Callum put his hand on Jamie’s knee and squeezed, which didn't solve any problems, but it felt nice.
“Also,” Jamie added, “We need to talk about the things I am and am not going to be out about. Just like I need to engage your lives on your terms, you need to engage me on mine. It wasn’t your place to publicize my relationship with Nerea without asking how I felt about that first.”
“I’m sorry too,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“So am I,” Callum said. “You’re right, we should have talked about this all weeks ago.”
“Well, what’s done is done,” Jamie said with an awkward smile.
For a moment everyone was quiet, but it was the quiet of peace and ease, not of tension and brewing argument. Jamie let himself breathe for a while, enjoying a world that seemed far more stable than when he’d wandered London last night.
“What happens now?” he finally ventured to ask.
“I suppose,” Nerea said with a glance at Callum, “We say out loud what we’ve been hedging around for some time. The relationships between us are not casual, not simple, and, as the events of last night make clear, can’t be private forever. What I am going to say is that, Jamie, I love you, and I am very glad you are back here, and we are going to figure out that and so much else together.”
Jamie nodded without being able to make words. For him this had never been something casual, not with Callum, not from that first day; and not with Nerea either, a thing cemented somehow, when they’d been at the beach, and Nerea, always so confident, had made a self-deprecating remark about her one-piece black swimsuit. To hide the evidence of all those babies, she’d said, as if she weren’t perfect, as if any of the movie industry bullshit they were all wedded to mattered. Jamie was constantly honored that she’d trusted him with any part of the rich history of her life or her body.
“Okay,” he finally found his voice enough to say. “I love you too. Both of you.” He looked back and forth between them rapidly, all overwhelmed emotion. “Very much.”
“As do I,” Callum put in, looking a bit stunned.
“Now that’s settled,” Nerea said, “We have something we’d like to ask you.”
“Yeah? After all that?”
Nerea smiled. “Oh yes. If we’re doing this seriously and without an expiration date — and if we’re making scenes in public — there’s no reason not to invite you to come with us to Spain for the holidays. And Margarita’s wedding.”
“Is she going to be okay with that?” Jamie asked. Margarita had not been thrilled with him dating her parents when they had met. He imagined she would be even less thrilled about him being at her parents’ house for Christmas and her wedding.
“We'll talk to her,” Callum said. “But I'm sure she'll be fine provided you don’t upstage her. Thank you for asking; it's good of you.”
“As for Christmas,” Nerea put in. “There are going to be a lot of people around. Whether that’s a positive or a negative is up to you. But our girls are all coming and thanks to the wedding there will be more friends and relatives hanging about than we’ll know what to do with. We’d very much like you to be a part of that.”
“I’d love to,” Jamie said breathlessly. He reached to grab both Callum and Nerea’s hands. He was overwhelmed both with relief and with excitement that he got to continue this incredible relationship. Not only theoretically, but with concrete plans and arrangements. “I have to —” he stopped himself, his happy mood deflating.
“What is it?” Callum looked alarmed.
“I have to tell my parents. That I won’t be home for Christmas. And that I’m dating you. Both of you. Especially before they read about it in the papers. That’s okay, isn’t it?” he added. If nothing else this whole mess was a lesson in the importance of not making assumptions.
“Of course it is,” Nerea said.
“What do you need from us?” Callum asked.
“I don’t know. Yet. It’s not going to be an easy conversation. But if we’re going to be together, I really need to have it.”
Chapter 23 - Callum tries to make things right
A week after what Callum now privately called The Great Gallery Debacle and Reconciliation, he went over to Leigh and Sam’s house. It was a gray November afternoon, with an edge of cold that seemed to sink into his bones. When he walked into Leigh’s warm sitting room, leaving the gloom and damp outside, Sam didn’t seem to be at home. Callum was relieved. The conversation that he needed to have with his daughter would be easier to have alone.
