by Corri Lee
“That works. Have you seen The Goonies?” I felt my brow twitch. Who hadn’t seen that film? “Okay you’ve seen it. So you should understand this.”
Sitting down on the couch next to me, Calloway passed me a beat up blue jacket with white sleeves, ‘RYAN’ in fine embroidery and silver appliqué on its back. It was soft and well loved; something that had been well cared for. Blinking, I held it up into the light and looked to him for an explanation.
“I dug it out of storage while I was in Boston. It was this or my class ring, and I figured this might appeal more to your geeky sensibilities.” Tongue in his cheek, he waved a hand to it. “I want you to wear my letterman jacket, Emmeline.” I was relieved that he looked amused by his own juvenile sentiment. As flattered as I was by it, I really did feel like howling out loud in hysterics. “I’m not joking, dork. We’ll be late for our lunch.”
My jaw dropped open. “Now?”
Nodding eagerly, he took the jacket from my hands and stood, holding it open for me. “Now. Consider it payback for my public berating on Friday.”
Gleefully, I sprang to my feet, my reluctance to engage in such an awful cliché dulled by... well, my geeky delight in engaging in such an awful cliché. It drowned me, but somehow wearing it made me feel like some kind of prom queen. It wasn’t a feeling I’d had the honour of enjoying myself in my school years. I’d never been pretty or popular, but all my loose knowledge of corny romantic teen movies hinted at me now being both.
When he’d pulled my hair free of the collar, I looked over my shoulder at Calloway with a faux-model pout. “Doesn’t this mean we’re ‘going steady’ now?” I stuck my tongue out in jest but his expression, again, halted me. “Oh.” That was the idea. This was his way of making his intentions known and I was surprised to not be feeling too disconcerted by the notion. “Has anyone else worn this?”
“No,” he turned me by the shoulders to face him, “plenty of girls wanted it, but, you know, that whole tradition is such an embarrassing cliché.” With the softest of smiles, he brushed his fingers across my cheek and tugged me into his arms. “Only you, Emmeline, and that’s the way it will stay.”
As it was, I was glad to have the extra layer. The breeze had taken on an autumnal chill while I’d been inside the golden tower, one that made me seriously regret my bare legs. Though being the impractical soul I was, I rolled up the sleeves of Calloway’s jacket and wore it open, hands casually shoved into the pockets as we walked.
I wore it well and everyone damn well knew it. The paparazzi didn’t even try to hide as we made the five block distance to our restaurant by foot.
And me? I felt unspeakably smug and comfortable, like I imagined any girl who’d been offered the jacket would.
Calloway seemed to buzz with his own kind of accomplished thrill. The mood between us was somehow lighter than it had ever been and a definite ray of hope shone down from a sky that had cleared significantly since the weekend. Amazingly, he was more stunning for seeming so happy—boyishly irresistible and all mine—and I was starting to appreciate that.
We went Greek for lunch. All right, in no way could it complete with a private mezzanine picnic but it was true to form and the circumstances were somewhat ‘normal’. We obviously weren’t typical people, but the scenario was simple enough; just two twenty-something’s spending their lunch breaks together. The most basic concept in the world, and satisfying for it’s ease. There were no secrets or mysteries—or at least none that I knew of—and no need to act like we were on an time limit. By no means was our budding relationship perfect, but damn it, it was honest.
I twisted the stem of my wine glass in my finger tips as I pushed away my plate. Calloway was still eating, and the conversational reprieve gave me time to really look at him.
He might have gotten more gorgeous in the last four days. His rebelliously over-long dark hair had a healthy sheen and I knew it felt like silk. His cheeks had a constant pinkish tint that hadn’t been there before and his irises gleamed with a spark of life and exuberance. When I’d arrived at his office the first time, he looked like a man who couldn’t be surprised—a man with a life so premeditated and organised he didn’t have to waste time on feelings. Then I stormed in and screwed that right up, and he seemed better for it.
My chest ached with the happiness I felt for him finally having something to break him out of what was likely a strictly routined day with no spontaneity, and I was a little proud of myself for being the person who’d got him there, even if I wasn’t really enough for him.
Bet I know someone else who was thinking just that when they met you...
Leaning back into my seat, I sighed. If I was effectively the Blaze to Calloway’s inner Emmeline, our newly constructed little bubble of contained calm existed on borrowed time. While we were different in that he knew my complications, there was no saying how long they’d exist or how long he’d tolerate them. Honestly, it really wasn’t fair.
Life is just showing you what it looks like from the other side. You should be grateful.
I wasn’t. Developing some kind of empathy for Blaze now was both unlikely and unnecessary. Even if it happened, our time had past. Being hung up on a bad relationship was nothing like hiding a secret wife with a medical death sentence. There was no way to twist it so he looked like a saint.
Borrowed time or not, I promised myself that I would focus on Calloway. There was potential—I knew it—and I wouldn’t waste another second on ‘what if’s. Blaze himself had told me not to.
Watching Calloway was bitter sweet. His brow was knit with deep concentration as he dissected his meal into the smallest bites possible, chewed for too long, then washed the morsel down with iced water. As methodical as his life was, his meals were a task he still seemed to struggled to undertake. While his problems were clearly worse than mine, judging by those scars, and despite our obvious physical differences, looking at Calloway was very much like looking at my own reflection.
