The Art of Three
The Art of Three
Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese
Published by Avian30, 2017.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE ART OF THREE
First edition. March 28, 2017.
Copyright © 2017 Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese.
ISBN: 978-1946192028
Written by Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese.
Also by Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese
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The Art of Three
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
The Art of Three
Chapter 1 - Jamie forgets about something very important
Chapter 2 - Callum solves everyone’s problems but his own
Chapter 3 - Nerea finds a way to irritate all her children
Chapter 4 - Jamie somehow makes it to Ireland
Chapter 5 - Callum makes decisions he probably shouldn’t
Chapter 6 - Nerea deals with her past, or tries to
Chapter 7 - Jamie spends an entire weekend with Callum in bed
Chapter 8 - Callum has an uncomfortable conversation with his daughter
Chapter 9 - Nerea gets yet another surprise
Chapter 10 - Jamie meets Nerea Espinosa de Los Monteros Nessim
Chapter 11 - Callum realizes his wife and his boyfriend have hit it off really well
Chapter 12 - Nerea, as usual, is excessively good at communication
Chapter 13 - Jamie talks to his family, but leaves out some key details
Chapter 14 - Callum makes an effort to spend time with people he’s not sleeping with
Chapter 15 - Nerea leaves for Spain with Jamie
Chapter 16 - Jamie plays house
Chapter 17 - Callum restrains himself for a change
Chapter 18 - Nerea scandalizes the neighbors
Chapter 19 - Jamie does his research
Chapter 20 - Callum realizes there are some conversations they should have had sooner
Chapter 21 - Nerea deals with a very worried Callum
Chapter 22 - Jamie takes a walk
Chapter 23 - Callum tries to make things right
Chapter 24 - Nerea plans a wedding
Chapter 25 - Jamie tells his parents everything
Chapter 26 - Callum offers Jamie some advice
Chapter 27 - Nerea hears an unexpected confession
Chapter 28 - Jamie finds an ally
Chapter 29 - Callum definitely didn’t see this coming
Chapter 30 - Nerea sends Jamie on an errand
Chapter 31 - Jamie gets lost
Chapter 32 - Callum manages to be an adult, surprising no one so much as himself
Chapter 33 - Nerea is grateful for drama that does not involve her
Chapter 34 - Jamie has an idea
Chapter 35 - Callum continues to be an adult, which continues to be surprising
Chapter 36 - Nerea attempts to mother from a healthy distance
Chapter 37 - Jamie makes a phone call
Also By Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese
A woman’s life is not defined by what is enough.
Chapter 1 - Jamie forgets about something very important
“How did you forget about the referendum?” Callum asked Jamie, clearly aghast. The two of them had finished a scene and were waiting while the crew set up the next shot.
Jamie was torn between trying not to die of embarrassment and wondering how his twenty-four-year-old life had come to this. He was sitting on the set of a film — in which he was starring — and next to him was movie star and heartthrob-to-middle-aged-women-everywhere, Callum Griffith-Davies. Their seats were tucked to one side of the set, out of the way of the bustling technicians and production assistants who scurried about doing the heavy lifting of making movie magic.
Embarrassment won out. Jamie moaned and sank his fingers into the hair his agent liked to call auburn but in reality was simply a plain brown.
“I’ve been kind of busy,” he said with a little tug of frustration. There was never enough privacy on film sets, but Jamie could not contain his emotions. Not about the vote, not about his own sense of haplessness, and, possibly, not even about his fairly awkward crush on Callum.
Jamie was two years out of drama school and starring in his first feature film. His co-stars were actors so famous he hadn't been sure they were real people until he’d met them. Callum, who was the most famous of the lot, was calm, well put-together, and aggressively genial in addition to being unfairly attractive. The look Callum was giving Jamie suggested he would never forget about something as important as the Irish marriage referendum.
“Don’t yell at me, okay? My mum already took care of that.” Jamie meant it as a joke but hunched his shoulders in shame nonetheless.
“Your mother yelled at you?” Callum stretched his arm across the back of Jamie’s chair. A casual gesture, surely, and one of fondness between work colleagues who liked each other, but it was the sort of thing he did constantly. Jamie felt off balance in the face of it. Having a crush from afar was one thing. Having a crush on someone who touched with easy fondness was utter misery.
Jamie nodded morosely. “She called and asked when I was coming home. Said that if she’s going to be perfectly okay with her equal opportunity son that she loses ridiculous amounts of sleep over, I am going to do my civic duty.”
“Can’t you catch a flight up Thursday night?”
“Nope. I’m working that day like everyone else here.” Jamie gestured at the dozens of crew members. “There’s no way I’m going be able to get home. What if it loses by just one vote?”
