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I, Izzy Prewitt, have never been in love before, not really.
I watched as people my age back in high school were getting into their early relationships, some of them lasting until we all hit university after the fact, some of those guys getting married, only to get divorced a few years later all before they hit thirty.
I’m twenty-seven years old, and I was what people call a late bloomer.
I wasn’t ready for a ‘relationship’ back in high school, whatever that meant, and even in university, it was all about a casual relationship more than anything else. I never really let myself get attached to someone; I had my fun, convincing myself that I could always find someone willing to spend their life with me later, after school was done and I was officially an adult.
Time passed me by—I’ve spent almost seven years at L’Arsenale, working the floor as a waitress, and then moving up to bartending after taking some classes. I like my job for the most part, I like being around people, and I enjoy working at night. There’s a freedom to it rather than working in an office cubicle, surrounded by other people doing the same slogging work you’re doing.
An office job never appealed to me, but even with working at the bar, I still want more for myself.
Is it my parents’ version of more, of what they want for me—pulling down more than $100K a year like my sister? Sure, maybe.
But that’s the thing: I’m content. I’m not overly ambitious, and as long as I pay my bills and can clothe and feed myself, I don’t really see a problem.
Except you still live at home, and Max is furious with you. We need to figure out how to fix that, don’t we?
Especially since my sister is so clearly falling in love.
Falling in love—that’s the real problem.
I don’t really know how to be now, how to act around Callum, glancing away more often than not, terrified that he’s going to see the depth of my heart in my eyes. Because even I know I’m looking at him differently, spending too much time running my eyes over his face, his body.
Is this even what I’m feeling? How do I know if I’ve never felt like this before?
I’ve felt attachment before, sure, in the friendships I’ve cultivated during school and during work, forging most of the friendships in instances at the bar where the dregs of humanity that carry a Y-chromosome make asshole comments.
“You all right?” Callum asks, dropping his highlighter down, snapping it closed, and letting it roll across the surface of the table. “Hungry? Tired? Cold?”
“Ah, so you’ve noticed that I can’t seem to regulate my body temperature,” I say, grinning at him. “I’m like a salamander or another type of reptile, I guess. Can I get a blanket, please?”
“Sure, sweetheart,” he says, the word rolling off his tongue, and he stills, caught in the moment. Callum freezes, eyes wide on me, as if I’m going to reprimand him for the sweet word. “Uh, sorry, we didn’t...is that okay to call you that?”
“As long as they’re nice words.” I nod. “You can call me a chocolate brownie and I would love it,” I assure him.
“Good, good. I’m going to make coffee for the both of us, get you warmed up. I’ll get you a blanket in a sec.” Luna follows behind him, now totally cast-free, although sometimes it looks like she’s still getting used to figuring how to walk without it.
She’s growing fast, and she’s losing her puppy face, her features refining, her coloring coming through more silver now as she gets older, and less charcoal gray.
Callum places a kiss on the top of my head as he passes by me, and it makes me all warm from the inside out, chasing away the chill in my fingers. He’s gotten more used to that, and he’s gotten more affectionate over the past few weeks as we basically spend so much together—on our days off, on the days we work, and sometimes I’ll even pass by after work and say hello to Luna.
Callum sometimes approaches me like he’s scared to, like I’m going to reject his need to give me affection, to ask for it (and he always asks), so I’m just as careful how I word my rejections.
Sometimes, I don’t want to be touched—like when I’ve got painful cramps during my period, or after a long night of work where I have to be on when it comes to my flirting game to try to max out the amount of tips I get.
But he’s getting more comfortable with me, and I’m elated to see that. If I can only find a way to deal with this constant ache in my heart when it comes to my feelings for him, with how to figure out how to tell him, if I even want to.
Callum is so very different from every single guy I’ve met, and it’s a scary thing, giving my heart to him.
I watch him putter around in the kitchen, making us coffee, Luna snuffling at the ground so I know that Callum has handed her a treat, and she’s trying to lick up tiny crumbs that she’s left behind.
He keeps glancing over to me as I’m seated at his kitchen table, trying to make my way through this take-home midterm from hell on my laptop with no less than a thousand internet tabs open that I toggle back and forth. It’s taking more time to do research and make sure my points line up as I’m trying to apply my proposed strategy to this particular case than actually writing a solid first draft.
It’s not that I don’t want to tell him how I feel, it’s just about timing is all, and I don’t want to present the information to him when he’s still particularly skittish around me.
