October squirmed in her seat. I’d never seen her so ill at ease.

“She showed up and gawked at the trees,” Cal said. “No kidding; the first thing she did when she got out of the car was wander through the backyard, looking up and touching and smelling all the trunks. I asked her to have dinner with me before she went into the house. She just had this vibe, you know? Turned me down though. Wouldn’t even give me her phone number. I had to bribe her real estate agent for it.”

“Why not?” I asked her. I couldn’t imagine any girl turning Cal down.

“I’ll tell you why,” Cal responded. “Because I made the mistake of saying, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ and after that she thought I was a dick.”

Cal cracked up at the memory. October gave him a half-hearted smile then looked my way. “I knew who he was. And I didn’t think it made sense for me to date a man whose job requires him to stand in front of thousands of screaming people every night.” She stared into her coffee. “Especially one who lived in New York, had a somewhat infamous reputation as a womanizer, and was in the middle of a divorce.”

“Divorce?” I couldn’t believe how much of Cal’s life I’d missed. “You were married?”

“Not for very long.”

“Please don’t tell me you have kids.”

“No kids,” he said. “Anyway, I dropped the price of the property so that she was basically stealing it from me, under the condition that she let me take her on a date. I really wanted to hit it out of the park, so I whisked her off to Mexico City because she told me she loved Frida Kahlo, and there’s a Frida museum down there. I rented out the whole place so there were no crowds to bother her, and it was all epically romantic until she got food poisoning from some street tacos we had for lunch. The rest of the trip was me taking care of her for two days while she puked into a wastebasket beside the bed because she was too sick to make it to the bathroom. That’s how I got her to fall in love with me. By holding her hair back while she barfed.”

“Chris. Stop.”

“Come on. You love this story.”

“So, you moved back here then?” I asked him. “From New York?”

“Technically, he still lives in New York,” October said with a tone.

“Not true.” He ruffled her hair. “I still have my place in Brooklyn, but when I’m not on the road I’m mostly here.”

October stood up suddenly and said, “I need to go lie down.”

Cal wrapped her up in his arms. He was so much bigger than she was, and he engulfed her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I have a headache.”

Cal kissed the top of her head. “OK. Go lie down. Harp and I are going to catch up.”