“It’s supposed to pass, you know. Comfortably.” Callum was relaxed, nearly disinterested, which only piqued Jamie’s interest further. He could make out the faintest hint of gray coming in at the roots of Callum’s otherwise light brown hair and loved that proof that the older man was human after all. Not only did he age like anyone else, he was vain enough to hide the fact.
Callum’s mobile rang in his shirt pocket, and he fumbled to silence it. Nearby, a tech flicked a key light on. Jamie watched as the illumination caught Callum’s profile and brought out the rich hazel color of his eyes. He really was magnificent, leonine almost. He’d fascinated Jamie from their first meeting. Jamie had been hard pressed to look away since.
Aware that he’d gone too long without saying anything, Jamie struggled to recapture the thread of their conversation. “If everyone who isn’t awful turns up to vote,” he said. “But if you’re not awful and you’ve any sense, you’ve left Ireland, and you’re no
t going back. I mean, I’ve got mates flying back in from Canada, and I can’t manage it from England. I have bollocksed this up. Royally and in a fashion unbecoming to my people.”
“How long are the polls open?” Callum asked, ignoring the fact that Jamie was nearly babbling.
Jamie shrugged. “’Til ten?”
“When do they open?”
“Not sure. Seven, I think. Why?”
Callum looked like he was considering something. His mobile rang again, and yet again he silenced it. He fixed Jamie with a keen eye.
“Who else on the crew is Irish, needs to get back, and hasn’t figured it out yet?”
“It’s not like we have a club,” Jamie said. “But, okay.” He ticked names off on his fingers. “Kate, from crafty. Mike, he’s a P.A. And Angela, I think, but she’s got a plan. I mean there are others, too, but seriously, it’s not like I have a list. I’d have to ask around.”
“Can you get them all together?”
“It’d take a while, but could do.”
Jamie had no idea what Callum was up to. He was about to ask when the man’s mobile rang a third time. Callum dug it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen, and then turned to look apologetically at him.
“Do you mind if I take this? Apparently, my wife is trying very hard to get in touch with me.”
Jamie waved him off. “Yeah, it’s fine.” On this set Callum was always the most important person in the room. If his wife was calling, he hardly needed Jamie’s permission to cut short their conversation.
While Callum took the call in a somewhat private corner of the set, Jamie made himself look at the floor, the cameras, the ceiling — anything other than the indecent lines of Callum’s shoulders. Staring at him was absolutely, positively not appropriate. Callum was his coworker. His A-list, decent, kind, and happily married coworker.
Jamie had never met Callum’s wife, Nerea, but he’d seen pictures of her here and there in the media. She was Spanish and as beautiful and as uninterested in the camera as Jamie expected of celebrity wives. She and Callum had three daughters, all of whom were older than Jamie. Not that Jamie spent excessive amounts of time looking up the details of Callum’s personal life on the internet. Really, he didn’t. Well, not anymore. But a year ago Jamie had just been a fan, and Callum had been one of those actors whose charming family holiday photos tended to turn up in Hello magazine.
Jamie pulled out his own mobile to text his mum so he wouldn’t be tempted to eavesdrop. Although any attempt to do so was rendered difficult by Callum conducting his side of the conversation entirely in Spanish. And wasn’t that completely, unfairly hot? Some days Jamie felt like he could barely manage English. The idea of being fluent in a second language was beyond him.
Hey. Maybe you won’t have to disown me. I might have a plan. He typed slowly and with great concentration. It was hard to focus. Aside from the general bustle of set, Callum seemed very excited about something.
Eventually Callum finished his call and returned. He beamed at Jamie, at the passing crew members, at the world at large, and said, “My daughter’s having a baby.”
“Oh my God!” Jamie was delighted for him. “Congratulations! How’s she doing?”
“She’s well,” Callum said, bouncing on his toes. Even with his broad six-foot-two frame he looked appealingly boyish.
“Is she telling people yet?” Jamie asked. “I mean, beside you and her mum and your random nosy co-stars?”
“Yes.” Callum frowned slightly in puzzlement. “Why?”
“So I can tell people.”
“Why would you want to do that?” Callum seemed mystified.
“Because a nice thing happened at work today? That has nothing to do with my inability to get myself home on my own?” Jamie grinned. “Also, you totally just lost your sex symbol status...granddad.”
Callum stared at him. For a moment, Jamie was terrified he had overstepped, but then the other man threw back his head and roared with laughter.
Chapter 2 - Callum solves everyone’s problems but his own
Having spent most of his adult life in the business, Callum had found that the trick to enduring long days on set was to have a life outside of filming. Which meant limiting his social time with the cast and crew and spending as much time as he could with his friends, family, and flings.
The flings, of course, he conducted within the agreements he and Nerea had for their extracurricular activities. Sometimes they were frequent; sometimes they were few and far between. At the moment Callum was only contemplating such a relationship, with a blue-eyed freckle-faced Irish boy too young for him by half.
