Sam seemed appropriately horrified for a moment but her expression cooled as she wrinkled her nose in mock sympathy.
“So, uh, Harper and I have to leave,” Callum said abruptly, surprising everyone in the room, including me. “We have some paperwork to attend to and need to catch up with Cherry. I can’t thank you enough, Charlie for letting us crash here. How can I ever repay you?”
“Just have Harper here save me a dance on Saturday and we’ll call it even,” Charlie flirted. Despite what Callum said, I can tell that Charlie is just being polite, albeit a bit cheeky, and really meant no harm but Callum’s grip on my hip tightened slightly, sending a secret thrill up my side.
In that moment, I glanced Sam’s way and she had Callum’s attention with her brow raised with an invisible ‘I’ll have you yet, Callum’ hanging in the air. Callum hugged Charlie once more and we left them alone inside as the door clicked behind us.
“It feels weird leaving there,” I said.
“I know. It was our first home together,” he said absently, not realizing what that meant to me to hear him say.
Callum and I found the nearest pay phone and rung Cherry to see if Kenny gave us the apartment or not.
“Cherry bomb! What’s up, baby doll. Hey, any word from Kenny?” Callum’s eyes widened and he nodded at me. I am so excited, I can barely keep myself from jumping up and down, screaming. “Okay. Alright, cool. Thanks, Cherry berry. Love you! Bye!”
Callum hung up the phone. “We got it!” He yelled, picking me up and swinging me around. His arms crushed around my torso and I selfishly wished he would squeeze me harder. His hands were the most amazing things I’d ever felt in my entire life and I found myself threading my hands in his hair and kissing his neck in glee. He slowly set me down, sliding my body down his. We both shifted uncomfortably, staring at one another, slightly embarrassed.
“What did she say?” I asked, trying to move our attention towards something slightly less awkward.
“She Kenny needs the first and last month’s rent in a cashier’s check. She mentioned it’d probably be smart for us to open a bank account.”
“Alright then. Well, where should we go?”
“Cherry banks right around the corner. That’s as good a place as any, I think.”
“Alright, lead the way, Mister Tate.”
Callum and I flew around the corner and entered the bank, breathless and oh so high off where our hard work was taking us. We signed our names onto the list to see a banker and sat on a non-descript sofa side by side. There was several people there and I was forced to wedge myself close to him, his warm, hard body felt so good next to mine. Callum grabbed a pen off a nearby desk and we played tic-tac-toe on the back of a deposit slip while we waited. It ended in a draw every single time.
“Cat’s game,” Callum says. “How many is that?”
“Eleven draws.”
“Why do you think they call it a cat’s game?” He asked me, leaning his head against the back of his chair and rolling the deposit slips into a tube.
I leaned my head as well but tilted my face towards him a little. He met my eyes and smiled.
“It’s called a ‘cat’s game’ because no matter how many times a cat chases his tail, he can never truly latch on. He does it anyway because it’s still fun to chase,” I explained.
“Seriously? How do you know that?”
“I don’t know if that’s true but it’s what I heard once.”
“Cool.”
“Harper Bailey and Callum Tate!” The banker called out with a little bit of deja vu’.
We stood and walked arm in arm toward their desk.
“Hi, I’m Asa.” He gestured towards the chairs and we sat. “What can I do for you guys today?”
“We’d like to open a checking account,” Callum said.
“We also need a cashier’s check before we leave,” I chimed in.
“Alright, that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll just need two pieces of identification and a minimum of one hundred dollars opening deposit.”
We both nodded our heads.