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Nerea spent too long getting ready for her lunch with Tonio. So long, in fact, that she was nearly late and definitely out of breath when she finally met him at the appointed café.
It hadn’t been nerves, exactly, that had made it impossible to choose a dress to wear — not one Callum liked too much, not one he didn’t like, not one that looked like she’d gone to a lot of effort, and not one that was so sexy the village gossips would accuse her of stepping out on her husband. Because that was absolutely not what this lunch was about. But there was no chapter in the manual of life that specified how to dress to have lunch with a former lover in order to invite him to her daughter’s wedding.
“Tell me your news?” Tonio said after they’d been seated in the sun on the patio.
Nerea liked this place and was grateful for its rare newness in the valley of ancient villages in which they both lived. The buildings, the dust on the street, the golden afternoon sunshine of spring, even the bright blue of the sky — all of it carried the weight of age. But this café hadn’t existed when they were dating, and that made things easier now. The past could be a heavy thing to carry.
Nerea forced herself not to fidget with her silverware. “Devon’s getting married.”
“Oh!” Tonio’s smile was broad and, oddly, relieved. “That’s good news. Congratulations to her. Who’s the lucky boy?”
“Miguel García Serrano.”
“Ahh, he’s a good young man. They’ll be happy together.”
“That is the plan.”
“I have to say,” Tonio said, rolling a water glass between his hands. “That’s not the news I was expecting you to share.”
Nerea tilted her head. “What did you expect?”
“To be honest? I thought you were going to tell me you and Callum were getting a divorce.”
“What, no!” Nerea didn’t laugh. Of all their acquaintances, Tonio was probably the only one who had any reason to come to such a conclusion, and she couldn’t say he was entirely unreasonable. But he was wrong. “No. Devon wants you to come to the wedding, and I didn’t want you to find out just from an invitation in the mail.”
“Only Devon wants me to come to the wedding?” Tonio asked carefully.
“I would also like you to be there.”
“And Callum?”
“Callum will be fine with it.”
“But he’s not fine now,” Tonio clarified. This was not a skill either of them had possessed — the ability to check in on everyone’s wants and desires and comforts, asking the uncomfortable but necessary questions — back when they had needed it. But they had it now, long past the time it would have been useful.
“No, I think he is. How he feels beyond fine, I’m not sure yet.”
“And therein lies the problem.”
Nerea nodded, though it hadn’t been a question. She and Callum were a united front against the rest of the world, but she had never been able to be anything but frank with Tonio.
“Also, we’d like to hire your company to take care of food and tables and chairs, and I wanted to avoid any potential awkwardness in that regard.”
Tonio waved that concern away with a flick of his hand. “And what about what you want?”
There was something in his tone that made the years instantly roll back. Like her, Tonio was older now, but Nerea could still see the young man he had once been. His dark eyes still sparkled in the sun; his hair was going a little silver at the temples but it was otherwise as black and as thick as it ever had been. Time had deepened the smile lines around his eyes and mouth, but it looked well on him. Life had been good to Tonio. If the thought made Nerea wistful, it also made her glad; she had been in love with him once and had never so much stopped loving him as stopped being able to do anything about it.
“Are you disappointed I’m not getting divorced?” she asked, somewhere between playful and sharp.
Tonio shook his head fiercely. “No! No. I’m relieved. I’ve been worried since you called me. He and I never...well. You were happy together, you and him. And fought hard for it. I would have hated to think that had fallen apart.”
“Thankfully it hasn’t.” Nerea smiled tightly, every fiber of her being torn between awkwardness and grace. “How is Augustina? And your girls?”
“They’re well.” That cautious smile again. “Augustina told me to say hello.”
“The same to her.”
Tonio nodded in acknowledgment. So far as Nerea knew, he and his wife weren’t polyamorous. It made Nerea feel better to know that after her Tonio had decided managing multiple relationships with multiple partners wasn’t something he wanted to do or was even capable of. If he had wanted it or managed it, Nerea knew she would have been jealous to not be a part of that. She didn't know what to do with that knowledge, but as it was, she could simply be happy that he was happy.
“You look good,” Tonio said, resting his chin in his hand.
“You’re supposed to say that when we first sit down, not twenty minutes into the conversation.” Nerea glanced down at the aqua colored dress she had spent so much time selecting.
“I didn’t know if you’d mind.”
“I don’t know if I mind either,” she admitted as her eyes met his again. “But it is nice to see you. I would have enjoyed these last years— ”
“Decades — ”
“Years — if we could have had lunch more often.”
“That’s hardly on my head,” he said.
