Chapter Thirty-Two
THIRTY-TWO
Annie
I feel guilty for the way I slipped out of Cal’s apartment this morning while he was still asleep.
It was probably cowardly of me. But the little sleep I was able to get was fitful, and I felt so discombobulated, like my pieces had all been shuffled up and put back together in the wrong order.
The opposite of how I’ve come to expect to feel in Cal’s bed.
Everything we said to each other last night flits uneasily inside my chest, like a butterfly unsure if this is a safe place to settle.
Distance seemed like the only way to get relief from the sensation, but I kept on feeling it long after I made it back to Harold’s.
And I keep on feeling it, even now that I’m alone at Virtu and Cal is farther away by the second as he journeys to New York to deliver the goose.
For the first time in recent memory, I can’t find any music looping in my head, urging me to sing or hum along. I don’t know if that’s related or not, but it’s freaking me out. Without the ambient noise in my brain, my thoughts are much too loud. Unignorable.
It also doesn’t help that business has been dead so far this morning.
I haven’t had anyone come in since I unlocked the door at 10:00.
I told Cal I’d think about staying, and I’m desperate for an excuse not to have to actually consider it right now.
So I’ve never been more grateful to hear the bells on the door jingle as someone finally enters the shop.
She’s a tall woman with light brown skin, tight curls pulled back into a tight ponytail.
The athleisure wear and fleece headband around her ears make it seem like she might have run here, though she isn’t at all sweaty or out of breath.
“Hello,” she says cheerily but with a hint of surprise, as if she wasn’t expecting to find me here.
“Welcome to Virtu,” I reply. “Anything specific that brings you in today?”
She removes her gloves and glances around. “I’m actually looking for Cal. Is he here?”
“He’s traveling today and won’t be back until late tonight. Is there something I might be able to help with in the meantime?”
“Oh, no. It’s a…it’s more of a personal thing, not business.
He’s looking into something for me, and since I was passing through the neighborhood, I thought I would check in to see if there have been any developments.
But it’s okay, I’ll just connect with him later.
” She smiles tightly, as if trying to hide that she’s finding this interaction disappointing.
“I could have him give you a call when he’s back?” I offer.
“Sure, that would be great. You can tell him Nicole came by to check on his research progress. He already has my info and everything.”
“Nicole,” I repeat. It isn’t exactly an uncommon name, but something tells me this isn’t a coincidence. This woman has to be Cal’s ex-girlfriend. The only other person he’s ever touched. Who’s ever touched him.
A stupid, primitive part of me wants to hate her, to think of her as my rival. But the more logical side can only feel intensely grateful to her for letting Cal go so I could experience these last few weeks with him.
Not that it matters when I don’t think I can keep him.
Then I register the rest of what she’s said.
Looking into something for me. Check in to see if there have been any developments.
What could she possibly be talking about except for the goose?
I offered to look into it for a friend, Cal said.
And why wouldn’t Nicole be that friend? Although applying that classification to the woman he intended to spend the rest of his life with at one point seems to be intentionally underselling things.
“I’ll let him know you stopped in,” I remember to add.
“Thanks so much,” she says.
“No problem.” I couple the response with my largest, brightest customer service grin, hoping it outshines whatever other expressions might be attempting to take over my face.
Nicole turns to the door, pauses, and turns back around again. “Can I ask you kind of a weird question?”
My heart thumps wildly, unsure what she might want to ask and what other new, uncomfortable information it might reveal. “Um…sure?”
“I realize it’s absolutely none of my business, and feel free to tell me to fuck off if you want. I just…are you and Cal…involved? I’m pretty sure you recognized my name just now. Who I am. To him, I mean. Or rather, who I was.”
“Ah…” I have no idea how to respond to this.
“If so, I just wanted to reassure you that this”—she makes a gesture with her finger that I suppose is meant to encompass the current situation—“isn’t anything to worry about.
He’s doing me a favor as a friend, and that’s all it is.
I’m married and very happy and he’s…” She trails off, apparently not knowing how to describe Cal’s current status or state.
Instead, she changes course, affection seeping into her voice.
“Cal is quite simply one of the best people I’ve ever known.
I really want him to find some happiness of his own.
” Her eyebrows then raise sharply, as if expecting something of me.
And I realize this isn’t only reassurance, as she said, but a bit of a warning.
“That’s what I want for him too,” I say, looking her straight in the eye so she knows that I mean it.
Her smile this time is wider, relaxed. “Good. That’s great.
” Nicole says this to her gloves as she puts them back on.
Then she looks back at me. “I better get going. But thanks for…” She looks around the store, as if just noticing the tiny changes I’ve been able to make.
Her face goes softer. “Just thanks.” For some reason, the way she says this is what convinces me most that she truly cares.
I nod as she turns back to the door.
Panic overwhelms me as soon as she’s left the shop.
Nicole is so beautiful, and she seems so kind.
Secure in herself in a way that I’m still trying to learn how to be.
How does someone go from being with her for fifteen years to settling down with messy, still-learning-how-not-to-hide Annie O’Neill?
I know how it happens. It happens because Callahan Leitner has only ever known how to be with someone all the way.
He has no real experience with anything else.
The same way he was convinced when I arrived (and surely still would be if I hadn’t blackmailed him) that there’s only one right way to run Virtu, he probably doesn’t understand that there are other ways to be with another person besides hitching yourself to them with the intention of forever.
I was so worried about him realizing one day that he’s bored with me and wanting to move on, I forgot to consider the more likely problem when it comes to him: that he’ll realize he’s bored and stay anyway.
That I’ll live my life with someone who keeps me around because I’m what he’s gotten used to, and not because I’m what he actually needs or wants.
In some ways, that might be even worse.
This thing between us was only ever meant to be temporary.
A way for us each to dip our toes into intimacy as the people we’re working to become, a sort of ephemeral period that could act as a bridge between our pasts and our futures.
Cal might think he wants to stop, smack-dab in the middle, and I must admit that I’ve been tempted by the idea too.
But Nicole walking into Virtu today, inadvertently revealing to me that the illegal dead goose I’ve been chasing around the city is hers and Cal never bothered mentioning it, was the timely reminder I needed that there isn’t a strong enough foundation beneath our feet to make it safe to linger here.