I love hearing from you, thanks for the reviews. Thanks to Netread for being my beta.
To better understand the of kids, I invite you to watch the film: Yours, Mine and Ours. There are 2 versions, the main concept of this story comes from the 2005 film but both films have them having 10 and 8 kids respectively. Callie has 10 kids (conceived 4/adopted 6). Arizona has 8. I'll post the kids chart soon.
Also, the U.S. Coast Guard does indeed deploy all over, not just the US, as common practice. I promise you, I've done extensive research on everything I'm writing. I even spent a good part of an hour today on hold with a cruiseline in order to find out how they number cabins on ships. The rep was amazingly helpful and walked me through a lot of cruise info, too. So to the person who left a kind of mean review in response to the person who corrected me, please be kind, we're all trying to get through this life in one piece.
I hope you enjoy. The next will be up in a few days depending on my schedule. Please let me know what you think. I can't wait to hear from you.
xx
It didn't take long for the cruise staff to start herding people into dinner. As everybody made their way into the dining room, Callie and Arizona found a seat next to each other as far away as possible from some of their classmates who would pry too much. Specifically, the head cheerleader, Madison, and her crew. As Arizona once again maneuvered them away from everybody else, she told herself it had nothing to do with her jealous anger for Madison and Callie having … for them being … sex, for them having sex! She swore it had to do with the fact that they'd made Callie's life in high school rather difficult and tonight was to celebrate, not commiserate. Tara and her wife joined them as did a few gay couples, Arizona recognizing the guys from her ROTC days. She smiled as they made introductions around the table but mostly stayed quiet, observing the conversations as pretty much an outsider.
While not everybody knew each other at the table, mostly being Arizona, Callie seemed to know everyone. She'd played matchmaker with Tara and her wife, Jenny. Martin and Eddie knew her well enough to ask about each individual kid, by name. And the last couple, Jeffery and Armi asked if Callie's oldest was available to babysit the following weekend. She sat there in awe of the shy awkward girl who had blossomed into an outgoing, secure woman. But even with the admiration, Arizona couldn't help but feel a jealous anger bubbling up. Callie kept in touch or made friends with each of these people, none whom she had much of a relationship with during high school, but she couldn't stay in touch with Arizona, a woman she claimed to have loved. It stung.
True, Arizona didn't exactly reach out in Callie's direction but she didn't reach out in anybody's direction and Callie seemed to have purposely left her out of the equation all together.
Trying her best to ignore those pangs of unwelcome emotions, Arizona smiled and made small talk with those around her. She wasn't planning on confronting Callie, it wasn't her business why she was left out in the cold. Or maybe she didn't want to know why. Maybe Arizona had been good for one thing, aside from the sex because their sex-life was not one of lacking. Maybe she was good for being Callie's knight in shining Reebok, always there to save the day and then when Callie finally found her own two feet to stand on, she was done with Arizona.
Arizona's sudden silence didn't go unnoticed by Callie and she wasn't exactly sure what was going on in that blonde covered head of hers. Maybe it was the new knowledge of Callie's sexual history although she found that a petty reason to be upset, it wasn't as if she had any of these flings while they were together. Or even shortly after, Callie didn't bounce back from their break-up as well as she made it look. There were days she didn't get out of bed for any reason but necessity and months went by before she could think of Arizona without crying. Maybe after two decades and then some, Callie could be openly honest with Arizona about the demise of their relationship and they could clear the air. They were both in town again, for what looked like the foreseeable future, and Callie didn't want to live in such close proximity without having Arizona in her life again. Sure, there was definitely still an attraction between the two, at least on Callie's end this is what she felt, but they were also both widows with rather large families. They'd lived different lives for the better part of the past three decades. Callie didn't expect them to just pick right up where they left off. She was sure a romantic future was not in their cards but that didn't mean they couldn't be friends. And friends were honest with each other and so that's what Callie planned to do, find out what was wrong and fix it.
Except Arizona wasn't making it easy. For someone who wanted Callie to save her a dance, Arizona sure went out of her way to avoid dancing with Callie. First it was that she wanted to stay at the table and keep Martin company because he had a sprained ankle. Since his partner and Callie both wanted to dance, why didn't they go out together. And then after that she had the excuse to go to the bathroom even though Callie watched her go in the opposite direction of the boat's facilities. Not wanting to cause a scene of any kind, Callie didn't question Arizona about where she'd gone, when she returned. The final time Callie asked Arizona to dance, the one where Callie was losing all hope at some type of friendly reconciliation between the two women, the rejection written all over her face, Arizona agreed but it was obvious she was not at all interested.
