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We’re basically two of the six people in the joint, and the bar’s been closed for a while now, but the staff is constantly brewing a fresh pot of coffee, and that’s all I smell after I demolished my smoked meat sandwich, eating up my coleslaw and pickle.
“Born and raised in the city,” Callum murmurs around a bite of his sandwich. He’s been eating much slower than me all night (well, morning) and much more carefully than I have. He makes diligent use of his napkin, wiping his mouth after every single bite.
“Never really been anywhere else. I don’t even have a passport,” he says, swallowing down his last bite, then slurping up some of his Orange Crush (just like mine), like he needs the sugar hit to stay awake.
Now that I’ve eaten and satisfied my hunger, I’m starting to flag, too.
Must stay awake. These are one of those nights where conversation flows, and I could fall in love, I just know it. Plus, I need to find out what’s happening with Luna.
“What about you?” Callum asks, carefully wiping his mouth of nonexistent crumbs or mustard.
“Uh, same, like I said, back in class. Shows how much you were listening,” I say, watching Callum nod and duck his head. Honestly, I don’t think he does know how attractive he is, or how attracted I am to him, and that’s going to be a problem if the night keeps going on like it is.
It's easy, our conversation, which is terrifying in and of itself. I don’t have to struggle to say something funny or interesting or babble my head off to make the other person at ease.
All of it is so easy with Callum, now that I’ve gotten him to actually talk to me.
Terrifying because I start to question myself, Evie’s words coming to mind: Who are you chasing? Who?
I shake my head and try to pay attention to the conversation we are having here and now.
“I live out in the west of the island. It’s a bitch driving into town every night, but what am I going to do?” I shrug and drink more of my Orange Crush down. Honestly, the best way to top all of this night is with a giant slice of cheesecake, and I’ll even be nice to Callum and share. “Want some cheesecake?”
His eyes light up at that, and honestly, it’s the most animated I’ve seen him. Maybe he’s just one of those people that it takes time to get them out of their shell, like my cousin Evie. You just have to find the right kind of topic that isn’t surface level shit, and it’s like unblocking a dam, and the conversation flows now when before it was like pulling teeth.
“Shit, yeah. And coffee. A whole pot of coffee.”
I grin at him and raise my hand to get our waiter over here, place an order for two slices of cheesecake and two never-ending cups of coffee. I’m not worried about my stomach getting full because we can seriously leave the cake in my car because it’s colder than a fridge outside as soon as we’re ready to go and pick up Luna.
“So you found Luna in a dumpster?” I ask, wanting to hear that particular story.
Callum runs a hand through his short hair again, his glance skittering away from me before coming right back, as if he’s the magnet and I’m true north.
“Uh, yeah. I was cleaning out my apartment a few days ago, and the chute was blocked.” He winces, and I wonder why.
“So I just decided to take it all outside myself to the dumpster in the alley that gets emptied anyway. I open the door, and I don’t know what caught my eye, because you’ve seen her coloring, she’s grey, but her bright green eyes caught me when she blinked at me, whimpered at the sunlight coming through. I’ve never fallen in love so fast,” he says, scratching at his cheek.
“And now she’s at the vet, and nearly froze to death because of me. I honestly had nowhere else to put her, and I didn’t want to endanger her with drunken assholes if I kept her in my coat. You know how many guys come in with knives?”
“What? Really?” I ask, gaping at him. “This is Montreal,” I say, and I probably sound so incredibly sheltered to him, the kid who grew up on the right side of the tracks.
Callum nods slowly, carefully. “You didn’t know?”
“Look, I know people get a little handsy when they’ve had too much to drink, and that goes for people of both genders. I’ve never been cussed out so bad than from when a girl that looked like she was fresh out of high school, hitting up her first legal bar as soon as she turned eighteen because she thought I had made her drink wrong when she didn’t know shit. I blushed so hard hearing her swear at me, and she grabbed one of the bottles from behind the bar and nearly threw it at me. People are nuts when you get a little bit of alcohol in them, and that’s not even counting the fact that people bring in knives. What for? This is Montreal, what the hell?”
Callum smirks at me, nodding along, finishing up his sandwich just as our cheesecake gets planted in front us, and the two steaming coffees that make me drool a little.
Caffeine, I need caffeine. Caffeine with cheesecake is even better.
“People can get nasty when they’ve had something to drink,” he says, and I still for a second from doctoring my coffee, stopping the flow of sugar in mid-stream. It sounds like he knows the fact from experience. “I’ve seen you get into trouble a few times actually.”
“What? When?” I pour over my memory and try to find the incidences he’s talking about, but nothing’s coming up. Maybe my servers are down or something.
