Callie, Unwrapped

by Amy Jo Cousins

  “Hi, I’m Callie. And normally a bit more graceful than this.”

  Gabe took her coat, while Kate shook her hand briefly and then let go.

  “Glad you could make it. Can we get you a drink?”

  We.

  And suddenly it felt like a blind date again. She forced her shoulders down and took a deep breath, watching them. They were a unit, Gabe and Kate, and she was drawn to them, to their easy comfort with each other. She made herself remember that they wanted her here. That they wanted. Hopping up on the bar stool, she hooked a heel on the curved metal bar that circled the stool’s legs halfway up, crossing her other leg over her knee. The red edge of her socks peeked over the top of her boot and caught her eye.

  Risk-taking and kinda slutty.

  Callie smiled.

  Focus. They’re buying you a drink. This is foreplay.

  She leaned forward to scan down the line of taps and knew this drew attention to the long narrow vee of pale skin between her breasts. The weight of the smoky quartz pendant bumped against her chest and swung free, the gemstone dangling from an elaborate metal bell cap that looked like a tangle of vines, two tendrils reaching up to twist around the beginnings of the silver chain.

  “Yes. Any IPA they have on tap would be lovely, thanks.”

  Kate wore a cherry red jersey camp shirt with sleeves that were cuffed to the elbows and a long hem that clung to her hips as she leaned over the bar to flag the bartender down. Dark jeans hugged her thighs.

  Someone cleared his throat.

  She looked at Gabe and he wiggled his eyebrows. Told you you’d like her. Right?

  She shook her head briefly and laughed.

  “You know me too well, Gabe.”

  She wasn’t sure how to get from where they were, sitting triangulated from each other in a quietly busy bar, to where she thought she wanted to be. Eyes closed. Wondering whose hand was trailing down her spine to stroke lightly over the crease of her buttocks. Feeling someone’s teeth close carefully on her nipple. And then sharper, with less care.

  She wasn’t sure, but thought she knew how to take a step in the right direction. No need to spend an hour on introductions. She wasn’t looking for a new bestie. It would be enough that they all got along, and that could be determined over the course of a game or two.

  “Should we get a table?”

  She sent Gabe off with the tray of brightly colored and striped balls to rack ’em up, and stayed behind with Kate to collect drinks and coats. She had her pint in one hand and both her and Gabe’s coats draped over her other arm when she saw Kate hesitate, hands full of glasses, coat still hanging from a hook under the edge of the bar.

  “Here. I’ll play sherpa.” She grinned at the other woman and took a step closer to her. Kate smiled her thanks, set a glass down on the bar, and pulled her coat free to lay it over Callie’s arm. It slid hem first towards the floor for a moment, until Kate slammed her free hand against Callie’s arm, catching it in time.

  Kate’s booted foot had slid between hers as she stood close, and Callie’s arms were nearly embracing her. Kate was shorter by an inch, and as she leaned in even closer to slide her arm beneath the slipping coat and scootch it further over Callie’s arm, her hair brushed Callie’s face.

  She steadied herself with a hand on Callie’s hip, her palm hot through the layers of black cloth. Then the girl looked up at her through dark lashes and winked. “Just promise me you’re not going to abandon me in some icy crevasse halfway up K2.”

  Ooh, good. Word play. I like this game.

  Callie inhaled sharply and laughed once, a hiccup that she felt between her legs.

  “I want you to know that I’m heroically resisting a bunch of really bad puns about ‘taking you all the way to the top, baby.’”

  Trying to make air quotes with her hands full was a challenge.

  Kate’s laugh was rich and deep as she led the way down the narrow hall to the billiard room. Her hair was buzzed short at the nape, and pale skin showed above the collar of her red shirt. Callie imagined pressing her lips there and feeling the delicate bones of Kate’s spine beneath her tongue.

  “Are you staying in town for the holiday?” Kate’s voice carried over the low music from the jukebox. Vampire Weekend, giving no fucks about the Oxford comma.

  “Yes.” She didn’t want to see anyone this holiday. The idea of a crowd of family was crushing. She wanted time alone, not questions about what had gone wrong with her marriage. And she wanted this. “You?”