“How are things with your mother?” Callum asked. As ever, he quickly gave up the attempt to share the big squashy armchair with Leigh’s cat and settled instead onto the couch.
“More than fine. She’s been lovely. From a very helpful distance. Thank you, by the way.” Leigh smiled and sat down next to him. At eight months along she was moving with the kind of irritated heaviness Callum remembered from Nerea’s pregnancies.
“It was no problem at all.”
“I saw some reviews for her show,” Leigh said. “They were all glowing.”
“Yes, indeed.” Callum fairly glowed himself at the thought of all those articles praising Nerea’s talent, her eye, her composition. Nerea was wonderful, and she deserved the world knowing and celebrating that. Callum had gone out and bought multiple copies of the papers and magazines that carried reviews, and Nerea had carefully clipped out the articles and pinned them up on the wall in the kitchen. It had been an extra relief that, in all the buzz about the show, there had been no buzz about the artist’s personal life. Apparently the journalist who’d overheard it all didn’t care about who an artist was sleeping with other than, or in addition to, her husband. Perhaps a sensible editor had intervened, or maybe there’d not been enough space or time. Whatever the reason, Callum thanked God for it. Jamie, in particular, had been relieved to have a bit more time to sort out how he was going to discuss the matter with his parents.
Callum and Leigh sat in easy silence for a moment. In the armchair, the cat stood up, turned around, and flopped down again to curl up on its other side.
Leigh sighed. “All right. What do you need?”
“Was I that transparent?” Callum asked.
Leigh gave him a look that said he was fooling exactly no one and that he was being tiresome. “You invited yourself over, asked if things were okay with Mum when they’ve been fine for months — and you know she and I would have told you if they weren’t. You’re not talking when all you ever do is talk. You think you’re getting better at covering when you want something, but you’re not. So what is it?”
“A lot of things.” Callum looked at his hands.
“Do you want me to respond to your request, or do you want me to pry the request out of you like a bad tooth?”
“It’s about Jamie,” Callum confessed.
“Margarita told me she met him,” Leigh said carefully.
“What did she say?” Callum couldn’t help asking, more eagerly than was probably useful. But he wanted to know.
“That he seemed like a nice enough kid,” Leigh said. “But that he’s younger than she is. Also she thinks you’re dragging Mum into your midlife crisis and has zero patience for any drama that’s going to come of this, but you probably knew all of that already.’
“Yeah. Thanks, though, for reinforcing it.”
“No problem.”
“To be clear,” Callum said. “I’m telling you this despite your fair and stated preference to know as little as possible about my extracurricular activities because this isn’t extracurricular anymore.”
“What does that mean?” Leigh asked. “Do I want to know what that means?”
“The relationship with Jamie is serious. For both your mother and I.”
“Serious how?” Leigh looked skeptical.
“Serious, we’re making long-term commitments to each other.”
“Are you moving in together? Are you telling the papers?”
&n
bsp; “Maybe? Yes? At some point in the future at any rate. We’re doing the kind of work that’s probably going to lead to those sorts of things.” Callum knew he was jumping the gun a bit; the three of them hadn’t had conversations about any of those topics in particular. But they were headed in that direction.
“Okayyy.” Leigh still looked dubious. “How does this impact my life? Just because Sam and I are poly in the sense that we occasionally have joint girlfriends, doesn’t mean that I need to know about your poly drama.”
“You could tell me about your poly drama,” Callum offered.
Leigh grinned smugly. “I don’t have poly drama. Drama doesn’t come with poly. That’s all you.”
“Jamie’s coming to Christmas and to Devon’s wedding.”
“Margarita!” Leigh laughed disbelievingly. “And he’s doing what?”
“Coming to the wedding. And Christmas.”
“Jesus, Dad.”
“Antonio’s also coming to the wedding,” Callum said, faltering a bit in the face of Leigh’s less-than-promising reaction.
