Chapter 9 Solid Outline

"That sounds really lovely," I say warmly. "But I actually already made plans. I'm meeting a friend for lunch."

"You’re choosing someone else over me?” Surprise flicks across his face.

“What?”

The surprise on his face disappears so quickly, "You just came out of the hospital."

"Minor scratches." I hold up my bandaged hand and smile. "She'll never forgive me if I cancel. We've been trying to pin down a date for weeks."

He looks at me for a moment.

I look back at him with the open, uncomplicated expression of a woman who has absolutely nothing going on behind her eyes.

"Of course," he says, his smile returning smoothly. "Another time."

I take a small step back, "Thank you for coming, Callum. You didn't have to." I fake a smile to follow my words.

And there it is --- the thing I have handed him. The perception he came here to maintain, gift-wrapped and offered freely.

I watch him accept it, his shoulders settling slightly, his worrying calculation melt into satisfaction. He believes he is leaving this situation having confirmed something about me.

He doesn't know I am confirming something about him.

"Take care of yourself, Sera." He squeezes my shoulder once--warm, brief, the touch of a man who is already thinking about the next thing. Then he turns and walks away with that confident unhurried stride.

I watch him go and feel absolutely Nothing.

Not longing, not the complicated grief of loving someone who was never what you thought, not even anger.

I pull out my phone and dial.

---

It rings twice.

"If you're calling to cancel I'm already at the table and I ordered bread and I'm not leaving," Elise says by way of greeting.

I laugh, the same way I laughed this morning in my mother's kitchen--surprised by my own capacity for it. "I'm not cancelling. I'm on my way."

"You better be. I've been looking at this bread for four minutes and my self-control has a time limit."

A pause. "Also you sound weird."

I grip the edge of my shirt, "I don't sound weird."

"You sound like you sound after something happened but you don't want to talk about it yet."

"Elise ...." I call out.

"I'm not pushing. I'm just noting that my best friend is keeping secrets now."

Another pause filled with what I strongly suspect is the sound of bread being broken.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm ...." I stop walking for a moment and stand on the pavement with the afternoon sun on my face and my bandaged hands with the full impossible weight of everything I know sitting in my chest.

Callum.

Lily.

Nadia Voss.

My mother’s thirty-two missed calls.

"Yeah. I think I actually am."

"Okay good. How far are you from here?"

"Ten minutes."

"I give my self-control eight minutes. Walk faster."

---

Elise is exactly where she said she would be.

Corner table, natural light, the bread already half demolished and an expression of complete unapologetic satisfaction on her face when I walk in.

Elise Morgan in my past life stands up when she sees me and opens her arms and I walk straight into them.

"Okay hi, hello, I missed you, sit down .... "

She pulls back and looks at my hands.

Her face changes. "Sera. What happened?"

"I walked into a car."

Dead silence.

"You ...." she says slowly, ".... walked into a car."

"I was looking at my phone."

"Sera Calloway." She sits down and points at the chair across from her. "Tell me everything and do not leave anything out."

"I'm fine," I say. "Minor scratches."

"Minor ..... " She points at my bandaged palm, then at my face, then back at my palm.

"Who the fuck drove the car?!"

“Shhhh” I put my finger to my lips, my eyes widening at her shout.

“It wasn’t even like how you’re imagining it.” I quickly say.

“Tell me everything.” Elise stares me down.

......

By the time I’ve finished telling Elise my accident story, she’s going from the angry teddy bear to a cute high school girl giggling over her favourite popstar. Her left leg is swinging slowly with her palm pressed onto the table and a cute barrage of laughs escaping her throat every minute.

"Was he cute?"

I roll my eyes, "Elise."

"I'm just asking because if you're going to walk into a car it might as well be driven by someone attractive, those are just the economics of the situation .... "

"He was irritating," I say.

She tilts her head. "Those aren't mutually exclusive."

I open my mouth. "Oh my God!. Can we talk about something else?."

"Absolutely not." She grins before leaning forward on both elbows. "Was he tall?."

"I'm not doing this."

"Dark hair or light?"

"Elise ....."

"I'll find out eventually. I always find out eventually, you know this about me, save us both the time, unless you’re still stuck up on that Callum."

"Dark," I say, just to make her stop. "Dark hair. Are you happy?"

She sits back with the expression of someone who has just been given exactly what she wanted.

"I'm comfortable," she says pleasantly. "Tell me about work. How's the Henderson piece coming?"

And just like that, very quickly -- just like only Elise can -- she pivots. She files the information away with that warm perceptive brain of hers and lets me breathe.

This is why I chose her first of everyone in my life, Elise Morgan is the person I called before I had a plan.

She is warm enough to hold you and sharp enough to see you and wise enough to know the difference between the moment to push and the moment to simply pass the bread.

"It's coming," I say. "Slowly."

"Slowly like nearly done or slowly like you haven't started?"

"Slowly like I have a very solid outline."

She gives me a look.

"The outline is very detailed," I avoid her eyes.

I can’t possibly say that I put a pause to it because I was chasing Callum now, can I?

"Mm." She refills my water glass without being asked. "And life? Generally? How are you? You look different."

I look up. "Different how?"

She studies me for a moment, her warm eyes watching me seriously.

"I don't know," she says finally. "Like you slept really well or really badly. One of those."

She picks up her menu. "What are you eating? The pasta here is genuinely life-changing. I'm not being dramatic, it changed my life, I'm a different woman than I was before the pasta."

I laugh and look at the menu.

Somewhere in this city, Callum Weston is walking away satisfied.

Somewhere in this city, Daniel Ashford paid a bill he didn’t have to pay and didn’t say a word about it.

And I am here, in a corner restaurant with my best friend and a glass of water and the full, terrifying, exhilarating knowledge that this time, I’ll carve out Callum Weston’s heart with my bare hands.

By the time I’m done, he’s going to need that nurse from earlier.