  “My family and I have…issues. I quit med school to be a gardener, according to my mother.” Kate talked over her shoulder as the entered the pool room. “Not really, of course. I run a nursery. Not a Korean mama’s dream job. I’m taking this Christmas off in the interest of maintaining my sanity.”

  “Cheers to that.” She raised her glass to Kate, picturing her up to her elbows in black loam, a smudge on her cheek maybe. A surprisingly sexy look. The other woman grinned back at her.

  The pool room was large, the pressed tin ceiling high above them. Gabe was next to a table in the far corner, rolling a series of pool cues across the felt to determine which one was the straightest. He watched a particularly bouncy roll and shook his head, sliding that cue back into the wall-mounted rack.

  “Heads up, gorgeous.” Kate’s voice echoed across the empty room. They were the only shooters on a quiet night.

  Kate walked over to him and handed him his drink. He took it with a kiss on her cheek and ran his palm over her ass, then bent over to whisper in her ear. Their heads turned together to look at her, their eyes heavy-lidded and the heat in their gaze hitting her like stepping into the glare of the sun on a sweltering July day.

  “C’mere, Callie.” Gabe’s voice was low, teasing, and he didn’t look away from her. “I want Kate to see your necklace.”

  She smiled and walked over, her hips swinging loose and fluid.

  The necklace. She’d wondered if he’d remember it. Remember making it for her years and years ago, when his metalwork was small and delicate, instead of the raw, towering explosion of force he wrenched out of steel and copper these days.

  Stopping in front of them, she arched her neck back a little and used both hands to pull her hair back, showing off the thin chain and the pendant that gently pricked her skin.

  Kate lifted the pendant off her chest, the backs of her fingers skimming against skin. Callie’s breath caught, and she knew her nipples were tightening visibly beneath her shirt.

  “I’m glad you still wear it.” Gabe curved a hand around her shoulder.

  “I never stopped.”

  Kate tilted the charm gently from side to side, examining it, and Callie felt the motion in a gentle tug at the back of her neck. “It’s beautiful. How come I don’t have one?” she teased.

  “Because it’s been a long time since the days when I fell in love and made a girl jewelry. You want something from me now, you’re gonna need a bigger backyard.”

  Gabe’s hand on Callie’s shoulder was strong as he tugged her towards him.

  “You know my backyard is ten square feet of third story porch space buried in rejects from work.”

  Slipping a hand behind Callie’s waist, Kate pulled her forward another inch, still examining the necklace.

  “Then you’ll just have to admire Callie and her necklace and admit that being the baby you are, you’ve missed out on some things.”

  “I do admire. I admit nothing.”

  She felt like a doll in their hands. She was there for them to pose and to play with. This made it easier for her. She was embarrassed about her own lack of agency, but grateful that there were two other people to take charge of her. She could just stand there and let them do with her as they wanted. The whole point of this night was to recapture something she’d lost, some spark of energy and I-don’t-give-a-shit-ness that had drained out of her over the years with John. And for minutes at a time, she felt like she had it. But trying to keep it. Now that was a
challenge. It felt like trying to dial in a faint station on an old analog radio. She’d catch it for a moment, and then it would fade out again. But she knew if she were patient, if she just kept tap, tap, tapping the dial a fraction at a time, she could find that signal again. Find that Callie, the one Gabe remembered.

  I remember when you used to kiss anyone in the bar who caught your eye, male or female. We all watched you and wanted to be next.

  She wondered if Kate were old enough to have ever seen a radio with a tuning knob.

  Shit, she felt ancient.

  Eleven years with John. Even longer since she’d last opened her mouth and traced the lips of another woman with her tongue. She’d married him on some sort of rebound from Gabe—John’s traditional expectations of her had felt comforting after the heady danger of no limits—only to find herself stifled by her husband’s conventionality.

  Now the only person deciding whether she would do more than talk a good game was her. Once upon a time, she hadn’t hesitated to grab what she wanted with both hands and hold on tight. She wondered where her nerve had gone.

  As if by mutual consent, Gabe and Kate both stepped away from her. Maybe they could read the sudden stiffness in her shoulders and knew she’d lost the moment. Gabe winked and handed her the pool cue he’d chosen.

