“A few, maybe. But my entire job is about making conversation with strangers, so I didn’t flounder nearly as much as she probably expected. After Mindy helped me set up profalls—sorry, profiles—on a few apps, I kept an open mind and said yes to meeting up with anyone who didn’t immediately send up redflags. And I meananyone. I figured if this was about understanding all of my options, I couldn’t limit myself. Lots of side tables out there, remember. Had to consider them all.”
Is it possible Cal came here to tell me that I was right? That he was mistaken about his feelings for me, which he’s realized now that he’s fallen in love with someone else he met over the course of his dating spree? “And?” I ask.
“And I walked away from the experience with a few new friends, a thousand rewards points at the coffee shop, and an even deeper certainty that I am completely, utterly in love with you, Annie O’Neill.” He steps forward and takes my hands in his. “The spark Nicole talked about when we broke up, I thought it was shorthand for sexual attraction. But you’ve made me understand that it’s more than that. It’s a soul-deep recognition, a seamless joining together to create a strong bond. A sort of dove— Never mind.”
The corners of my mouth tilt upward. “Were you about to compare our connection to a dovetail joint, Cal?”
“Possibly. What I’m trying to say is that I didn’t feel that—haveneverfelt that—with anyone else.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “And honestly, I’m kind of angry with you. Because you saying I needed to get out there and keep shopping around to know that I love you made it seem like you thought what we shared wasn’t special, like it wasn’t rare and valuable. Something common enough I could just swipe right a bunch of times and easily find it again.”
I stare down at my sneakers. “I knew it was special. That’s what scared me so much.”
“I know,” he says, arms falling back to his sides.
“It was hard for me to trust that what we had was real when no one ever wanted the ideal version of me as theirs forever,much less the messy, flawed, meatball-subs-on-the-counter version. Then I met Nicole and figured out she was the friend you were looking into the goose for, and I was already freaking out a bit about the idea of staying in Baltimore and…I just got so in my head about it all.”
Cal steps closer, bringing his hand to my cheek. He cradles my face with the same care he uses when handling precious porcelain. “The messy, flawed, meatball-subs-on-the-counter version of youismy ideal version. My ideal everything.” The corner of his mouth kicks up smugly, that slight arrogance of his no longer grating but part of his charm. “And of course what we have is real. I should know; I am widely considered to be an expert when it comes to identifying knockoffs. I put my full professional weight behind it when I say that we’re the genuine article. But”—he pulls a large yellow envelope out from inside his jacket and hands it to me—“speaking of things with dubious value…”
“What’s this?” I ask, staring down at it.
“Just a little blackmail material of my own,” he says, eyebrows raising playfully.
I open it up and pull out a thin stack of five-by-seven black-and-white photos. Upon inspection, I see that they’re the ones of us topless in the mannequin warehouse.
“Roland had my email address from when he sent us those releases to sign,” Cal explains when I glance back up at him, perplexed. “He got in touch after you left to let me know that his professor loved the series and had encouraged him to sell these shots at the school’s holiday art market.”
“So you went to the holiday market and bought them?”
“More like I preemptively offered him five hundred dollarsfor the whole series in exchange for him never exhibiting or selling them otherwise,” he says.
“You’re that shy?” I tease.
“It was still early in my dating adventures, but I’ve always been certain what the outcome of all this was going to be, Annie. I never needed any convincing that you were the only person with whom I would ever willingly get partially naked in an abandoned warehouse at two in the morning. So I knew one day I’d be standing in front of you again, and I hoped that you would be looking at me the way you are in those pictures. Like you want me half as much as I want you.”
“And am I?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
“You are. Which, thank you for that. Makes this whole conversation a little less nerve-wracking.” He swipes a stray bit of hair behind my ear, and the brush of contact makes me shiver.
“I’m sorry,” I say, looking into those beautiful eyes I’ve missed so much. “I should have been braver. I should have stayed.”
“No. I mean, I wish you hadn’t left so abruptly. I wish we could’ve talked face-to-face about things. But you were right to go. I needed to work through some things.” He brings his forehead down to mine. “I am so sorry that I made you feel like a good-enough fit for an empty space in my life instead of the centerpiece you deserve to be. I promise you, Annie, that if you’ll still have me, I’ll rearrange my entire soul around you. I’ll gather up the shards of my past and mix them with yours. We’ll string them up on fishing wire and make something new and beautiful together.”
Overwhelmed by the emotion swirling inside me, I look back down at the photo currently on the top of the stack still in my hand. Despite the quickly accumulating moisture in my eyesattempting to block out the view, I’m able to determine that it’s the moment Cal was looking at me when he wasn’t supposed to be, and it’s as if the electricity of that moment has traveled through the image and settled back in between us.
I look back at him, a tear escaping down my face. “I don’t know, Cal. Sounds sort of tacky.”
His lips crash down onto mine, and the kiss deepens as his hands sweep slowly up and down my body, mine clutching the fabric at the back of his jacket. His fingers work to free my T-shirt from where it’s tucked into my jeans and we almost trip over a tower of boxes as I take an inadvertent step backward.
Cal releases me in time to keep us from toppling, and grins down at me. I’m about to tell him that I’m really glad that he likes me the most out of everyone because I like him the most out of everyone too. But before I can, he glances around at the half-finished shop and says, “This is a really nice place you have here. Harold told me you were opening it, and I was so, so happy for you.”
“Thanks. It’s been a lot of work but I’m really excited.”
“Your dream come true,” he adds quietly. “You did it, Annie.”
I let the uncertainty that’s been swirling around in my stomach as I approach opening for business out in a joke that I know Cal will see right through. “Well, we’ll see,” I say, wiping away the remnants of my earlier tears. “Could wind up more of a nightmare if no one wants to buy anything.”
He places his hand on my hip, bringing me closer again. “It’s going to be wonderful.”
“You sound quite certain of that.”
