Stuck With the Grumpy Single Dad

19. Chapter Eighteen Mabel

Chapter Eighteen: Mabel

T wo days pass.

Forty-eight hours stretch between now and the moment I pulled up in front of Beaufort Manor to confirm the truth once and for all.

I lean against my kitchen counter, staring at the dregs of cold coffee in my mug. The house is quiet except for the ticking of the clock on the wall. It’s the kind of silence that I used to appreciate after a long shift at the Siren & Sword, but now it feels oddly suffocating. I think the quiet has become a living thing, and that it’s pushing me to think about things I’d rather not.

Things like Cal. And Matt. Matt and Cal.

Ever since I came back from Maine, I’ve been trying to reconcile the two. There is the man I’ve known for years, whom I’ve trusted with my secrets and hopes and everything in between, and there is the man who stood in front of me, tight-lipped and uncertain, who let me walk away from him as if it were no big deal.

I always imagined that if I ever met Cal in person, it would feel like magic. Like I might finally understand what all the fuss is about, or that I might even get a taste of whatever otherworldly sense that Miss Maisie is tuned into. In my head, we’d just click. There would be instant recognition, a connection so strong that I’d just know who he is.

That didn’t happen, obviously. Instead, Matt and I started out as something akin to adversaries.

I still remember the way he looked at me when we first met here in Mermaid Shores. Cold, distant, like I was an inconvenience. How could that man be the same person I poured my heart out to for all these years? How could he be the man who knows me better than anyone?

I groan and stand up straight, pacing the small space of my kitchen. My thoughts keep circling back to the same question: who is Matt, really? Is he the version of himself he showed in those letters, or the man I know in real life?

It doesn’t make sense. It’s true that, when I’m writing as Maple Leaf, I allow myself to be freer with my words and more vulnerable with my thoughts. It’s easier to be brave when you are writing instead of speaking, and when you don’t have to face the person who will be reading it. It allows you to be a more honest, unapologetic version of yourself.

And yes, it’s true that I never bothered to tell Cal my real name. But, then again, he never asked.

Despite that, everything else I’ve told him is the truth.

Deep down, I also know that everything he’s told me is the truth, too. Even his name wasn’t a lie. Callum is his middle name. It’s a part of him. He didn’t necessarily lie to me about moving to Mermaid Shores, either. He just withheld the full truth, likely because it didn’t seem like the sort of thing that should be revealed in a letter. Maybe he had wanted to tell me everything in person. Maybe, if we hadn’t gotten off on the wrong foot, I would’ve known that he was Cal weeks ago.

With a heavy sigh, I pause by the kitchen window, looking out at the street. It’s a bright, sunny afternoon, perfect weather for a stroll to clear my head, but I can’t seem to shake the weight of this confusion. I wonder if I should just go to my mom’s place and see if she needs help. Today is my day off from the restaurant, but it’s not like I really know how to sit still. And at least helping her out would give me something to do.

Yet, as I reach for my phone to text her, there’s a knock on the door.

I freeze, staring at the door like it’s about to grow a mouth and reveal some great secret to me. It’s probably just a neighbor.

And yet, somewhere deep inside my chest, I feel something warm and timid stirring, like a butterfly making the first nudges against the shell of its cocoon.

Taking a deep breath, I pull open the door.

There he is.

Impossibly. Inexplicably. Incredibly.

Matt is standing on my front porch.

His hands are shoved into his pockets, and his expression is serious but not hostile. For once. There’s something different in his eyes this time, too. Something that makes the aquamarine hue seem even more mesmerizing than usual.

“Hi,” he says. His voice is soft and uncertain, a tone I didn’t know that Matt was capable of.

For a moment, neither of us speaks. Just like two days ago at Beaufort Manor, the silence between us stretches, thick with all the unsaid things.

“Hi,” I manage to say, trying to keep my voice steady. “Why—what are you doing here?”

He takes a deep breath. “I was going to write you a letter, actually. I thought I’d come here, slip it into your mailbox, and then leave again. Give you some space. Let you decide on your own whether you want to respond. Whether you want anything to do with me.”

I swallow hard against the lump in my throat. “I see.”

“But then I realized that I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to hide behind words on a page. Not this time.”

“We’ve both been doing that for years, I think,” I say. “Even if we haven’t noticed it.”

“I know,” he replies, a flicker of regret in his voice. “That’s the problem. I’ve spent my whole life hiding behind those letters. Not in the sense that the man I was to you—that Cal was a lie. In fact, I think Cal is the most truthful version of myself. The problem is that I’ve never let anyone else see it. Even you—you only got to know me as Matt. And we both know how well that’s gone so far.”

I bite my lip, a tentative smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. This is my Cal. Sweet, honest, rambling Cal. He is in there.

“Do you want to come in?” I ask him.

He hesitates, as if he’s not sure he heard me correctly, but then nods.

I step aside. He moves past me, and then I gesture for him to pass through into the living room. I close the door, taking a moment to catch my breath, and try to keep my heart from racing.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts the moment I enter the room, like he’d been barely holding himself back from saying it since I opened the door. “I should’ve told you the truth from the beginning. I should’ve told you that I was moving to Mermaid Shores. I should’ve told you my real name.”

