“The Charleston castle?” Teyler asks.
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Colleen and I sort of thought of the place as ours. When I was here that summer, my parents rented the house at the bottom of the hill. I got bored and took my ball out to explore. I used to dribble all the time, so it was like second nature. Anyway, I found a court at the castle and was working out when she and her friends showed up. Later that night, we went to a party there and hooked up. We spent the rest of the summer, until I hurt my knee, sneaking away together to hook up there.”
“That’s how you hurt your knee before the recent injury? Here, when you were a kid?”
“Yup. Colleen and I had actually just conceived Taylor. Obviously, we didn’t know that at the time, but the fucking condom had broken, and we were a little freaked out. Colleen slipped on the rocks and I broke her fall.”
“That’s why you left and broke up?”
“That’s why I left. We didn’t break up. We planned to stay together long distance. I wanted her to transfer to Connecticut to be near me. She was thinking about it until she found out she was pregnant. The stubborn woman then got it into her head that she needed to shoulder that burden alone so that I wouldn’t give up my dream of playing ball.”
Callan raises an eyebrow. “If given the choice…”
“I would have been a father to my daughter and said fuck it to everything else.”
“Yeah, that sounds more like you.”
Teyler shakes his head then takes a pull from the beer that has been sitting on the table next to the sofa. “So, you’re buying the castle?”
“Yup.”
“And what is our new mayor forcing you to do?”
“Oh, wait until I tell you that fucking story.”
13
1994
Falls Village, Maine
“You okay, sweetie?” Dorothy Hamilton asked Colleen.
Colleen shrugged her shoulders, then bent down to pick up the mess her young daughter had made on the carpet. “I guess. It sucks when everyone is home for break then leaves again.”
“I know, honey. But you know you could take classes here or I could help with Taylor for a while if you wanted to think about going…”
“I’m not leaving her to go to school like she doesn’t exist.”
“No, but you let him.” Dorothy raised her chin at the college basketball game on the screen.
Taylor is only a toddler, yet as she stood next to the screen, her daddy running up and down the court, there was no mistaking that she was his.
“That’s different, and it’s my decision to make.”
“I’ll say this till the day I die, it is your choice, but it’s the wrong one. One day, she will ask about her daddy and she’ll blame you for keeping them apart.”
“I’ll deal with that then.” Then changing the subject Colleen asked, “Did Georgia fix the mix-up with her books?”
Dorothy rolled her eyes at her daughter’s attempt to avoid the uncomfortable truth, shook her head in response, then picked up her granddaughter and took her for a much-needed nap.
Colleen sank into the sofa and sighed when she felt the cushions sink because of her increasing weight, the legs of the furniture groaning as she moved to get comfortable. Not that she knew what that was anymore. She’d felt fat and unsure in her skin when she’d been graduating from high school and had met a boy who turned her world upside down. Now she truly was overweight and didn’t know what to do.
Colleen had gained forty-five pounds with her pregnancy because she’d been depressed and had refused to leave the house for most of the twenty-four weeks that she couldn’t hide the fact that she was carrying a child she’d conceived without wanting to.
Colleen had had a pretty easy pregnancy. Her morning sickness didn’t last long into her pregnancy. By her second trimester she waited for the physical exhaustion to kick in so she could use it as an excuse to remain in her bed. But that hadn’t come until her final week carrying her daughter. Her sister, Georgia, had made her stay as active as she could, but it was her senior year at The Maritime Academy, and she’d been busy. So, whenever Georgia wasn’t around, Colleen overindulged in candy, ice cream, pasta, sweets, chips, and snacks.
Working with Dorothy at the saltwater taffy and fudge shop hadn’t helped either. Colleen had thrown herself into the shop and started researching new recipes. She tried them out and licked the spoon a little too often. Now here she was with a toddler and the baby weight she’d gained with her and then some.
She decided she owed her daughter at least the advantages of breastfeeding so she convinced herself the overeating was necessary for her daughter’s health.
“Another three from Walker!” the announcer on the television cheered. “That boy is hot tonight. What’s that? His fifth? Villanova can’t stop him.”
Colleen groaned and wondered who he’d be getting hot and heavy with later tonight. She knew he wasn’t living like a monk while also a star athlete on campus.
Then she watched as Teyler looked directly into the camera and licked his lips. The up-close shot they captured of him every time his habit showed up, sent a shiver through her system. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear he was thinking of her every time he licked those plump lips of his.
She glanced down at her belly, still soft and flabby, even though she’d had more than enough time to get back into some semblance of shape after Taylor’s birth. Miles, her brother, sent her a treadmill, his first big purchase after graduating. Colleen uses it to hang her clothes to dry.
Time passed slowly for Colleen. She felt alone and isolated from her friends and the rest of the world. When her friends returned to Falls Village, Dorothy told her to go out, but Colleen brushed the offer away.
By spring break of what should have been the end of her second year of school, Diana and Kim plotted to get her out of her funk. Diana thought hearing about Teyler would do the trick. She’d held off for a year, but thought it was time for Colleen to move on and find a life for herself.
“I have something to tell you,” Diana said, chomping on a piece of fudge as she sat at the counter at the shop with Kim next to her on a stool. “I wanted to tell you last year, but we agreed you weren’t ready.”
“Coll, you need to listen to us. You need a life. You’re only twenty and you’re living like you’re forty,” Kim said.
Colleen put her third piece of fudge down before taking a bite and raised her eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” Diana said. “I, ah…I saw Teyler last year at UConn.”
“What? And you didn’t tell me? Did you tell him about Taylor?”
“Jesus! Coll, I would never do that to you. But, um…I think you should move on.”
“Excuse me? I’m not sitting here waiting for him to come back and sweep me off my feet. Not even Teyler is that strong.”
“Don’t do that,” Kim warns. “I hate when you put yourself down. If you don’t like the way you look, do something about it.”
She used to. Colleen remembers starving herself and making herself vomit the meals she’d allow herself to enjoy. She didn’t care enough to do that anymore. She was tired of fighting the battle of her weight, and what did it matter now? She wasn’t looking for a relationship.