“The sentiment’s the same.”
“It never bothered you when we were at college; me having cash?”
“That’s one way to put it.” He’d been loaded, something that some of the girls had known and thought added to his levels of hotness. Another reason to try and catch him.
“You know what I mean.”
“I didn’t give a flying rat’s arse about you having money. Apart from that you weren’t a jerk because of it.”
He looked out into the square. “I spoke to my dad last night about him working so much. I asked him how felt now he’d retired.”
“What did he say?”
“That he wondered why it had taken him so long. So I asked why he’d worked so hard – he used to spend weekends at his office and I think there was a month I genuinely forgot what he looked like because his hair had grown that much I didn’t recognise him.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen… kidding. I was six, I think. Marie was horrified and tore him a new one. I think that was where I learned you could use the word fuck multiple times in a sentence.”
“Why did he work so hard?”
Callum focused back on me and I saw him swallow. “Because it was a habit. Because he had no idea how to look after little kids apart from to make sure that he could provide for us, like his dad had done. He told me this while he had Eliza on his knee.”
“That’s sweet. He likes being a granddad?”
“The group message is full of pictures of him with her. I don’t think Mum can do much else besides take photos at the moment though. There’s even a video.”
“Do you understand where he was coming from?”
Callum nodded. “Kind of. I don’t think he feels proud about it. Then we talked about rugby. That was less awkward.”
“It’s all good. As long as you feel better for talking.”
We descended into talking about families, people from college, vets we’d both worked with and the best way to deal with dogs that had ingested socks. We ate tagine and drank mint tea until the sun started to head down towards the horizon and the end of the day was inevitable.
“I really don’t want to go home.” I felt my eyes prick as I looked over the balcony to the square. It was the dust. I never cried or became tearful. It had to be the dust.
Callum’s arms wrapped round my waist, his chest firm against my back. “We can come back. You can come back. The only boundaries you have are the ones you put there yourself.”
I turned around, his last words flicking a switch I hadn’t known had been turned off. His words were right: I set my own boundaries, always had. I told me what I could and couldn’t do, just as I had when I’d turned him down when we were young because I didn’t think I was enough to handle him.
The kiss I gave him was soft, nothing needy. He had one hand on my ass, the other on my waist and he was smiling when I pulled away.
“Do we go back to your room?”
“This makes it three times in a row with the same woman. Isn’t that breaking your rules?”
“I broke all my rules for you a long time ago.”
* * *
The mad passionof our first time and the slow love-making of our second blurred into each other when we reached my room. Tomorrow we went back home. Tomorrow we’d be spending our first night away from each other in six weeks. Callum wouldn’t be next door; I wouldn’t be having coffee and breakfast with him in the morning; I wouldn’t be sat round any more fires looking at the stars or drinking mint tea in a riad listening to the call to prayer with him. I’d be in my small apartment with magnolia walls and without a painting on them because I was too afraid to tie myself to anyone or anywhere, less I hurt them.
Callum took off my clothes, taking his time as if he was trying to memorise what he saw, as if this was our final time.
It had to be our final time. If it wasn’t, then what was it? What were we?
I closed the blinds, only the tiniest amount of light peering through, the dim Moroccan lamp giving a glow that made his skin look as if he had been touched by Midas himself.