"Wanna tell me what's bothering you?" Callie asked as her arm slipped behind Arizona's back, pulling them closer together.
"Nothing." Arizona answered with a vacant expression on her face. "I'm just worried about the kids."
Callie scoffed. Arizona had already told her Barbara lived with them to help out and there was nothing Barbara couldn't handle. Callie knew this personally, more than once Barbara had mended her own wounds. Or held her hair, that one time her and Arizona got drunk on the Colonel's liquor cabinet. Or wiped away the tears. Callie knew that Arizona's answer was pure bullshit and avoidance.
"You didn't leave your ten kids in the hands of Mark Sloan. Three of my kids have crushes on him, Emil tries out all his practical jokes on Mark and trust me when I say they aren't always funny. If he doesn't make it to age nine, I won't blame Mark. And Lane doesn't listen to Mark, she thinks he's the poster-villain of feminism. So, unless your mom decided to throw 55 years of military wife training out the window, I'm sure your kids are still breathing."
"Why didn't you write me?" Arizona blurted out the question which had been on the tip of her tongue all night long.
Callie sucked in a deep breath and looked Arizona in the eyes. The pain reflected back hurt her heart and crushed her spirit. The last thing she ever wanted to do was hurt Arizona, then and now.
"Do you really want to do this here, now?"
"Well, yeah." The tone in Arizona's voice was choked with the pain in her eyes. "God Callie, you are even friends with Tara all these years later. Tara who threw you into a locker and threatened to bash your face in and if it hadn't been for your French teacher intervening, she probably would have. We were together for seven years, we had something real. Or at least I thought we had something real and I haven't heard anything from you in over two and a half decades and don't tell me you didn't know where I was because the Coast Guard isn't the U.S. Marines, you could have easily found me."
"No, I knew where you were, everywhere you've been. I kept track of you and every time there was a casualty of someone in the service, I'd wait on the edge of my seat to hear if this time it was a Coast Guardsman. If it was you." Callie confessed. "Arizona, the best part of me was always you and without you, I was an empty shell for a very long time. Once I could put myself back together, I knew if I reached out, all that hard work would be for nothing. By the time Kat came into my life, you were out there doing great things, and it wasn't fair to either of you."
"You didn't fight for me." Arizona whispered before untangling herself from Callie's embrace and slipping from the dance floor. Callie helplessly watched her go.
"I didn't think you wanted me to," she said sadly to the empty space around her.
An hour later, as the dancing and celebrating continued, Callie made her way down the ship's hallway toward her cabin with her shoes in her hand while leaning against the wall for support. She was more than a little tipsy, having consumed just a wee bit more alcohol than intended after Arizona played her disappearing act. At first, she figured Arizona would go out onto the deck to cool off and get her head together but after she didn't return, Callie circled the entire ship looking for her to no avail. The only person she did run into was Madison who tried nonchalantly to hand Callie a piece of paper with her room number on it. "My husband couldn't make it," she whispered as she shoved the folded paper into the palm of Callie's hand.
Defeated upon return, Callie switched from wine to much harder alcohol. And that's how she ended up kind of sliding down the hall, against the wall, toward her cabin. She wasn't drunk but she also hadn't been intoxicated in so very long that the small amount she drank was doing a number on her.
M-42 was really far away as Callie looked down the hall and counted the door frames between herself and her cabin. Sliding forward, she stopped dead as she came face to face with M-09. Realization where she was sparked something deep inside of her that she thought she'd grown past. Apparently tonight's blast from the past show was all too much for her and she wanted, no needed this. With her chin set and her lips pursed, she knocked confidently on the door.
There was nothing but silence in response which only fueled Callie on. Dropping her shoes, she steadied herself to face the door, head on, and started rapping hard against the metal door.
"I know you're in there. We need to talk about what happened between us. We can't ignore it and I don't want to anymore. I don't like keeping secrets. I don't want to keep this one anymore."
To be continued ...