  “Wanna break?”

  She rolled her eyes and handed the cue back to him, trying to shake off her mood.

  “You know I hate breaking.”

  “I’ve told you a hundred times, that’s because you hesitate and fuck it up in your head. Just nail the shit out of it and you’d be fine.”

  Gabe was doing this for her. Ragging on her like he used to, talking like it was a hundred years ago and they were twenty-three years old, shooting pool for blowjobs and pussy-eating. Opening her spirit up with his playfulness.

  “What are we playing, anyways? There’s three of us.”

  “Cutthroat?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “You’re evil when you play that game.”

  He straddled the pool cue and twisted the cube of blue chalk rapidly back and forth on the tip.

  “Baby, I’m always evil. And you love it.”

  “Yes, we do, Gabriel. Don’t brag.” Kate took a seat on a stool and rested her pint on the rail that ran along the wall. “Why don’t you two play eight ball and I’ll play winner.”

  As Gabe rounded the table and placed the cue ball behind the second diamond, she moved closer to lean against the rail next to Kate. She could see the delicate lines of Kate’s clavicle as she stood over her, looking down at the other woman. Kate took another sip of her beer and licked the edge of foam off her lips.

  Callie shook herself alert, Gabe’s teasing once again bringing her back to the days when she bantered and flirted without hesitation. Right. Conversation time.

  “So, are you and Gabe together?”

  “Not really. It’s complicated.” Kate shrugged and grinned. “God, I sound like a status update on Facebook.”

  Callie laughed. The explosive crack of the cue ball smashing into the rack drew their attention. Stripes and solids scattered, bouncing off rails and spinning out of corners. When everything drifted to a halt, two stripes and a solid had dropped into pockets.

  “Nice break.”

  “You could do it just like that. I’m telling you, it’s all in your mind. And your hips.”

  She watched his narrow hips in dark jeans as he leaned over the table, shot, and cut another stripe into a corner pocket. Kate sighed audibly behind her.

  “That man has the finest ass in Chicago.”

  “Right?” Callie agreed.

  Their simultaneous giggles drew Gabe’s attention as he lined up his next shot. He faced them, stretched out over the scarred green felt, one braced hand elevating the stick above a solid that sat right next to the cue ball.

  “Do I need to separate you two?”

  It was easy in that moment of pure female appreciation of a gorgeous male to slide her arm around Kate’s slim waist and press their hips together.

  “Good luck with that.”

  “Shit.” Gabe shook his head and drew the cue back for the shot. “I should have known you would gang up on me.”

  Kate snaked her hand around Callie’s hips and slid her fingers toward Callie’s belly button, palm pressed flat against her stomach.

  “You should be so lucky.” Her thumb slid up and brushed against the underside of Callie’s breast. Callie inhaled sharply.

  As if he could hear her gasp, Gabe jerked at the last second and miscued. Kate’s hand moved off her stomach and rested on Callie’s lower back for a second before giving her a gentle push forward.

  “Looks like you’re up.”

  Gabe handed her the stick as she passed him, but didn’t let go right away. His dark eyes locked on hers as she tugged at the pool cue. He leaned forward until she could feel his breath against her ear, sending shivers down her spine.

  “It’s your move, madam.”

  Probably not talking about eight ball.

  She slid her hands down the cue, brushing his aside as she took ownership of the stick. Since he’d barely moved the cue ball with his miscue, she stayed on the near side of the table and lined up a shot on the solid that had been blocking his angle.

  “Side pocket.”

  Pool was such a sexual game. She braced herself against the rail with one hand and lowered her torso until she eyed the shot with her face level to the table. Her knees were bent to help her crouch down, and she felt the fabric of her skirt pull tight across her ass as she stuck it out, knowing the couple behind her would be watching.

  She pulled the cue back slowly and tested her shot, pulling short a half-inch from the cue ball. Did it again just to draw the moment out, like warm taffy.

  “Stop teasing and take your shot.” Gabe, his voice thickening.

  “I like it when she teases.”

  Perfect.

