A Healing Love
Copyright© 2025 by Marc Nobbs
Chapter 42: Gifts & Goodbyes
Coming of Age Sex Story: Chapter 42: Gifts & Goodbyes - Paul Robertson's journey continues as his past and present collide at a star-studded movie premiere, where a connection that once terrified him reignites with passion that threatens to consume them both. Fighting to forge a new future for himself and stop drifting, Paul must finally become the man he’s always been afraid to be. A beautiful, bittersweet exploration of grief, social responsibility, the healing power of love, and learning that sometimes loving someone means letting them go.
Caution: This Coming of Age Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Consensual Romantic Heterosexual Fiction
Will knew we were coming, so he answered when we rang the doorbell.
“Paul. Kayla. Come in. Come in. Sophie’s upstairs with a couple of her friends doing ‘Homework.’” He even made air quotes with his fingers.
“William, don’t be mean,” Amy said from ‘The Snug’ to our right. “I’m sure you remember what we were like at that age.”
“I don’t know what you and Lizzie got up to on a school night, but I would have been studying.”
“Yes. Of course you were,” Amy said, her voice dripping in sarcasm. “Just be grateful she’s interacting with her friends in person and not living her life through her phone or her computer like some girls her age are.”
Will shook his head. “Should I call her down here, or do you want to go up and surprise her?” He grinned.
Carly looked at me.
“Surprise her?” I said.
Carly nodded.
We’d given Imogen her signed copy of ‘Alabama Sweetheart’ before we left, and she was practically in tears over it. The look on Mark’s face had indeed been worth handing him a copy, too. As was his comment.
“Er ... maybe save that for someone else, ‘cause ... I can always borrow Immy’s copy, can’t I?”
Carly had looked at him innocently and said sweetly, “But, Mark, I’ve signed it for you and everything.” Then she and I burst out laughing, Imogen joined in, and Mark went into the lounge to watch TV in a huff.
“Okay, well, up the stairs, turn left and go over the mezzanine. Her room is at the end of the building above the lounge.”
“Okay, thanks, but before we go upstairs, Will, I need you to sign something. Sophie isn’t eighteen yet, is she? So, she won’t be able to sign it.” I handed him the NDA I’d bought with me. Imogen had signed one too.
He took it from me and scanned through it, nodding.
“This is well written.” He looked at me. “Your work?”
I shook my head. “Two of the younger lawyers from Sarah’s firm.”
Will nodded again. “Okay, I’ll just go through it a bit more carefully, then sign it for when you come down. But you have to tell her what I’m signing on her behalf, why, and what it means. Got it?”
I nodded. “Yeah, of course.”
We went up to Sophie’s room and I knocked on the door.
“What do you want, Dad?” Sophie whined.
I shrugged and, looking at Carly, nodded towards the door. She raised her eyebrows, grinned and nodded back.
“It’s not your Daddy, Honey.”
“Kayla!” Sophie screamed loud enough for Will and Amy to hear in the snug downstairs even if they had the volume on the television turned up high.
Seconds later, the door swung open hard enough to rip it off the hinges if they’d been any less secure than they were, and Sophie rushed out to hug Carly. Then she took Carly’s hand and dragged her into her room.
“See! Look! See! I, like, totally told you!”
The other two girls in the room, both pretty much carbon copies of Sophie, stared at Carly with their mouths wide open.
Carly waved at them and said, “Hey, y’all.”
Then the girls both started babbling at once—that incoherent chatter that only girls seem to be able to do. Only teenage girls, in fact. They were talking over each other and speaking faster than a machine gun, so I only caught snippets of what they said.
“You were, like, totally not lying!”
“I don’t believe it!”
“This is amazing!”
“Soph, I’ll, like, totally believe everything you tell me from now on.”
“Can we get selfies?”
“Can we get tickets to your next show?”
I’d stepped into the room behind Carly and Sophie, and one of the girls sitting on the bed finally noticed me.
“Soph, is that, like, Paul?”
“It is, isn’t it? That’s like, totally, Paul.”
“Damn, Soph, you weren’t lying about him either!”
“So, anyway,” I said, stepping up next to Carly and Sophie. “We’re here because Car ... Kayla has a present for you, Sophie.”
Carly looked at me and smirked. I don’t think I’d ever get used to calling her Kayla. She’d always be Carly to me.
“A present?”
“Sure, Honey. It’s like a thank-you gift. You know, for helping me out after you told me that the Porky’s show was on YouTube.”
“But ... All I did was...”
“All you did, Honey, was show me the comments and help me make it into a good thing and not a disaster.”
