#calumslunchdate

“No, no.” I said, trying to recall the story. “Well, yeah, but a different one. She left the other pub a few months ago. Her boss was sexually harassing her.”

“Whoa, her boss?”

“Yeah.”

“The middle-aged white lady?”

“Yep.”

“Blonde hair, always blown-out, really bad regrowth and ridiculous fake lashes?”

“The one and the same.”

“Huh.” She paused. “I didn’t think… well, she didn’t seem… the type?” I wanted to laugh at Belle’s shock, but I was much the same when Pol first mentioned it.

“Neither.” I snorted darkly. “Turns out white women become sexual predators a lot more often than we thought.”

“I’ll say.” Belle huffed, but it seemed off again. Not so much like she didn’t care that Polly had experienced harassment, but the same thing as earlier – just the mention of Polly seemed to bug her. I wanted to ask about it, but I got the feeling she was just going to tell me to buzz off.

“Are you okay?” I settled for asking quietly, almost afraid that I’d left it too long to ask and she’d fallen asleep (despite the graphic death scenes flashing before our eyes). But her breathing was still even and I felt her shrug against my shoulder.

“I’m okay.” She mumbled and then picked up the PlayStation remote to turn up the volume. I sat there with anxiety for a couple more hours as I finished the ice-cram and, eventually, drifted off into a restless sleep.

We both woke up the next morning to my phone blaring obnoxiously loud. It was too early for my alarm to be going off, which meant somebody thought it was a brilliant idea to call me at (I fished out the contraption from somewhere between the sheets) 6 in the morning. My eyes weren’t open enough to see who it was, so I just answered the damn thing before Belle started swearing at me.

“Please tell me you have a good reason for calling me right this second.” I grumbled out, teetering on the edge of sleep despite my predicament, and internally hoping it wasn’t my mother or someone who would take an equal amount of offence to me answering the phone like that.

“I’m sorry!” I could almost see his sheepish grin now. “I know it’s early. But Diaz is sick, he sent the email last night.”

“So… no class?” I asked, my voice almost cheerful. Calum waking me up at 6 o’clock in the morning was almost worth hearing the news.

“No class.” I could hear the smile in the Māori boy’s voice. “Breakfast instead? I was thinking we could finally work on the mural together today. We might even finish if we haul ass.” I chuckled weakly and yawned before I had a chance to say anything. Part of me wanted to say no and curl over and go back to bed. But the other part of me – the smarter part – was too giddy to think of anything to say that wasn’t ‘fuck yeah’. I didn’t say that, but I did yawn one more time.

“Uh, yeah alright.” I sat up and used my free hand to rub my eye (and smear my already smeared eyeliner from yesterday).

“Sweet.” Calum was smiling again, I knew it. “I’ll meet you at the door in half an hour?” I yawned again and Calum laughed. “Hopefully you’ll be awake properly by then.”

“Whatever.” I said but I laughed weakly too. “I’ll see you soon.” I didn’t really wait for Calum to reply before I hung up, but he probably didn’t mind. Much.

“Who the fuck was that?” Isabelle grumbled out in her raspy morning voice that, admittedly, was a lot sexier than mine.

“Calum.” I told her. “We’re going to go work on the mural.”

“At this hour of the morning?!” I felt like if we were awake properly and it wasn’t so damn early in the morning, my sister would be yelling at me.

“Yeah, class got cancelled.” I explained, looking around the room to find where I’d abandoned my jeans. I couldn’t find the ones from yesterday, weirdly enough, so I found a different pair of light-wash skinny jeans that were ripped at the knees and paired it with an old, over-sized grey Draco Malfoy tee that already had paint all over it from previous projects.

“Do you want to come?” I asked when I realised Belle would be here on her own to face the wrath of Polly (I assumed Polly had wrath, anyway). But she didn’t reply with words, so much as a muffled snore. I turned to look over my shoulder and, naturally, the girl had passed out again.

I snuck out as quietly as I could, grabbing my bag with my sketch book and colour swatches, my wallet, phone and keys in my hands before I slipped into a pair of worn-in black flats and tip-toed out of my bedroom, trying as hard as I could to make as little sounds as possible (which, obviously, was impossible considering it’s me we’re talking about. I dropped about a million things and actually swore kind of loudly when I hit my hip on the corner of my dresser).

There was a part of me was waiting for Polly to be sitting in a swivelling chair out in the living room, turning on the lights dramatically as she swung around in her reveal and demanded to know where I was going. Because that was definitely something she would do – knowing her, she’d even borrow somebody’s cat and go full Godfather on my ass. But, again, that smarter part of me knew that was ridiculous, and that I didn’t really owe her this one either. Polly had a flair for the dramatic, and being so invested in my life wasn’t a right.

I finally made it out of the front door, and as promised, Calum was waiting on the other side, beaming at me like he’d been awake for hours. He was in similar get-up to mine – dark skinny jeans, spotted with paint and ripped a few times at the knees and thighs, and a red flannel, that looked kind of too big for his limbs, thrown over a similarly paint-sotted black tank. It annoyed me a little bit, too, because he looked so damn good, even in flip-flops, and I looked like a toddler from day-care.  

“I hope you know breakfast is on you.” I took for telling him over my shoulder while I locked up, trying to mask my frustration as being because of the hour of the morning and not because of my growing butterflies. “You don’t get to wake me up this early and not feed me.” Calum laughed and when I turned around to greet him properly, it was almost as if he was smirking at me, but like… fondly. I didn’t even know that was possible and yet here he was, making it a thing.

