Chapter 70
who's nick?
Cal
Em is one of the last people to come down the escalator to baggage claim. It’s been a month since I’ve seen her in person. As she approaches, I hold out the bouquet of flowers I brought for her. She takes them, and when I lean in for a kiss, she turns her head so that my kiss lands on her cheek.
She mutters something about the flight being bumpy and then wanders off toward the baggage claim station. I follow along, standing next to her while she checks her phone.
“I had a draft paper due yesterday,” she explains. “I was hoping for quick feedback.”
“Well, I’m hoping to make you forget your master’s program and papers and thesis arguments for about forty-eight hours.”
She looks up at me. I was hoping for the playful smile I love, but all I get is a look of exasperation.
Emily is traditionally pretty in a lot of ways with her honey-blond hair, bright hazel eyes, and a cute, upturned nose.
She’s in a white T-shirt, jeans, and a navy blazer, looking like she could go horseback riding or teach a college class.
Either way, she’d look good even in spite of the downward tilt of her pink mouth.
I reach out and trace my thumb along her lips.
“Your face is gonna freeze like that,” I say, leaning in for a kiss.
She allows it but turns away as soon as the baggage claim buzzer goes off.
As Emily makes her way closer to the carousel, I shove my hands in my pockets and blow out a sigh.
I’ve been feeling so guilty about kissing Billie.
It won’t happen again, especially now that I know we have to work together on this project at the boys and girls club.
Still, I wonder if I should tell Emily about it.
Although, at this moment, I doubt she’d care.
When she spots her bag, I jog over to grab it for her. She thanks me, and I pull it along behind me as we make our way out to grab a taxi.
“So, what do you want to do this weekend?” I ask. “I made us a reservation for dinner tonight but thought I’d see what you were up for.”
“Have you done any sightseeing?” She stares out the window at the sights as they pass.
“Not really. I mean, I walk around a little, but I don’t do too much besides work stuff.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” she mutters to herself.
“Well,” I say, feeling affronted, “I mean, I did go out to see some live music one night.”
She turns and appraises me. “Cal, I know you pretty well. You like routine and you’re way out of yours.”
I’m not sure how to take the statement. It could be that she’s saying she understands why I haven’t seen a lot yet.
Her tone makes it seem otherwise, but I’m bad at reading people most of the time, even people I know well.
I can read one thing, though. Em hasn’t smiled once since she got here.
She keeps looking at her phone. I guess she’s just distracted by her school stuff, but still.
When we get to my apartment, Em dumps her things in the bedroom and then disappears into the bathroom. A moment later, I hear the bath water running. I knock lightly on the door.
“Want some company in there?” I ask through the door.
“No, I’m good,” she answers back.
I frown and sit on the couch to watch sports highlights while she does her thing. When she finally comes out, she’s in a fluffy white robe, her blond hair piled on top of her head in a dancer’s bun, tight and perfect. I pat the couch, and she sits, leaning into me as I put my arm around her.
“Feel better?” I press a kiss to the crown of her head.
“I guess. I hate flying, I’ve realized.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear that.”
“It just makes me feel crowded and dirty. Nick says the air doesn’t just circulate and recirculate, but I can’t help but feel planes are just germ factories.”
“Who is Nick?” Don’t like the sound of him.
“He’s a guy in my master’s cohort. We work on a lot of projects together.”
“How does he know how air circulates in a plane?”
She shrugs. “When is dinner?”
I look at my phone. “An hour.”
“Okay. I’ll go get dressed.”
She starts to get up, but I pull her back, leaning in to kiss her neck. “We have time,” I say against her skin.
She swats me away and mumbles something about needing to send an email before we leave. I follow her into the bedroom, watch as she pulls her laptop from her bag, opens it up, and crawls onto the bed with it on her lap.
“Really, Em?”
She looks up and her eyebrows knit in the center of her forehead. “What?”
“I haven’t seen you in weeks. I’ve missed you. I’m trying to kiss on you and you’re sending an email?”
“Sorry.” She doesn’t sound sorry at all. “Nick’s expecting my feedback on this project. I’ll be able to focus on your needs more thoroughly if you let me get this off my plate.”
I grit my teeth. “Em, I flew you all the way here. I want to see you. Talk to you.”
“Fuck me?” she asks, not looking up from the screen. Her fingers fly over the keys.
