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“Liz is big on picnics,” he laughed. “Or at least she’s big on getting me and the kids out of the house for a few hours during lunchtime.”
I smiled at this, certain his instincts on Liz and her ulterior motives were entirely correct. He smiled back, and I took him up on his offer to settle onto the blanket. Callum took the spot next to me and I felt the strange tension between us. To anyone in the park, we looked like a happy couple enjoying the final minutes of daytime as the fireflies emerged across the field. They had no way of knowing I saw this, instead, as a potential final goodbye.
28
CALLUM
“So ... you were going to tell me about how I abandoned you?”
Darcy’s words were accusatory, and I couldn’t blame her. Hearing her talk about how she thought I picked up and left her all those years ago was bringing a whole new understanding to some of the things she had said to me. And it certainly explained her text. I had always thought she knew what I tried to do for her all those years ago. But now I wasn’t so sure.
“I never knew why you left,” I told her. But then I started again. I needed to explain things from the beginning. “I wasn’t trying to abandon you. I left because I was going onstage.”
“Onstage?” I could tell she was being cautious. She wasn’t sure what to believe anymore, and I knew I couldn’t blame her for that.
“Do you remember the band? They were a group from town who did lots of covers of the most popular classic rock songs, but they had a few originals here and there. They were only a few years older than me and they went through our high school.”
“I remember,” Darcy nodded. “I think they played at my senior prom.”
“Probably,” I laughed. “The high school was always eager to jump onto their star, even if they were only a mildly successful band playing shows at the local park.”
“I take it you’re speaking from experience?”
I smiled as Darcy picked up on my annoyance toward the school.
“They call me every year to ask me if I want to put my name on the gym or a softball field. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell them I hated that place.”
“Hated it?” Darcy looked over with a questioning look. “You were always so popular!”
“Really?” For a moment I thought Darcy might be joking. “It certainly never felt that way. I don’t think I really understood who I was until I started focusing on music in college and met my bandmates. Popular, huh?”
Darcy shrugged as she looked at me sideways.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” she mumbled.
We shared a smile, and for a moment I forgot what we were talking about. I wanted to live in the simplicity of that moment. But I forced myself to stay on track.
“Anyway, the band. I knew them a little because they graduated a few years ahead of me. And I had seen enough of their shows around town that they would recognize me and sometimes let me hang out with them.”
“So you got caught up saying hello to them? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“Not at all,” I assured her. “But I did leave to meet up with them.”
Darcy looked over at me with a furrowed brow, skepticism clear on her face. I took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. I was starting to realize what it meant if Darcy had left when she said she did. It was like the pieces were fitting together to solve a mystery.
“You really left before the band came back? You didn’t see them start playing again?”
“No!” Darcy said. I sensed the frustration in her voice. “I came back from the bathroom and saw you had left. And I was way too humiliated to sit on that blanket by myself with everyone staring at me! So I called Liz and walked to the parking lot and then just kept walking. She picked me up at the gas station on the corner.”
I shook my head, taking all of this in.
“All this time I thought you knew!” I spoke quietly, more to myself than to her, but Darcy was running out of patience.
“Will you tell me what’s going on?”
“I did leave the audience that night, but it wasn’t because I didn’t like you. Instead, it was because I got up onstage to play a song. I had convinced the band to let me kick off the second half.”
“You played that night?”
