“You must come here often,” Callum observed the easy way Samantha settled onto the grass.
“It’s nice here.”
He couldn’t deny the peacefulness of the expansive cemetery that was plopped right across from a movie studio in the middle of a city. It was like stepping into the past. Even Samantha beside him, with her brown dress and simple shoes, looked like she’d walked here right from the forties.
“So, spill,” she demanded, puckering her lips around the straw and taking a drink of her wine.
“What?”
“Who is he?”
“Who is who?”
“Are we really going to do this?” she asked him incredulously.
Callum took a sip of wine, finding it wasn’t awful. He took a larger sip through the narrow straw then nestled the cup beside him in the grass.
“I met someone. But I don’t know. It’s not really a big deal.”
“Lies.”
“I met him online, and now he’s here.”
“What?” Samantha shouted at him. “You invited someone from the internet to meet you in person?”
“It’s 2018, Samantha. It’s not an uncommon thing. But to answer your question, no, I didn’t.”
“What then?” she asked, her eyes huge.
“He showed up.”
“Sounds like an axe-murderer to me,” she suggested grimly.
Callum shook his head, remembering when he’d had the same worries. “No. I found out he actually knows my boss, which is weird, but okay, I suppose.”
Samantha eyed him tentatively while she waited for him to continue.
“I like him, and things were going really good and then some stuff happened, and things were better again, kind of, and then he just showed up here. Itt was awesome, but he’s staying with my boss and not me, and I just assumed that if he came here to be with me, he’d want to be with me, you know?”
Even as he said it, Callum recognized the contradiction of his words. Jack was right. He knew it and he hated it. Callum had said he wanted one thing, and then what he wanted had changed and he’d never said so. Jack was trying to do the right thing by giving him the space he’d always said he wanted, even as he was growing to resent it.
“He’s not Ian.”
Callum’s eyes snapped up and locked on Samantha as she took a drink of wine and shrugged apologetically at him.
“I know you don’t like to talk about him, but what Ian did was supremely fucked up. Most people don’t do things like that to people and it’s not fair to act like everyone else will.”
“You’re right. I don’t want to talk about him.”
“You know he abused you, don’t you?”
“He didn’t,” Callum protested.
“Not physically, no,” Samantha corrected quietly. “So why did he do what he did?”
“Because I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t the kind of person he wanted to be with,” Callum reminded her, the words sticking to his tongue.
“Callum, you’re perfect. Then and now.”