Callum shrugs, hiding his mouth behind his hand again like he’s trying to hide a smile. The look in his eyes, though, tells a different story.
“I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. You know how to defuse a situation,” he comments, eyes alighting with a little bit of flirtation, and holy shit, I wasn’t expecting it, not from him. I want the brooding guy, not this guy that’s flirtatious. I don’t know what to do with this version of Callum that flirts back. “How to bring people down from their angry highs. You’re good at it.”
I shrug, glancing away, spearing my fork into my slice of cheesecake, honestly doing anything I can so I don’t have to look at him right now. “I’ve been bartending since I was in university. You learn a thing or two about people, Callum, about how they’re going to act when you tell them no.”
I can feel a change, even though we’re sitting across each other like this, and my situational awareness goes through the roof, my very own version of Izzy-senses that are tingling, and not the good kind of tingles, the kind of tingles that usually mean I have to make a run for it.
I glance up at Callum, watching his eyes narrow on me, and when he drops his hand from his grim-set mouth, his jaw is clenched so tight that it makes his cheeks hollow just a little bit.
I mean, in all objectivity, it’s a good look on him, but it still makes my heart beat too fast in my chest and my breath rattle in my throat, body locked as I wait for him to make the next move, my cheesecake and fork hovering in the air, waiting for him to let me out from under his spell.
“Yeah, sure, but you’ve probably always had that ability; the ability to talk people down, to defuse a situation.”
I shake my head, letting out a breath, and then promptly reward myself with a bite of cheesecake because I survived that stare and need some more sugar in my system.
Shit, no guy in the history of my life has made me sweat as much as Callum is currently doing. It doesn’t help either that I find him interesting, that I want to know more about him. Hell, he doesn’t look like a guy that would nurse a discarded puppy back to health, fishing her out of a filthy dumpster and making a home for her when he’s already tapped out on time and energy.
But he is.
First impressions don’t, apparently, mean jack shit.
I wonder what he’s been thinking of me.
I’ve been with guys like Callum before—the one who doesn’t let anyone in, and a girl has to climb over walls and perform a whole slew of a gymnastic routines when I can barely bend at the waist and keep my knees straight at the same time.
I’ve bent over backwards for guys before. Granted, it’s been a very long time since I’ve done that, way back in high school, and ever since then I’ve preferred my relationships to remain in the short-term and casual.
And I know myself to be a good judge of character. You don’t work in a bar for as long as I have without noticing some things—learning about human behavior by osmosis while people go to fancy schools and get fancy degrees to know what I know.
Callum isn’t falling into the box I put him in, and now I don’t really know what to do with myself.
“You have any siblings?” I ask, croaking it out and almost end up choking myself with hot coffee as I gulp it down to dislodge the toad in my throat.
Callum nods. “A younger brother, Eric.”
“Right. You said something about him before. Right. Well, I have an older sister,” I volunteer after drinking some water to deal with my scalding throat. “And all-female cousins on my dad’s side.”
“Yeah?” Callum asks, smiling a little, looking interested even though I know I’m giving him boring information. I nod slowly and watch Callum take his first bite of the island’s most famous cheesecake—seriously this place is apparently a stop for tourists when they come to the city to enjoy the cuisine and culture or whatever.
“That must have been fun growing up.”
I tell him a little bit about myself, wanting him to know the parts of me that exist outside of the bar, outside of school.
We run the gamut of conversation topics: favorite foods, favorite colors and why (because honestly, that should be a question on everyone’s list—it’s so insightful into another person’s personality and how they view the world). I learn that Callum doesn’t watch all that much Netflix, that he prefers satellite TV, where he has to wait a whole entire week for a show to air, and that he doesn’t believe in binge-watching.
“I’d rather take my time with it, go at my own pace. I like sitting down on my Wednesday nights and watching The Prodigal Son, or NCIS, or old episodes of Criminal Minds and Law & Order. I don’t like the pressure of having to finish an entire season in two days. Honestly, though, I don’t ever really have the time. Between school and work, I’m just looking for a show that’ll help me turn my brain off so I can go to sleep.”
“You watch Criminal Minds before bed? What are you, some kind of monster?”
Callum flushes and shrugs. “I find it interesting, profiling, analysis of behavior. I know, I know, I should watch Mind-hunter, but I haven’t gotten around to it in years. It’s all interesting, how we all act with each other.”
“So then what we’re studying...you want to learn about consumer behavior? Is that it?” I ask, scarfing down the first half of my slice of cheesecake and then making a deal with myself (in my head, not out loud) that if I can eat the rest slowly, I will allow myself to buy a 24-pack of Orange Crush on my next grocery run. Adulting at its finest.
