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Callum was worried. He and Nerea had woken up to an email from Jamie with his flight information; he’d be landing just before noon. Which made today a busy one for arrivals, as Thom was due to arrive that morning and Piper was getting in later that afternoon.
Callum had wondered for some time what would happen when Jamie told his parents about the three of them, but he had assumed things would be more or less all right when that eventually came to pass. Jamie’s parents, from everything he knew, seemed like reasonable people who loved their children. But Jamie fleeing home in tears right before Christmas seemed like an unmitigated disaster. Whatever was going on was more serious than when Jamie stormed out of their flat after Nerea’s gallery opening.
Nerea was uneasy too, which unnerved Callum, if possible, more. While Callum tidied the living room and his study, she checked her mobile every five minutes, as if waiting for a call or a text even though Jamie was surely in the air by now. Nerea was the calm one, the one who didn’t overreact. If she was worried, things with Jamie and his family might be very bad indeed.
Thom arrived before breakfast. He had taken the earliest possible flight and, having flatly refused to be picked up at the airport, rented a car to drive over to the house. He’d declared he didn’t want to be carless while sharing the house with a horde of people, most of whom he neither knew nor spoke the same language as. Callum, once a stranger here too, could hardly blame him for wanting to be secure of the means of occasional escape.
Callum met Thom in the driveway to say hello and show him where he could park so he wouldn’t get blocked in by later arrivals. Thom looked tired and also worried, more so than would be justified by traveling during the holiday season.
“What’s wrong?” Callum asked, after they’d exchanged a brief hug.
“Nothing,” Thom said dismissively.
It was rude to pry, Callum decided. Perhaps something had happened with Katherine. And if nothing else Thom was allowed to feel less than in top form for his first holiday season following his divorce. Still, as Callum led Thom into the house, he couldn’t shake the sense that something else was off. He’d known Thom all through the bitterness and misery of the divorce proceedings. This mood now didn’t feel like that.
Callum tried to push the nagging worry to the back of his mind. He had enough else to fret over.
Nerea was waiting for them in the living room. “You’re first, so you get the pick of the guestrooms,” she told Thom as she hugged him hello.
“Any room but the one Jamie had last time.”
Nerea laughed. “Deal.” She seemed to sense that something was wrong with Thom, too, because she shot Callum a worried, questioning glance while she took Thom’s coat to hang it up. Callum shrugged and shook his head.
“Are you okay, Thom?” Nerea asked.
Thom nodded.
“Really okay?” Nerea pressed.
“Yes, of course. Why do you keep asking?”
“Because you look terrible,” Nerea said bluntly.
Thom did chuckle at that, but said nothing about whatever it was that was bothering him. Callum thought about pressing further, but suspected that if Nerea couldn’t get the matter out of him, no one could. Once Thom got settled, he ate breakfast with them in the kitchen which was already under siege with preparations for the upcoming wedding and holiday.
Callum felt overwhelmed by the chaos and had no idea how Nerea didn’t. Crates of pine boughs were stacked in a corner with spools of gold ribbon balanced precariously on top. The island was piled with provisions for everything that needed to be baked or cooked that wasn’t coming in from Antonio’s company. And one half of the big kitchen table was covered with candles, pine cones, and yet more winter greenery for the centerpieces
After breakfast Callum wandered around looking for his keys so he could go to the airport to pick Jamie up. Thom tailed him, chattering about nothing, which seemed like an improvement. Callum had originally considered having Thom wait at the airport and drive Jamie over himself, but whatever Jamie’s current circumstances were had precluded that.
“When does everyone else get in?” Thom asked as Callum opened the hall closet so he could dig through the pockets of various coats.
“Jamie’ll be here as soon as I can get him back from the airport. Leigh and Sam don’t get here ’til tomorrow, because they’re taking the ferry over and then driving.” No keys in the closet; Callum went back to the living room to look around. “Piper’s getting here this afternoon. As for the rest of the relations and friends, I have no idea. Nerea has a spreadsheet. I think. I don’t even remember who’s staying with us.”
“Ah. Can I talk to you then? Thom asked, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders uncharacteristically slouched. Something was definitely going on with him.
“Sure,” Callum told the sofa as he shifted cushions. “Ahah! There they are. I’m going to get Jamie now, come take a ride with me?” Maybe he could get Thom to spill the matter on the drive out.
“Ah. No. No, thanks,” Thom put his hands up and took a step back. “That’s okay.”
