HOMECOMING

@calfaulkner​

Saenoo wandered to the front of the museum and watched different visitors making their way to the exhibits further inside. He had his earphones in, and he doodled on a napkin while he people-watched from his seat near the doors. 

When he glanced outside, he caught a glimpse of a familiar face. He strode outside to greet him as he crumpled the napkin into a trashcan nearby.

“Hey, you gonna come in or…?”

❂

Dropping off the flower delivery at the museum office: done. Callum hovers near the entrance, eyes flickering to the flow of visitors and tourists making their way inside. Monmouth has always been a fixture in his life in the Cove, a popular spot for school field trips and the like ― and as one takes for granted what one grew up with, his lukewarm disinterest in the gallery shows in his leisurely footsteps.

Cal’s considering going in, maybe take a look around the museum shop, since this is his first time visiting since secondary school, literally ― then Saenoo calls out. The invitation makes his choice for him. 

Saenoo’s eyes brighten in recognition. “You were there!”

He has to start from the beginning obviously because this kid is probably confused. “I mean, well… I’m pretty sure you came to the museum on a school field trip when I was just starting off. I kind of bored you guys to death about Van Gogh and his depression, and how his brother helped…” 

As he trails off, he chuckles to himself at the irony that he was launching into the same boring spiel. “Ha, I’ll save you the agony this time.” 

He offers a handshake. “I’m Saenoo, and you’re forgiven for kicking sand in my mouth.”

“No, you’re thoughtful to describe her to me. I can see colors, some better than others. I used to be able to see too, so I can put it all together with the way she feels and how you describe her,” she reassures him.

Ari rubs the dog’s face fondly and carefully places a small kiss on her forehead. “Oops, I’ve just left a lipstick mark on her fur, haven’t I? Sorry…”

She raises her eyebrows at his response, surprised to his attention to detail. Then, she squints, immediately suspicious. “Are you from a magazine or something? If you want an interview about what I’m wearing this season, you should really talk to my publicists. She’ll throw a fit, y’know…”

"Oh." Blind people can see color? This is new information, he blinks, not knowing that there are different degrees of vision loss in what qualifies as blindness. Callum is a little curious as to what that's like for her, but they quite literally have only just met, so he stays silent. "Don't worry about it. She needs a wash, anyway."

It’s still weird, okay? We watched CBeebies together, I’m allowed to find it strange. How can I be ancient if I’m only five years older than you? Does that make you ancient, too, or am I being held to a double standard?

I don’t think I could do that–everyone who knows me knows I cry at the drop of a hat, and I think there’s something about me that lets strangers know it, too. Just this kind of aura about me that says I cried this morning when I watched How to Train Your Dragon on netflix. You’d be a much better John Wick than I am, but I can be your cool sidekick who counts the bullets or something.

Of course I am holding you to a double standard. How's it feel being twenty-eight, huh? Suddenly wise beyond your years?

“That’s not even helpful!” he protests. 

Saenoo rubs his mouth and realizes how futile that action is. He tries the guy’s suggestion with his water, and he spits it out extremely ungracefully. He makes a face at what he’s done, and it makes him want to immediately pack up and go home now.

“Just forget it okay?” He waves his hand, dismissing the guy. It’s the first time Saenoo gets a good look at the perpetrator, and he looks oddly familiar. Maybe a little bit older but not by much. “Hey wait, did you go to school here?”

Callum is ready to mind his own business with an apologetic shrug ― go back to playing the game on his phone, maybe, or attempt to take a nap, if falling asleep in this godforsaken heat proves possible ― but the other man isn’t done with the conversation just yet, it seems.

“What?” The question catches him off-guard. School?

Crisps. She does like crisps, but as with many things she is awfully particular about which ones she’ll eat. Maude tilts her head, nodding once only to better emphasise her curiosity. “What kind?” she asks.

When the answer turns out to be Doritos, Maude almost sticks her tongue out to fake a gag. After a particularly horrifying incident revolving around too much rum and two whole bags of said savoury snack, she’d sworn those traitorous little triangles off for good. Then again, she’s peckish, and it’s free food.

“Yeah, okay.” Maude sits on the corner of Callum’s towel, brushing some of the assailing sand off her front. “What’s your name?”

Cal doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it takes considerably less effort than he imagined to make peace with her via a bag of Doritos. Once she sits down, he places it on the towel between the two of them, but not before popping a couple into his mouth. 

It feels bizarre to be asked to introduce himself in his hometown where practically everyone knows him and his family ― well, everyone meaning the longtime Cove residents. “Callum,” he offers, pushing up his sunglasses to balance them on top of his head. “And you? You’re not from around here, are you?”

“Weird little dance routine to Wannabe?” She recoils in faux horror. “I’ll have you know it’s the actual dance routine from the video, Cal.” She laughs, “I really failed you as an educator of culture if you don’t know that.”

“It was hurtful when he left,” she pauses, “and it hurt for a long while afterwards–but I was just about in the clear when he showed back up here a successful author. And what do I have to show for the last decade, Cal? A middling career as an artist, a dead mom, and working at the same place I worked as a teenager?” 