Callum nods, his face lighting up as he launches into what he’s interested about, but it goes deeper than consumer behavior; I think he’s talking about people in general.
“Were you always interested in psychology? Is that what you studied in undergrad?”
Callum laughs and shakes his head. “No, I was in kinesiology, actually. I wanted to be a doctor.”
“What?!” I squawk, nearly choking on my tiny piece of cheesecake and having to gulp down coffee to have it melt in my throat. “What?” I sputter again, watching Callum hang his head low, loose on his neck and shoulders, a hand covering the side of his throat and back of his neck, like I just went in for the kill.
“Uh, yeah. I know, I don’t look the part. It didn’t work out, though...” he says, and I’m sure there’s more to the story there, but now I need to know more about the last part.
“Callum, you look like you belong in the octagon destroying opponents on the daily. Holy shit, you wanted to be a doctor, really? Can I ask what happened, or do you not want to talk about it? Honestly, we can talk about anything else. Wow, a doctor?! Really?” I keep shaking my head, none of it computing. Callum is so Callum. He’s trying to get his MBA, and he’s moonlighting by night as the bouncer to our club, watching out for all of us more often than not.
None of this is making any kind of sense to me.
“Yeah, I get that a lot. It’s not what a lot of people expect.”
“Well, first of all, if I had you as my doctor for anything, I’d be miraculously cured if you smiled at me,” I say, going for the kill because life is short and I like seeing Callum flustered—Callum the would-be medical student who’s now a bouncer, who saved a dog from a dumpster and ran his car battery into the ground because he didn’t want to leave her at home and increase her separation anxiety.
Honestly, who is this guy?
“Shit, Izzy, really?” Callum snorts, slapping a hand over his mouth, and it’s so incongruous with this idea I have of him in my head that I catch myself gaping at him, like he’s a movie star I just noticed and can’t drag my fangirl eyes away from.
“What? What did I say? You see yourself in the mirror, please. You know Gaetan, our manager, only hires really good-looking people, right? Which goes against a bunch of laws and shit, but business is business, I guess.”
“Is that why you’re on most nights?” he asks, and oh my God.
“Are you flirting with me right now? I would like to confirm.”
Callum grins, and I swear to all that is holy and just on this planet, and even to the asteroids in the entire galaxy that my heart stops beating for a few seconds before coming back online, triple timing it to catch up. Holy shit, holy shit!
“You know what you look like, too. You’re charming and charismatic, and beautiful, and you know how to talk your way out of trouble.”
“You’re making me sound like I’m some sort of prize to be won. Stop that, now, or I’ll leave your ass to walk back to the vet. Has Dr. Robert called?”
“I’m sorry,” he says, fishing his phone out of his hoodie pocket and showing it to me after unlocking it—no notifications. “I didn’t mean to offend you, that was not my intention, Izzy.”
I nod slowly, fork up another piece of my cake, and go to town. Eating slowly is for losers, anyway. It’s not like the calories cease to exist if I eat more slowly.
No, pal, it just means that you’re probably going to get fuller faster, and therefore potentially eat less.
Right.
“For the record, I am flirting with you, but it stays as is. We’re just sharing a meal, Izzy, I’m not asking you to marry me.”
My eyes nearly bug out of my head at those words. “Excuse me? Excuse me? Are you kidding me right now? Married? Me? To you?” I point between the both of us, confirming that Callum is indeed, in fact, in all of his wisdom, talking about a future where he and I are together in a happily-ever-after. “Like that’s going to happen, ever.”
I have to get back on track, I have to shake him off. I’m starting to like this guy beyond his physical appearance, and inevitably the next step will be to sleep with him.
Absolutely not. We’re not repeating those same patterns again, remember?
Maybe he’s different.
Hell, maybe he’s just like everyone else, too.
Callum shrugs, looking unbothered, not offended at all. He’s not even annoyed or angry or upset, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that kind of reaction before, especially to a statement I just said. I gave him a ‘no,’ and Callum’s backing off.
“You’re not who I would choose either, so don’t worry about it.”
“Worried? Do I look worried to you?” I sputter, nearly choking on my hasty drink of water, and honestly, I need to stop drinking any kind of liquid. I’ve seen my life flash before my eyes too many times tonight.
“What were we even talking about that we went down this track, huh? Heterosexual males and females can absolutely be friends, you know. Besides, we’re working on that case later on today together because I’m having a hard time with the numbers, and you owe me for driving your ass around.”