We’ve been seeing each other for months, and there’s only four weeks left to the semester and there’s a lot of shit to do—I don’t know how often we’re going to see each other, honestly. And maybe that’s okay, maybe we both need a cooling-off period. Maybe this is going too fast.
I wouldn’t know, and I don’t think Callum knows either.
“I want to take a break,” I announce, furiously saving all of my documents and then putting my laptop to sleep. I push back from the kitchen table, stand up and twist at the waist until something cracks along my rib cage on the left, and then on the right, reaching my arms up high to pop my shoulders. Callum’s walking toward me from his hallway, a giant fleece blanket held out in his hands, like he’s just waiting to wrap me up in it.
“A break?” he asks, still coming toward me, his steps slowing. He’s always so careful, so gentle that my heart’s doing acrobatics in my chest, and I want to attack him with tons and tons of my affection. “Uh, sure...I can order us some food...” He trails off when I talk toward him, nabbing the blanket and moving it over my shoulders, then loops my hands, and hence the blanket, around his body too.
“Izzy, I’ve got a lot to do...” he sighs, and I can see the way the stress is making his features all tensed together, the way his eyebrows are practically perpetually pulled low on his forehead. “I’ve got a lot to do.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, heart thumping hard in my chest. I lick my lips and grin when I catch him tracking the movement. “But let’s take a half hour just to relax. We’ve been at it since this morning and we haven’t eaten anything, and we’re flagging. Let’s take a thirty-minute break and then get back to it, okay?”
Callum deliberates, even going so far as to bite his lip with this thinking face on, but I know I’ve won. So far since I’ve known him, Callum seems to indulge me whenever I want him to.
“Fine, all right. You’re cold anyway,” he comments, wrapping his arms around my waist, taking a step closer to me so our chests brush against each other.
There’s a snuffle and then a whimper, and Luna is between both of our feet, underneath the blanket, half of her body within the cocoon I made, and the rest of it out, her green eyes shining as she looks up at the two of us.
“I took you for a walk an hour ago,” I tell her, trying to convince her that not every single time we stand up is an opportunity to run and play outside. It’s the tail-end of March, and that likely means we’ve got at least a couple of snowstorms left until Montreal decides that it wants to progress into the spring season.
“I did. You went out, you did your business, and you got a snack a whole five minutes ago, even less. Luna,” I groan when she whimpers in that way that kind of hurts my heart. She’s had such a rough start as a puppy, it’s hard not to spoil her every single chance I get.
She’s already destroyed my Valentine’s Day gifts, and I keep her in new toys every couple of weeks, but I didn’t show up with anything new today, preoccupied with my thoughts.
It’s not like the world stops when you make these kind of realizations—good or bad—there’s still shit to do. I still have responsibilities to my family, to my parents, hell to my sister which is nothing more and added stress right now with work and school.
“I am a little cold, yes,” I say, glancing up to Callum.
“We could take a power nap,” he says, “Or just get underneath the blankets in my bed so you can warm up and watch something on Netflix. Whatever you want.”
See? He constantly indulges me, and it makes my heart sing.
“That sounds like an excellent idea. Luna, wanna go nap?” Luna lets out a disappointed huff and a sad whine, but then perks up as we start moving toward Callum’s bedroom.
The room’s pretty minimalistic, nothing but a mattress in the middle of the room and a TV hooked onto the opposite wall. There’s no extra bedroom furniture, and I wonder how he’s able to fit all of his clothes in his closet. There isn’t even a dog bed for Luna because she gets to sleep right next to him.
Callum crawls in first, looking incredibly cuddly with his sweats and his giant crew neck that’s too big for his body. He lifts the blankets after punching his pillow to make it comfortable, and I swoop in with my blanket cape, Luna pouncing onto the bed after me, weighing down the duvet until she finds her perfect spot. “Getting warmer?” he asks, pulling me close, but I can feel his arm over my waist moving around, likely searching for the remote. “Got it, got it. Anything you want to watch?”
“Whatever you want. I plan on closing my eyes anyway. Are you gonna set an alarm?”
Callum nods against my head as I wrap myself around him, like a koala to its favorite tree.
“Yeah. Half an hour, and then we’ll eat something and get back to work.”
I nod against his chest, lulled by the beat of his heart underneath my ear. “Is this okay for you, me being like this?” I ask and feel Callum tense up underneath me. I lift my head to look at him. “You can tell me, you know, if you need a break from me. You’re allowed to want your own space. We basically see each other every single day, I get it, I’d understand if that’s what you need.”
Callum stays quiet, and I know I’ve got it right.
