Truly Madly Deeply: A Grumpy x Sunshine Romance (Forbidden Love Book 1)

“End of the Road”—Boyz II Men

Five Years Later

As it turned out, it was death that brought me back to Staindrop.

My father’s death to be exact.

“So, where did y’all bury Artem?” Melinda Fitch, our middle-aged neighbor, clutched her pearls in my parents’ living room, rearranging them across her heavy cleavage.

“Mom’s favorite vase.” I gestured in the direction of the mantel above our fireplace. The urn was a beautiful piece, a nineteenth century silver and enamel samovar my babushka had brought to the U.S. when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Melinda barked out a high-pitched laugh. When she realized I wasn’t joking, she paled, pressing her lipsticked mouth to her cup of tea. “Wait, he got cremated?” She whispered the last word, like it was a swear word.

“No, we just pushed him in there. It’s really not that difficult when you squeeze someone one limb at a time,” I deadpanned.

Verbal diarrhea—one.

My flimsy reputation—minus thirty.

Melinda looked ready to bolt through our wall like a cartoon character. Her eyes were the size of derby hats. Most people weren’t accustomed to my zero-filter train of thoughts. Over the years, my coworkers and peers had learned how to ignore my foot-in-mouth, nervous blabbering. Mostly, anyway.

Melinda brought another biscuit to her lips, nibbling on its edges demurely. “May I ask…um, why you chose cremation?”

“He was an atheist. He didn’t believe in God, religious rituals, or the afterlife.” A sharp stab of emptiness impaled my stomach when I spoke about him. “He told us cremation was less burdensome on the ecosystem.” I could tell my words flew right over Melinda’s hair-sprayed do. I had lost her at ecosystem. She probably thought it was our AC brand.

My dad had stood out in the quaint, small town of Staindrop, Maine, like a dildo in a church. He had taught physics at the local high school until the last month of his life and enjoyed chess, mental math, and volunteering twice a week at the local reservoir, collecting litter. He was ruthlessly pragmatic yet an oddly optimistic creature. His stage four cancer had bitten at his existence a chunk at a time but hadn’t stopped him from making every moment count.

Dad had been alive—not just living—until his very last breath in hospice. Only three days ago, we were still hunched over a game of chess, bickering over which hospice food was the most depressing (the porridge, hands down, no matter how much he loathed the Jell-O).

Now my living room was full of people I once knew, offering their condolences. Everybody had brought a beet-based dish, Dad’s favorite root vegetable (and yes, he ranked them). Casseroles, cakes, au gratin beets, all in different shades of purple.

I went through the motions. Hugging people, answering mind-numbing questions. “How is New York?” Cold and pricey. “What are you doing there?” Waiting tables and mustering the courage to launch my own true crime podcast. “When are you planning on moving back?” Never seems like a good timeframe.

What shocked me the most was how easily I slipped back into the familiarity of this house I hadn’t set foot in for years. How it wrapped around me like an old dress. How drenched these walls were with timeless memories.

The only difference was that now, Dad wouldn’t materialize from the kitchen, a newspaper tucked under his armpit and a cup of honeyed tea in his hand, saying, “Tell me something good, Callichka.”

Spotting Mom on the other side of the living room, I cut through the mass of black-sheathed shoulders and rested a hand over her arm. She was squinting at a dessert tray, pretending to give it great thought.

“Hanging in there, Mom?” I brushed a wayward lock of hair from her eye. She nodded, pressing her lips together. I was her mini-me. Same almond-brown hair piled up in tight curls atop our heads, giant azure eyes, and petite frames.

“It’s just…” She shook her head, waving a frantic hand at her face to keep her tears at bay.

“What?” I rubbed her shoulder. “Tell me.”

She sliced a piece of sponge cake with her fork. “I feel…lighter. Like I can breathe again. Is that terrible?”

“Mom, no. Dad was sick for sixteen months, and he suffered every second of it. His relief is your relief. It’s hard watching someone you love hating their own existence.”

Dad had been sick of being sick. I had been in the room when he passed away. I had held his hand, stroked the thick, blue veins running up and down the back of his palm. I’d sung his favorite song, “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas.

