16. Callum
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Callum
We finish our coffee and sandwiches, and I leave money on the table even though I know Margo won’t charge us.
She never does. She hasn’t even since I was old enough to have my own money.
But I leave it anyway because she’ll use it to pay for someone else’s meal when they need it. That’s just who she is.
Then we head back out into the afternoon. The sun has moved lower in the sky, painting everything in that golden pre-sunset light that makes Westerly Point look like something out of a postcard.
“Beach?” I suggest, even though I already know where I want to take her. My feet have been trying to go that way all afternoon.
“Lead the way.”
The beach is a five-minute walk from Margo’s cafe, down a narrow path that cuts between two houses and opens up onto sand.
I’ve walked this path a million times. As a kid chasing my brothers.
As a teenager trying to clear my head. As an adult who sometimes needs to remember why he came back here in the first place.
But walking it with her feels new.
It’s not crowded. It never is this time of year.
In just a few months, this whole stretch will be packed with tourists and their umbrellas and their screaming kids and their expensive beach gear.
But for now, it’s just a few people walking dogs in the distance and some kids building a sandcastle near the water, their laughter carried on the wind.
Vivienne stops at the edge of the path where the pavement gives way to sand. She reaches down and slips off her shoes. I watch her balance on one foot, then the other, using my arm for balance.
I do the same, leaving both our pairs in a pile on a sun-bleached driftwood log that’s probably been here longer than I’ve been alive.
The sand is cold under my feet but not unbearable.
It’s still holding onto the warmth from the afternoon sun.
We start walking side by side, following the curve of the shoreline.
The water is choppy today. The wind has picked up, pulling at Vivienne’s hair and yanking strands free from that messy bun.
I want to reach over and tuck them back. I want to know if her hair is as soft as I remember. I have to curl my fingers into my palm to keep from doing it.
Our shoulders bump as we walk. Just barely. The briefest point of contact. But I feel it everywhere.
Jesus Christ. Get it together. One investor meeting and some accidental contact, and I’m suddenly completely useless. She’s still hiding something. There’s something she won’t let me near, and it’s driving me insane.
And she broke my heart. I need to remember that.
We keep walking. The beach stretches out ahead of us, empty and peaceful. The sound of waves is constant, a gentle soundtrack to my pounding heart that won’t slow down no matter how many deep breaths I take.
I have so many questions rattling around in my head, demanding to be let out. Demanding answers. But I think of the fishing trip and Wesley and Roman telling me to back off. I need to let her carry whatever she’s carrying until she’s ready to put it down.
I think about how long it took her to stop flinching every time someone raised their voice during service.
It was almost a month before she stopped going tense at the sound of my voice cutting through the kitchen noise.
She still stands just outside the kitchen door sometimes, one hand on the frame, like she’s gathering courage to even walk through it.
It hits me that she hasn’t once picked up a knife since she’s been here.
Not once. The Vivienne I know wouldn’t hesitate to jump into a working kitchen at any opportunity.
It’s taken me longer than I’d like to admit to learn the difference between someone who doesn’t want to be known and someone who doesn’t know how to let you in.
Vivienne is the second kind. I’ve always known that.
Even in school when she was all pointy edges and competition and that careful, professional distance she kept between herself and everyone else, there were these moments.
Small, unguarded moments where I could see the whole of her underneath all that armor.
She just needed you to be patient enough to wait for them and let her come to you.
I’m trying to be patient. But it doesn’t come naturally to me. It never has.
And we’ve only just found our way back to something that feels like us — like the Cal and Vivi who competed and pushed each other and made each other better.
I am terrified of doing the one thing that sends her running again.
I don’t want to push too hard and ask too much.
I don’t want her to give me more than she can.
So I don’t ask why she stopped cooking or why she left me or any of the thousand other questions burning in my chest.
Not yet.
“You used to do this in school,” I say instead, trying to keep my voice casual. “Take walks when you were stressed.”
She glances at me, and surprise flashes across her face. “You noticed that?”
