7. Callie
CALLIE
Imake it all the way back to the Trading Post before my eyes start burning.
Tears don’t fall from my eyes, though. I don’t cry after these calls. I haven’t cried after one since I was nineteen and my dad said “ski instructor” with the same inflection most people use for “unemployed.”
I learned after that one. Smile, redirect, move on. Don’t let anyone see how much it hurts.
I slip through the courtyard and into the outfitter. Kendall is at the register, ringing up a pair of trail poles for a couple in matching sun hats.
“Hey,” she says, glancing at me. “You good?”
“Great.”
I grab my stack of coupons from the counter and head for the entrance.
Standing outside the door, sun on my face, handing out ten-percent-off cards to strangers.
That’s the job. That’s what I’m good for.
My mom’s words are still playing on a loop in my head, mixing with every other version I’ve heard from every other person, and I can’t make them stop.
Something with a future, honey.
I hand a coupon to a woman with a stroller. She takes it without looking at me.
The little outdoor job.
A guy in a visor waves me off before I can even open my mouth.
You could do anything.
That’s the one that always gets me. Because it sounds like a compliment. It sounds like belief. But what it actually means is, you could do anything, and this is what you chose? The unspoken second half of the sentence carries all the weight.
I’ve been outside for ten minutes when I see him.
Beck is walking through the courtyard with the same long, deliberate stride he uses in the shop. No wasted motion. He’s still in his work shirt, still has grease on his forearms, and he’s heading straight for me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“Beck, I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I said I’m—”
“I heard what you said. I also heard what she said to you, and I watched you leave my shop doing that thing you do where you smile like everything’s okay and none of it reaches your eyes.”
My mouth opens. Closes. He’s standing in front of me now—close enough that I have to tilt my chin up—and the courtyard is right there, tourists wandering past. Lea’s coffee smell drifts from the entrance, and this man with brake dust on his hands is looking at me like I’m the only thing in the frame.
“What thing?” I ask. My voice comes out smaller than I want it to.
“The thing where you make it easy for people to stop paying attention. You go bright and you go cheerful and you wrap it all up in a bow, and everyone walks away thinking you’re fine because you made it comfortable for them to believe that.”
The coupons are shaking in my hand.
“I know that move, Callie. I do it differently, but I know it. When somebody calls my shop, I pick up, I fix the thing, I hang up. Nobody asks how I’m doing.
Nobody wonders what I want. I’m the guy who keeps things running, and as long as I keep doing that, nobody has to think about me as a person. ”
“Beck…”
“You’re not taken seriously. I’m taken for granted. It’s the same thing. We’re both invisible to the people who should be paying the most attention.”
A tourist walks between us. Neither of us moves.
“Your mom is wrong,” he says. “Not because she’s mean.
She’s not. But she’s wrong. Ski instruction isn’t a fallback.
It’s not seasonal. It’s not a phase. You researched circuit boards on your lunch break because somebody mentioned a word you didn’t know, and three articles later, you understood it better than half the guys who bring me equipment.
That’s not someone who’s wasting her potential.
That’s someone whose potential is so obvious, it scares the people who settled for something safe. ”
My vision goes blurry. I blink hard.
“You know what I see when I look at you?” he asks.
His voice is quieter now, but just as certain. The gruffness is still there. It’s always going to be there. But underneath it is something unguarded and raw. Something that I don’t think he shows to anyone, ever.
“I see someone who’s going to be on that mountain in November teaching people to love the thing she loves,” he says.
“And she’s going to be incredible at it.
Not because someone finally gave her permission, but because she never needed it.
She just needed someone to stop pretending they didn’t notice. ”
The coupons slip out of my hand. They scatter across the cobblestones and neither of us bends to pick them up.
“You notice,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“Nobody notices.”
“I do.”
I step forward and press my face into his chest. Right there in the courtyard, tourists and cobblestones and coffee smell and all.
His arms come around me, and they’re stiff at first because the man does not do public affection, probably has never done public affection, probably considers this a hostage situation.
But then his hands settle on my back and he pulls me closer, and I feel him exhale like he’s been holding his breath since I walked out of his shop.
“You’re not just a tool in somebody’s toolbox,” I say into his shirt. “You know that, right?”
His arms tighten.
“I’m serious, Beck. You’re not just the guy people call.
You drove me up a mountain to show me where I’m going to teach.
You looked up my certification requirements.
You upgraded a circuit board for a bike that wasn’t even yours to fix.
” I pull back enough to look up at him. “That’s not a guy who fixes things.
That’s a guy who pays attention. There’s a difference. ”
His jaw works. For a second, I think he’s going to deflect. Make a joke, or as close to a joke as Beck Meyer gets. Say something about the brake job he’s not finishing.
He doesn’t.
“Nobody’s said that to me before,” he says.
“I know. That’s the problem.”
He looks at me for a long moment. The furrow between his brows is still there, and I’m starting to understand it’s never going away, and I don’t want it to. It’s his face. It’s the face of a man who frowns at the world because the world has never given him a reason to do anything else.
Until now.
“Your coupons are everywhere,” he says.
“I know.”
“People are stepping on them.”
“I know.”
“We should probably pick them up.”
“Probably.”
Neither of us moves.
He leans down and kisses me. Slow, steady, unhurried. Not the parking lot kiss, not the mountain kiss. Something different. Something that feels like a decision, made in broad daylight, in front of anyone who cares to look.
When he pulls back, Lea is standing in the doorway of the coffee shop, arms crossed, grinning. “About time,” she calls out. “Three days ago, this man didn’t know how to smile. I’d like to thank whoever fixed that.”
Beck’s ears turn red. Actually red. The grumpiest man in Copper Peak, blushing in a cobblestone courtyard because a coffee shop owner called him out.
I laugh. A big, open, out-of-proportion laugh. A laugh that bounces off the old stone walls and fills every corner.
He looks down at me and the furrow softens, just a fraction, and I know this is it. Not because it’s perfect. Because it’s real. Because he sees me and I see him and neither of us is invisible anymore.
I bend down and start picking up coupons. He watches me for a second, then sighs, drops into a crouch, and helps.
“I still don’t need hiking boots,” he says.
“Everyone needs hiking boots.”
“I need to go finish a brake job.”
“After you help me pick up coupons.”
“This is my life now,” he mutters. But he keeps picking them up.
And when he hands me the stack, our fingers brush. His hand is rough and warm and steady, and he doesn’t pull back.
He never pulls back.