“We’re not going to pull off the side of the road and have sex in the car,” Callum said.
“Not actually my concern.”
“What is it, then? Come on, or Nerea’s going to put you to work.”
“That’s okay, I should help out anyway, since you two are putting me up and everything.” Thom continued to back out of the room.
Callum, puzzled and worried, watched him go and then turned to find his sunglasses.
* * *
AFTER MAKING THE DRIVE to and from the airport twenty times a year for more than two decades, the road and the scenery were excessively familiar to Callum. When he arrived in Spain and was driving to the house, it was his favorite road in the world. Other days, when he was leaving again, he hated it. Today, with dry roads, not too much sun, and the prospect of seeing Jamie at the end of it, the drive was a pleasant one. Even taking into account Jamie’s distress and his adjusted timetable. Callum was confident they could work out whatever needed to be worked out. In the meantime he was not going to complain about getting a few more days’ worth of Jamie.
He started to reconsider that opinion when Jamie appeared at the international arrivals exit, dragging his suitcase behind him. He had sunglasses on. Callum was about to tell him to take them off — it had clouded over and there was nothing so attention-catching as huge sunglasses in an airport — when Jamie took them off himself, folded them carefully, and hooked them in the collar of his shirt. His eyes were very red.
“Can we go home?” Jamie said, making no move to hug or otherwise greet Callum.
“Okay,” Callum said and reached for Jamie’s suitcase. He didn’t react — out loud — to Jamie’s use of the word home.
They drove for half an hour in silence before Jamie started crying. Without saying anything, Callum pulled over to the side of the road, under a stand of bare trees. As soon as his hands were no longer occupied with driving, Jamie fumbled off his seat belt and buried his face in Callum’s shoulder. Callum stroked the back of his neck and murmured comforting nothings in his ear until Jamie’s breathing evened out and he straightened back up.
“That bad?” Callum asked. He leaned over Jamie to pull open the glove compartment and fish out a packet of tissues to press into Jamie’s hands.
Jamie scrubbed one of the clean, if crumpled, tissues over his eyes and blew his nose. “I have never had a row like that with my parents.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Will it change anything?”
“Sometimes talking helps.”
Jamie gave a noise that was probably supposed to be a snort but came out more as a sniffly squelch. He blew his nose again. “There was yelling.”
“They didn’t take it so well,” Callum surmised. Jamie had said as much before.
Jamie shook his head. “I thought it was getting better, that Mum was starting to listen to me. But then — I don’t know, maybe I said something I shouldn’t have, maybe she totally freaked out, but next thing I knew we were just yelling at each other. And Dad didn’t say anything, which — that’s how we always knew we were in deep with him when we were kids. I stalked off to my room to call you before I really said something I regretted and now I’m here. In Spain. And I won’t be home for Christmas, which was the plan, but not like this. And....” His voice trailed off.
Callum’s hands tensed in his lap. He didn’t want to imagine what could follow that and.
“My little sister’s getting married,” Jamie said so softly Callum had to strain to hear him. “I’m worried I won’t be at the wedding. And — you don’t have to say anything to this, I’m not asking for anything — I’m worried I’ll never get married myself.”
Callum was terribly, guiltily glad Jamie had said he didn’t have to say anything. Because what was there to say to that? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He reached out and took Jamie’s hand in his instead. Jamie clung with a frightened strength.
“Your family’s reaction isn’t your fault,” Callum said.
“No,” Jamie said. “But I should have handled it better, should have told them sooner. How am I ever going talk to them again? I just packed up my stuff and left.”
“You did that to us and we’re still talking to you,” Callum said.
Jamie gave him a doleful look.
“Okay. Bad example,” Callum admitted. Even if — and he wasn’t going to say this to Jamie, not in this state — it was probably a fair one.
“I’m okay,” Jamie said. “You can keep driving.”
Callum nodded, put the car back in gear, and pulled back onto the road. Next to him, Jamie belatedly pulled his seat belt back on.
“How did your parents react?” Jamie asked after a few moments. “To the news that you and Nerea — you know?”
“Were dating, or were poly?”
“The second one.”
“We’ve never actually had that conversation. Can you imagine? Talking about feelings and personal lives? Terribly un-British.”
Jamie cracked a smile. Callum counted it a victory.
