Chapter 2
My empty cup is in my hand, the window behind Callum throws late-afternoon light across the table, and I notice at the same moment that he's not going to answer right away.
The silence lengthens on his terms, not mine, and I can feel how completely I've stepped into a conversation he's already finished having.
He expected me to ask about the lease and expects me to stay. I'm left with the fact that he's right about both.
Behind me comes a sound like a small freight train clearing its sinuses and when I glance back I see Pancake's jowls vibrating with each exhale.
She's wearing a knit bandana that reads Boss Lady.
When I turn back to Callum I try very hard to remember that I'm here to negotiate a lease and not adopt a dog.
"The pop-up's also on Harbor View," he says.
"Two blocks south of your current location.
Ground floor unit, approximately twelve hundred square feet.
" He sets a single printed page on the edge of the worktable, his thumb tapping once against the paper before he slides it toward me.
"You can take occupancy starting tomorrow. "
I look at the page without picking it up. “What’s the rate? And if the answer is ‘competitive,’ I’m leaving.”
He hands me the contract and I look, waiting for the catch. When there isn't one, the problem isn't the number. It's that there's nothing to argue with. The rate is below market, the timeline is reasonable, and there's a month-to-month extension clause if my remediation runs long.
He's cleared every obstacle from this decision and I know he's done it on purpose, because a man who pulls inspection records before a phone call doesn't do this by accident.
"What if I find something better in the next forty-eight hours and don't need the space at all?"
“Then we rip it up and pretend this extremely professional meeting never happened.” He says it without inflection, without any particular investment in the outcome.
I narrow my eyes. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“You wouldn't care?”
“If you've got a better option tomorrow, take it.”
I blink.
One shoulder lifts. “The goal isn't keeping you in my building.”
“What's the goal?”
“Keeping your store open.”
Then, after a beat, he says, “I’m not running a charity. I’m offering you a solution. Different tax category, Avery.”
The sound of my name in his mouth does something I choose not to examine.
“I'm worried about terms I'm not reading carefully because I'm tired and stressed. You've arranged this entire conversation so that the path of least resistance is agreeing with you and somehow I’m supposed to feel like agreeing was my idea.”
The corner of his mouth shifts, not quite a smile.
“That's a fair read. Slightly rude, but fair.”
"Did Jonah hand you a field guide? ‘Approaching the Wild Port Hueneme Bookseller.’”
He looks at me for a second. “Jonah didn’t exactly hand me a user manual, if that’s what you’re asking.” The corner of his mouth shifts. “But he did say that if you felt cornered, you’d leave before you let anyone see it.”
"He's not wrong." I say it evenly, but what I'm actually thinking about is how Jonah has been running interference between me and the rest of the world for so long that I've stopped noticing when he does it. I'm noticing now.
"No," Callum says. "He isn't."
The annoying part isn't that Jonah told him.
It's that Callum recognized it.
Most people notice when I'm angry or stubborn. Very few notice the thing underneath.
My phone buzzes against my thigh and I glance down.
Shane: Should I lock up or are you coming back today? Also do you know if any of the other shops on the block got red-tagged?
I type back that he should lock up and that I don't know yet.
I don't address the second question because I don't have that answer.
Shane is steady and reliably on my side, at least in all the ways that have ever mattered.
I hold onto that before I put my phone away, even though something about the timing of his question doesn't quite settle.
“What do you want in return?” I ask.
Callum looks at me for a second.
“That’s hurtful,” he says. “I occasionally do things without an evil master plan.”
I wait.
He looks out at the city for half a second. “Not often.”
Against my will, something at the corner of my mouth threatens mutiny.
He notices. Of course he notices.
Then his fingers settle flat against the table.
“For the lease. For the research. For pulling records and having a solution ready before you knew you needed one.” His eyes come back to mine. “I want you to stop acting like the good option has to be a trap.”
The irritating part isn't that he's wrong. It's that it sounds like he's been paying attention.
“You’ve already decided this is a bad idea and you’re looking for a reason to refuse that isn’t just stubbornness.
