Chapter 9 #2
“I mean, when they left me in Indianapolis, I didn’t have to go with you.
I had other options. They weren’t great and I wasn’t looking forward to trying them, but I didn’t have to pick up with some other guy like you just said.
And I do get that I was really lucky that you let me stay with you—that you’re still letting me.
Thank you, but I think I could have been ok on my own.
” I thought about sitting there in the round plaza, still confused due to what I’d taken the night before, with nothing to my name except a dress that was meant to expose me and an empty orange juice bottle.
I hadn’t cared much about the future at that point.
“Are we fighting right now?” Callum asked. “I’m glad you came with me that day. I was worried about you at first, but later? I knew it was the right decision.”
“You didn’t want me at first, because…why?”
“You might have been pulling some kind of scam. You said so yourself,” he reminded me. “You said it was nice of me to let you stay over, because you could have stolen my car.”
“I could have done a lot of terrible things.”
“But even though I was worried, I knew at heart that you weren’t that kind of person.
I could tell that you needed my help, obviously you did.
You were barefoot and bleeding in the street,” he continued.
“It worked out, too, because here we are. You have a job you like, right? We’re living large with two plates and a good number of forks.
” He smiled, halfway. “Are we still fighting?”
“No, we never were,” I said. I got up and poured myself another glass of water.
“Are you upset about something?”
I sat back down and drank, thinking. “I don’t really like the idea that I was helpless, like…I don’t know what kind of animal Anara would think up, but what comes to my mind is a lamb. The kind that a dog could pick up and rip out its throat.”
“Rainey, what are you talking about?”
“That happens,” I said. “I’ve seen it happen. My aunt had an awful dog and it would chase other animals. We lived out in the country and it attacked a flock of sheep and it killed about ten of them.”
He looked disgusted. “That dog was a hell hound. What happened?”
“The rancher shot and wounded him and my aunt went crazy, but it was all her fault. She could have been prosecuted, because she already knew that her pet was dangerous and she still let it roam uncontrolled. But she always got away with stuff,” I said.
She had never been held accountable. “The rancher also could have sued her over his losses, but he wouldn’t have collected anything.
You can’t get blood from a stone.” But I did remember the blood on that day because Aunt Simone had sent me over to deal with the problem.
The carcasses, the smell, and the rancher’s anger were as clear to me now as they had been five years before, when I was eighteen.
“Is that the dog that bit you, too?” He looked down at my thigh, where Damian’s doctor had sanded away the scar. “What happened to it?”
“It was already gone when my aunt died. I had told the county animal control that it would probably kill somebody.”
Callum put his hand on my leg, over the place where I’d had the jagged gash. “You don’t have to worry about the dog.”
“I’m not,” I said.
“Yeah, you are. Your voice is shaking and so are your hands.”
I looked at the glass of water I held and then put it down. “I took care of it. I can take care of myself, too, even if it doesn’t seem like it.” I had done that for a lot of years, and a lot had gone on that I’d forced myself to get through.
Later that night, I sat at the kitchen table with my sewing machine while he was in his room, watching some football footage on a tablet from the team.
The season had continued relentlessly over the past few weeks.
I had gone to the game in Iowa and so had Anara, and it had been fun to see a new place but not very fun to listen to our team get booed.
Callum himself was booed, because he was getting to play.
The starter was coming back from his injury gradually, so they were splitting time at the position.
I had listened to the jeering from the opposing fans and had gotten very, very mad. “They don’t know what’s good,” I had told Anara, and she had agreed. Apparently, they reminded her of koalas, which had relatively smooth brains that were ridiculously small for their body masses.
But I had skipped flying out to the next game due to work issues (meeting clients on Saturday morning with my boss, Beau) and the next one had been at home.
Suddenly, it was fall and it was definitely colder here.
My T-shirts and jean shorts were put away in a drawer and I was working on coming up with warmer clothes that were good for the office and more that were good for games.
And I had to look just right in our videos, too, which took more effort because my wardrobe in those had become a topic of conversation in the comment section.
It was getting late but I kept my foot on the pedal of the machine and the spool of thread kept spinning.
