Page 33 of Base Block

“Really.” He looked up. “I’m sure Victoria told you that I’m looking to expand my business in that direction.”

“She did,” I agreed. “I think I could help with that.”

I hurried home in Callum’s green car, which I could use while he was off in Ohio. He was now saying that I should probably have one of my own, one that he might purchase, rather than me dropping him off or taking the bus around.

“You’d be really cold at those stops in the winter. You already get cold at night,” he had pointed out. It was true that I wore my black sweater or his high school sweatshirt rather than the sleeveless Ts that he liked, but I wasn’t dainty. Of course, waiting in the snow at a bus stop was no fun, either.

For today, the green car worked just fine as I rushed back to our condo. Heidi and Anara were coming over to watch the game with me and I was excited to host them. I had spent a while chopping vegetables to go with the dip I’d made, which hadn’t turned out as well as I’d wanted.

“What is this?” Anara asked a little bit later, as she swirled it with a cucumber spear. “Milk with bacon bits?”

“It’s cream cheese and other stuff.” I had tried to make it healthier, which was what Millie had always said when we weren’t allowed to have food: she was keeping us healthy. For my healthy dip, I had used non-fat cream cheese and sour cream, low-fat cheddar, and turkey bacon. It had gotten runny and it didn’t seem to have the flavor that the recipe’s creator had promised and all the five-star reviews had confirmed. So, maybe I had made it healthy, but I had also made it bad.

“It looks great,” Heidi told me. “I’m not going to eat right now because I’m feeling a little sick.”

Anara licked the dip off her cucumber. “There’s no real evidence that animals experience emesis. That’s morning sickness,” she explained. “But a lot of nesting goes on, and I’m not limiting that comment to birds. Are you doing that yet, Heidi?”

We talked as we watched the pregame shows, but we kept the sound off because we were also listening to Herb and Buzz on my phone. After we had heard a lot about the nesting habits of rabbits, they were interested in how my interview had gone.

“He asked me a lot of questions,” I said. That was different from my meeting at the warehouse store, where the guy had only complained about his former employee, and from the one at the deli where the woman had eaten her lunch and ignored me. “I think I answered them pretty well. He wanted to see examples of how I dress, so I showed him stuff from our channel and he was also interested in what I did for other people. He nodded a lot, which I think was good?”

“It sounds very promising. I bet you’ll get it!” Heidi said.

I compared it again to my other interview where I’d heard about the former employee getting kidnapped. That had reminded me of when I’d first met Damian, because both of them had made it clear that sex would be part of the job.

“It’s so exciting that you’ll be a stylist. What would you do for me?” Heidi asked. “Would you pick new clothes or change my hair?”

“I think that you already look great,” I said. “You’ll have to get some new stuff to fit over the baby and I could help with that. Or if you wanted to adjust some of your current clothes, like letting out the waist or adding panels, I could do that, too.”

“Thank you!” she said, smiling.

“How did you learn how to sew so well?” Anara asked me.

“I learned from my grandmother and aunt, because they used to make almost everything they wore. Even jeans. My grandma made her satin wedding dress, with boning.” They didn’t know how impressive that was, because they didn’t have any reaction besides nodding. “I’m nothing compared to her,” I continued. “They had a stash of fabric, but I liked to thrift and remake.” Although…Beau Gowan hadn’t been too impressed by my dress today, which really didn’t look like a tablecloth anymore. He had liked the idea that I had connections to the Woodsmen wives and girlfriends, but I did feel slightly guilty about using them.

I hadn’t felt any guilt about getting as much as I could from Damian, but things had changed a lot. Now, I didn’t like to take the debit card that was attached to Callum’s account and I also didn’t like it when he said to use cash, and left a pile for me.

We talked more about clothes, mostly what Heidi would wear to work when she grew out of her current wardrobe, until the game started. Then we were all about the action on the field. It wasn’t going very well, unfortunately, because the quarterback was really struggling. He was a guy just out of college who was hoping to be the first-choice backup to Everett Ford. The defense was also struggling and they let three touchdowns get past them in the first half.

George, Heidi’s husband, kicked a massive field goal, though, so she was thrilled and Anara swore that Demitrious had never played so well. I thought that things would have gone more smoothly for the QB if he’d had better protection, which Callum could have provided. He just didn’t get in enough to show that—all in all, it was a disappointing game in terms of the score and in terms of his minutes.

But he would be home tonight and that was wonderful. Hours later, I went to the little airport to pick him up, following along as the Woodsmen fan experts tracked the plane’s route, reported possible turbulence and headwinds, and then finally announced that they were in their final approach. I watched the lights in the sky and, since there weren’t any other flights coming in, I knew that he was close.

“Hi,” I said happily as Callum finally got into the car.

“Hi,” he sighed. “I’m glad to be back.”

“Was it a hard trip?”

It had been long and then disappointing for him, because he disagreed with my view that he’d played well. “There aren’t a lot of games in the preseason for me to show what I can do. I feel like I missed an opportunity,” he explained. There were some technical things he could point to but mostly, he was just unhappy in general.

“You’ll do better in the next one,” I consoled.

“That will be the last preseason game and I won’t get in during the regular season,” he said.

He knew better than I did, so I didn’t argue that point although I strongly believed that he should have played a whole lot. Who was to say that the guys from the prior season were better than Callum? I didn’t think so at all.

“Buzz signaled you out on the pregame radio broadcast,” I told him. “He said he’d talked to you after practice last week and that he thought you were a cool cat and a scream.”