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I felt like a wide-eyed child again, listening to him talk about his art and his travels. “How old were you?”
“Fresh out of college, so… twenty-two? Twenty-three? A couple of years younger than you.”
Younger than I was, and already he had lived so much more than I had. I didn’t regret Fern. I adored her. But it reminded me of the mistake that I had made, and the consequences that had come with it.
I shoved those thoughts away. I wanted to be somewhat positive, damn it. I didn’t want to let the night be ruined by my own melancholy, self-deprecating whispers. “How long were you traveling?”
Cal hummed in thought. “About four years, all told. I got to the bottom of South America, decided I was freezing, got a job on a cruise ship and hopped all over the Caribbean, went to Europe, down through Africa, decided I hated the heat and went back up to Russia, the Middle East, India… all through Asia, finished up with Australia and island-hopping until I was in Hawaii and working at a hotel there.”
He’d done so much, experienced so much already. God, no wonder I had been such a child to him. Was I still like a child to him? It felt like in the realm of my own experiences, I had done so little, experienced so little, and how was I supposed to compete with that?
“The whole reason the series came about, actually,” Cal said, and I was so grateful that he was just continuing to speak, so glad that I didn’t have to fight through all the frustration with myself that I was experiencing, “is that I was working, and so I was painting at odd hours, whenever I could find the time, and a lot of the time that was at night.
“And I really found that I… I loved cities at night. In the daytime you really get to feel the individuality of the city. You get to see how that city is different from every other. But at night… cities all look the same. In a good way, though. Like you’re a part of the same… dreamland. All the harsh edges, the sharp lines, they’ve been softened. You can’t see the trash in the gutter anymore, you can only see the warm lights in the windows. And it’s unifying, because it’s the same no matter what city you’re in, so it’s almost like the whole world is one big city, and you’re all connected.
“So I did that series, I painted the skyline of each city at night, and actually, when you hold up each painting next to each other they flow together into one big painting so that it looks like one city, together, united. I thought it was a good way to express how I was feeling about it all without being too heavy handed.”
“I think you succeeded.” Cal glanced at me in surprise, and I smiled. “I really felt that, when looking at the paintings all together. I thought, wow, it really is just like one home, isn’t it? But it’s also all so different, and that’s wonderful too.”
Cal nodded, looking pleased. “I’m glad that you thought of it that way. I always valued your opinions on my artwork. I didn’t realize how much until you were gone.”
I hadn’t known that. “Why would you?” I blurted out, before I could retreat back behind my shell again. “I was just… a child. And I hadn’t done nearly all the things that you’d done. I hadn’t traveled literally everywhere in the world, forging my own path.”
Cal startled a little at that. “Is that what you think of yourself?”
I shrugged, then gestured out at the city. “This place might look, at night, like it could be Paris or Mumbai, but it’s just Nashville.”
“Nashville’s not too bad a place. It’s got a huge music scene. I loved visiting here when I was younger.”
“To visit, maybe, but it’s no Rome, Cal. What have I done with my life compared to yours?”
Cal stopped walking. “You’ve raised an entire human being, Maggie. That’s amazing. It’s a feat that I couldn’t have done all by myself. I want to try being your partner in raising her but you’ve already tackled the first four years alone, and those are some tough years. Your adventure is different but no less important than mine.”
He paused. “And if you wanted, I could always… I’d love to show you, some of those places. If you would let me.”
It was the sort of thing that I had imagined but never hoped that Cal would say to me. It sounded like the future—like he was actively thinking not just about how much he wanted me in the moment, but how he wanted me in his life, and in a permanent, long-lasting kind of way. If I hadn’t known better I would’ve pinched myself to check that I wasn’t actually dreaming this entire thing up.
