I did some math in my head and it wasn’t good. Not good at all. “Damn you, Crescent Cove water.”
I rose and stared at myself in the mirror. My face was a bit pale, but otherwise, I looked the same. I’d swapped out my Christmas smock for a Valentine’s day one over my skinny jeans and fuzzy sweater.
And now I had to pee.
“Shoot.” I hung up my smock and started unbuttoning my jeans. Then I hesitated. Should I hold it for a pee test?
Did I want to get a pregnancy test here?
Everyone would know I’d gotten one. As it was, people still asked me if I had talked to the hot artist from the festival.
The answer was no.
No, I had not, and I didn’t intend to.
Not really.
Probably not.
But now?
Quickly, I did my business and washed my hands. I took my smock with me, but I hung it up in our little locker area. I didn’t have a customer for another hour. That was just enough time to go to the pharmacy in the next town over.
I really didn’t want to be the next bit of gossip fodder in this town.
But if I was pregnant…
The timing was all wrong. The situation was crazy. I wasn’t ready to be a mother.
Or was I?
Chapter Eleven
CALLUM
My car was the cause of my life stress.
I should sell it.
Burn it?
Nah, too hasty. Selling it was a good idea. To someone far enough away that I would never take the chance of seeing it again on the street. A person in Idaho, for example. I never went to Idaho. That had to be safe.
I even went online and searched for a small town in that state with a dealership that might want to buy back my baby. I was that desperate.
Or insane, take your pick.
I’d stayed up too late grading papers several nights in a row, which had led to a recent dependence on Death by Coffee. Turned out they weren’t lying. Once you got on that stuff, it was hard to get off of it.
Who needed sleep, right?
Well, it turned out I did. Since my breakup—did it count as a breakup if our entire relationship had lasted under thirty-six hours?—and the start of the semester had worn me raw, I obviously should not be making big life choices.
So, naturally, I made several.
I didn’t sell my car. I did, however, agree to move my appointment for custom work to mid-February. Specifically, February 14th. A day I was guaranteed not to be busy, since I’d been dropped faster than tequila made a woman’s clothes come off.
Also, I was never voluntarily listening to the country channel on satellite radio again.
But as that date drew closer and my loneliness grew deeper instead of lessening, I began to consider the paths life had taken me on. Specifically, how I’d ended up in Crescent Cove and when I was going back.
There could be a message that I wasn’t seeing.
Sure, certain heartbreak and an early onset midlife crisis seemed like the likely ones. But I was an artist. Trained to look deeper.
An artist who was doing a series of paintings on the one woman I was supposed to be forgetting. So far, that wasn’t working out too well. Not to mention I was dreaming about her so much that I had no choice but to get them out of my head and on to paper.
I looked between the trio of canvases I had on easels in my studio. What I should’ve done was put them up for consignment—once they were finished anyway. The last thing I needed were more reminders of her.
Though it didn’t matter, because I thought of her all day every day anyway.
The first one was an amalgamation of that charcoal drawing I’d done in the park the day after our kiss. I’d changed her attire from just the scarf to the white dress shirt I’d dreamed of the night we’d been together. The material draped over her curves, clinging to her in some places and falling loosely in others.
Of course I kept dreaming about her in it.
I was near obsessed with getting everything down. The interesting shadows that teased the juncture of her thighs, mostly hidden by her shirttails. My shirttails, the buttons strategically undone. Her long hair dipped over one eye.
She made the perfect ingenue.
Perfectly unattainable.
In the second painting, she was different, although the changes were modest. Her hair was just a bit wilder, her shoulders back, the shirt barely held closed. More shadows. More defiance in every line of her body. Her beauty fisted my throat and made the sweeps of my paintbrush erratic.
I tried to catalog every detail, to show the subtle changes from the first. I didn’t know why I’d done a series. We’d only had that one stolen night. It wasn’t as if I’d seen her evolve. I never would.
The third canvas was bare.
I didn’t know what I’d do for that one. I’d just known I had to do three.
After I’d worked for a while getting the shading just right of her hair over her shoulder, I grabbed my phone and took a few quick snapshots of the paintings in progress. I liked to catalog the stages of each piece. Some of my customers enjoyed seeing the process of them coming to life. And sometimes, I just needed to have a record of every step.
Then I tossed my cell over my shoulder in the direction of the mattress and went back to it.
Awhile later, my phone buzzed, and I fumbled on my bed until I found it in the disordered sheets. When I did manage to lay down, rest was elusive. More nights than not, I stumbled out of bed to paint. I was driven to finish these, even if it felt like I was painting a future I couldn’t see yet.
Maybe that was just wishful thinking.
I glanced at the readout. My real estate agent, Connie.
My heartbeat kicked into high gear.
“Hi, Connie. What’s up?”
“You know what’s up. Your offer was accepted.”
I sat on the edge of my bed. “No counter?”
“None. Looks like you’re going to be a new homeowner, Callum. Congratulations.”
Those words echoed in my head as I drove toward Crescent Cove an hour later. Instead of the mini blizzard I’d encountered the first time I’d driven this route, today the sunshine reflected off the icicles gleaming on roofs and sparkled on the thin glaze of snow on lawns. It was still cold enough to freeze my balls, but the sun made me think spring was coming.
Someday.
Dare had a loaner waiting for me when I dropped off my car for the custom work we’d talked about. He was in the middle of a job so he just waved hello while Gage handled the paperwork.
“I’m going to live here soon,” I announced.
Not that he’d asked. Or even spoken much to me. Apparently, Crescent Cove-ites had long memories. At least this one did.
He grunted. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yes, I’m buying a house on the lake.”
“Where exactly?”
We discussed details, and surprise of all surprises, Gage was my new neighbor. Sort of. He wasn’t right next door, which probably was good for the state of my pumpkins next Halloween. He seemed much friendlier today than he had in December, but I wouldn’t exactly say he’d rolled out the welcome wagon.
Closer though. In general, the townsfolk were pretty friendly. Maybe eventually, I’d be one of them.
Dare’s idea of a loaner was more family friendly than my sports car. The Jeep was more practical than mine as well, especially to drive out to the lake view roads. I parked on the street near the hair salon and walked straight inside, ready to face my fate with a smile.