“I know you’re stressed, I know you are. I’m sorry if I’ve been adding to that stress, Cal,” I murmur, pressing a kiss to his cheek that has him making some sort of surprised sound that makes me laugh and makes Callum flush redder than a boiled lobster. It’s adorable, and it makes me kiss his flushed cheeks in a frenzied display of affection, Luna the only witness.
“You haven’t been adding to it, I’m just...I’m juggling a lot. A lot.”
“I know you are, so if you need me to disappear for a few weeks, I can do that. I can do that for you.”
“What if you decide to forget about me altogether?” he asks, running a hand through my hair, pushing it back so it’s over my ear and out of my face.
I frown at him, making a confused noise in my throat. “Why would I forget about you? I told you, we have joint custody over Luna, even if you provide all of the room and board. Sorry, cutie,” I say, kissing his cheek again. “How could I forget about you?”
Callum shrugs. “People live with regrets all of the time; I don’t want to be one of yours.”
I frown at him, trying to figure out where all of this is coming from. “Well, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to be, but like, I can’t really see the future, you know, I just pretend I can.” I nod to him, and he smiles sadly back.
“Did I say something wrong? Are you planning on disappearing out of my life for more than a few weeks? I told you we got joint custody, and if I don’t get to see you at least once a week after this trial separation period because we’re both idiots that have too much on our plates right now, I’m going to hunt you down and force you to spend time with me.”
“How are you going to do that? I’m bigger than you.”
“You’ve seen me wield giant bottles of alcohol, and my aim has gotten pretty good over the years,” I tell him, watching something warm and fond move across his face. “I know...I know I’m not ideal,” I tell him, laying it all out there, like I have since the beginning.
“I’m not incredibly responsible, and I still live at home, and I’m still working at L’Arsenale, and I’m not the most super-ambitious person on the planet, I just like to go with the flow, and I don’t think there should be a problem with that, unless you’re my parents.”
Callum nods and runs the pads of his fingers over my cheekbone, then moves over my ear, down my jaw, to tap at the pointier edge of my chin.
I sigh, wiggling on top of him like a lizard might when it finds a particular warm sand dune to bake in. “That doesn’t mean that I don’t work hard, or that I won’t work harder if I need to. I’m not afraid of work, I’m not.”
“Did someone tell you that you’re lazy? Because I would like to speak to them—respectfully.”
“See? You can make me grin when I tell you about all of my faults. How could I possibly forget about you if we spend some time away together? We’re not going long-distance, and I know where you live. If you need more time alone, I could pass by and take Luna for walks if that’s what you need, when I’m able to, or we can schedule walks around the mountain since you haven’t taken her there yet. She’s gonna die when she meets all those maniacal squirrels that walk right up to you demanding peanuts, I swear. It’s going to be great.” I grin at him and lean up and down to kiss the tip of his nose.
“I would appreciate a break. Just a short one. I’m... I’m drowning in all the work I have to do. I even feel guilty taking this nap, actually, which isn’t much of a nap.”
“I know, we have to stop talking so we can recharge our brains. It would be cool if we could do that, like something out of The Matrix, but the future hasn’t even figured out how to make an actual hover board, let alone how to download information directly into my brain stem.”
Callum laughs underneath me, making me move on top of him, and his smile just makes the entire day, no, the entire week better.
How could I forget him? And what’s going on in his head that would make him think I would do that to him, to Luna?
Well, you’ve willingly professed your love for the pup, maybe it’s time to tell him how you feel face to face?
He probably already knows just by the way I act around him; I’m not a liar when it comes to how I treat him. I would beat my own self up if I treated him like shit.
And I’m not ready to tell him I love him yet...this all feels a little too good to be true. I haven’t even seen him angry or inconsolably sad; how am I supposed to know how I’m going to feel when I see him feeling that way?
Questions, I’ve got too many questions in my head, but the one answer I have is that I always want to be wrapped around Callum, or him wrapped around me—this is great. I force my eyes closed on a happy, contented sigh and wiggle closer to him, Luna at our feet, keeping my toes toasty warm with her canine body heat.
I can’t ignore the way he wants to take a step back from what we have here, but it’s not like I’m going to force him to want to be with me twenty-four seven. I love my family, and I’ve known them for years, but even I can’t be around my parents or my sister for twenty-four hours of the day, seven days a week. I’ll commit a crime, that’s just the way it is.
So I try not to be worried about Callum needing a break from me, as if giving him the time away will make him realize that he can always find a better catch than me, Izzy Prewitt.
But that’s doubt talking, and her voice seems to be getting louder and louder and louder.
