“Thing growing?” I asked Cal.
He sighed and pinched his nose.
“Here it is!” she waved the—
“Oh, my God, is that a rat tail? You had a braided rat tail?” I said with disbelief and amusement.
“It was awesome at the time,” he defended.
“And what time was that? 1988?”
“I was a bit behind in the trends.”
Bea came out with a box of stuff and two scrapbooks.
“Aunt Bea, I thought we talked about you needing to get your hoarding under control,” Cal said, now blushing.
“I only hoard the wonderful stuff. Like this!” She held up a glittery mask with macaroni glued to it. “It was your superhero mask when you were seven.”
I settled in as Bea opened the scrapbook. Cal groaned and sat in the chair next to us. I smiled at him as Bea started telling me the background of each and every picture.
“This really isn’t fair. Just wait until I get the dirt on you,” Cal said with a wink to me. I smiled back, but something in my heart hurt. My father was barely speaking to me, and only to tell me to stay away. My mother hadn’t called me in over a year. It was safe to say there were no scrapbooks or painted masks in my past.
So, I sat there, letting myself get caught up in the happiness of Bea and looking through pictures of Cal and wondered if this was what it felt like to be a part of a family.
Chapter 14
“You want to stay at my place tonight?” Cal asked, gripping the steering wheel of his truck and looking out the window as we drove away from Aunt Bea’s.
“At the fire station?”
“No, I have an actual home. And I’m off tomorrow.”
Wow, I hadn’t seen Cal’s actual house. He’d mentioned it before, but it was this phantom thing in the background.
“Stay at your place, like stay the night?”
“Yep. None of that ducking out like you did at the station that one time either.”
“Hey, I stayed the last time we, ah…”
“Had sex.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s because we were in your house, Kitten. This time, you’ll be in mine, and I already have doughnuts on hand, so I won’t have to leave.”
He was so easy to fall into pace with. Like hanging out, having sex, going to Thanksgiving dinner with his aunt, and staying the night at his house were all normal, simple things that didn’t need to be overthought. Which I liked. A lot. Because my brain was weighed down with so much stress. But Cal just made things easy—didn’t make me feel like I was clinging to mixed messages or afraid of losing.
Which was not smart. I’ve lost, big. Losing Cal would be difficult. He was a wonderful friend…boyfriend? I had no idea. But he made me feel safe and he listened to me. He understood me on a level I didn’t because a lot of the issues I was going through were new.
“You’ve got me on pins and needles over here, Kitten. It’s not like I asked you to move in. It’s one night.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking about.”
“Is this a big decision that merits a lot of thinking?” He wasn’t asking rudely, he sounded genuinely curious.
“I don’t know. I was just wondering how all this looks. And what I’m supposed to say when I get asked certain questions.”