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“Why? What’s wrong, Dr. Robert?” Callum asks, standing up to his full height, taking a step forward as if he misheard, wanting to understand. I can tell it makes Dr. Robert uneasy with the way she pulls her hands out of her pockets and takes a step back, keeping the distance between them at all times.
Callum notices and stops, fisting his hands at his sides before shoving them in his coat pockets, glancing down at his feet, hunching in to make himself a smaller target.
It bothers me that he does that, and I move to stand up beside him, Luna attacking the shoelaces of my boots before she dances around my feet for a few seconds. That seems to tucker her out until she’s lying down on my foot, which ultimately means that I cannot move for fear of waking her up.
I live here now.
“She’s not well, Mr. Johnston,” Dr. Robert says, speaking slowly and carefully, and I find myself putting a hand on Callum’s shoulder, trying to offer as much comfort as I can.
“She needs to be de-wormed, and she has an infection in her right hind-paw that makes it difficult for her to walk. Her blood work is a mess, too. She’s been through so much and she isn’t even a year old yet,” Dr. Robert sighs, rubbing at her tired eyes, looking like she’s Amber’s age, barely even thirty. I know it would kill me to be a vet, to watch dogs and cats—the most precious of animals die on her table.
Shit, shit.
“She doesn’t have any broken bones, but the infection is worrisome,” she continues, and Callum sways on his feet underneath my hand, and I clasp harder at his shoulder, winding my other arm around his, trying to keep him upright.
“Okay, all right. Please do whatever you can. Please.” Callum keeps nodding, and I realize that he’s looking down at little Luna, who’s still on my boot, sleepily gnawing on my laces, her eyes drooping closed only to wake herself up to start the whole process all over again. God, she’s adorable, and I want to cuddle her until the day I die.
“When can I come back and get her?” he asks, his voice holding a wealth of pain.
“I’m going to hydrate her and give her the antibiotics right now, so come back around ten or eleven in the morning, and we’ll see how she’s doing then. I hope she responds well to the therapy, and I don’t see why she wouldn’t, but she’s been sick for a long time, and that can have lasting effects. The receptionist took down your phone number, and I promise you I will keep you informed.”
Callum just keeps nodding so I take a step up to the plate. “Yes, we’ll do that. Thank you. C’mon Callum, we gotta leave Luna in capable hands, huh?” I say, squeezing along his bicep through his coat, watching Dr. Robert stoop down to haul up Luna to her chest, getting excited licks for her trouble.
God, I really hope against hope that this isn’t the last time I see the puppy.
How can I care for the pup so much after her meeting her a whole couple of hours ago?
That’s what dogs do. And babies, too, I guess.
“I’ll call you,” Dr. Robert says, giving us a final nod. “Go with your girlfriend, and I’ll let you know how Luna is doing in the morning. Well, later in the morning,” she says, giving us a tired smile, and we both shuffle to the door without correcting her, with me practically holding Callum upright.
We head out into the early-early morning darkness where the sky feels like it’s more purple than inky blank, and head back inside my warm-ish car, sitting inside while it warms up completely.
Callum sighs, putting his head in his hands and shaking it from side to side in a way that makes me kinda worried. “Fuck, I knew I should’ve brought her to the vet the second I found her, but I had to work, and then school’s been eating up all of my time. All of this could’ve been prevented if I just fucking took her to the vet when I found her. Shit, Callum, you’re a fucking idiot.”
“Hey, no, you’re not. You thought she was fine; why would you rush her to the vet right away if she looked fine?” I say, running a hand up and down on his back and then stopping because hello, it’s incredibly rude and creepy to touch someone without their express permission. I know I wouldn’t like it done to me, so why do I think I have free reign with Callum when we hardly know each other?
I know him as the brooding bouncer at the club, and the guy who sits next to me in class that has the kind of stare that’ll light you aflame with the intensity of it. Now he’s sitting in my car, right beside me, holding on to his head, looking for all intents and purposes utterly heartbroken, and we haven’t even had any really bad news about Luna yet.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to touch you,” I murmur to the dark of my car, fiddling with the vents and adjusting them so that he gets half and I get half of them blasting me with air that is steadily getting warmer and warmer. “What do you want to do now?”
Callum leans back into the passenger seat, looking straight ahead through the windshield, as if he can use some nifty trick like X-ray vision and look through the veterinary hospital to see what the hell’s going on with his dog.
“I’m sorry about this, about tonight,” he says, his apology delivered while he’s still staring through the windshield, like I’m not even here, which is ruder than rude.
“I don’t know why you’re apologizing to me. I just drove you here.”
Callum finally deigns to turn his head and look at me, his face in shadow, but still, you know, a nice face. “And I inconvenienced you tonight.”
I shrug. “I didn’t do anything that I didn’t want to do. Do you want to go somewhere to eat? Oh my God, you know what we should go eat? C’mon guess,” I say, smacking him in the shoulder and then rubbing at the spot where I hit him.