  The slide of the cue through the circle of her finger wasn’t smooth, stuttered a little, but she’d been careful enough that that didn’t matter. She reminded herself to chalk up as she watched the red three ball drop neatly in the side pocket.

  The cue ball bounced gently off the rail and rolled to a stop just off center for a shot on the five in the corner.

  “Nicely done. You’ve still got a soft touch.”

  She looked up at him through her eyelashes as she lined up the next shot.

  “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  She could still make his eyes heat up. Good.

  The pool game was her way in. The thread she could follow back to Callie-who-kissed-anyone. Between Gabe and John, she had two exes who’d profoundly impacted her feelings about sex and what it meant to her. One had blown the doors wide open, and the other had smothered her sex drive to death under a mountain of anxiety. Or at least sent it into hibernation.

  She wondered what it said about her that she was so reactive to them both. Why it was never she who drove her own sexuality, why did she let herself be wound up by one man’s desires or shut down by the lack of desire from another? Had she never wrapped her brain around sex and what she wanted from it for her own self?

  Here, now, she would find a way to figure out what she wanted. For her.

  Her two potential lovers watched as she laid her breast against the table and sighted down the rail. As she leaned forward so far that her necklace rested on the felt, the chain coiling in a tiny pile over the pendant. Gabe stood at an angle between Kate’s spread legs and reached behind her to snag his drink. Kate hooked a finger through one of his belt loops and kept her eyes on Callie.

  She could hear them talking with low voices to each other. Knew that they meant her to hear.

  “My money’s on Callie. Girl’s gonna kick your ass.”

  “You just want her to win so you can play with her on the table.”

  “Mmm. You know, I know you just said that to keep my mind in the gutter.”

/>   “Did it work?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “Mission accomplished.”

  Heat was pooling low in her belly and she knew she was getting wet again with every word she heard. It was hard to concentrate. She pictured someone coming up behind her and running a hand up the back of her thigh. Lifting her skirt up over her hips and pressing her chest against the table with a firm hand between her shoulder blades.

  This was something she wanted, a desire she owned down to its bones.

  Fuck, that’s hot.

  She made her shot. Sank it. And realized she hadn’t thought to plan another shot afterward, leaving herself blocked in the corner behind the eight ball. After a pathetic attempt at a cross-side bank that went nowhere near the pocket, she rounded the corner of the table and passed the cue off to Gabe with a smile and shrug.

  “Lost your concentration, darlin’?”

  His grin was feral. She wanted to grab his too-long dark curls and yank hard, open his neck up to her and suck on his throat until she left a bruise. See how his concentration held up after she put dirty ideas in his head. She settled for stepping into his personal space, close enough to lean in and smell him, vanilla and leather and man.

  “Something like that.”

  When she got back to her drink at the rail, and Kate sitting there perched on a stool, waiting for her, she had to remind herself that it wasn’t water in her glass before she chugged it out of sheer relief from the tension.

  “Are you thirsty?”

  “I’m something.” She eyed Kate over the edge of her glass as she lifted it again. The other woman held her gaze. And held her gaze. And then smiled, slowly. “So, it’s complicated?”

  She heard the crack of pool balls colliding on the table behind her and then the rattle of more than one ball landing in the same pocket. Kate shook her head and her smile turned into a rueful grin as she looked over Callie’s shoulder at the man who she’d agreed to share with another woman on the Tuesday before Christmas.

  “It really isn’t. Gabe loves me, but he isn’t in love with me. Says he doesn’t do ‘in love’ anymore.”

  She knew why. He’d been so young once and so in love. If she could find that girl who humiliated him by cheating on Gabe with his best friend, she’d be hard pressed not to punch that woman in the face. Reporting him as a stalker to the Res Life office at the college he’d attended had been a particularly vicious final kick in the teeth. Gabe had been brutally harsh on himself when she’d gotten him drunk enough to tell the story, describing the handful of emails he’d sent begging for an explanation as pathetic and clingy—but five emails didn’t a stalker make. The ex must have felt some kind of guilt over being a cheating asshole, because she’d sure spent a lot of energy slandering him on campus as a guy who couldn’t let go while he hid out in the sculpture studio and took his angst out on steel and bronze.