“Nerea’s parents, though — I’m not sure what they were most angry about. That I’d gotten her pregnant before I married her, that I was English, or that we were both still seeing other people. The end of her university career was also not appreciated. She tried, but the circumstances were too chaotic.”
“She was pregnant before you were married?”
“Oh yes. It’s why everything happened so quickly. There was respectability to be maintained,” Callum said dryly.
Jamie’s mouth started to twitch up at the corners. “You had a shotgun wedding!”
“No, we didn’t,” Callum protested.
Jamie was grinning full out now. “Yes, you did. Oh my God. Why doesn’t anyone know this?”
“The internet wasn’t around back then, and it can’t do math now.” It was Callum’s turn to be sulky, or at least act sulky, because it seemed to make Jamie smile. “What happened was, I told her I’d marry her. She said that was lovely. And told me exactly what she was going to expect of me, regardless of our marital status. If I hadn’t been head over heels in love with her already, I would have been then.”
“Wow,” Jamie said.
“Mhmm. Mind, I broke most of those promises within a year. Except for the ones about financial stability and sexual freedom.”
“Has Nerea forgiven you for that yet?”
Callum sighed. He was glad to hold Jamie’s hand for this conversation and also glad he didn’t have to look at him while he admitted these things. The countryside spread out before them, brown and green and gold in the winter light. The road was busy with holiday travelers. Callum tried to imagine a life without these things — without Spain and Nerea and the home they’d built together — and couldn’t. The mere prospect was bleak and terrifying.
“I’m not sure she ever will,” he said. “I don’t want you, or anyone else, to get the wrong idea. I didn’t introduce her to polyamory, because the fact is I happen to be made of relationship failure, or I was for a long time. I was sleeping around and behaving terribly while she was a woman with complex relationships and a lot to teach me.”
“Don’t shame yourself,” Jamie said.
“I’m not ashamed of what I was doing, just how I was doing it,” Callum clarified. “And frankly, I was talking foolish risks.”
“Huh?” Jamie shook his head as if to clear it.
“It was the eighties.”
“Oh. Shit. Sorry.”
Callum shrugged. What else was there to say about that?
“But you and Nerea are happy together, right?” Jamie frowned like he was trying to puzzle that out. “You didn’t marry her because you were scared.”
“I’ve never been scared enough of anything,” Callum said. “We’re together because we’re together. And very happy. And we were then, too. Our marriage has never been bad, although there were rough patches.”
“What kind of rough patches?” Jamie asked, half curious and half wary.
Callum sighed. There was no better illustration of the point than the argument that had followed the wedding when the girls were little. He was ashamed to relate his dreadful behavior to Jamie, but Jamie deserved to know the bad of his history as well as the good.
Jamie listened without interruption.
“I had to learn to be more responsible and more present,” Callum said once he’d retold the story. “And the credit goes to Nerea for giving me the chance to learn how to do both of those things. It’s part of why you running here, as delighted as I am to get my hands on you, worries us. Well, me. Nerea too, but I won’t speak for her. You can’t solve problems where you aren’t.”
“I also can’t solve problems if no one is listening to me,” Jamie said.
“Here’s the thing,” Callum said with a reassuring squeeze to Jamie’s hand. This boy was wonderful and wanted to do everything so right. But he was going to have to learn how to fix situations when he made royal messes of them. Callum had taken far too long to absorb that lesson himself, but maybe he could save Jamie a few decades of pain and regret. If so, Callum’s own screw-ups might have been worth it. At least a little.
“You’re going to hate this,” Callum continued, “but no one is obligated to listen to you. Which is something it’s going to get harder and harder for you to remember, the older you get and the more successful you are. You let your parents know what is happening in your life, you remind them you’re willing to discuss any questions they have, and you stay in touch so they realize you’re the same person you were yesterday, just maybe a little more mature.”
“Do you think it would help if my parents met you?”
“Right now — and I say this as a man with three daughters who tries not to be a boorish, archaic, misogynist twit but sometimes is — probably not. I’ve spent time hating everyone my kids have dated. If your parents are uncomfortable with your relationships, they’re uncomfortable,” Callum said honestly. “But you know them, and I don’t.”
Jamie shrugged. “The only thing I know is that I don’t want to lose any of you. You and Nerea or my family.”
“I can’t promise you that’s going to be possible,” Callum said, because a life of poly had taught him that keeping everyone happy was never guaranteed. “But don’t put off calling home again. It’ll only make things harder in the long run.”