Free to Love

Chapter 52

Shawn

I decided to log back on to social media. It had been over four years since I'd last been active. The kids were in school and I had the place to myself. It was a good time to do this.

I first went to twitter. My last tweets had been promotional. No surprise there. I scrolled down and found some funny things I'd written about parenthood. I smiled as I read one particularly funny tweet about changing Nolan's diaper.

Next I logged on to Instagram. This was much harder to look at. My feed had the same promotional crap, but then there were hundreds of personal photos. Many of them were pics of my babies. I'd been such a proud young dad. Everything they did blew me away. I quickly scrolled all the way down to when I first went public about Mal and then slowly scrolled up, reliving our life together through my pictures.

My entire marriage was documented in my IG feed. There were pics of Mallory pregnant with Gracie and glowing, pics of of us together looking like a couple long before we really even were, pics of Nolan's pregnancy, pics of us with our babies, and pics of us genuinely happy and as in love as any two people could be.

I didn't want to cry, but I couldn't help it. Sometimes the pain of losing my wife was a fresh as it was right after she'd died. It was like my years of working through the grieving process just disappeared, and I was back standing by the bed as she breathed her last breaths.

"I miss you, Mal," I said as I touched her face on my phone screen.

As I sat there crying, I was hit by another feeling.

Guilt.

I felt like I was betraying my girlfriend, who I genuinely loved, by sitting on my phone crying about my wife.

I put my phone down and slowly composed myself. Then I picked it back up and reopened Instagram. I'd decided to post a picture of the kids, Joanna, and me taken on Halloween. Grace was dressed up as an 80's girl, wearing several items that had belonged to my mother during that time. Nolan was a werewolf. He didn't know much about them because I didn't let him watch really scary stuff, but he'd seen the mask and thought it was awesome. Jo and I were not dressed up but we were all smiles behind the kids.

I posted the photo with the simple caption 'Halloween 2027' and then closed the app.

I knew there'd be speculation about me and Joanna. We'd been spotted out in Toronto, but we were always with other people. It wasn't clear we were a couple. My IG post didn't make it obvious, either, but I knew what the reaction would be.

Not that it mattered. The bulk of my fan base had grown up. They weren't teenage girls anymore, and it was unlikely they'd flip out about me having a girlfriend. I'd been out of the spotlight for so long that I hadn't really accumulated a new base. Since I'd been off social media, I wasn't even sure if my old base still cared. Sure they'd come to see me perform last summer, but that could have been for nostalgia's sake.

Out of curiosity, I reopened Instagram and searched #shawnmendes, just like I used to when I'd stalk myself. There were a lot more recent posts than I expected. The picture I'd just posted was already being shared. Sure enough there were questions about who the mystery woman was, but mostly people seemed shocked I'd posted. Maybe I should have tagged, Jo. I'd ask her later if that was okay.

I went back to my page and saw I had tons of likes and many comments, most welcoming me back.

That was enough for today. I set my phone down and grabbed a load of laundry and threw it in the washer.

                               ~~~~~~

"So you're back in the social media game, eh?" Jo asked as we stood side by side cooking dinner.