Chapter 13 #2
"Don't say it," I warned, starting the engine. It coughed twice before catching.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Liar. You’re dying to make some comment. I can see it on your face.” I pulled out of the parking garage, merging into Saturday traffic with the aggressive optimism of a woman whose car had questionable brakes. "Buckle up, buttercup. We're going on an adventure."
"Where?"
"You'll see."
"I hate surprises."
“Too bad. Now, get comfy and enjoy the ride.”
He settled into the seat, and I caught the micro-adjustment—the moment he decided to stop resisting and let the current take him. His shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. His hand found my thigh, resting there with casual possession.
I was driving a rusted Honda through downtown with Callum Hayes's hand on my leg and the windows cracked to dilute the fry smell. This was either the most ridiculous morning of my life or the most honest one.
Both, probably.
I took him to the Eastside.
Not the curated, gentrified Eastside where craft cocktail bars charged eighteen dollars for a drink served in a mason jar. The real Eastside—six blocks of food vendors and vintage shops and a weekend flea market that sprawled across a parking lot behind an old warehouse.
Callum got out of my car and surveyed the scene with the controlled alarm of a man who'd wandered into a foreign country without a phrasebook.
"Is that a man selling taxidermy from a folding table?" he asked.
"That's Reggie. He's here every weekend. Last month he had a stuffed raccoon posed doing karate. Very tasteful. I almost bought it.”
"Willow, please don’t fill my apartment with dead things,” he almost pleaded, like I would actually do that.
I laughed and tugged at his arm to keep walking.
“Why are we here?” Callum asked, slow to give into the unscheduled calamity that was a flea market.
"You need to experience joy that doesn't come from load-bearing calculations.
" I grabbed his hand and pulled him into the market.
"Rule for today: you're not allowed to assess the structural integrity of anything.
No comments on building codes. No opinions on foundation materials.
You are a regular human on a regular Saturday and you're going to buy overpriced vintage junk and eat food from a truck and enjoy yourself. "
"And if I don't enjoy myself?"
"Then I'll know you're a lost cause and I'll return you to your office with a bow on top."
He squeezed my hand. "Lead the way."
The flea market was a gorgeous mess—folding tables and pop-up tents and hand-lettered signs advertising everything from handmade ceramics to vintage vinyl to suspiciously organic essential oils.
A woman in a tie-dye hoodie was reading tarot cards beneath a beach umbrella.
Two golden retrievers in matching bandanas supervised the proceedings from a patch of sun.
Callum was so far out of his element he might as well have been on Mars.
I loved it.
"Look at this." I held up a ceramic mug shaped and painted to resemble an owl. "For the shop. If the shop survives."
"That's hideous."
"It's magnificent. It's going on the shelf behind the register." I paid the vendor five dollars and tucked the mug into my bag, and Callum watched with the resigned acceptance of a man who'd realized he was dating a person who collected ugly pottery.
We wandered. I dragged him past vintage clothing racks where he recoiled from a 1970s leisure suit ("That fabric is a biohazard") and through a section of old books where he found a water-stained copy of Le Corbusier's writings and held it with the tenderness other people reserved for newborns.
"Buy it," I said.
"It's damaged. The spine is—"
"Buy it anyway. Imperfect things have more personality."
He looked at me. Held the look too long for a crowded flea market on a Saturday morning. Then he bought the book.
We found food trucks parked behind the warehouse—a taco truck, a Korean BBQ operation that smelled incredible, a crepe stand run by a woman who called everyone "chérie" with absolute sincerity.
I ordered tacos. Callum studied the menu of the Korean truck with the seriousness of a man reviewing building codes.
"Just pick one," I said through a mouthful of carnitas.
"I'm evaluating my options."
"You've been evaluating for four minutes. The bibimbap. Get the bibimbap."
He got the bibimbap. We sat on a low wall beside the parking lot, eating with plastic forks, our shoulders touching. The February sun was weak but present, and the market hummed with the cheerful noise of a hundred people spending money they probably shouldn't on things they definitely didn't need.
"Verdict?" I asked, nodding at his bowl.
He chewed. Considered. "Exceptional, actually."
“See? I wouldn’t steer you wrong.” I wiped my hands and grabbed my phone. “Callum Hayes eating street food from a plastic container. I should document this for posterity. Smile."