Family was also difficult to come by presently. Nerea was at their home in Spain, having learned early in their marriage that her enjoyment of Callum’s life on set was inversely proportionate to her proximity to it. Their middle daughter, Devon, lived in Spain too, just half an hour away from Callum and Nerea’s house. Leigh, their eldest, and Piper, their youngest, both lived in London, but had their own busy schedules and complicated lives. Which made tonight a friend night.
Thom Abbot was Callum’s latest best friend. Callum went through best friends at the rate of one or two a decade, which was far better than the turnover rate on his lovers. They had met while working on a movie and they’d quickly bonded over odd films, obscure books, and the raw incompetence of their first-time director. Now, five years on, here they were at a gastropub of the sort that had recently been taking over London. Callum appreciated the food — few things were not improved by being fried in duck fat — but he appreciated the dim lighting and relative quiet even more.
“God, you’re getting old,” was Thom’s first response when Callum finally told him about Leigh.
Callum was working up to a clever retort when someone approached their table to nervously-yet-politely ask for a selfie. Callum winced but obliged.
Thom waited until the fan had gone to give a heavy sigh. “This is ridiculous,” he complained. “How am I supposed to mope with your good news and all your groupies around?”
“They’re not groupies; they’re not my fault; and it was only one,” Callum replied.
“That’s how it starts.” Thom toyed with a chip. “And you love it.”
Callum started to protest, then gave up. Thom had half a point. “Not when I’m eating dinner. Or trying to have a conversation with you.”
Everyone Callum was close to teased him about being unable to go without human contact for twenty-four hours. No matter how often he denied the accusation, they weren’t wrong. Callum loved people: Their stories, their foibles, their failures. And yes, he adored their eyes on him. But just as much, he loved looking at them when they were engrossed in their own lives, unselfconscious and unaware. Even Thom, in the midst of a messy divorce that was incredibly awkward for their social circle, was fascinating to him. Sure, he’d been yo-yoing between clinginess and refusal to communicate for months, but Callum loved him all the same.
Thom was nearly as tall as Callum but rail-thin where Callum tended to broadness. Since the divorce process had started, Thom had kept his hair buzzed short to hide that he was rapidly going bald. Callum had wondered if Thom was mourning his marriage or trying to get laid again when he’d made the change, but didn’t have the heart to ask. Thom reminded him of the friends he’d had as a boy: Loyal, absurd, and desperately kind. Callum always enjoyed the time they spent together.
AFTER THEIR MEAL, THOM declared a need to escape any further groupie appearances and noted that his own place was far too pathetic and sad to hang out in now that Katherine had moved out. So they took a cab from the pub to Callum and Nerea’s pied-à-terre in Covent Garden. Callum was glad he had a late call the next day; it meant he and Thom could stay up as late as they wanted to talking.
Because Nerea and Callum properly made their home in Spain near Cortegada, the flat was tiny. They maintained it more to provide the comfort a hotel couldn’t when Callum was shooting or when he and Nerea wanted to spend a
few weeks in London. It was on the top floor of the building, under eaves which formed a ceiling Nerea found charmingly slanted and Callum found dangerous given the number of times he’d whacked his head on a low beam that ran above their bed.
The walls were eggshell white, the floors a bright hardwood, and all the textiles of the furniture and curtains were pleasant red and golden browns that echoed the brick of the exterior. The kitchen formed an odd L-shape perpendicular to the rest of the space and the tiny living area was almost entirely taken up by an armchair and a sofa. The bedroom, such as it was, was merely an alcove separated from the rest of the space by a heavy dark red curtain, insisted on and installed by Nerea herself. The layout allowed them to entertain without the awkwardness of having a bed in the middle of the space, but the flat had never truly been big enough for two grown people.
Callum fetched beers out of the cupboard and handed one to Thom. He had already stretched out on the sofa, his shoes off in deference to Nerea’s concern for the furniture.
“Tell me your woes.” Callum dropped into the squashy armchair wedged in between the sofa and the window.
“I’m forty-one years old. Divorce sucks. Being single sucks. Dating occasionally sucks, like how we can’t go to your club anymore because my brief affair with Eloise at reception was...brief.”
“Understatement. That was disastrous,” Callum added helpfully.
Thom gave him a wary glance. “When it doesn’t suck, it’s somewhat terrifying. But I’d guess you’d know that. About dating, I mean.”
Callum tipped his head to the side in a vague acknowledgment of Thom’s point. “Dating can be good,” he said. Honestly, anything that distracted Thom from his misery was a positive. Because Thom was supposed to help Callum with his periodic fits of misery. Which it was very hard for him to do when he was preoccupied with his own disaster of a life. Callum wasn’t comfortable with being the well-adjusted one amongst his friends.