Callum nods, completely taking the wind out of my very angry and insulted sails, and that sort of makes me...stop.
Who is this guy, not to rise to my bait? And why is he just going along with everything I say?
Who the hell is he?
“I wasn’t looking to upset you, Izzy. I just put my foot in it. I’m sorry. Please accept my apology.”
Who throws apologies out like that, when all the men I’ve known in my entire life are basically allergic to the damn word? “Fine. Apology accepted. Eat up.”
“It’s not like we can go anywhere, we’re stuck here for the foreseeable future. You want another coffee?” Callum’s already signaling our waiter, who looks like the kid is sort of sleeping while standing up and with his eyes open, which honestly is a skill I wish I possessed.
I hold my breath as I consider my options.
I could leave him here and go and salvage the rest of my night/day. I could go home and sleep this all off, even if there’s a niggling worry in my chest about the pup, about Luna making it through the night, about figuring out how she’s going to recover. But I knew the moment I laid eyes on her that she was mine, too.
“Fine. I’ll have another coffee. What other nuggets of wisdom do you have to tell me?” I say after the kid who served us clears away our plates and promises to come back with hot refills of delicious black coffee. I’m flagging just a little bit, and I’m getting an urgent urge to pee, but I can hold it for now.
We’re staring at each other, a staring contest, a contest of wills, a contest of—
“I’m scared of blood. Scared in the sense that I get wicked nauseous if I see it or smell it,” he blurts, placing his forearms on the table, and it’s hilarious to me, hilarious, that a man his size, that a guy who deals with assholes swinging knives and fists almost every single night is afraid of blood.
I try, I try very hard not to laugh, because it’s no laughing matter to laugh at a person’s fears, but the whole situation is ludicrous to me, and he’s just this big, brawny guy, and he’d be laid low if some asshole started bleeding in front of him. Oh my God, oh my God, why is it so funny?
“I’m sorry, it’s not funny,” I say, squeezing the words out behind a giggle that I try to press down with a hand to my mouth, but doesn’t really help, like at all. “Guess that messed up your whole wanting to be a doctor thing, huh?”
Callum grins at me, at my poor attempts to control my laughter even as people turn to look at me, and I wave hello to the general crowd. It’s gotten later on in the night/morning and is the kind of quiet in the early morning where one disturbance can shock the shit out of you and give you a heart attack.
It’s me, I’m that disturbance, and I can’t freaking help it.
Callum, big Callum, the guy who looks like he can set you on fire every time he looks at you...is afraid of blood when he’s a bouncer?
I slap a hand over my eyes as I feel tears start to well, and I continue to giggle, the kind of sound that’s somewhere between howling and laughing, clutching at my belly as my abs begin to hurt, getting the best exercise in years. I sniffle, knuckling under my eyes to find mascara and tears mixed together, but honestly, who am I trying to impress? Not Callum, as we’ve made abundantly clear.
“Blood, you’re afraid of blood,” I whimper past another giggle, the whole thing setting me off again, and Callum’s laughing with me, and it’s all pretty great until I’m crying in earnest and the back of my head’s starting to hurt from laughing so much and so hard for the past little while.
Does this mean I’m dying? Can’t ask Callum, he never made it through med school ‘cause he’s afraid of blood!
I howl again, my brain supplying me with images of Callum losing his cool-guy shit, running away from the prospect of blood littering the floor at the club. This is some next level shit, wow.
“I didn’t...I didn’t expect that. Ouch, ouch, my abs. Shit.”
“Here, drink some water, would you?” Callum swings me his own glass of water, and I have no qualms sucking it down, alleviating my dry throat. “And thank you for laughing at my misfortunes and phobias.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That’s such an asshole thing to do, but it’s funny. Oh God. I’m never going to look at you the same way again, Callum.” I sniff, then sniff again, the giggles starting up again before I talk myself down off that particular ledge.
Nope, no more laughing. It’s not fair.
But he’s afraid of blood! It’s like a super villain yakking every time somebody dies in front of them!
Wait...isn’t that a movie?
“Good. I don’t want you to look at me the same way. You’re basically the only person I talk to from work. Other than Derek when he wants me to do my rounds.”
I swipe at my eyes again, knuckling away the tears. “Shit, shit. It’s cool, we’re good. Don’t call the ambulance, I’ll be fine.”
“I’m glad I could entertain you.”
I wave a hand at him. “Let’s just forget about it, because it’ll start me off again, and I don’t want to laugh at you, it’s just hilarious. Nope, no. Tell me something else, anything else.”
“Yeah? I know we’ve still got time to kill. So what do you want to know?”
