The doorbell rang.
Annie, John, and Maggie had been in the kitchen talking. The wine bottle empty, food demolished, almost another hour had passed.
John looked at the face of his watch, then peered at Annie, a fatherly glance holding court in his eyes.
"I'll get it," Annie said, knowing who it was and why.
The three of them had been waiting for him. Cal was the forecasted hurricane. The occupants of the house could do nothing but prepare and then wait for its impending arrival.
John cleared his throat and tipped his head in reply. Maggie remained silent for a change.
Annie walked to the foyer, replaced the strap of shirt that had slipped off her shoulder, and opened the door. Upon seeing the uninvited guest before her eyes, she stopped — everything stopped, only her heart beat.
Cal stood, hands at his side, thumbs in his pockets. The damn crinkle between his eyes stood out like a firecracker. He didn't look angry or proud as Annie had imagined he might. He looked lost and hurt, yet he still combed over Annie’s frame, defining his want. The tension between them was immediate and strong, and it made Annie falter.
"What … uh, what are you doing here?"
"Did you think I would let you leave Miami without saying goodbye to you?" Cal stared into her eyes. "Annie, you promised."
"I'm sorry for breaking it. I thought..." Stumbling over her words, she looked away. "I thought you would understand."
"No," he said, pressing his fingers over the trim of the door. "I don't understand."
The open vulnerability she saw in his eyes, an emotion he rarely wore, made her temporarily speechless. He actually wanted a reason. The truth. Could he read the pregnancy all over her face? She was not prepared to give him answers or reasons or conversation.
"How could you just show up here?" Eyes possessed, Annie was on the verge of releasing a torrent of tears. "I don't know what more you want from me." Acting on impulse, she reeled and rushed up the fancy staircase.
"Annie!" Cal stepped into the house and shut the door, watching as she raced up the steps. If he knew her at all, he knew she was not coming back down.
Grabbing hold of the railing, he attempted to gain composure.
What composure? He had none.
He pinched the skin at the back of his neck. He didn't need this right now. He’d called John for a reason. A purpose. The last thing he’d expected to find on the other end of the line was Annie. Home from home. Breaking her promise. Cal thought he’d fucked everything up, but he didn't break promises. He fulfilled his end of bullshit.
Maggie came around the corner, eyes dead set on blame. "I think you need to leave." She approached him, homing in on his profile.
Cal gazed at the staircase, following its keys, then he looked at Maggie with a stare colder and crisper than her own. "John didn't tell you why I called?"
"Please leave. Annie doesn't need this right now.”
"Stay out of it." The finality of his own words shocked him. "When are you going to finally understand this is none of your business?"
Fuck. Cal dropped his head. He didn’t want to see Annie off like this, in this way, in his friend’s home, full of news he didn't want to deliver. Why hadn't John told Maggie why he’d called? Probably because he didn't want to be the one to tell Annie. What a fucking disaster.
Cal shot one final stare in Maggie's direction, sure to make it pompous, before he proceeded to walk up the glossy, white steps.
"Cal!" she yelled, striking a fist on the bottom railing.
"Enough, Maggie," John said as he turned the corner. He’d been observing the entire bloody scene from a few feet away. "Let them be."
Startled, Maggie turned and faced her husband, looking defeated and sad.
John’s eyes shifted up to the outline of Cal’s body at the top of the staircase, watching his friend disappear from view.
“I can’t." Maggie ceded to John now that the room was quiet and empty.
"Come here." John opened his arms, and Maggie fell into them.
"Annie has been off since she's been here. Yesterday she was like a..." Maggie waved her hand around behind John's back, "like a statue."
"Cal’s hurting too."
“I wish they’d never met." Maggie rested her cheek on John’s shoulder while he cradled her pear-shaped waist.
"I don’t think you really mean that."
Maggie lifted her head and looked into her husband’s eyes, the no, I didn't really mean that spread across her face. “She loves him, you know that?”
“I know,” John whispered. Annie had never told John she was in love with Cal, but John knew. He always knew much more than he ever let on. He played with his wife’s curls. “He needs her love, Maggie.”
“Even at her own expense?”
“We don’t always choose,” he said. “She needs him—”
“Like hell she needs him."
John smiled and shook his head.
“She needs his love too," he said without wavering. His gray-blue eyes looked mostly blue and a little wet, and they were shining into Maggie’s face like beacons.
"Maybe."
"Wow. A maybe, huh?" He tugged her hair. The flattened curl straightened and sprung. "That’s progress." John slipped his fingers through his wife’s. “Come on, my Maggie the Cat, let’s take a walk on the beach." John's drawl thickened. “They need privacy, and I have to tell you why he called.”