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Tuesday evening after dinner, Cal was watching The Untamed with Rose. They only had a few episodes left. The show was going in places he hadn’t expected, but he supposed it was quite different from anything he’d watched before.
All of a sudden, everything went black. The TV shut off. The lights went out.
“Shit,” Rose said from somewhere to his right.
They were both quiet for a few moments, and then he heard her get up. His heart pounded, but her footsteps on the creaky old floor moved farther away.
Why had he thought she was going to sit on his lap? What a silly idea.
He heard her open the front door before she returned to the living room.
“Looks like all the lights on the street are out,” she said. “It’s not just us.”
Well, not a problem for them to worry about, then.
“Shit,” she said again. “I have lots of food in the fridge. I don’t want it to go to waste. And the freezer...”
“The frozen stuff will keep for a while.”
“Forty-eight hours. That’s how long you have for the freezer. For the fridge, I think it’s only four or five hours.”
“We’ve got time. The power will probably be back on within an hour. We can check the hydro company’s website in a few minutes to see if they have an update.”
“The year of the ice storm,” she said. “Do you remember that? I think it was 2013. I’d just moved to Toronto, and my power was out for four days before Christmas. I lost all my food. Well, maybe some things would have been okay since it was cold outside, but I didn’t want to risk it.”
“But this outage isn’t caused by a storm. It shouldn’t be out for days.”
“I know. I just...”
“You want to go for a walk?” he asked. “It would give us something to do rather than use up our phone batteries.”
“Good idea.”
The lights were out when they got to Bloor, but when they walked a few blocks west, everything was lit up again. It was rare for Cal to be out with Rose—it hadn’t happened since the night he’d brought her to the pub—and it was kind of thrilling. It shouldn’t feel like a big deal, but it was.
“Ooh.” She stopped in front of a bubble tea shop. “Do you want brown sugar boba?”
“Say what?”
“You’ve never had it before?”
“I’ve had bubble tea, but not that kind.” He patted his pockets. “I don’t have my wallet.”
“That’s okay. I’ll buy.”
He made a note on his phone to pay her back while she went to buy their drinks. They looked pretty cool, with the dark tapioca balls at the bottom, followed by streaks of brown in pale liquid. He was about to pierce the top with his straw when she put her hand on his wrist.
His brain might not be good at, say, mental math, but it was excellent at remembering all the little ways they’d touched in the past few weeks. The most recent time had been when he’d found her awake in the middle of the night and put his arm around her—a much longer touch than this, but he was still very aware of this one.
“Sorry, could you repeat that?” he said, realizing words had come out of her mouth.
“I always shake it up before drinking, but you should take your pretty pictures of it now.”
He rarely took pictures, but he took one of his drink. When he noticed her staring at him, she quickly looked away.
“Let’s, uh, walk while we have our boba,” she said.
“The hydro company’s website says the power will be back in an hour or two.”
He was prepared for her to freak out that it wouldn’t be on soon, but she didn’t, perhaps reassured that their food wouldn’t be at risk.
He gave his cup a vigorous shake and started drinking as they ambled down a side street. “Wow, this is good.”
“I know, right? It’s my favorite.”
He made a mental note of that.
Well, Ray, she’s having bubble tea with me tonight, not you.
The other day, Rose had been smiling while talking to someone on the phone, and Cal had briefly wondered if it was Ray. When he’d realized it was her dad, he’d been more relieved than he should have been. He just couldn’t help it with her, and they hadn’t spent much time together lately, except when they were watching The Untamed.
Rose looked up at the sky. “I guess I’m in the mood for thinking about the past today. Remember the blackout in 2003? I could see so many stars. It was like going camping.”
“You lost power in Ottawa, too?”
“Yeah. I was at the mall with my mom, and it took us forever to drive back because all the traffic lights were out.” This was the first time he’d heard her mention her mother. “At night, my dad pointed out all the constellations to us.”
“Well, I was younger than you, maybe ten or eleven. I don’t remember it well, to be honest.”
“Ugh, I feel weird.”
“Why?” he asked.
“You’re so much younger than me!”
“I thought it was six years?” He recalled her mentioning the other day that she was thirty-five. “It’s not that much.”
“Oh, God. you were in middle school when I was in university!”
“But I’m not in middle school anymore,” he said, his voice low.
She stopped on the sidewalk. They were on a residential street that didn’t have any power, so he couldn’t see her face as well as he wanted. But he’d be able to touch...
He clenched his hand—the one that wasn’t holding the bubble tea—into a fist so he didn’t reach toward her.
“Who cares if roommates are six years apart?” he said lightly. “It’s no big deal.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Nah, I really have no idea.”
She gave him a shove. “Dammit, you’re too big and solid. I can’t...”
“I’m too big, Rose?”
“Shut up. You’re too big for me to push.”
“I see, I see.”
“Shut up,” she said again.
He wished the lights would come back on. He wished it were daylight so he could see the expression on her face—and whether her cheeks were a lovely shade of pink. But since he couldn’t see her as well as he’d like, he stepped closer instead. He didn’t touch her, just stood near her, and he was rewarded with her sharp intake of breath.
“So you’re talking about the fact that we had sex, Rose? You feel weird for sleeping with a younger guy?”
“How old did you think I was when we met?”
“Same age as me, maybe a year or two older? I didn’t think about it much.” He shrugged and leaned toward her. “You enjoyed yourself, didn’t you?”
He couldn’t help pushing her a little, just to see what she’d do. He suddenly had a feeling that she’d been spending less time with him lately because she was attracted to him.
Thank God for blackouts.
“Do you think about that night much?” he asked.
If she said no, he wouldn’t push any further, but...
“Yes,” she whispered.
He hissed out a breath. “What parts do you think about? Tell me.” He was very aware of the rise and fall of her chest underneath that tank top. “Do you think about how angry you were when I took your seat? Or do you think more about what happened when—”
She leaned forward and kissed him.
Maybe she was trying to shut him up more than anything, but he didn’t care. She wrapped her arms around him, pressing her body and her lips to his. He slipped his hands into her hair and kissed her back, his empty bubble tea cup falling to the sidewalk. She tasted of brown sugar boba and Rose.
And then her lips left his.
“That was okay?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“You still want to kiss me, even now that you know what I’m really like?”
He frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”
At that, she kissed him harder, both of her hands coming up to cup his face, and it felt like she was putting everything she had into the kiss. He slipped one hand around her waist, just under the hem of her shirt so he could feel her bare skin—he was desperate to touch her. To be closer to her. To feel her hands on his hardening length.
“Rose,” he murmured as her lips trailed down his neck before returning to his mouth.
But as soon as his tongue touched hers, she leapt back from him and ran in the direction of their home.