I shrug. “I get it.”

He blinks at me. “You do?”

“Matt—Cal—whatever… you inherited a fortune. And I know how you’ve lived, barely getting by half the time. Your life changed overnight. I don’t think I would’ve been able to put that in a letter, either.”

He looks down at the floor, nodding slowly. “I was scared, too. Scared that if you knew who I really was, you wouldn’t want anything to do with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I first started writing to you as Cal, I was just some kid trying to figure out the world. And you were this bright, happy girl, and I felt like I could be real with you in a way I couldn’t be with anyone else. And I knew that you were the only person in this world that I was fully honest with about my thoughts and feelings and—and whatever else. To think that you might meet me, meet Matt, and be disappointed in him—in me —was unbearable. I let myself be a coward about it.”

I take a step toward him. “You’re not a—”

“Cal is the best version of me,” he interrupts, gazing at me with so much intensity that it almost knocks me over. “He is stronger than I am on an average day, more honest than I can ever bring myself to be with people. But the most important reason that Cal is the best me is because Cal is the man who loves Maple Leaf. The man who loves… you, Maple. Mabel.”

I suck in a sharp breath.

Love .

I do love Cal. I have loved him as a friend since I was a kid. I even let myself love him as something more in the brief, selfish, wicked moments that I allowed even when he started dating Lindsay again. And when they found out they were pregnant and planned to get married, I forced myself to turn that love back into something platonic. When Lindsay passed away, daring to let that love drift toward romance again felt like a horrible betrayal, so I denied it. It hasn’t been until recently, a decade after he was widowed, that I have dared to imagine a version of reality where we might find a path to walk together.

At the same time, however, those feelings have always been more of a fantasy than anything else. Deep down, I didn’t actually expect that it might come true.

Matt’s eyes lock with mine. “And Matt… Matt is the guy who has spent years building walls, trying to keep people out because it’s easier than getting hurt. It makes his life less complicated, but it also makes it lonely. Cal is the man I want to be instead. The man I can be with you—with Maple. And the truth is, I think I fell in love with Maple Leaf years ago, but I didn’t let myself acknowledge it because it didn’t seem fair to the girls and… I didn’t think it was possible to love someone you’ve never met.”

I can feel my heart swelling with something that feels a lot like hope, but could also be something like fear. This is what it feels like to stand at the edges of the cliffs on the outskirts of town and witness how raucous and endless and merciless the ocean is. Even then, faced with something so daunting, there’s an urge to dive right in, to see what kind of world you might find underneath the surface.

“I don’t know what to say,” I whisper, my voice trembling. It’s the same thing I said to him two days ago, and I want to kick myself for it. Since when am I the sort of person who is ever at a loss for words ?

“You don’t have to say anything,” he replies quickly. “I just needed to tell you this. I needed you to know that the man who wrote all those letters, the man who’s loved you from the other side of the page, is me . And I’m done pretending that he’s not.”

I stare at him, trying to process everything he’s saying, trying to make sense of the whirlwind of emotions swirling inside me. This is Cal, but it is also Matt. I can see both of them, and I am sure he can see both sides of me in this moment. The side that I present to the world and the side that only he knows.

I take a step closer to him, daring to leave just barely two feet of space between us. “I’ve loved Cal for a long time, Matt.”

Matt’s eyes widen, and I can see the disbelief in his gaze.

“I knew there was something about you from the moment you wrote back to me,” I continue. “That crush I had on Danny? The boy who lived in your house before you? It disappeared the second I read your reply to my first letter. From that moment, you became everything to me.”

For a minute, neither of us moves. We just stand there, staring at each other, the weight of the last twenty years pressing down on us. And then, slowly, Matt reaches for me.

His hand brushes against mine, tentative, like he’s afraid I might pull away. I don’t, though. I can’t. I don’t want to run from this. I don’t want to live a double life. I want to be Mabel and Maple, and I want to know Cal and Matt. I want to have that chance.

I step forward, closing the distance between us.

Then, before I can pause to think too hard about it, his lips are on mine.

The kiss is soft at first, hesitant. Testing the waters. After a moment, however, when we simultaneously recognize how perfectly right it feels, the kiss deepens into something so profound and all-consuming that everything else falls away.

It feels a lot like coming home to a warm house on a winter’s day. It feels like the first breath of true spring after the rains of April. It feels like the calm, pacified sea after a torrential summer storm.

When we pull apart, we’re both breathless. We press our foreheads together, and I swear I can feel the steady thump of his heart working in tandem with mine.

“Mabel Lee,” Matt whispers, his breath tickling my skin.

“Matthew Morgan,” I answer.

He pulls me close, his arms wrapping around me. I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, this is the start of something real. Something true.

And as I stand there, wrapped in his embrace, I realize that the future I’ve been looking for all this time, the love and peace that I’ve been dreaming about finding, is standing right in front of me.

Matt. Cal. It doesn’t matter what name he goes by.

Because he’s him .

I’m me .

And that’s enough.

It’s more than enough.