“Yeah, in Elliot’s man cave. Are you all right? You look like you’re going to be sick. I’m guessing you’re a fan.”
“Ah, yeah, you could say that.”
“Callan is trying to get him back together with some ex-girlfriend or something. I’ve heard them talking, but when I walk into a room, Callan gets all weird now and he shuts up.”
“I gotta go. Tell the doc I’ll reschedule for another day,” Colleen says as she bolts from the office, the building, and her past.
She intended to go home and lock her doors, but she finds herself driving by the B and B, her head almost out the window in search of a man she once knew. Just one look is all she wants.
She knew Teyler Walker was in Falls Village. But at the B and B, only a few inches from her house where Taylor was still living? That was a different story. And he was about to move above her store where Taylor is almost every day.
She didn’t know what to do. Her past and present, her future was colliding, and she felt dizzy.
Then she saw the guys, Ace Lyons and Elliot Montgomery, loading suitcases into Callan’s car. Before she could be seen and recognized by Callan, caught spying, or worse, Teyler, she rushes off.
After aimlessly driving around the town, she finds herself at the Charleston castle where it all began.
This time, she walks around the grounds, stands on the basketball court, and watches the ghost of a boy she once knew maneuver his body with the ease of a black panther. When she finds herself climbing through the window like she had every night that summer she was eighteen, she knows she’s lost her shit and some news station will make a documentary about her one day soon. Too bad she’ll be bat-shit crazy by then because she was only a stone’s throw away now.
Colleen makes her way through the space until she comes to the door that leads to their room. Their room. Funny how she thinks of it that way when this house isn’t hers, never was, and she hasn’t been there in close to twenty-five years. Unless you count that one quick peek she took not too long ago after seeing Teyler’s career end before her eyes.
Pushing the door open, Colleen heaves in a breath. The memories of that summer, especially that last night, come rushing back and she feels like that young girl again. But so much had gone wrong that night. The condom, the fall, Teyler leaving.
She’ll never regret her decision to let him go or the choice she made once she found out she was pregnant. She did it all for him. But would he see it that way? Would Taylor? Her time was up. It was time to face her past and accept the consequences of her decisions.
After wallowing in her tears for a bit, she sighs heavily then regroups. She wipes at her face and dries her tears. With one last glance at the space she still thinks of as theirs, Colleen turns and heads back to her car, back to the shop to wait for Callan Black so she can interrogate him about his relationship with Teyler Walker. She’s pretty sure she knows what he’s up to after hearing it from Jordan.
She pulls up at her shop and sees the foreign sports car. Teyler always had a thing for fast cars, he would talk to her about them in those first days after he’d left Falls Village, after his knee surgery when she would take his call and try her best not to breakdown and change her mind.
Colleen huffs and figures it’s time for her to pull on her big girl panties. She wonders what Teyler will think of their newer bigger size when he sees her. Colleen had not been a waif when they met and Teyler was always telling her he loved her body, that he liked a girl that didn’t feel like she would break under his weight, but after Taylor was born and her mom got sick, Colleen had let herself go. She’d let it go way too far and was working with Dr. Hughes to get to the reason why so she could find a way to be healthy, if not ever skinny again. She was over trying to be what society deems thin. In her mid-forties, that no longer mattered. All that mattered was her health and happiness now.
Unfortunately, with Teyler Walker back in town, he was going to expose her secret and once that was out, Taylor would not be happy and when her daughter was upset with her, Colleen’s life went off balance. Taylor and her shop are all she has.
Colleen might have expected to find Callan in her shop, she’d given him the key weeks ago, but she could never have prepared herself for the sight of Teyler Walker in her coveted space. But there he is, sitting at the counter with a swagger he hadn’t had at eighteen, one that only comes from being one of the best pro athletes in the country.
She stops and lets her eyes wander over him. Sure, she’s been following his career and watching him develop into a man, but this, in person, is so much better and she allows herself the pleasure for a moment.
Teyler Walker is in her shop in the flesh and he’s all man now. Hard slabs of muscle covered by the smoothest dark skin. She hears herself moan a second too late and Teyler turns and locks eyes on her.
“Colleen” He breathes as his eyes rake up and down her body and cause a chill to run over her at his heated perusal. He might have spoken to her that one day, when he was brave enough to call the shop, but this was different. Colleen, in the flesh made him feel alive. That day on the phone, he’d chickened out after telling her he’d returned to Falls Village and had wanted to see her. When she claimed to be too busy to give him ten minutes of her time, he’d relented and let her hang up on him.
Colleen stands stock-still for a moment, then clears her throat and does her best imitation of a woman who is not affected by the man now rising from a stool and sauntering her way. “Oh, wow! Hey, Tey. Been a long time.”
Teyler smirks and emits a sound that’s a cross between a chuckle and a sneer. “Sure has, baby. Like I said when I called, didn’t need to be that way.”
Colleen shrugs. Sure it did. He just doesn’t know that. Yet. But just as that thought enters her mind, she hears the bell above the shop jangle. She knows who it is before she turns around. She’d forgotten that she’d asked Taylor to cover the shop while she was at Dr. Hughes. It was her busy time, and she didn’t want to close for too long. Taylor had promised to come over right from summer camp at Lollipop Preschool.
“Ma, what are you doing here? I thought you had, oh…” Taylor stops speaking as she takes in the scene. Her mother looking like she’s about to puke while a tall, African American man stands only a few inches from her. A man who has features Taylor looks at every day in the mirror. Features that she didn’t get from her mother.
Teyler feels his world spin. He tries his best to suck air into his lungs, but it’s no use. If he’d played one of those games on social media where you upload pictures, this young, stunningly beautiful girl who is the perfect combination of him and Colleen, would be the outcome if he put their images together.
She has the perfect skin tone, a blending of her parent’s. Her eyes are set big like Colleen’s, but they’re the deep brown of Teyler’s. Her facial structure is Colleen’s, the high cheekbones and pert little nose, but her full lips are all Teyler’s. Her hair is long, black, and curly, she’s a knock-out but seems shy and kind.
“Mom, who’s this?”
Colleen doesn’t know what to say. She heaves in a deep breath as the tears flow from her eyes. “Teyler Walker,” she honestly states. “A tourist in town. He’s a basketball player.”