Chapter Thirteen #2
Cal gives me some space and walks Bart over to the grassy park corner.
“No, you don’t. You love me and you love him and someday when your children ask Auntie Becca how their parents finally stopped being idiots, I will say, ‘Well, my babies, your father brought your mother coffee and your mother pretended not to want to climb him like the big, beautiful tree he is.’”
I choke on air. “I’m hanging up.”
“Wait! Do not hang up. Are you blushing? I bet you’re blushing. Is he watching you blush? God, I hope he is. Men need enrichment.”
“Goodbye, Becca.”
“No, wait!” Her tone gets serious and loses the humor. “Max, this is good. It’s good, right?”
I smile and look back at where Cal talks to my dog as Bart looks up at him with starry eyes.
“It’s…good.”
“You spun around each other for years—it’s not some weird insta-love story. I can feel you hesitating. You fell for him years ago. Now you’re just sliding down that path a lot faster because it’s a path you already know.”
And she’s right. I don’t need to hesitate because it’s Cal.
“When did you get so insightful?”
“Oh, I’ve always been insightful. I’d love to have insights on what’s under those jeans when you get the chance—”
“Bye, Becca,” I roll my eyes.
“Use protection!”
I smash the end button so hard my thumb hurts.
For a second, there is only the sound of Bart’s nails clicking back toward me on the sidewalk and Cal making a heroic attempt not to laugh.
I stand up straight. “Not a word from you.”
“I wasn’t going to say a thing.”
“Your face is saying all the things, Callan.”
He presses his palm against his chest in mock offense. “My face is innocent.”
“Your face is—”
I stop myself before I use one of the first three things that come to mind.
Beautiful. Hot. My favorite.
He does laugh then, and Bart takes that as an invitation to jump around his legs like that laugh was for him, which makes Cal scratch behind his ears again.
Cal is crouched on the sidewalk, one knee bent, coffee set carefully beside him, Bart’s leash looped around his wrist while he rubs his chest and says something too low for me to hear.
The golden red of Bart’s tail sweeps across the fallen leaves, scattering them around Cal’s shoes.
The morning light hits the side of Cal’s face and catches in his hair, in the dark scruff along his jaw, and the golden-green of his eyes when he glances up at me.
My chest tightens.
This is how it should have been. This is how it would have been.
Not Patrick’s apartment and heels I hated and highlights in my hair. Not watching my phone for the right response or wrong tone or waiting to see what version of that boyfriend I would get. Not making myself smaller and smaller until I could fit inside his expectations and pretend it was love.
This.
A beautiful Saturday morning. My coffee. Bart. Cal’s laugh. Weekend coffee dates and soft arguments about work with a man who knows I’m already awake at seven in the morning. Because he sees me.
Because he always did.
I think of that version of me at twenty-two, sitting across from him in the library with highlighters scattered between us and the coffee he brought me by my elbow.
I think of snow as he walked me home and his shoulder brushing mine.
His thumb across my cheek at graduation.
The blue and gold pen I never got to open.
The life I was choosing when this was right in front of me, waiting.
Cal stands, brushing a hand over his jeans. “You okay?”
I blink.
“Yeah.”
He studies me and walks back over, Bart now proudly between us like he arranged this.
“You sure?”
I take a sip of coffee and study his face. He looks worried, but he smiles and God, I groan inwardly because all I want is that smile to kiss me and erase the last seven years.
I think about lying.
I don’t.
“I was just thinking.”
“About?”
He reaches out and holds the tips of my fingers with his, rubbing small circles into the cold skin there.
There are a hundred things I could say.
That I was thinking I don’t know how to do this. That I’m scared at how easy this feels. That some part of me is waiting for the second shoe to drop; for the catch because good things don’t usually show up on my porch on a random Saturday morning looking at me the way he is right now.
“I don’t think I have to fall for you.”
I refuse to overthink and let the words tumble free.
He stills.
My heart pounds, slow and fast at the same time, and I talk without thinking.
“Because I think I did a long time ago,” I say looking down at our fingers laced between us. “I think there was just stuff in the way and I couldn’t see it clearly. I didn’t know what to call it.”
The silence after is long enough for my brain to turn back on and start figuring out an exit strategy.
Then he steps closer.
Not too close. Just close enough the air shifts and he has to really look down at me.
“I knew what to call it.”
My breath catches.
“Then why didn’t you?”
His mouth curves, sad at the edges. “Because you weren’t mine to name.”
I think the ground might give out below me as he lets my fingers drop and lifts his hand, then stops like he’s giving me the choice to close the distance.
And I do.
I step closer and his fingers brush my chin, and I think I might drown in that look in his eyes that’s saying so many things and nothing at all.
“I’m here now,” I say.
His eyes hold mine. “I know.”
“And you’re also here.”
“I know that too.”
“Good.”
“Good,” he repeats, and the smile is devastating.
Bart barks once.
We both look down.
I sigh, “He’s very needy.”
“He gets it from you.”
I gasp. “Take that back!”
“Nah.”
“I will take this coffee and leave you here.”
“You won’t.”
“I might.”
“You like me too much.”
“Not even!”
“Admit it, you have a crush on me,” he laughs, his grin is immediate and criminal.
“I do not.”
“You do. Cause you’re here. With me.”
“Or are we just both here with Bart?”
“Convenient excuse.”
“I’m a legal professional. I can deny things with confidence.”
He laughs again, and I look away, but I’m smiling so hard it hurts.
Bart trots ahead as we start back towards the house. Cal’s hand brushes mine once. Then again. And the third time, he stops pretending it’s accidental and lets his fingers catch mine.
He looks down, then up at me, waiting for a sarcastic remark, but he just smiles and looks at me like…
God, like I’m everything.
Like this is normal. Like this is what we do.
Like maybe we aren’t falling at all; just picking up exactly where we left off.