“But, you, like, already retweeted me and stuff, which was, like, so sick.”
“Yeah, that was totally lit,” one of the girls on the bed said.
“We, like, should have believed you then, but, Kayla Valentine coming to dinner? That’s, like, so not a thing.”
“Yeah, well, now you know it was a thing,” Sophie bit back.
“Yeah, I totally get it. So sick.”
I rolled my eyes. “Kayla, do you want to give Sophie the gift now?”
“Sure, but you need to tell her about the NDA her Daddy is signing.”
“ND What?” Sophie said, looking at me.
“NDA,” I replied. “Non-Disclosure Agreement.”
“What’s one of those? And why is Dad signing it?”
“It means you can’t share this gift with anyone,” Carly said, holding out the CD case to Sophie.
“What’s this?” Sophie said, taking the CD case.
Carly smiled her million-dollar smile. “Alabama Sweetheart.”
Sophie frowned.
“My new album,” Carly said. “Just finished it. We haven’t even decided on a release date yet. There’s not even any cover art. Nothing like that. I finished it yesterday. You’re one of the first people to have a copy. One of the first anywhere in the world.”
“Even I haven’t heard all of it yet,” I said. “I’ve heard three of the songs live, but haven’t had a chance to sit down and play the CD yet.”
“Or lie down and play it,” Carly said, winking at me.
“This is...” Sophie was still looking at the CD case. It had a simple white card inlay instead of the usual little booklet, with ‘Kayla Valentine – Alabama Sweetheart’ written on the front. When she opened the case, she’d find the track listing for both CDs on the other side of the card.
She looked up at Carly. “This is amazing, Kayla.” I think there were tears in her eyes. “I don’t know what...” It was the first time I’d seen the young woman lost for words. “Thank you! Thank you so much!”
“Aw, Honey, come here,” Carly said, opening her arms. Sophie stepped forward into Carly’s embrace.
“Open the case,” I said.
“Huh?” Sophie moved out of Carly’s hug and looked at me. “Why?”
“You’ll see,” I said.
She opened the case, saw the CD and then looked at Carly. “You signed it?”
The two girls on the bed jumped up and raced over to Sophie.
“Let’s see.”
“What does it say?”
Sophie held out the case so her friends could see what was written on the CD itself.
“To Sophie, thank you for reminding me to always make the best of a bad situation. Love Always, Kayla.”
“What did you do?” The other girl asked.
“Yeah, what did she do, Kayla?”
“I’ll let Sophie explain,” Kayla said, “But just know that I was panicking when I found out about that Porky’s video. I thought it would make me look real bad and people would be upset with me for doing it.”
“But it was a sick video. I wish I’d been there to see it person. I go to Porky’s all the time.”
“Yeah, but not on Rock Night. That’s for old people.”
Carly looked at me. She was still grinning, and her eyes were sparkling.
“That’s kinda the point, y’all,” Carly said. “I was panicking over here, and Sophie showed me that there was no need to panic and that I could actually make it into a good thing. That’s the reason I started doing some of those songs at my shows and the reason the ‘Alabama Sweetheart’ is a double CD.”
“It’s a double CD?” Sophie flipped open the inner tray of the case to reveal the second CD underneath the first.
Carly had signed that one too, just without the message.
Sophie looked up at Carly again, her eyes again glistening with unshed tears. “I don’t ... Thank you, Kayla. This is the most amazing thing...”
“Will you stay and listen to it with us?” one of Sophie’s friends said. Then to Sophie, she added, “We are putting it on now, right?”
“Yeah, please stay and listen to it with us,” the other one said.
“Aw, I’d love that,” Carly said. “I’d love to know what y’all think of it. I really would. But I can’t. Paul and I have some other people to go see who we have copies for. But, I tell you what, if y’all post a video after you’ve listened to it and tell me what you thought of it, then I’ll repost it to my followers.”
All three girls enthusiastically agreed to do that.
“But,” I said, “you can’t share the songs on your accounts. That’s the agreement Will is signing downstairs. He has to sign it because you’re not old enough yet. Because this is a special, advanced copy that not many people in the world will receive, and since we don’t know when it’s being released yet, it means it’s kind of a secret, and we want to keep it that way for now. So that means you can’t share it on your accounts or make a copy for your friends or anything like that. This copy is for you and only you. If you share it or copy it, then your dad could get into a lot of trouble, do you understand?”
Sophie nodded. “I understand. I get it.”
“So, does that mean we can’t listen to it? Only Soph can?” One of the girls, who Sophie still hadn’t introduced, said.