“I don’t do—“
I took the photo. In it, he was mid-protest, bibimbap in hand, looking annoyed and handsome and thoroughly out of his depth.
It was the best picture I'd ever taken.
"Delete that," he said.
"Absolutely not. This is going in a frame."
"Willow—"
"In a frame, on a shelf, in my apartment. Assuming my apartment still exists. Which reminds me—" I set down my taco. "I should call Mr. Henley about the repair timeline."
The mention of my apartment introduced a current I hadn't intended. My apartment. The one I'd be returning to. The one that existed in a separate geography from the bed I'd been sharing with Callum for the past three nights.
He registered it too. I saw the shift—a tightening around his eyes, a calibration happening behind his composed exterior.
"There's no rush," he said. Carefully. "To go back."
"The repairs are supposed to be done this week."
"I know. But there's no rush."
I looked at him. He looked at his bibimbap. We were both aware of what he was saying without saying it—stay, keep staying, don't leave—and we were both aware that saying it plainly would turn a three-day sleepover into a decision with real architecture behind it.
"Let's not talk about it today," I said. "Today is a no-serious convo zone."
He nodded, accepting that declaration.
I finished my tacos. He finished his bibimbap. And we didn't talk about the apartment, or the expiration of our arrangement, or the fact that I'd stopped being able to picture my mornings without his arm around my waist and his French press coffee and his devastating, half-asleep shoulder kisses.
We didn't talk about it. But it was there. The elephant in the room at an outdoor flea market, which was an impressive feat even for an elephant.
After the market, I drove us across town to a neighborhood I'd discovered during a wrong turn last summer—a stretch of residential blocks where the houses were old, weird, and wonderful.
Victorian painted ladies with turrets and wraparound porches.
A mid-century modern box that looked as though it'd been airlifted from Palm Springs.
A craftsman bungalow with a garden so overgrown it resembled a benevolent jungle.
An art deco apartment building with curved balconies and decorative flourishes that had survived eighty years of weather and neglect.
I parked. Killed the engine.
"Why are we in a residential neighborhood?" Callum asked.
"I want you to show me."
"Show you what?"
"How you see buildings." I unbuckled my seatbelt, turned to face him. "You've been an architect for twenty years. You look at structures every day and see things the rest of us don't. I want to know what you see."
He was quiet. I watched the idea land—the realization that I was asking him to share the part of himself he'd poured his life into.
Not the business side. Not the client-facing, contract-winning, Richard Ashford side.
The real part. The passion that had cost him a marriage and nearly cost him his daughter.
"You want an architectural walking tour," he said. "Of a random neighborhood."
"I want you to be excited about a thing you love while I watch. Is that weird? That might be weird."
"It's not weird." His voice had gone rough, the way it did when I caught him off guard with a sincerity he hadn't prepared for. "It's—"
"Don't get sappy. Just show me the buildings."
We walked. And Callum Hayes—controlled, restrained, emotionally buttoned-up Callum Hayes—transformed.
He pointed at the Victorian on the corner and explained how the turret wasn't just decorative but served as a thermal chimney, drawing hot air up and out.
He ran his hand along the craftsman's porch railing and talked about mortise-and-tenon joinery with the reverence a priest gives a sacrament.
He stopped in front of the art deco apartment building and described the way the curved balconies interacted with prevailing winds, creating microclimates that made each unit feel different depending on its orientation.
His hands moved when he talked about buildings.
That was the revelation. In every other context—the office, the galas, the coffee shop—Callum kept his hands disciplined.
Controlled. But here, pointing out a cornice detail or tracing the line of a roofbeam, his hands came alive.
Sweeping, emphatic, sculpting the air into shapes that mirrored what he saw.
He was beautiful.
Not handsome—though he was that, annoyingly.
Beautiful in the way a person became beautiful when they forgot to perform and let the raw, unfiltered version of themselves breathe.
I was watching Callum Hayes in his natural habitat, and his natural habitat wasn't an office or a gala or a pristine apartment.
It was here, on a sidewalk, looking up at a building with an awe that decades of practice hadn't dulled.
“Am I boring you?” he asked, the tiniest apprehension creeping into his voice.
“Not at all. I like seeing you passionate about what you love. It’s literally the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”