“Sorry, sorry. I have this bad habit where I hit people—or things—when I get excited, or basically have an emotion. Sorry, Callum. But c’mon, guess where we should go. Unless you’re not hungry, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me because you’re a big guy so you must eat all the time.”
I’m rambling, I can hear myself rambling as if I’m watching myself in a movie, getting secondhand embarrassment for the character on the screen, but I’m the character, it’s me!
Holy shit.
Callum just keeps staring at me, and I keep shoving word vomit into this non-conversation, trying to dispel the silence.
“Not that it’s bad being big, it’s not, that’s not what I’m saying,” I say, shaking my head and my hands at him, trying to negate the previous statement as much as possible. “Like body positivity and all that, I’m just stating facts here, Callum, facts. And it’s a fact that I’m starving, so you might be starving as well, like ninety-nine-point-nine percent chance of being starving, just like me.”
Callum keeps his silence, but I swear on all that is good in this world—so, like, dogs and cats only—that the corner of his mouth twitches, and his eyes go half-mast like he’s struggling to contain an epic smile, the kind that could destroy planets with how beautiful it is.
I mean, I’m guessing, hedging my bets, as it were. Because if I were on the receiving end on that kind of smile, I’m ninety-nine percent sure that I wouldn’t survive.
Nope, not me.
“Do you wanna know or not?” I ask, tilting my head at him. “Or do you just want to come along for the ride, and then decide? Spoiler alert—it’s going to be greasy and delicious and might ruin your gym rat diet, just saying.” I shrug, then pull on my seatbelt, and hear Callum pulling his over his body, too, closing it off with a click.
“Guess I’m coming along for the ride. I don’t really want to walk back to my dead car.”
“Oh, yeah, well, we need to get some jumper cables, too. Since I don’t have those to give you a boost when we go back. Remind me, okay? After I stuff my face.”
“I would appreciate that,” he says, nodding to me when I glance over, and I wonder what it’s going to take to have him be comfortable with me. Have I not declared my undying love to his dog, and that means we’re basically best friends now?
I’m usually not into the whole brooding, silent type, but there’s something about Callum that has my invisible antennae picking up signals that he may not be putting down.
“You really don’t want to know where we’re going?” I ask, pulling out of the parking lot, watching Callum pull out his phone from his pocket, unlocking it so the blue light nearly blinds us both, checking for any kind of messages, and I find that cute, too. Why, why do I find that cute?
“Surprise me,” he says, and I take it for the challenge it is.
“Really? Here?”
“What? You’re going to bash on my food choices? Is that what this is, Callum?” I ask, rounding my car, locking it with a beep, and meeting him in front of it so we can walk to the diner together. “It’s either smoked meat sandwiches at stupid a.m., or steamed hot dogs. What did you prefer? I was feeling for smoked meat sandwiches, and since I was the one driving, I make the decisions around here.”
Callum grins, and it’s as devastating as I thought it would be, to the point where my knees threaten to buckle.
He steps forward to open the diner door for me, and I have to order my feet to move or I’m going to get embarrassed, and I’d rather die than get embarrassed.
I walk inside in front opening the inner door for him, and a tired-looking college kid blinks at us, shaking her head from side to side like a dog coming out of the bath would, and greets us in French and then English.
We’re shown to a table and given sticky menus that I frown down at, but we’ve already got some cleansing wipes on the table, ready to go.
“Do you know what you want?” I ask, my stomach howling with hunger. I’ve got a headache pounding behind my eyeballs, and I’m hoping that food and copious amounts of water is going to chase it all away, instead of me taking painkillers for it. Scratch that, I want an Orange Crush. Yeah, yeah.
Callum shakes his head, glancing down at the menu, paying too much attention to it, like he wants to ignore me, but joke’s on him because once the food’s in front of me I’m going to forget he even exists.
“I don’t know, I’ve never been here before.”
“What? Really? It’s like super famous. I’m pretty sure tourists come here all of the time!” I exclaim, rapping my knuckles against the top of the table to get him to look at me, acknowledge me. When he does, though, I feel myself blanch, the blood leeching out of my face and going south, like big toe south.
“I don’t get out much, believe it or not.”
I tilt my head at him, not getting it. “Is that a joke?”
Callum shakes his head and frowns at me, eyebrows pulled down low over his eyes. “I’m not joking, Izzy.”
“Really? ‘Cause you always seem like the life of the party,” I snicker, then sober when he doesn’t join in on the joke. “Sorry. Could you maybe stop glaring at me like that? I know I incite violence in my older sister, but like, we’re strangers, you know nothing about me,” I murmur, pointing a finger at him, jabbing the air between us.
Callum shakes his head again, and under this bright lighting I can so tell that he’s blushing.
“It’s my face, I can’t help it.”
“Oh, okay then. That’s fine then, obviously. You can’t fix your face. I mean, you probably can fix your face, since like, plastic surgery is real, and a thing that people do, if they wanna.” I’m word-vomiting again, trying to make Callum comfortable with me.
I’m pretty sure it’s having the opposite effect though.