Now I had several shades of orange thread, but if Callum got traded to another team, I wouldn’t wear this color again.
If he went somewhere else, would he want me to come along with him?
Would I want to go? I had a job, a condo, and friends here—but the job was only part-time, my friends would leave along with their partners, and the condo was rented to Callum Frazier, not to me.
I listened to him get up from bed and walk out to join me. “What are you making?” he asked.
“I was trying to finish this skirt but I keep messing up on the zipper,” I said.
All my clothes from the summer were too tight in the hips and butt, and I’d been glad to put them away.
Now that I was sewing new stuff, it was embarrassing to see how much bigger I had to size it all.
I reached behind my machine and turned it off. “I’m taking a break.”
“Go to bed,” he said. He put his hands on my shoulder and rubbed. “Does this feel right? This is what you do for me, but I don’t want to squeeze too hard.”
It was excellent and I told him so. “You’re also up late,” I added.
“I was watching film of the Ryders’ defensive line. They’re impressive,” he said.
“But you can handle them.”
“It’ll be a fight.” His hands paused. “I was thinking about how strange it was, too. Five years ago, almost to the day, I was in a guy’s basement watching him package his pills to sell.
I was going out as his protection and to make sure he got paid, but I hated him.
He was laughing and saying that people had no idea what they were getting.
He could have been giving them rat poison and he thought it was so funny.
I thought of my mom, dying alone and probably poisoned by dirty pills, and I hit him in the mouth.
It was kind of a sucker punch, but he had it coming. ”
“He did. He really did.” I thought about the various drugs that I had taken with no clear idea of what they were, just like Callum’s mother. At least I hadn’t had a baby depending on me.
“And now I’m here, with you,” he went on. “It’s a crazy world.”
“Do you ever want more?” I asked.
“Like, a nice car? A house without squatters in it? Or do you mean stuff beyond material crap?”
I nodded. That was what I meant.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, and I turned in the chair so I could see his face. I also took his hands. “I think about the security of a bank account, for one thing. They were talking to us about classes for rookies on financial choices and I’m going to sign up to take them in the off-season.”
“That’s a good idea. But what about other stuff?” I asked.
“A lot of the guys are helping out their parents and grandparents, but I don’t have those. I don’t have any debts now that I paid off my credit card. Do you?”
I shook my head. “Like, long-term goals,” I suggested.
“Yeah,” Callum said again, “I have been thinking about my future. I have two years of junior college under my belt, which is an associate degree. I could go further, too. Nobody in my family ever did any kind of higher education. That I know of,” he amended.
“My father might be some kind of genius, but I doubt it a lot because if he was so smart, he wouldn’t have gotten involved with my mother.
But she was beautiful before the addiction started to show and he wouldn’t have been the first guy to get fooled by a pretty face. ”
“I guess that happens.” I let go of his hands and stood, then started to organize my projects.
“What about you? Would you want to go back to school?”
“Probably not,” I said. “I didn’t really like it.”
“I never heard of anyone doing math in their head like you can. You’re really good at figuring stuff out, like how you went after that per diem and got it all organized. I bet you were good at your classes,” he remarked. “Didn’t you tell me that?”
“I was ok,” I corrected. “I missed too much to be good. And I messed around, too.”
“You got in trouble?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding. I started to lift the machine to put it away, but he took it from my hand. “Thanks.”
“Why?”
“Why did I get in trouble?”
“You know why I did,” he said. He put his hand on my back as we walked toward the bedrooms. “I was a little asshole who was taking a swipe at the world.”
“Were you actually little?” I wondered.
“When I was twelve, I was already six-two. I was only little in terms of mental abilities.”
“You’re no koala!” I said, and then explained their smooth brains.
Callum had followed me into my room and he sat on the bed as I took off my earrings at the dresser. “What did you do for trouble?”
How honest did I want to be? “I wanted attention,” I said. “I liked attention from boys.”
That didn’t seem to bother him. “You probably led them around by their…noses.”
“I was pretty back then,” I agreed.
“Back then? You’re beautiful now, too,” he told me. “I get so much shit about you.”