“Yes, I know. Mum told me ages ago. Which has what to do with Jamie, exactly? Other than making this the most awkward get-together ever?”
“I was hoping you might have a word with your sister for me. For us. To...smooth over things about Jamie. And Tonio.”
“No. Absolutely not,” Leigh said decisively. “I am not going to get in the middle of you and my sister and whatever it is you both need to sort out.”
“But you’re the one who understands — ”
Leigh cut him off. “Me getting along with you, does not give me a direct line to understanding choices you have made in the past. And even if it did, it does not obligate me to play go-between because you can’t figure out why Margarita’s been angry with you most of her life. I’d been hoping you could figure it out yourself but since you’re sitting here asking me to intercede with my sister, that’s not going to happen. So I’m going to tell you why, and you’re going to decide what to do about it without my help.”
“All right,” Callum said. Leigh was pragmatic in her anger, which was unsettling because it meant he deserved her wrath. As prepared as he was to hear her out, that was still hard.
“Do you remember when Ana and Carlos’s daughter got married?”
Callum tried to recall the name and the event. “That was twenty years ago.”
“More than that. Do you remember it, though?”
“Other than that it happened? Not particularly.”
“You had just come home. You’d been off somewhere on a project for six months. We’d seen you maybe an odd weekend or two. Piper was just a toddler. In any case, at the reception, Margarita tripped and fell, the way kids do, and knocked out a baby tooth. You and Tonio were both there, Mum was off somewhere else. And Margarita ran to Tonio.”
“Oh. Oh God. That wedding.” Callum took a deep involuntary breath. He remembered now. He could see it all, twenty years past: The garden decorated for a reception, the milling crowd chatting in its wedding finery, little Devon in her sky-blue fancy dress and white patent leather shoes tripping and falling and Callum hadn’t been able to get to her in time.
“Yes, that one. You yelled at her. For going to the man she rightfully expected to comfort her. Which wasn’t you.”
“No wonder she hates me,” Callum said. All the shame of that day was flooding back to him.
“She doesn’t hate you. She just doesn’t trust you. Not entirely. But you get it now?”
“That’s why your mother ended her relationship with Tonio, you know,” Callum said. “She was furious with me. Tonio was furious with everyone. He told your mother to dump him or dump me but either way to make a goddamned choice.”
“And she chose you.”
“She almost didn’t." Callum looked at his hands again. It felt strange to talk about. So much of his life was public record, and yet, so much of it was only known to himself and Nerea. And Tonio. "It took a long time for us to be okay again, but we did a lot of soul searching and a lot of work and managed to stay together. And Devon — Margarita, sorry — I’ve never felt more wretched in my life than I did as soon as I’d finished hollering at her. I was exhausted and jetlagged and I felt like I was losing my family. And then I very nearly did.”
“Dad,” Leigh said. “I’m not the one you have to explain this to. Or apologize to, because I assume there was an apology somewhere in there. We’ve always been alike, you and me, and I understand how you make your mistakes. Piper doesn’t even remember those years. But Margarita — you owe her an apology. You can’t change what happened or fix what you did. But you can apologize. And maybe be less prickly around her very legitimate sore spots.”
Callum nodded slowly. He felt like he’d been kicked in his ribs. He somehow hadn’t thought, hadn’t considered, that Margarita would have been so affected by that incident. She deserved to be, and Callum deserved all of her mistrust. That didn’t make him feel better, but it did make him understand.
“All we wanted then was for you to be around,” Leigh said. “Not to come crashing back into our lives full time by breaking all the systems we had finally got in place.”
Callum nodded again. He didn’t trust himself to speak; this was a reckoning a long time coming.
Leigh bit her lip. “It’s great that you and Mum have someone to add to the happiness that you have now. But if Jamie is somebody you’re serious about, then I presume you’re not going to keep him separate from my life with Sam. And our baby.”
“Part of the family, yes,” Callum mumbled, still shamed by Leigh’s ongoing fierce clarity.
