Page 46 of Heat Clickbait
His smile, soft and genuine and completely unscheduled, buoyed me up as I headed into the kitchen where Milo waitedwith an apron that said "Kiss the Cook" in glittery letters and the patience of a saint about to be severely tested.
The cooking lesson was a predictable disaster. I confused salt and sugar in what should have been a simple pasta sauce, somehow set a kitchen towel on fire while stirring, and created something Milo generously called "abstract food art" that looked like it belonged in a modern art museum rather than on a plate. But when he stood behind me, his broad chest warm against my back, guiding my hands to properly dice onions while murmuring instructions in my ear, I understood this wasn't about cooking at all.
"You're terrible at this," he said affectionately, pressing a kiss to my temple while surveying the chaos we'd created together.
"The worst," I agreed, leaning back into his solid warmth and letting myself enjoy the simple pleasure of being held while something bubbled on the stove.
"Want to try again tomorrow?"
"Always," I said, and meant it. Maybe that was the point of all these individual dates, learning to try again, to choose again, one burnt dish and color-coded agenda at a time.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Callie
I closed my eyes, letting the gallery's carefully regulated climate control wash over me like a balm against the evening's lingering heat. Ghost had chosen this place for our date, a small contemporary art museum tucked into the renovated warehouse district, housed in what used to be a textile factory before gentrification claimed the neighborhood. The space kept its industrial bones with exposed brick walls that were painted crisp white, concrete floors polished to a mirror shine, and high ceilings crossed with blackened steel beams. It was open late on Thursdays for what they called "contemplative viewing," a pretentious phrase that basically meant dimmed lights and hushed voices encouraged.
Only a handful of other visitors wandered the stark white-walled spaces, their footsteps muffled by industrial carpet that probably cost more than an entire year of rent on my first apartment. The kind of place where people spoke in reverent whispers and spent long minutes staring at single brushstrokes, searching for meaning in negative space.
He stood beside me like a shadow made solid, not touching but close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from his lean frame through the soft cotton of his black henley.
The shirt was new. I'd never seen him in anything but hoodies before tonight. With the way he had the sleeves rolled up it revealed the a large part of the geometric sleeve tattoo that wrapped around his left arm like circuit board pathways, the precise lines and angles seeming to shift in the gallery's carefully calibrated lighting. We'd been here forty-three minutes by my count, and he'd spoken exactly three words: "After you" at the entrance, delivered with a slight bow that would have seemed pretentious on anyone else, and "Water?" at the marble fountain in the lobby when he'd noticed me unconsciously licking my lips.
But the silence between us wasn't the awkward void that plagued failed first dates. It was full of small, deliberate gestures that spoke their own language. His hand hovering protectively near my lower back when we navigated doorways crowded with other visitors, the way he'd angle his body just so to give me the unobstructed view of each piece, positioning himself between me and any approaching strangers with the subtle precision of someone accustomed to being a barrier. He'd wait with infinite patience until I was ready before moving to the next installation, reading my body language like code he'd long since memorized.
The current piece dominated an entire wall of the gallery's largest room. It was a video loop projected on what had to be a thirty-foot surface, waves crashing against jagged black rocks in hypnotic slow motion. No sound except our synchronized breathing in the darkened space and the distant murmur of other visitors in adjacent rooms. The projection cast everything in shifting blues and grays, turning Ghost's sharp cheekbones into something almost ethereal.
"My first pack used to go to the ocean," Ghost said suddenly, his voice barely above a whisper but still startling after so muchcontemplative quiet. The words seemed to surprise him as much as they did me, emerging from some deeply buried place. "Every summer. Same week in July. Rented the same cabin in Maine for six years running."
I turned slightly, just enough to see his profile illuminated by the projection's rolling blue light. His jaw was tight with the kind of tension that came from approaching old wounds, the geometric patterns of his tattoo seeming to shift and breathe with each wave that crashed silently on screen. His dark eyes reflected the endless cycle of water against stone.
"Theodore loved tide pools," he continued, and it took me a moment to realize he was talking about himself in third person, like the memory belonged to someone else entirely. Someone he used to be. "Could spend hours cataloguing what lived in them. Hermit crabs, sea anemones, periwinkles. Precise. Organized. Said it calmed the noise in his head, having something small and contained to understand completely."
"The noise?" I asked softly, matching his whispered volume instinctively.
"ADHD. Anxiety. The usual cocktail of brain chemistry that makes you build entire Lego cities in the early hours of the morning because your thoughts won't stop racing long enough for sleep." His fingers flexed at his side, a tell I'd learned to recognize when he was fighting the urge to fidget. "They understood. My first pack. Didn't try to fix it or manage it or suggest meditation apps. Just... existed around it. Made space for it."
The projection cycled again, waves retreating in slow-motion silence before building to another crash against the unforgiving rocks. The pattern was mesmerizing, endless, like grief itself. Neither of us moved toward the next room, held captive by the rhythm and his unexpected openness.
"What happened?" The question escaped before I could stop it, but Ghost didn't flinch or shut down the way I'd expected. He'd grown used to the question over the years, I realized. Had probably rehearsed various versions of the answer.
"Car accident. Highway merge during rush hour. Instant." The words came out clipped, factual, like a police report he'd memorized. "I was streaming. Thursday night horror showcase. They were coming back from dinner at that new fusion place downtown. Wanted to bring me food because I'd forgotten to eat again, too focused on subscriber goals to remember basic human needs."
My chest tightened with sympathetic pain. I wanted to touch him, offer some kind of physical comfort, but wasn't sure if contact would help or hurt when he was this exposed and vulnerable.
"The last thing Marcus texted was a photo of my order from the Thai place," Ghost continued, his voice taking on a distant quality. "Extra spicy pad thai with extra vegetables. 'For our ghost pepper,' he wrote. They'd been calling me that for months because I was the only one who could handle the really spicy food." His voice cracked slightly on the nickname, years of grief bleeding through.
We stood in the blue-lit darkness for another full cycle of waves, maybe two, before he found the strength to continue. The silence stretched but didn't break.
"Haven't let anyone call me by my actual name since. Couldn't be Theodore without them. That person died in the hospital waiting room when they told me there were no survivors."
"But you told me, or at least you told me that Theodore was your middle name," I pointed out gently.
"You needed to know." He finally looked at me directly, dark eyes reflecting the endless projection like twin mirrors of theocean that had once brought him peace. "If we were going to be anything, packmates, friends, whatever this is, you needed to know who I really was. Not the streaming persona or the pack's silent technical support. The actual person underneath all the protective layers."
"And who is that?"
He considered the question with the same intense focus he brought to cable management and server optimization, weighing each word before committing to it. "Someone who catalogs tide pools and builds Lego cities when the world feels too chaotic. Someone who can't speak when overwhelmed but could write novels in Discord messages if given the chance. Someone who loved once and lost everything, then found something different but equally real." He paused, studying my face in the shifting light. "Someone who's learning it's possible to be seen again."
