This place, even though I had never seen it before, felt like home.
As I went, I bent and picked more dandelions, which all turned to roses as soon as they were pulled from their stems. I smiled as music flowed around me, music I could feel rather than hear. It was a gentle, soothing, happy melody, and it sounded somehow familiar.
Like something I used to hum to myself in the shower.
A dark splotch appeared on the horizon. I realized quickly that it was moving toward me. After a few more minutes and more picked flowers, I realized it was a man.
He moved with careful curiosity, and like me, he bent every now and then to pick up a flower. I watched in fascination as the falling petals from my flowers caught on the wind and were drawn toward his.
Where they met, they cascaded around each other, rising and falling as if alive, catching the breeze and following it in swirling patterns up and around each other.
Becoming one.
When I reached the point where the petals came together, I threw my arms out on the breeze and lifted my face to the sky. The sun was deliciously warm. It beat down on my cheeks and forehead and warmed me from the inside out as the petals whipped around me. My giggle got caught up in the wind and echoed in my own ears.
It became impossible to stand still, and soon, I was spinning and twirling as if I could dance with the petals, too.
The man was watching me. And he was smiling.
And he was Callum Gabriel.
“Lina,” he called to me. He held out one hand.
I stopped spinning. The petals drifted toward him and circled around him lazily in the air.
“I need you,” he said. “I’ve always needed you.”
“I need you too,” I whispered.
I took his hand. He pulled me into him like we were on a dance floor, not alone in the middle of an empty field surrounded by petals that were, for lack of a better word, alive.
Suddenly, the petals all fell to the grass at our feet, forming a bed of yellow silkiness.
Cal took both of my hands and went to his knees, pulling me down with him. The air smelled like freshly cut grass and roses. I breathed deeply and exhaled slowly. Cal breathed in unison with me.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
“I missed you too.”
“I’ve missed you for fifteen years.”
“Me too.”
He kissed me. Deeply.
> I melted against him and gave in to the need burning up inside me. The petals rustled softly beneath us as he pushed me down on my back and pinned me there with his hands on either side of my head. The kiss became wilder and freer, and I looped my arms around his neck, pulling myself up toward him, putting all my feelings into the way I kissed him.
I needed him to know that I loved him. Needed him. Missed him. Craved him.
Wanted him.
It was as simple as that. Everything else was just background noise.
Cal lifted the skirt of a dress I didn’t notice I was wearing. I was naked underneath. I gathered the dress up around my waist, holding it up as he hurried to pull his pants down. He left them around his knees, resting upon the petals, and dropped back down on top of me. He kissed my forehead, the tip of my nose, and my lips.
Then he was kissing the side of my neck and working his way across my chest as he lowered his hips to mine and slid his cock inside me.
I took all of him on his first deep, slow thrust. We melted together and became one. I ran my fingers up his sides, over his shoulders, and down his arms. Then I wrapped my fingers around his wrists and held on as he made love to me upon the petals.
“I love you,” he whispered. His voice was hoarse and ragged. Each breath he drew was quick and sharp. His skin burned beneath my fingers.
“I love you too.”
Cal smiled. I felt his smile part the clouds that had darkened my soul. The light inside me burned bright and illuminated things I thought I had forgotten forever.
Cal pulling into my driveway in his first pickup truck when we were kids. It was a beat-up old thing, with torn-up leather interiors, missing floor mats, and an interior light that only worked some of the time.
Cal waiting for me outside my classroom when school ended. As soon as I emerged in the hall, he’d take my hand and pull me down the hallways. Then we would break free, rush outside, and get into that busted-up old truck and head to the ice cream parlor.
Cal telling me for the first time that he loved me as we lay in his bed one night after his dad had gone to sleep. He hadn’t known I was spending the night.
Cal telling me he was going to Harvard.
Me hating him.
Tears streamed down my face. Cal wiped them away and kissed my cheeks with incredible tenderness. He eased my sorrow, one kiss at a time, and I buried my face in the groove of his shoulder.
“Deeper,” I whispered.
He pushed himself deeper inside of me. My body opened up to him, like a flower.
Cal held my face in his hands as I filled up with pleasure. Like a glass of champagne, I was all bubbly inside. It came to the surface with my orgasm, and I shook and spasmed beneath him. My vision grew brighter and brighter, until Cal’s face disappeared, and I was staring up at nothing and everything all at once.
I woke with a gasp that hurt my lungs and sat straight up in bed. The covers fell from my shoulders and gathered around my waist, much like my dress had in my dream.
“What the hell just happened?” I muttered as I pressed my hand to my forehead. My skin was covered in sweat, and I was still out of breath.
I shook my head, trying to make sense of what I’d just dreamt. Little pieces of it started coming back to me as I sat still and thought about it. There had been flowers, a breeze, and sunshine. And there had been Cal.
My Cal.
I remembered him.
A smile crept over my face. “I remember you.”
I ripped the blankets off and made it halfway to the bedroom door before I also remembered what had happened between Cal and me. I remembered all the lying he had done and why I was here back at Judy’s house with Kelli. I remembered that I had fled to the hotel after finding out I was not Asher’s nanny.