I can’t give you one because there isn’t one.
The offer’s good. The location works. The timeline fits.
I want you to say yes instead of spending the next two days trying to find a reason not to. ”
I just stare at him.
His eyes narrow slightly.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s not a nothing face.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
One shoulder lifts. “You just got this look like you're thinking somebody’s being ridiculous but you’re trying to be polite about it.”
I stare harder because I absolutely do not have a look and also because I hate that he apparently recognized it.
There’s a part of me that wants to tell him that Elizabeth Bennet also thought she had Mr. Darcy figured out when she turned him down the first time. I keep this observation to myself, because saying it out loud means deciding which of us is Darcy.
“Excuse me,” I say. “I need some air.”
Pancake lifts her head as I stand, regards me with the solemn gravity of a dog who has seen things, and then heaves herself upright.
That's when I see there's a front leg that isn't there and the easy three-point stance she's clearly had long enough to make look like the only way to stand. She lies back down and closes her eyes.
There are forty things I want to ask Callum right now and this isn't the time for any of them.
This is a business arrangement. He has a problem and I have a problem, and we've found an overlap. That's all this is. Although I still can't tell what, exactly, he stands to gain.
I spend the next forty-seven minutes on the sidewalk outside his building, working through every contact I have and every referral they give me.
Making calls, leaving messages, and chasing options that all collapse the moment I follow through on them.
Long enough to realize my calls aren't going anywhere.
I stand there after I put my phone away and turn the situation over the way I would a bad chapter, tracing it back to the moment the red tag hit the door this morning and recognizing that's when things stopped working.
There's nothing to fix about that now, only a decision to go back upstairs, sign the lease, and focus on surviving this instead of pretending I can avoid it.
The office is exactly as I left it. Callum is looking down at the worktable with his hands braced against the edge and his eyes on the city. He doesn't turn around when I come in.
“That was quick.”
I stop halfway to the table. “That’s offensive.”
He glances at me over his shoulder. “About your decision-making?”
“No.” I keep walking. “About your confidence.”
The corner of his mouth shifts. “You came back.”
I hate that I don't have a response ready for that.
He turns back toward the table before I can invent one, which I appreciate more than I mean to. He expected me to come back. He and Jonah both did, and that's the thing I'll be quietly furious about long after the pop-up lease ends and my store is back where it belongs.
Pancake has migrated from her orthopedic corner to directly underneath the worktable at Callum's feet and is snoring peacefully onto his left boot. He appears not to have noticed, or to have noticed and accepted it as one of the fixed conditions of his life.
When I cross to the table he reaches past me without a word and angles the document toward the light.
“Is the month-to-month extension in writing or just verbal?” I ask.
"Page two, paragraph four."
I pick up the document and read all of it, my finger tracking the clause as I shift my weight against the edge of the table. Page one to the extension clause and the early cancellation terms to the rate lock language.
The terms are exactly what he said they were, and there's still one thing I don't understand: the eighteen months of acquisition data on his table and the inspection records pulled before I called my brother.
I hold the question in my mouth for a moment and then I let it go.
Relief settles in, which is irritating because it's attached to him.
What I'm trading is certainty for survival, and I know it, so survival wins today.
I reach for the pen he's set beside the document and my fingers catch against his before I can stop it. The contact lands sharper than it should, like I touched something live, and my grip tightens instinctively around the pen even though his hand doesn't move.
For a second that stretches past where it should, we're both holding it, his thumb just brushing mine, and I'm suddenly aware of every inch of space between us and how little of it there actually is.
I don't look up and don't move first. The heat of his hand lingers a beat longer than it has any right to before I pull the pen back, forcing my attention down to the page so I can sign my name without letting my hand shake.
Neither of us says anything.
Then Callum says, quietly, “You can let go of the pen.”
I look down. We’re still both holding it.
Heat climbs into my face fast enough to annoy me and I let go immediately. “I'm aware.”
His mouth twitches.
“I was testing it.”