“No, that’s all fine,” Carly said. “Sophie can play it for her friends, here at home and at school, even.”
“But you need to make sure no one tries to record it if you do,” I added.
“You can share photos of the case or the CD online,” Carly said. “So, people can see I signed it for you. And you can even share short clips online. They just need to be really short.”
“Thirty seconds from any song,” I said. “No more than that, so stick to ten or twenty seconds to be safe.”
“So, I can only share one song? Or three if I do ten seconds from each one?”
Carly smiled. “No, Honey, it’s thirty seconds per song. But, think of it this way, the more songs you share a clip from, the less special each one will be.”
Sophie nodded. Smiled. Then said, “Thank you, Kayla. This is amazing. It’s really special.”
“You’re welcome, Honey. Now, how about those selfies before I go?” She paused. “And don’t forget to tag me in when you share them.”
“You know I was kidding about going parking on the cliffs, right?”
As I started the engine, I glanced over at Carly in the passenger seat. “Are you sure? It does sound like fun.”
She smiled sweetly. “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? But we’re not teenagers, Paul. And the truth is, I’d rather you take me out for a nice meal again. One last meal, somewhere we haven’t been before. Somewhere real nice. Then after that, we go back to your room, listen to ‘Alabama Sweetheart,’ and you can make love to me while it plays.”
I stared at her. One last meal.
What a horrible thought.
I nodded. “Okay. You’re the boss. Somewhere nice. Although I think we’ve been everywhere ‘nice’ that I know about.”
“How about...”
“How about where?”
She smiled. “The first place you took me for a meal in Westmouth.”
“What? Pizza Hut?”
She giggled and nodded. “We started there. Let’s...”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. And I didn’t want her to. But I knew exactly what she meant.
“Well, it’s not ‘somewhere nice,’ but I suppose it’s fitting. Okay. So, go to see Lana before or after?”
She giggled again. “Definitely before. I don’t think she’d appreciate the garlicy pizza breath.”
I fired the car into life and drove out of the village and back into town, then up the hill to campus, parking as close to Campus Heights as I could.
One of Lana’s flatmates, Josh, answered the door after we rang the bell.
“Oh, hi, Paul. Lana or Lily?” Before I could respond, he spotted Carly standing beside me. “Fuck a duck! You’re Kayla Valentine!”
Carly smiled sweetly, gave Josh a little wave and said quietly, “Hey Y’all.”
“Josh, did you just say...?” As usual, all the bedroom doors on the corridor were propped open, and another of Lana’s male flatmates appeared at the entrance to the first room on the left, immediately stopped speaking and stared at Carly. “Fuck me, it is as well!”
Three more flatmates appeared in the doorway at the end of the corridor leading to the communal kitchen. I knew Rina, but despite having had dinner with them regularly last term, I couldn’t recall the names of the two boys with her.
Lily and another girl appeared at the entrance to Lily’s room. “Hi, Paul. Hi, Kayla,” Lily said.
“You know Kayla Valentine?” said the girl next to her, whose name I also couldn’t remember—I’m terrible with names.
“We’ve met,” Lily said brightly. Hard to believe that was the same girl who’d been so cold towards Carly at Lana’s string quartet concert.
That accounted for seven of the eight residents. The one we had come to see wasn’t currently standing in a doorway staring at us.
“Erm ... Is Lana in?” I asked, feeling rather awkward.
“Lana!” Josh called. Then he quickly added, “Can we, like, get some selfies with you and stuff?”
He didn’t usually speak like a teenage girl. I suppose that was what we ought to start calling ‘The Kayla Effect.’
“Later, Josh,” Lana said from her doorway. Then she looked at Carly and me. “What’s up? Did you want me?”
I nodded. “In private, if we can?”
“Of course. Come on in.”
“But—” Josh said before Lana cut him off.
“I’m sure Kayla will pose for all the photos you want after we’ve talked about whatever they’re here to talk to me about.” She glanced at Carly. “Right, Kayla?”
Carly smiled sweetly again. “Sure. But I can’t stay long, Paul’s taking me out for one last nice meal.”
I rolled my eyes. “We’re going to Pizza Hut.”
“Pizza Hut is nice,” Lana said. “And I guess it’s appropriate. Come on in, then.”
We followed Lana into her room, despite the protests from the others, and Lana shut the door behind her. Lily had tried to follow us in, but Lana shook her head at her and said, “I’ll fill you in later, okay. Promise.”
When we were alone, just the three of us, Lana faced us and said, “What’s up? Must be important for you to come over.”
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