I was Cal’s ex-girlfriend from high school.
I was the one who had been left behind when he went away to Harvard.
I turned around and rested my back on the bedroom door.
The room I’d slept in was the same one I’d spent my teenage years in. That was what Kelli had told me, anyway. When she opened the door and led me inside, she said some of it might jog my memory. It hadn’t. It had felt like a room that belonged to some other teenage girl I didn’t know.
But it was mine: the white dresser with the pink jewelry box on top, and the glittery picture frames filled with pictures of a younger me and Kelli. The single bed covered with floral patterned pillows and trimmed with a pink bed skirt. The sheer pink curtains. The white shag rug. The boy band poster on the inside of the closet door.
They were all symbols of a me that used to be.
Why could I remember Cal, but not that old version of me? None of it added up.
One thing had become crystal clear to me in the last twelve hours. I owed some of that clarity to the dream. I knew how crazy that sounded, but it didn’t change the fact that I felt a little more whole after dreaming about me and Cal.
I knew that I still cared for him.
What was more, I remembered the love I used to have for him when we were young. Some of that might still be there. I’d certainly started to care deeply for him since he took me in after the accident.
I also knew that Cal cared for me, too.
Going back to him now would confuse him. It would probably confuse me too, but I needed him to know that I remembered him. I needed him to know that I was going to be okay. If I could remember him, I had to believe that I could remember everything else.
35
Callum
Even though Asher was eye level with the grocery cart, he still managed to push it through the store without running anyone over, which was an impressive accomplishment. As he pushed it along, one wheel inadvertently strayed to the side as if it wanted no part in our New Year’s Eve grocery shopping trip.
I threw things into the cart: chips, ingredients for pasta for dinner, vegetables for salad, dip, and the little cream puffs my father liked so much.
Asher stopped the cart and looked up at me when I plucked a bottle of sparkling grape juice from the top shelf of one of the aisles. I waggled it back and forth. “What do you think, Ash? You want a celebratory drink tonight in a fancy glass for when we watch the ball drop?”
Asher grinned at me and nodded. “Yeah!”
“Grape?” I peered at the row of sparkling juice beverages. “There is also cranberry—eww—lemon, blueberry, and raspberry. What do you think?”
“Grape,” Asher said decisively.
I put it in the cart. “Good choice. That’s the one I would have picked, too.”
“What else do we need?”
I pursed my lips and pressed a finger to my chin thoughtfully. “I think we just have to go back to the produce section to pick up an onion, and that’s it. Is there anything you can think of that we might have missed?”
“Nope.”
I nodded. “Good. Anything else you want?”
“Nope.”
“Excellent,” I said, pointing down the aisle. “To the produce department then.”
Asher walked purposefully forward, pushing the cart along with determination. We passed other families in the grocery store who were having a much different experience than me and my son.
Most were arguing. Kids were pitching fits because mom and dad wouldn’t buy them something they wanted. And by mom and dad, I meant mostly mom. There weren’t many dads in the grocery store on New Year’s Eve.
If the kids weren’t the ones making a fuss, it was the parent, who was likely in a foul mood from how crazy life had been over the holidays. New Year’s was the last big event before the nice calm quiet of winter sank in. No more family dinners. No more entertaining or endless cleaning. No more gift wrapping, secret keeping, and worrying about breaking a child’s heart if they found out Santa wasn’t real. Once you made it past New Year’s, you were home free until next year.
I was lucky to have a kid who was easygoing. He never made things a struggle for me.
�
�Hey, Ash?”
Asher stopped pushing the cart and looked back at me.
“Thanks for being awesome,” I said.
Asher cocked his head to the side. “You’re welcome.”
I laughed. “And so humble.”
“Humble?”
“Modest,” I said.
He still looked confused.
I chuckled and patted him on the head. “It means you’re polite and don’t think too highly of yourself in a cocky, arrogant sort of way.”
“Oh, I see. Well, thank you for being awesome too, Dad.”
“Not as awesome as you.”
“Can we go get the onion now?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yes. Of course. Lead the way, good sir. Go forth to the onions.”
“You’re weird.”
“You’re lucky.”
We wandered through the produce section, and Asher took his time selecting the perfect onion. He didn’t want one with any brown spots, and he wanted the yellow dry shell to be the perfect shade all the way around. He checked them for firmness and even smelled them. I waited patiently until he chose a perfect golden onion, dropped it in a bag, and put it in the cart.
After, we went through the checkout and loaded up the trunk of the car. We put the cart away and headed home. Asher told me all about how excited he was for our New Year’s Eve night.
“The ball drops at midnight, right?”
I nodded. “Yep. Right when it hits twenty nineteen.”
“Don’t let me fall asleep this year, Dad. I don’t want to miss it again.”
“I recorded it for you last year.”
“But it wasn’t the same,” Asher said.
I looked at him in the rearview mirror and smiled. “No?”
He shook his head. “I want to see it right when it happens.”
“Well, you have to keep yourself awake then. I seem to remember trying to keep you up last year, and you got mad at me because you were tired.”
“I won’t fall asleep this year. I’m older now. I can stay up.”
My Holiday Reunion Page 20