“Well, yeah. Maybe that, too.”
“Pardon me if I don’t rip my clothes off so you can take me like some animal.”
“That wasn’t how I…”
“Whatever. Fine. Let’s get it over with.” She puts the laptop down and lies back on the bed like a cold, dead fish.
“Wow, that’s certainly hot, but I think I’ll wait until you’re actually interested.”
Emily sits back up and rolls her eyes, grabbing her laptop, her attention back on her email.
An hour later, she’s in a little black dress, her hair still up in that fussy bun.
I compliment her for about the tenth time, telling her how beautiful she looks and how much I’ve missed her as we’re led to our seats at the restaurant.
It’s on the sixtieth floor of a hotel, looking out at the Strip, lights twinkling around and below us.
“Nice view,” she says flatly.
“I mean…”
She gives me a half smile as she sips her water. “There are views like this in Montreal.”
“Of course, there are.”
“Nick and I went to Trillium Park not too long ago,” she says as the waiter comes to take our drink order. Em orders iced tea. I encourage her to share a bottle of wine with me, and she says primly, “No, thank you. You know how you get when you drink.”
“Excuse me?”
The waiter shifts from one foot to the other, face pinched. “Shall I come back?”
“No. I’ll have a Stella. The lady just wants iced tea.”
I stare at Emily as the waiter walks off. “Really?”
She shrugs. “You have very little filter even when you’re sober, Calum. I’m not in the mood to babysit you if you get drunk.”
There is no part of me that wants to have an argument with my girlfriend when she’s only just arrived. I have missed her, missed the comfort of having someone around who knows me well.
“So why did you go to Trillium Park?” I ask, trying to change the mood.
Emily is looking at her phone again. “Hmm?”
“You said you and somebody went to Trillium Park, but the waiter came, and you didn’t finish your thought.”
She looks up. “Oh. Nick. The guy in my cohort? We went one day a week or two ago. The weather was as amazing as that view of the skyline. I love Montreal; it’s just the best.”
This feels like a dig. We’re looking down on an iconic view of the Strip in Las Vegas.
There are lights of all colors, fountains, and every kind of structure imaginable.
It’s not like the skyline of Montreal, that’s true, but it is special in its way.
A view I’ve started to value in a different way.
The thought of my hometown’s cityscape hurts my heart a little, though.
I miss home and she knows it. To remind me of a place I can’t be right now seems cruel.
Still, I’m less interested in picking a fight about that than I am in finding out why she was with some other guy in the park.
So, I go for it and ask, “Why go to the park, though? How can you get research done in a park?”
“We were actually just reading case studies,” she says, tight-lipped. “I don’t need to justify it to you.”
The waiter returns with our drinks. Emily glares at my bottle of beer as if it has caused her a great disrespect. She manages a thin smile as she orders a salad for dinner.
“You could have anything on the menu and you’re getting a salad?”
“I’m not very hungry,” she says, looking out the window.
My nostrils flare as I breathe in and breathe out. “I’ll have the sirloin medium, and a baked potato,” I tell the waiter, handing him my menu.
After he leaves, Emily hits me with what’s really on her mind. “Why do you have to make everything so uncomfortable?”
“I’m not trying to make things uncomfortable.”
“I mean, even now, you’re acting like a child.”
I hold her stare until she shakes her head and looks back out the window.
We sit in silence for at least five minutes; the time straining between us. Finally, I attempt to make peace for a third time or maybe the fourth at this point. “What are you working on for your thesis right now?”
Emily brightens a bit at this. She is a true academic, and she’s likely to go on to her Ph.D. next. She never passes up an opportunity to talk about her work and she doesn’t disappoint now.
“Well, remember before you left, and I was working with the local school systems to survey kids regarding their interest in and access to counseling and psychological services?”
“Vaguely.” Now, less than enthused.
“Well, the responses were pretty wild, especially when I compared them to the same survey to their parents, regarding how they felt about mental health care when they were their children’s ages.”
“What is your plan with all of this research?”
“Really?” Emily folds her arms across her chest. “I’ve only explained my goals like six billion times, Cal.”
“I mean, I know you want to get this degree so you can go on to the next one, and then you want to teach at the college level.”
“But the research is important. I’m trying to correlate the changing attitude toward mental health care to the too-slow growth of the counseling and psychological services industry.”