Nerea let it pass. The battle of who to blame wasn’t worth fighting just to invite him to her daughter’s wedding. “Devon’s not the only news,” she said. A topic change would do them both good.
“Oh?”
“Leigh’s pregnant.” Nerea couldn’t help the way her heart fluttered as his face broke into a grin.
“You do have a lot of good things going on. That’s wonderful," Tonio said. "Congratulations to her.”
“I’m going to be a grandmother,” she said somewhat ruefully.
“Not congratulations then on the part that makes you feel old.”
Nerea was about to tease Tonio about his own age. Instead, she frowned as her mobile rang. She dug in her purse. “It’s Callum,” she said, not apologetic, but slightly embarrassed. Her husband always had the worst timing. “Do you mind?”
Tonio waved his hand to indicate that he didn’t, but he looked away, his eyes fixed on the middle distance. Awkward didn’t begin to cover it.
She answered the call in Spanish out of habit. Callum responded in kind, but then switched to English. Nerea laughed as the reason became apparent.
“I have some company that wants to check in with you,” Callum said, his voice playful and still half-stuck in what she recognized as his seduction mode. “I hope this isn’t a bad time.”
“It’s never a bad time for you,” Nerea said, also in English, rolling her eyes a little. The English wouldn’t give her much privacy — Tonio could certainly follow a conversation — but it would cut down on eavesdroppers to this ridiculousness. “I’m having lunch with Tonio.”
“Oh...shit. How’s that going? Give him my regards?”
“Fine, and I’ll think about it. Now, who and what have you got there and are you going to put them on the phone?”
“It’s Jamie.”
“The Irish boy? From your movie?”
Callum had nattered on about the boy before, so it wasn’t entirely surprising, but Nerea hadn’t been aware he’d had any plans to move beyond gazing from afar. But then, Callum rarely planned to do anything with anyone who wasn’t her. It just seemed to happen.
“Mmmmmhmmm. He slept on our couch after insisting I take him out to dinner so he could ask me whether I’m bisexual.”
Nerea gaped. Tonio turned his attention back to her, his face cautiously curious.
“I assume the longer version of this story makes sense,” she said.
Callum chuckled, and Nerea closed her eyes in fondness for the complete bullshit of his bashful charm. “It does,” he said.
“Put him on the phone.” She looked over to Tonio and mouthed an apology. Tonio shrugged it off.
“Hi ma’am, this is Jamie,” said an unfamiliar voice with an Irish accent on the other end of the line.
Nerea had never so wished Callum had been in the room with her for such a call. Because ma’am? Really? She was torn between delight and horror. But the young man had manners, whatever the rest of the story was.
“Jamie,” she said warmly. “It’s nice to meet you, such that it is.”
“You too. Callum said he hadn’t talked to you about me yet, and before we did anything I wanted to talk. To you. And make sure you’re okay with it? Not that I think Callum’s not trustworthy or anything,” he added hastily.
“But, he doesn’t always seem to have the best judgment?”
“Well,” Jamie began but didn’t seem to know where to go from there.
“If you think that, you’re not wrong,” Nerea said.
She made a face at Tonio, whose own expression rested somewhere between wariness and amusement. He made a face back, though, and laughed softly when she winked at him.
Nerea returned her attention to the young man on the phone. “While I appreciate you calling me, he does have my blessing to sleep with you, if you want, but I’m in the middle of something. Although that’s no reason for you not to have some fun.”
“Uh. Thank you?” Jamie stammered. Nerea would have bet Callum had an arm around his waist and was kissing his neck. He had a very specific move for people he wanted to get off the phone.
“You’re quite welcome. But I really am at a lunch you’ve just made a little more awkward,” she said with another rueful glance at Tonio, who was now laughing outright. “So tell him I love him, and he can tell me all about you later, yes?”
Jamie’s response was composed of incoherent syllables.
Nerea laughed. “Have fun. Give him a kiss for me somewhere filthy.”
She clicked off the line and dropped her mobile in her bag. Then she fixed her smile on Tonio. “I am sorry about that.”
“You’re not. And if I didn’t think Callum was a mess, I’d think you two planned that.”
“We didn’t. I promise.” Nerea hesitated, then put her hand over Tonio’s on the table. “But will you come to the wedding? I think we’d all like you there.”
“Even Callum?”
“He may have no idea how to have a conversation with you, but you’re a good man and were a good man to our girls. He knows that.”
“What would you say if I said I need to think about it?” Tonio asked.
“I’d say that I understand, but that I’d like you to do this for me. And for Devon.” Nerea was very good at making points non-negotiable.