“Of course I noticed. You’d disappear for an hour and come back calmer.” I keep my eyes on the water, staring anywhere but her face. “I always wondered where you went.”
I noticed everything about her. She would organized her station with military discipline, every tool exactly where she needed it.
I would stare for hours at the way she bit her lip when she was concentrating on a difficult technique.
I relished the way she’d laugh at my stupid jokes even when she was exhausted and running on three hours of sleep and too much espresso.
I dreamed of the way she’d pull her hair up when she was getting serious about something — the messier the bun, the more focused she was — a pen always stabbed through the center.
I noticed. I always noticed.
“I didn’t think anyone paid attention,” she says more to herself than me.
“I always paid attention.”
The words come out more raw than I meant them to be. Vivienne’s cheeks flush slightly. But she doesn’t look away. She doesn’t deflect or change the subject like I half-expected her to.
She just looks at me with a small smile. And for a second, I can’t breathe.
“I forgot how much I loved this,” she mutters, her voice almost lost in the sound of the waves. “Just walking. Being outside. Not thinking about spreadsheets and projections.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She smiles brightly. “Thank you for suggesting this. This is just what I needed.”
“Anytime.”
I mean it. I’d do this every day if she wanted. I’d walk with her until my feet hurt. And talk with her until my voice gave out. I’d be with her in whatever way she’d let me.
Which is dangerous thinking. That is the kind of thinking that gets you hurt. But I can’t seem to stop.
Even though I just told myself I need to remember that she broke me into a million pieces without explanation.
But fuck, I’ve always been drawn to Vivienne in a way that made no sense. And I guess no matter the circumstances, I always will be.
Our hands brush as we walk. Knuckles touching, bare skin against bare skin for a fraction of a second. But my breath catches anyway then stops completely.
And neither of us pulls away.
The contact lingers. Or maybe I’m imagining it. Maybe I’m so aware of every inch of space between us that even the absence of touch feels electrifying.
We walk in silence for a while. The easy kind where you don’t need to fill the space with words and only works when you’re comfortable with someone and you trust them enough to just exist beside you without performing.
The sun is starting to sink lower now, painting the sky in shades of pink and orange, turning the water liquid gold.
Eventually we end up sitting in the sand without discussing it. Just a natural stopping point where the beach curves and there’s a smooth stretch of sand facing the water. We sit close enough that our shoulders touch, our hips almost aligned, with our legs stretched out in front of us.
This is too close. I should move and put some space between us. I need to put some protective walls around my already wounded heart before she has a chance to break it again.
But I don’t move.
I don’t think I could make myself move even if I wanted to.
“I could get used to this,” Vivienne says, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.
“The beach?”
“All of it. The town. The ocean. The —” She gestures vaguely at everything around us. “The pace of it. Everything feels slower here. Simpler. It’s really wonderful.”
“You say that now. But wait until winter when it rains for three months straight and you can’t see the sun for weeks.”
“Still sounds better than New York in winter.”
“Did you like New York?”
It’s the safest version of what I actually want to ask. The question underneath the question. It’s a door left open. She can walk through it or she can close it, but either way I’ll know something.
I remember when she lived in New York. She told me all about it, back when she was still telling me things.
We talked every day, sometimes twice a day, messages bouncing back and forth across the country.
Her complaining about the cold and the subway and how crowded and expensive everything was.
She would talk for hours about how the kitchen she worked in ran differently from Paris, and way differently from the one she’d just left in Boston.
I remember thinking she sounded tired in a way she never had before, but I told myself it was just the adjustment.
Just Vivi being Vivi, burning through something new on her way to the next thing.
And then nothing. A week of silence that became two. Then three. Then permanent.
She’s silent for a long time. I peek from the corner of my eye at her just to make sure she’s still there.
“Parts of it,” she says finally. “The city itself. The energy. There’s nothing like it.” She takes a small breath, and I can hear the tightness in it. “The winters are brutal though. I was only there for about six months.”
Six months.