Page 64 of Base Block

“I didn’t. They left me,” I told her. “We were in a club and I sat down in a chair—I passed out in a chair. When I woke up, the place was empty and everyone was gone. My purse was gone, too, which had my phone in it. I found Callum and he helped me. He let me stay with him and then he let me come to Michigan, like I said.”

“Why?” she wondered. “The obvious answer would have been sex, but you keep saying that you’re not doing it.”

“We’re not,” I confirmed. “I’ve asked myself that a few times, why? I think it’s partially because he’s a generous person in general. He decided to give his old house to his former high school coach because that guy needed a new place to live. He’s just giving it to him.” That had been Callum’s solution to help, so I’d recommended that he talk to his lawyer and they had made it happen legally.

“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “That is very generous.”

I nodded. “He went through hard times himself and when we met, he saw what a total, ridiculous mess I was. He helped me in the way that people should have done for him. And maybe he also saw that I could help him back. I’m trying.”

“Your channel is getting huge,” she said. People here had recognized me, not just the Woodsmen fans but also some for the other team. “You’re making money and that has to be good for him with sponsorships, too.”

It had been. It was just local stuff so far but his agent was looking to the future. There was a possible commercial in the works, one that would run online. It was for shampoo and conditioner, which I had been thrilled about. When we’d met, he had never even heard of conditioner.

“Callum isn’t doing the videos for fame,” I said. “He’s thinking about his future after football and how we’ll live.”

“And you’d still be with him?” She frowned. “I still don’t understand.”

“I don’t really, either,” I admitted. “Because things have gotten a lot more…touchy.”

“Angry?”

“No. Like, I’m touching him,” I answered. “We cuddle together in our chair and I kiss his neck while he rubs my back. He falls asleep in my bed sometimes, he hugs me goodbye and hello. We hold hands. There’s a lot of touching.”

“But no intercourse.”

She had mouthed the word, which made me glad. “No, none.”

“And you want that,” she continued, nodding like it was a given. Then she stared at me, because I hadn’t answered. “You don’t want to? Is it him or is it sex in general?”

“I would do it with him,” I said. “That would be ok.” I loved to be close to him and there were only a few short steps from all the touching stuff to sex. We would just have to take off our clothes. “It wouldn’t be much different.”

Anara wrinkled her nose. “It would most definitely make a difference. For one thing, there would only be one set of sheets to change and also, you’d have to add birth control to your budget. But I also think that you’d have an emotional component to contend with.”

“I’m already emotional about him. I really care about him, so much.”

“That’s what I mean. If you do engage in intercourse, it’s risky because of your feelings,” she told me. “And his.”

I looked at the field. “Is he having intercourse with someone else? Because I think about Damian and how much he demanded it. I have a hard time believing that someone like Callum has gone for months and months without it.”

“You’ve gone that long, too.”

Yes, I had, too. “Here they come.”

We all stood as the teams jogged out from the tunnels to their places on the sidelines, and after that, we were only talking about football and not these really hard, really overwhelming relationship things that I didn’t want to think about anyway. But then, it was hard to even watch the game because things turned brutal. These two teams were historic rivals, according to Anara (whose knowledge wasn’t limited to the animal kingdom). This year, they had nearly even records, and they both wanted to win the game. A lot.

“That was violent,” she murmured as a Woodsmen defensive back flattened their quarterback. When the ball went to our offense, they apparently wanted to return the favor and—

“Oh, no! Oh, crap! Oh, my goodness!” I was saying a lot of those kinds of things and Anara had started swearing very loudly, because a fight broke out on the field between our running back and their safety. Both guys were swinging, and I wasn’t sure how much that would hurt with pads and helmets, but then it got worse because the rest of the players on the field also raced down to the action. It reminded me of the fight in the 20 Grand club all those months ago, when I had escaped by climbing up on the toilet and had left Millie on her own.

Callum didn’t do that. He was right in the middle of all the huge bodies but it was hard to see what was going on because it was so chaotic down there. The coaches were trying to keep back the benches and the refs were blowing whistles and doing their level best to put a stop to it, but it was bedlam on the thirty-yard line for several minutes. Then it took even more time for the refs to have a meeting and finally announce penalties, and a lot of those went against the home team. The crowd started booing and the mood turned even uglier. They threw stuff onto the field for a while as the announcers asked them to please stop and threatened to end the game.

I looked at Anara. “Should we go?”

“I think we’ll be ok if we all leave together at the end. I should probably cover up this sweatshirt,” she said, staring down at the orange knit fabric. “Demitrious did tell me not to wear it.”

“So did I. So did Callum,” I reminded her. We had been right and she picked up the coat she’d discarded and zipped it up to cover the color.

Callum started texting me almost immediately after the game ended with a Woodsmen win, which made the crowd even madder. “I can’t come up in the stands, I’m not allowed. Stadium personnel will be there soon to escort you to your car.”