“What I’m saying then, is that if Jamie becomes a part of my kid’s life, and then you and he or Mum or whatever fall apart, you do not get to make my kid’s life miserable the way you made mine and Piper’s and Margarita’s miserable. Though obviously Jamie’s not going to be a parent figure.”
“I’d hope not, he’s younger than you.”
“Ugh, yes, you don’t have to remind me,” Leigh said, laughing at an absurdity Callum could recognize too. “But the point remains. Don’t do the same stupid stuff twice, because I’m not going to be on your side this time and I’ve got a bigger mouth on me now.”
CALLUM WAS GLAD HE’D arranged to meet up with Thom weeks ago. Although he wasn’t much in the mood for company after his showdown with Leigh, time with someone he adored who was neither blood family nor lover would do well to shake him out of his funk. If he was very lucky, Thom might even help him figure out how to make things up to Margarita going forward.
Coming in out of the freezing drizzle of the rain was a deep relief. The sky was already dark even though it was barely four o’clock, and Callum needed to lose himself a bit in the warmth of dark wood and ale.
Though he’d been at the gallery and witnessed most of that drama in person, Thom dutifully absorbed Callum’s relation of those events and his conversation with Leigh without adding much in the way of commentary.
“One thing’s for sure,” Thom said when Callum had finally finished. “Your daughters are all way smarter than you.”
“I knew that,” Callum said proudly. “And now, I would like to extend my and Nerea’s formal invitation to spend Christmas with us.”
“Really?” Thom looked taken aback. And possibly wary. Both were strange.
“Definitely! Unless you have other plans. But we’ve been inviting you for years and you’ve never come. So this year you and whoever you’re bringing to the wedding are.”
“I get a date?” Thom looked faintly green.
“Of course you do. Let me know if you’re not bringing anybody, though — Nerea wants a final headcount soon. You did get the invitation, right?”
Thom nodded. “Probably. I haven’t looked at my mail in a while. I’ve been busy.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“What makes you think that?” Thom looked downright nervous now.
“You just said you were busy
when I know for a fact that you don’t have any urgent work projects right now. So I assumed.” Callum wasn’t sure what to make of the look on Thom's face.
“Some people have hobbies other than fucking people,” Thom said.
“So you’re not seeing anyone?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So you are seeing someone.”
“I can, in fact, be seeing someone and not want to talk to you about her,” Thom said.
“Where’s the fun in that?”
“Believe me, both of us will be happier if I don’t.”
“Really?” Callum didn’t believe him. He was also disappointed. Gossip, especially about a friend’s happiness, could be such good fun.
“Definitely.” Thom was firm. “And you can tell Nerea I won’t be bringing anyone that will increase her headcount.”
“No? That’s a shame.”
Thom shook his head and lifted his glass to drain it. “You have no idea.”
Chapter 24 - Nerea plans a wedding
On the first of December, Jamie left for Dublin, and Nerea and Callum flew back to Spain. Nerea loved this time of year there. They both missed Jamie immediately but there were other pleasures to compensate while they waited for him to rejoin them. The air in Spain, in contrast to London’s, was soft and mild. The sharp brightness of winter hadn’t fully set in, and mists threaded their way through the trees in the morning and evenings. The woods and fields were soft browns and tawnies, the sun mellow and gentle.
There was plenty to keep both of them busy. The wedding was scheduled for the day after Christmas in the village church, and the reception would be at the house. Which would make the day of the wedding hectic in the extreme but there was something proper and fitting about the party being held in an old house that had been in the family for so long. Until then, there were flowers to arrange, tents and heaters to plan for the back garden, and negotiations to be made with the church ladies about schedules. Margarita had settled on a lovely dark green and gold for her wedding colors, and in the evenings Nerea sketched different ideas for what to do with the heaps of pine boughs and gold ribbon they’d acquired while Callum sat reading aloud to her from a book.
The Art of Three Page 16