I had sung it, fighting the tears and the lump in my throat. I’d envisioned him as a small boy, tucked in his cot in Leningrad, dreaming about golden beaches and tall palm trees. He must have imagined it too, because he’d smiled. Smiled as his systems began shutting down. Smiled as a lifetime of educating kids, uncoiling my mother’s yarn in precise increments when she knitted mittens, and stealing tea cakes from the cookie jar above the fridge when no one was looking had flashed before his eyes. Dad had smiled through it all. Because he knew that his happiness was my favorite view.

His hand had still been warm when he’d flatlined. The nurse had come in and squeezed my shoulder. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she’d said. But I had gained so much over the years. Love, resilience, and endless memories.

Mom rubbed her forehead, frowning. “Maybe I’m just in denial. It’s all going to dawn on me once you go back to New York and I stay here by myself. That’s when reality always kicks in, isn’t it?” She pressed a fist to her lips. “When everyone leaves and grief is your only companion.”

I clutched her in a hug, desperate to comfort her but not really sure how.

“You know, it’s going to be weird, the first time I’ll sleep here by myself.” She glanced around the room, her throat bobbing with a swallow. “Even when Dad was at the hospice, I always had a friend stay over. I married him when I was twenty-one. I’m not even sure I know how to be alone.”

Mom needed someone next to her. The accusations Dylan had hurled in my face the night our friendship had perished crashed over me like a tsunami. About me being a shitty friend. Maybe I was a shitty daughter too. After all, I had managed to successfully avoid Staindrop for five years. I’d seen my parents plenty—we’d met in Portland, New York, and some places in between. But I never made the journey here.

Then I thought about being a parent. The act of sacrificing—your time, your sleep, your money, your attention, your concern, your love. All for…what? So that one day, your kid would give you half a hug and tell you that everything will be okay, then run off to New York, leaving a trail of half-assed apologies?

Mamushka always told me that when you became a mother, you expanded. Found ways to provide more of you to meet your child’s needs. Maybe it was time I expanded as a daughter too. Rose to the occasion.

“I’ll…I’ll stay here for a while,” I heard myself say. No permission was given by my brain for my mouth to utter these words. And yet, here they were. Out in the wild. Entering my mother’s ears before I could stop them.

“You’d do that for me?” Her head snapped up, eyes flaring with hope.

This woman changed your diapers. Band-Aided your boo-boos. Paid for your utterly useless degree. You are not going to bail on her just because you are frightened of Dylan Casablancas.

And that was what it boiled down to: Dylan. Row was long gone now. He became a world-famous bad-boy chef: restauranteur, reality TV judge, and Michelin-starred prince. Over the years, he had graced my television screen in frightening quantities. Smiling his dimpled smirk during morning shows before Thanksgiving to teach viewers how to make the perfect, moist stuffed turkey. Opening a new restaurant in a trendy European location on E! News, a Victoria’s Secret model draped on his arm, or as a grumpy judge in a low-stakes Netflix reality TV show, scowling at fancy dishes and barking obscenities at hopeful chefs. An entertainment columnist had once written, “Ambrose Casablancas is what happens when Gordon Ramsay and James Dean have a secret child.” I felt the entire sentence in my bones.

“Yup, I’m here for you.” I wrapped an arm around Mom’s scrawny shoulders. “We’ll make comfort food, watch movies, catch up. I’ll stay until January first, how does that sound?”

Let me tell you how that sounded to me—terrible. January first was eight weeks from now. That meant I’d bump into Dylan at some point. Into other people I wanted to see even less.

“Oh, Cal.” Mom patted her nose with a crumpling piece of tissue, mustering a grateful smile. “If it isn’t too much trouble.”

“Not at all. I missed you. I want to spend time together.”

If my bank account could speak, I was sure it’d tell me I was high. I couldn’t simply take time off. I still needed to work in order to pay for my Williamsburg apartment. And by “apartment,” I meant shoebox. A terribly expensive shoebox. I had to figure out a way to make money in Staindrop, and God knew the answer wasn’t going to be through my pipe dream, my unrecorded true crime podcast, Hot Girl Bummer.

“Only if you’re sure.” Mom clutched on to my arm. “I don’t want you to stop your life for me.”

“Don’t worry, there’s literally no life for me to stop.” I pulled her into another all-consuming hug, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “We’re going to have a blast, Mamushka. Just like the old days. You’ll see.”

“Really?” Hope painted her face.

“Really. Nothing will ruin this for us.”

As I said that, the door flung open and in walked Ambrose Casablancas.

And a very pregnant Dylan.