Of course, my opinions were based on assumption. He’d only hinted at our shared maladies and there could be any number of explanations for the scars. Still, I liked the idea that I’d met someone who really understood it—understood me.
As though sensing that he was being observed, Calloway stiffened and shoved a chunk of brizola around his plate. Cursing quietly, I forced my eyes away, furious with myself. What the hell was I thinking, watching him so openly and tactlessly?
It’s not your fault. You’re just used to being around people who don’t look at their food like it’s a bear trap.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, keeping my eyes on a sepia photograph hung up on the terracotta painted brick wall, “I should know better than to watch you.”
“It’s okay,” he said uncertainly. “This isn’t weird to you. You’ve been there yourself.”
Reluctantly looking back at him, I straightened in my seat, preparing myself to respond to the way he’d shot those two sentences at me as statements and not questions. What and how he knew was irrelevant. If my past anorexia was a matter of public record now, I’d deal with it. How I handled conversations about it with someone who covertly admitted to suffering himself was the important factor.
Hands wrapped around it’s bowl, I started talking down into my glass. I opened up to him because I wanted him to know it was safe to talk about it. Because I wanted him to know that I wasn’t ashamed.
“It peaked when I was sixteen. I hid it so well for a year, then the cutting started.” I knew he was nodding even though I didn’t look for it. “I really was fat when it started—borderline obese—but I never stopped seeing that. I didn’t stop seeing it until recently.”
“Until Blaze.” Alarmed, my eyes shot up to Calloway and narrowed. Warily, he set his fork down and leaned across the table to curl a hand around mine. “It’s obvious from the difference in you between the day I met you and how you are now.” I tried to shuffle back and look down at myself. What did that mean?
He’s saying you
look fat again.
What—seriously?
You have kind of let yourself go...
“You just look more comfortable in your own skin, Emmeline. As sexy as you were when you fell at my feet, you had a kind of awkward vulnerability about you that doesn’t exist anymore.”
“So I don’t look fat?” Blushing violently at the fact I’d asked the question out loud, I twisted away and exhaled slowly.
“Of course not,” he half-laughed, “you have an amazing figure. But if ever I needed proof that we don’t all recover completely...” Reaching for my hands again, Calloway rubbed his thumb over the scar on my left wrist. “And why this?”
“Why does any teenage girl try to kill herself in the middle of a college day?”
“Ah.” Grinning, he sat back and picked up his fork, taking a bite of his meal he looked far less unhappy about. “The three B’s.”
“Pardon me?”
“Boys, bitches, and bad self-esteem.”
I had to laugh because it was so bloody apt. “Dead on, actually. I’m trying to figure out the male equivalent of that.”
“Bitches, bastards and bad self-esteem.”
“No fair, you get more expletives.”
“I earned them.” Spearing four or five bites of the beef onto his fork, Calloway shoved them all into his mouth with gusto, leaned back and wiped his hands with a napkin. It looked like the only part of his meal he’d actually tasted and enjoyed. “Kids are evil. I should have had a better chance at the ‘it’ girl in school being on the football team, but she started a whisper that I made a good quarterback because I was ‘heavy’. Everyone started saying it.” Then, picking up his water, he added dryly, “Turns out she’s a lesbian.”
“You’re kidding.” Eyes sparkling, he shook his head with suppressed humour and shot me a look that was boiling hot with affection and gratitude. Figuring I was the first person he’d been able to talk to without judgement, I pulled his letterman jacket around me tightly, hoping he’d see it as sweet when I snuggled into it. “In the worst ways possible, we seem to be very alike.”
“We do,” he agreed. “I never could have imagined there being someone else out there just like me.” His eyes darkened as he spoke, showing me all the distressing shadows that still drifted around inside him. All those moments he’d felt worthless and like there was only one way out.
Oh, Calloway... All this time he’d felt alone in a world so big and full of people. Just like I had. Maybe he’d been sitting around waiting for me to drop into his lap. Hoping. Praying. Wishing.
“Maybe we were meant to meet. Do you believe in fate?”
“No.” My mouth snapped shut at his quick response. “Life is what you make it, Emmeline. Romantic clichés like fate, karma and wishes are just a way to shift blame when you fuck up.”
“Oh.”
His answer broke my heart because it told me he was so damaged that it had killed all his childlike faith. He carried the blame and consequences of his actions around like a boulder chained to his ankle and had nothing to ease the strain.
Feeling an unexpected closeness to him that I hadn’t felt before, I made a promise to myself to make sure Calloway Ryan, the rich, outrageously yummy, successful business man who shouldn’t have had a care in the world, wouldn’t spend his life doomed to a fate of dragging his feet. At the very least, I’d show him how to share the load the same way I’d been taught to do it myself. I owed him that much.
That evening, I saw Calloway’s new apartment for the first time. The rest of the afternoon had been indulgent and arresting; Calloway and I torn apart to attend our separate meetings at opposite ends of the city but my attention persistently robbed from business by the sweet messages he sent to me via email. It felt like passing notes in class.
