Page 43 of Base Block

“I mean that it makes sense to me that you would have jumped at any opportunity to find a better situation for yourself. I’m glad the next guy you picked up with was me.” He stared at his phone and shook his head. “I guess I’ll talk to my agent about this. Maybe she has some ideas because the only thing I can think of is hiring someone to burn the house down, and that might come back to haunt me.”

“I could have done something else.”

He looked up at me again. “What?”

“I mean, when they left me in Indianapolis, I didn’t have to go with you. I had other options. They weren’t great and I wasn’t looking forward to trying them, but I didn’t have to pick up with some other guy like you just said. And I do get that I was really lucky that you let me stay with you—that you’re still letting me. Thank you, but I think I could have been ok on my own.” I thought about sitting there in the round plaza, still confused due to what I’d taken the night before, with nothing to my name except a dress that was meant to expose me and an empty orange juice bottle. I hadn’t cared much about the future at that point.

“Are we fighting right now?” Callum asked. “I’m glad you came with me that day. I was worried about you at first, but later? I knew it was the right decision.”

“You didn’t want me at first, because…why?”

“You might have been pulling some kind of scam. You said so yourself,” he reminded me. “You said it was nice of me to let you stay over, because you could have stolen my car.”

“I could have done a lot of terrible things.”

“But even though I was worried, I knew at heart that you weren’t that kind of person. I could tell that you needed my help, obviously you did. You were barefoot and bleeding in the street,” he continued. “It worked out, too, because here we are. You have a job you like, right? We’re living large with two plates and a good number of forks.” He smiled, halfway. “Are we still fighting?”

“No, we never were,” I said. I got up and poured myself another glass of water.

“Are you upset about something?”

I sat back down and drank, thinking. “I don’t really like the idea that I was helpless, like…I don’t know what kind of animal Anara would think up, but what comes to my mind is a lamb. The kind that a dog could pick up and rip out its throat.”

“Rainey, what are you talking about?”

“That happens,” I said. “I’ve seen it happen. My aunt had an awful dog and it would chase other animals. We lived out in the country and it attacked a flock of sheep and it killed about ten of them.”

He looked disgusted. “That dog was a hell hound. What happened?”

“The rancher shot and wounded him and my aunt went crazy, but it was all her fault. She could have been prosecuted, because she already knew that her pet was dangerous and she still let it roam uncontrolled. But she always got away with stuff,” I said. She had never been held accountable. “The rancher also could have sued her over his losses, but he wouldn’t have collected anything. You can’t get blood from a stone.” But I did remember the blood on that day because Aunt Simone had sent me over to deal with the problem. The carcasses, the smell, and the rancher’s anger were as clear to me now as they had been five years before, when I was eighteen.

“Is that the dog that bit you, too?” He looked down at my thigh, where Damian’s doctor had sanded away the scar. “What happened to it?”

“It was already gone when my aunt died. I had told the county animal control that it would probably kill somebody.”

Callum put his hand on my leg, over the place where I’d had the jagged gash. “You don’t have to worry about the dog.”

“I’m not,” I said.

“Yeah, you are. Your voice is shaking and so are your hands.”

I looked at the glass of water I held and then put it down. “I took care of it. I can take care of myself, too, even if it doesn’t seem like it.” I had done that for a lot of years, and a lot had gone on that I’d forced myself to get through.

Later that night, I sat at the kitchen table with my sewing machine while he was in his room, watching some football footage on a tablet from the team. The season had continued relentlessly over the past few weeks. I had gone to the game in Iowa and so had Anara, and it had been fun to see a new place but not very fun to listen to our team get booed. Callum himself was booed, because he was getting to play. The starter was coming back from his injury gradually, so they were splitting time at the position.

I had listened to the jeering from the opposing fans and had gotten very, very mad. “They don’t know what’s good,” I had told Anara, and she had agreed. Apparently, they reminded her of koalas, which had relatively smooth brains that were ridiculously small for their body masses.

But I had skipped flying out to the next game due to work issues (meeting clients on Saturday morning with my boss, Beau) and the next one had been at home. Suddenly, it was fall and it was definitely colder here. My T-shirts and jean shorts were put away in a drawer and I was working on coming up with warmer clothes that were good for the office and more that were good for games. And I had to look just right in our videos, too, which took more effort because my wardrobe in those had become a topic of conversation in the comment section.

It was getting late but I kept my foot on the pedal of the machine and the spool of thread kept spinning. Now I had several shades of orange thread, but if Callum got traded to another team, I wouldn’t wear this color again. If he went somewhere else, would he want me to come along with him? Would I want to go? I had a job, a condo, and friends here—but the job was only part-time, my friends would leave along with their partners, and the condo was rented to Callum Frazier, not to me.

I listened to him get up from bed and walk out to join me. “What are you making?” he asked.

“I was trying to finish this skirt but I keep messing up on the zipper,” I said. All my clothes from the summer were too tight in the hips and butt, and I’d been glad to put them away. Now that I was sewing new stuff, it was embarrassing to see how much bigger I had to size it all. I reached behind my machine and turned it off. “I’m taking a break.”

“Go to bed,” he said. He put his hands on my shoulder and rubbed. “Does this feel right? This is what you do for me, but I don’t want to squeeze too hard.”

It was excellent and I told him so. “You’re also up late,” I added.