It’s only in the moments when her back is turned and he shoots me a sinful look, or when she insists on me showing him my childhood bedroom and he slides his hand up my thigh, pushing me against the wall and kissing me the moment we’re alone… those are the moments the real him peeks out.
I like it, though.
It reminds me of his story about the flies and the toxic lake. Maybe he’s not the most traditional place in the world to seek refuge, but maybe he is the right one for me.
It will take time to know for sure, of course, but given we are apparently engaged and having a baby together, it seems like I’ll get plenty of it.
In the car on the way home, Calvin has to return a few work emails and one phone call since he took the day off to go meet my mom.
I get tired of fighting pirates and draw out the little pad of paper I always keep in my purse in case there’s an idea I need to sketch.
Since Calvin told me to cut my workload in half, I don’t have any pressing projects to work on right now. I’ll start a new one next week, but I’ll have plenty of time to finish it—as long as Calvin doesn’t haul me off to another country, anyway.
I don’t realize how long I’ve been sketching until we’re back in the city. I only have a pencil to work with so there’s no color in the drawing, but I dust off the page and look at my handiwork.
And adorable little fly buzzes across the page. I smile faintly.
I wonder where he’s going.
Maybe home to the lake. He’s a brave little fly, daring to go where no one else dares go…
I tilt my head and look at him, then decide he needs eyebrows.
No, flies don’t have eyebrows, but my fly isn’t a realistic insect, he’s a cute, child-friendly version. He’s adorable, the kind of cute little fly guy you can see going off on big adventures as he grows up in this big, unusual world.
“What’s that you’re drawing?” Calvin asks.
I hold up my notebook to show him. “Isn’t he cute?”
He smiles faintly. “He is.”
I put the notebook back down on my lap. “I think I’ll call him Eli.”
“That’s a nice name.”
I nod. “I’ve always liked it. Maybe if we have a boy we could name him Elias and call him Eli. I could paint a mural on the wall in his bedroom.”
Calvin shakes his head, which surprises me. At first, I think he hates the name Elias, but then he says, “A boy is out of the question. Cutler men are too much trouble.”
I choke on a burst of laughter, but then I realize he’s serious. “Oh. Oh, honey. You do realize you can’t dictate the sex of our baby, right?”
Disinterested in that take on reality, he swipes his phone screen without even looking up. “We’re having a girl, and that’s that.”
I shake my head at him and go back to my sketch. Eli needs flowers to make his area prettier, maybe a bossy little bee friend named Isabelle.
I’m engrossed in my sketching, but I can’t help noticing when I see Calvin reach into his interior suit pocket and pull out a phone.
It wouldn’t be alarming… except his phone is sitting on the seat between his legs.
He has two phones?
Why would he have two phones? It doesn’t make sense that it would be a work phone. He has been doing work—or saying he is—on his regular phone, and to be honest, it doesn’t seem like Calvin has such a buzzing social life that he requires one. He has friendships for when he needs them, but it doesn’t seem like his need to be social extends very far beyond that.
Covertly, I watch him. He’s not on it for long. He waits for the phone to power on before sending a message. He waits for a response, and then sends another. Once he’s finished, he tucks the phone away in his pocket and resumes whatever he was doing on his main phone.
I could pretend I didn’t notice—he probably didn’t expect me to, given I was otherwise occupied—but curiosity compels me, and he did say he wanted honesty from me.
“Was that a second phone?”
He glances over at me, surprised I’m paying attention. “Yes,” he answers simply.
“Is it a work phone?”
“Not precisely.” When I just frown at him skeptically, he offers more of an explanation. “It’s a burner phone. When I communicate with certain people who don’t want their cellular activities to be traced, we communicate on burners. I had to wait until we were back in the city though, because even a burner can be traced by approximate location, and since we were out of town today, it would be very easy to deduce I sent the message.”