With a general theme of sickly saccharine sweet nothings, many of the emails contained links to online news articles voicing the journalistic views on my state of dress that day. America saw the gifted jacket as an unmistakable sign of declared love between us, and I didn’t care if they were even half right. We may not have been anywhere close to the stage of pushing up daisies in joint graves with matching epitaphs, but it felt like we were the beginning of the end of each other’s respective darker days.
The first thing to hit me when I reached his Fifth Avenue penthouse was the aroma wafting into the hallway outside. Calloway had sent me his address and a request for me to bring an overnight bag with the promise of a cosy night in acting like we were John and Jane Doe, strictly no talk of misery, business or our appallingly healthy bank accounts allowed.
I closed my eyes on a contented hum when I rang the door bell, seduced by the rich scent of lamb and herbs. The garment bag holding my outfit for the next day and laptop case almost fell from my hands I was so lost in it.
“Emmeline.” He pulled me back to earth with a shy smile that made my knees weak. He was bare foot in loose fitting jersey pants and a tight black v-neck t-shirt. It was the first time I’d seen him look casual, not including the obvious time when I’d seen him very naked. “You’re still wearing my jacket.”
“Are you kidding?” I posed, fingering the collar. “I’m never taking it off. Did you cook?” He shot me a look full of wry amusement that I couldn’t decipher. “Is that a yes?”
“It’s a yes. My mother thought it would help if I knew exactly what was going into my food. What better way than teaching me to prepare it myself?”
“Huh...” Not caring about anything beyond the first three words that had left his mouth, I distractedly pushed up on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek and craned my neck around his head to nosy into the apartment, intrigued by the soft light and gentle lilt of music within.
With a knowing wink, Calloway stepped back to let me explore, pride in his home apparent in his poise.
Light plumed from up-lighters set close to the floor, illuminating patches of the deep mauve walls. The only source of natural light in his lounge came from the wall baring three sets of white framed balcony doors, covered in floating white voile curtains that fluttered slightly in a draft. An arrangement of three massive black suede couches were positioned around an antique looking brick fireplace that crackled merrily behind a three windowed glass guard, a white flokati rug on the floor between them with a polished oval coffee table made from a slice of thick oak tree in it’s middle.
“Ah,” I announced, “now this is more like it!” and walked a circuit around the room, running my fingers across the sturdy mahogany cabinets that held an assortment of keepsakes and photographed memories. I could see through to the bright kitchen, which looked like a chef’s dream come true with it’s full-sized range and stainless steel topped work surfaces. “You had me worried.”
Amusement back in view, Calloway regard me with a raised brow. “What were you expecting?”
“Oh, I dunno... a torch lit dungeon with chains on the walls, carabiners hanging from the ceiling and a few sacrificial virgins tethered to Saint Andrew’s crosses...” He ran his hand through his hair and scruffed it up, definitely confused as to whether this was one of those times I was utilising my bizarre sense of humour. “Chill out, I’m joking. I was just a little concerned by how sterile your place in TriBeCa is. I find a lot of people’s homes are like a physical projection of what they are inside and that place has...”
“Nothing.” He finished my sentence and slumped down onto one of the couches, head in his hands balanced on his knees. “The place has no soul or personality.”
“Cal.” I turned on my heels, startled by the pain in his voice. “You’re in the process of moving out. That void-like absence of life is to be expected.”
“Actually, that apartment has looked the same way for six years.” He laid his hand on my thigh when I collapsed down onto the seat next to him, more for his reassurance than mine. “My father found me that apartment, planned the refit and interior. Said he’d done it how he thought I’d do it myself.” Oh hell. I shuffled closer, wrapping my arm around
his thick bicep. “I see homes the same way you do and it bummed me out that he thought that’s what I am. Empty, blank and lacking definition.”
“But look at this place.” Waving a hand to the room around us, I gave him a bittersweet smile that said all I couldn’t put into words. This was the Calloway I was getting to know well; sophisticated, vibrant and welcoming. It had a nineteen-forties Hollywood feel that told me he was cultured and privileged but a perfect gentleman. “You did pick all this right?”
He admitted, “I did,” but heaved a great sigh and turned to face me better. “But I used to be happy in TriBeCa. I didn’t stop feeling like that wasn’t me until I came back from London.”
The heat of his gaze over me was fierce enough to imply that I might have had something—or everything—to do with his decision to relocate, almost too fervid and raw for me to bear. To have that much influence over someone after a five minute meeting didn’t sit well. I’d heard of love at first sight and thought I might have even believed it, but this—this was insane.
“I think you made the right decision to invite the change,” I said slowly, voice clipped and words laced with uncertainty. “A fair part of having a good state of mind is environmental. But that apartment is awesome, why not just redecorate?”
“It’s not what I would have picked for myself.” Calloway eased back into a leisurely sprawl across the suede and pulled me with him. The way he sat—arms and legs wide and relaxed—told me that the worst part of the conversation was over. “It feels too much like an ivory tower. Yes, the view is impressive, but from every window, all I could see was rooftops and river. No life. No view of the true essence of this city. I couldn’t even hear the traffic.”