Hurtful puts it lightly, she’s afraid. Some days hurtful was the right word for it–a dull ache in her chest that only occasionally flared. Other days, though–especially recently after losing her mother, those two heartbreaks joined forces and could knock her out for an entire day. The therapist she saw (as recommended by the grief counselor her family used after Georgiana’s death) referred to it as a grief box. There’s a button in the box and a ball–as the years go on, the button remains the same size–but the ball shrinks. When the ball hits the button, though–it triggers the same feelings as it had done when the ball constantly pressed against the button. Thankfully, Ada thought–the heartbreak ball had shrunk down quite a bit until finding out her mother was sick and she needed to return to the Cove.  “Sorry, Cal–I didn’t mean to unleash this on you. You were just a kid when it happened and now you’re, well, very much not.” She laughs, “I’m here for you too, bairn. Anything you need, you just let me know, yeah?”

Callum wants to open his mouth and protest that she’s doing just fine by herself, but it would only sound insincere with Freddie’s rather illustrious career so clearly laid out in front of them. “Yeah, alright, his face is plastered all across town,” he admits with a lighthearted eyeroll. “But man, c’mon. Anything would pale in comparison to something like that. If we're throwing a pity party, I've had to move back in with Mum. And Becca." His shoulders move in an exaggerated shudder, almost comical, as he mentions his baby sister. The gesture is a mask over his frustrations — he had headed off to the big city, only to come back with nothing but a sense of shame, crippling anxiety, and some meager internship experience. It worries him, thinking about what his future is supposed to look like, now that the one goal he'd put all his passion into failed to work out. (The worst of it gets him at night, his mind wandering off, obsessing about what-could-have-beens and agonizing over depressing possibilities.)

“It’s okay. Letting it all out helps.” He shrugs. If only he could follow his own advice. The quiet of the flower shop weighs down on his shoulders suddenly, clogging his throat with shame — which doesn't make sense, honestly, because Cal knows this isn't something to be ashamed about. Ada of all people is not going to be judgmental. Still, words will not come easy.

Something is seriously wrong with his mind today to venture out of his house to subject himself to be around people and to be in swim trunks at the beach. And to top the whole thing off, here is a rude kid kicking up a sandstorm in his direction while he tries to read.

The sand flies into the crevices of the book, his hair, and his clothes. He clamps his mouth shut in frustration and feels the crunching of sand between his teeth. “I think I just ate some,” he seethes.

❂

“Ah. Shit.” A semi-crowded beach is never a good place to let out his frustrations on a sand-covered towel. “Do you want ― water, maybe?” he suggests as he sits up more fully, brows twisted in a guilty frown, albeit concealed by his sunglasses. (In the midst of it all, Callum’s ears manage to pick up the man’s accent: distinctly American. That you don’t come across often in the Cove, apart from niche tourists. Where has he heard that before?) “You could, like, spit it out or somethin’.” A mediocre solution at best, but it’s all he can come up with right now. 

Ada is sprawled out on her beach towel smothered in a questionable combination of tanning oil and suncream (the suncream being a recent addition to her beach day skincare routine) with a book across her face blocking the sun from her eyes. Her eyes are closed as she tries, tries being the operative word, to take a nap in the warm sunshine like those street cats she sees on her walk to work. As soon as she feels herself slipping into the sweet, sweet embrace of summertime sunshine, the sensation of sand begins to fall on her. GREAT. She bolts up and tosses the book to the side, almost ready to shout, but the familiar voice of Cal fills the air and her mood softens. Clearly it was an accident then.

“Darlin, what did I tell you about being more careful?”

"I know, sorry," he says, peering at Ada through his cat-eye sunglasses to assess the damage. Her tone is reminiscent of their childhood — he would be out in the garden practicing cartwheels, scraping his knees and elbows, and Ada would be the one to patch him up. The memory almost makes him grin despite the situation. Cal holds up Rebecca's towel as a silent offer in case she wants to wipe down the sand with it; but then again, it might just end up sticking to her oiled skin more.

You know, no matter how old you are, I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to hearing you swear, Cal. It’s jarring and disturbing and I feel like I’ve done something terribly wrong to bring it about.

I never said it happened in broad daylight, [He winks.] No, it really wasn’t like that. My partner at the time was dancing with a girl and having fun, and that girl’s boyfriend took offense. I didn’t actually get stabbed, thank god–no one got stabbed, but it makes for a good story. You should see Glasgow some time, it’s wonderful.

What’d I say? “Dickhead”? That barely qualifies! And you’re only five years older than I am, ancient man. Get over yourself. 

Whoever said rollerblading’s as easy as riding a bike has never been faced with the unbearably tentative clunkiness of Maude Hardgrave’s mind-and-body-miscommunication. Meaning that Maude can neither do one nor the other. But after Oumi Janta’s viral Tik Tok, she decided, on an inexplicable whim, as she is sometimes (though not often) afflicted with, that she would attempt the prior. Three falls and a guaranteed bruised bum-cheek later, Maude’s strolling, barefoot, down King Arthur’s shoreline. Her white rollerblades dangle from her neck, knocking lightly against her collarbones with every languid step.

As if her earlier tumbles weren’t enough damage for one day, the sudden lashes of sand whipping at her legs have her startling to a halt.

“Um. A bit, yeah.”

As soon as the question falls from his lips, Callum realizes how pointless it is. There is literally nothing he can do about it. What's he going to do? Help the other person get undressed and dust off the sand?

"Right, uh—" He looks up at her behind his sunglasses, face scrunched up in a grimace under the piercing rays that warm his bare skin. She doesn't seem mad, just... mildly irritated, maybe. Oh, and an unfamiliar face, Cal notices absent-mindedly. (Just how many people have moved to the Cove while he was away?)