Page 65 of The Consequence of You
Callie rolls out from under me and is off the bed before I can process her words properly. She frantically pulls on a pair of panties and scrabbles round in her drawers for more clothes.
Rolling onto my side, I lean on my elbow, watching her dress silently. I was hoping she wouldn’t run again. But I’ll do this over and over, if that’s what it takes. Because there is something inevitable about the two of us.
It was there the first day I saw her, being introduced as the new girl in my class at Heathley Academy eight years ago. It was there in every barbed interaction between us. In every heated look exchanged. It grew between us in every-fucking-thing that’s happened since.
It’s taken a long while for me to see my obsession for what it is, so I can understand and accept if she needs alittle longer to get there. But she will. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my entire life.
She continues to dress, and once she’s fully clothed, she rounds on me.
“I think you should leave now. Today has been all kinds of …fucked up. Maybe that’s why we’re all in our feelings. It’s the shock or something.” She pulls on a pair of socks as I smile to myself. She saidwe.I don’t point out she’s as good as confirmed her feelings are the same as mine in that one sentence; I have a feeling it won't help the situation.
Callie paces the room muttering to herself, and I sit up. She can have this little tantrum if that’s what it takes.
“I love you, Callie.” I say it out loud. She stills in my peripheral vision.
“No.”
“No?” I pull my boxers on and find my shirt hanging on the back of her chair, still damp from the rain. “You don’t get to tell me who I love, Callie. It’s just a fact.” I dress in the rest of my clothes, shuddering as I pull on the sodden fabric.
She pivots in front of me, fists clenched tightly, indignation written all over her face.
“I meant no, as in no to this. No more ofthis.” She waves her hands between us. “We can’t see each other anymore. And while I might not be able to stop you from saying those words, you can’t make me see you again. We’re done.”
I rest my arse on the edge of her desk and cross my legs at the ankles, as she continues to pace her bedroom floor.
“Dahlia and Grayson are going to California in a few weeks, and I’m going to look for somewhere else to volunteer. I don’t think I can go back to the nursing home aftertoday. It’s going to be difficult.” She’s lost in her ramblings, and I don’t interrupt her, but she suddenly stops short in front of me. “The point I’m making is, we won’t see as much of each other, and whatever this madness is between us, can be forgotten about.”
Her voice subtly changes at the end. A tiny chink in the armour she puts up. She’s saying the words, but they’re completely at odds with what her heart wants. I know her. There’s a hell of a lot more going on in her head than she’s saying.
I stand and gently take her hands in mine, rubbing my thumb over the backs of her knuckles until her breathing slows down. I turn them over and trace the faint lines on her palms before I speak softly,
“You can’t run from this forever. We’re written in the stars, you and I.”
Moving my thumb to her wrist, I trace the Latin inscription she has tattooed there.
Momento Mori.
“The first time I saw this, I thought it meantremember the dead. I assumed you got it in memory of your mother.”
She flinches and pulls her hands away.
Picking up the silver bracelet from her desk, where she’d put it earlier, I hold it up between us. “But I noticed earlier, the same thing is engraved on your mother’s bracelet, and it got me thinking about it again. Because it doesn’t mean remember the dead, does it? It translates asremember you must die.”
She snatches the bracelet from me.
“I did get the tattoo to remember my mother.Momento Mori.It’s something she’d always say. She lived by that motto.”
She’s deliberately ignoring my point.
“Remember you must die. It meansseize the day. It meansdon’t forget to live.”
“I know what it fucking means, Asher,” she snaps.
“Surely, she’d want you to honour her memory and ‘live’? Surely, she’d want you to do what makes you happy? And I know you’re happy when we’re together. In fact, I have never seen you happier than when you and I are together.”
“You know nothing about what my mother would have wanted for me,” her voice falters on the last word, and on the one hand, I feel guilty for pushing her, but on the other, I’m glad she’s finally communicating with me on some level.
“Did she love you?”