Callum’s eyebrows leap up his forehead, and that corner of his lip quirks up again, and I find myself grinning at him in response. He’s got a face that with one look could kill you on the spot, giving Medusa a run for her Gorgon money, but I’m the one that’s making him almost-smile.
Don’t I deserve an award or something? Who’s gonna play the Canadian anthem since I’ve just won gold?
“Glad you think so, Izzy,” he says, running a hand over the bottom half of his face, and his features settle into worry once more.
“You’re thinking about Luna,” I say, tapping my menu over the item I’m gonna buy (basically a smoked meat sandwich with coleslaw and a giant pickle with a shit ton of mustard all over it). “She’s gonna be okay, Callum.”
“You don’t know that, though. You don’t, and neither do I. I didn’t know that taking her in would take five years off my life, shit.”
I nod along, murmuring an affirmative sound. True, true, it’s all true. “I’ve never had a dog, so like, I can’t give you any tips.”
Callum shakes his head, rubbing his hand over his mouth, sighing through his nose.
Our waiter shows up, and I jump on ordering first, making Callum smile at me, close-lipped but so glorious that I forget where I am for a second until I come back down to Earth. We thank our waiter and hand him over our menus before Callum goes back to staring at me, and I stare right back.
“You look like you grew up with a dog, though,” he says, sighing and running a hand through his hair again. “Shit, I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m running on fumes and caffeine that I had at twelve-thirty, and yeah, coming to eat was a really great idea. Thanks for lugging my ass here, and thanks for putting up with me and helping me take my dog to the vet. What’s your middle name?” he asks, which makes me startle hard.
“Uh...it’s Pearl. It’s Pearl.”
“That’s a pretty name,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper, his green looking like crystals from where I’m sitting. “Very pretty.”
“Thanks,” I say, squirming in my seat. It’s weird having all of his attention on me like this when I’m so used to weirdos ogling my face and body and asking for favors when it comes to alcohol, and the other kind of favors for a bigger tip. Which is fine and dandy if it wasn’t illegal here (is it?). “My parents gave it to my for my birthday.”
Well, shit, I didn’t think he was going to be laughing at what I said like that, and holy shit, his laugh, his laugh.
It’s so very different than what he looks like, like it explodes out of him, and it’s not suave or perfect or freaking sexy in the way that some hot guys laugh, but it does make me want to join in, and I see the random truckers that are nursing their coffees look at us, lips twitching into their own smiles.
Callum leans his head back, laughing at the ceiling, throat working with it, eyes closed, the lighting throwing shadows of his eyelashes across his cheeks, and shit, shit, shit, this guy is attractive and ticking all of my boxes.
Plus there’s the fact that we now have joint custody of his dog. Obviously it’s meant to be, obviously.
Don’t run ahead of yourself, Iz. We’re not trying to repeat the same mistakes again, right? You can’t keep doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result every single time. You just can’t.
“Shit, that was funny,” he says, still chuckling, taking off his coat and patting his chest in a way that makes me wish that I could, too. “Shit. I wasn’t expecting that, not from you.”
I notch my chin up, frazzled from his awesome laugh. “Yeah? And how do you know that? Have you even talked to me outside of school? Talked to me at work? You haven’t gotten to know me at all, even though I’m basically in your social circle two places out of the three: work and school. So I’ll have you know that I’m basically a superhero in disguise and don’t you ever forget it. I excel at defusing situations and making people at ease. It’s part of my job description, Callum. What’s the saying? Not all heroes wear capes.”
Callum rubs a hand over his lips again, I think to hide his smile, and I get mad all over again.
“Yeah, yeah, Izzy, I won’t forget how you rescued me and Luna. I promise.”
I flush, wishing for the waiter to magically show up and bring us our smoked meat sandwiches (because of course Callum got the same thing as I did), but of course, the universe, or whatever’s up there in outer space is not listening to me right now, which is fine, fine.
“Don’t worry, I won’t forget,” he says, and it feels like there’s more that’s left unsaid, more that he wants to say, which of course is the exact moment in time where our food shows up, and I sniff hard to get all that glorious smoked meat smell up my nostrils, my salivary glands getting in on the action and making me drool.
“Bon appétit,” I say, nodding to him, and Callum gives me a smile, an actual smile, that if I were eating something, or chewing, I would’ve choked, abso-freaking-lutely.
Callum’s smile makes his face transform—he doesn’t look like brooding guy ready to steal your soul in the depths of your darkest dreams, but he looks like he should belong on catwalks around the world, so warm and cuddly that I tell myself to stay very still, and stare ahead, almost looking through him so I can negate the effects that smile has on me, full-blown as it is.
Callum is freaking gorgeous, and I don’t think he knows. Or if he does know, he doesn’t use his powers for evil, and that’s basically the same thing.
Which brings me to another startling realization: I want to get to know more of him, I want to know all of it.
And I’m pretty sure that’s a bad, bad idea.
Looks like I’m going to be failing at achieving my New Year’s resolutions this year—again.
