Callum’s lip ticked up in a pained smile. “August is just a long way away.”
7
Callum
“It’s annoyingthat I need to come to work if I want to see you,” Callum’s good friend Mark said teasingly while leaning over the bar and plucking a cherry out of the condiment caddy.
Callum rolled his eyes and poured two martinis. He stabbed olives on a plastic skewer and dropped one in each drink then turned his back on Mark to deliver the drinks to a customer.
“You shouldn’t even be here, you know,” Callum reminded him, returning to where Mark was standing. He raised an eyebrow. “Like you said, I am at work.”
“At work bartending,” Mark observed. “You should get me a drink.”
Callum poured grenadine into a pint glass then added some Sprite. He dropped a handful of cherries in and pushed it across the bar toward Mark. Callum had been neglecting his best friends. He knew that, but apparently it was so bad it sent Mark to seek him out at work.
“You don’t even drink. You could have called.”
“I don’t even know when you sleep. I don’t know what this life is like.” Mark waved a hand around his head aimlessly.
“It’s just life. We can’t all work a nine-to-five,” Callum said with a shrug.
If anything, over the past few months Callum had grown to appreciate the late hours of his job since they acted as at least a small counterbalance to the time difference with Jack.
“Two beers!” someone called from a few spots past where Mark stood. Callum reached into the freezer and pulled two bottles out, popping the tops and setting them in front of the patrons. They passed over a twenty and left, laughing with their arms around each other’s necks.
He’d wanted to meet someone online to avoid the exact feelings he was having right now. This painful yearning. An acute feeling, the absence of something he hadn’t even known. Callum talked to Jack after work every morning and fell into fitful sleeps after every call, his brain and heart desperate for the touch of Jack’s skin under his hands, against his mouth.
“Earth to Callum.” Mark shook his empty glass in front of Callum’s face.
He took Mark’s glass and mixed another Shirley Temple.
“What’s going on with you?” Mark asked.
Callum scrunched his face a little and shook his head. “Nothing. I’m good.”
“Samantha is mad you never come around anymore.”
Samantha was Mark’s girlfriend and one of Callum’s oldest friends. They lived together in a tiny one bedroom apartment in an ivy-covered building in Hollywood that reeked of vintage glamour.
Mark was probably right. Callum used to spend more time with his friends, but his sleep schedule had been thrown off thanks to all the time he spent talking to and chatting with Jack.
His phone vibrated in his pocket and his thoughts immediately drifted to Jack, not as if they were ever anywhere else. He dug his phone out to find it was his last call alarm and not a text.
He reached behind him and flashed the house lights then put his phone away.
“I’ll call her this week,” Callum swore to Mark, who just raised an eyebrow in question.
“I will!” Callum reiterated, snatching Mark’s glass from his hand and dumping it into the sink.
“I wasn’t done with that!” Mark protested.
“You were. I need to get all these last call orders out then clean up and restock.”And get home so I can talk to my Daddy.
“You better call her,” Mark said accusingly, sliding a ten dollar bill across the table.
“Soda’s free,” Callum said with a roll of his eyes.
Mark took the bill and stuck it back into his pocket.