“Yeah, alright, that’s fair.” He chuckled at me with a nod before pulling me in for a ‘good morning’ hug which, you know, wasn’t overly unusual. What was out of the ordinary was that he pressed his lips to my temple and held me just longer than he normally would have, and that kind of sent me into a bit of a puddle. My knees were shaking so much I was pretty sure he could feel the trembling, too. “Cold?” He asked, and that’s when I knew for sure that he could. I just nodded with pursed lips, too scared to open my mouth in case I vomited on his feet. Not at them. On them.

“One sec.” He let me go and I desperately started to wipe my hands on my jeans on the off chance he miraculously wanted to hold hands at some point. I mean, if he was smart he wouldn’t. But everyone was under the impression we were “something” and I was under the impression that if two people like us were “something” then usually the “something’s” would hold hands at some point. I really kind of hoped that wouldn’t be today.

Anyway, Calum had disappeared for a short moment back into his apartment, and just as I was about to ask what the hell he was doing, he remerged with a black Dickies hoodie in hand.

“Here.” He said, offering me the sweatshirt with a fairly neutral expression. I just stared at it for a moment, bewildered at his complete underestimation of how much I would overthink everything he did for me from the moment he decided he liked me.

“I could have done that myself, you know.” I took to saying when he nudged the soft fabric at my goose-bump-covered arm. Calum just shrugged, totally unfussed.

“Eh, you’d already locked up.” Was his justification and then he grinned the lazy grin I kind of loved and I rolled my eyes at it to stop myself from melting any further.

“Well, thanks.” I laughed, handing him my bag while I pulled the hoodie over my head. It was kind of big, and I had to roll the sleeves back a little so my hands would be free, but it was warm and it smelled like Calum and I actually kind of forgot to be nervous the moment I pulled my hair out from inside and took my bag back from Calum who was watching me carefully. “How do I look?” I gave him a cheeky pose.

“I didn’t realise how much smaller than me you were.” He noted. “But it looks good.” I blushed again, but before I could say ‘thanks’ again he cut me off with a very serious look. “I want it back, by the way.” I bunched the collar up over my nose and mouth, shaking my head wildly.

“Nuh-uh. I like it.” I said, muffled but the soft fleece on the inside. “I want it.”

“I’ll buy you your own.” Calum said pointedly as we made our way out of the building. “But that one is the only one I have left that isn’t so scratchy.” I gave a loud laugh.

“Wow.” I deadpanned. “The only reason you won’t let me keep it is because it’s the least shitty one you own. No sentimental value at all?” I stared at him wide-eyed and teasingly. Calum rolled his eyes and I think he was even pouting a little bit.

“No, there is…” He mumbled, refusing to look at me. I bit my lip, holding in the laugh. “My mum bought it for me before I moved to Melbourne.”

I was still laughing about Calum being a Mama’s Boy when we reached the only on-campus place that served breakfast food – and to our displeasure, that was Bitters. We weren’t too keen on shitty tasting coffee and stale toast, but we were lazy and didn’t exactly want to walk any further than we needed to either. We chose the lesser of the evils – sometimes ass-tasting coffee wasn’t the biggest problem in the world.

The whole time we talked and joked (and Calum teased me about my various scars and bruises from our last early morning), I couldn’t get over how normal this was starting to feel. Early mornings with Calum, breakfast with Calum, conversations that were leading nowhere with no meaning whatsoever, while simultaneously seeming to bleed some kind of hidden wisdom that we would come to realise a little bit later. The butterflies never went away, but instead of making me feel sick it was almost like it was a comfortable encouragement that maybe, just maybe, nothing was going to immediately go wrong this time.

I was scaring myself a little bit, actually, how weirdly okay with this I was. I still trembled a little bit whenever Calum’s ankles brushed mine under the table, and my blood still settled deep in my cheeks whenever he complimented me or hinted slightly that he had feelings for me more than ‘yeah she’s pretty alright, let’s test a theory’. But it was becoming easier to ignore them – or, at least, rationalise with myself that maybe there was a chance that the world wouldn’t end if I felt a little bit safe with Calum. This was a big step for me. The last time I felt involuntarily safe around this guy I freaked out and threw myself into a spiral of depression, just about killing myself in my own stench when I refused to shower. Right now, I was seriously impressed that I hadn’t tried to smother myself in my bed covers. Or hang myself with my own hair.

“Hey, did you ever end up figuring out what tattoo you want yet?” Calum suddenly asked, excited, and snapping me out of my deep train of thought with a fright. I flinched. I knew that eventually we would end up talking about this again, and I was ridiculously underprepared for it.

“Uh, no…” I gave a tight-lipped grimace and Calum’s face fell, disappointed.

“What? Why?” He asked, and if I didn’t know him better I would have thought maybe he was actually kind of offended. I shrugged, my face contorted into some kind of frown crossed with a pout.

“I just…?!” I gave a defeated laugh, burying my face in my hands as I leant my elbows on the table in front of me.  Calum laughed, his hands grabbing my wrists and pulling my hands away so he could look at my face with raised eyebrows.

“Just what?” He asked me.

I sighed. “Alright, honestly? Most of it is that I just forgot.” I admitted and Calum raised a thick brow at me.

“Uh... what?” He was struggling for words, I could see it. “How do you forget to design a tattoo?” I shrugged again through a kind of uncomfortable laugh. Calum’s hands were still kind of wrapped around mine, our fingers some kind of intertwined together on top of the table. ‘This is how!’ I felt like screaming. ‘You are the reason I forget my own fucking name half the time!’

“I don’t know.” I settled for saying that instead because it was less dramatic and less of a giveaway that I would jump off of a cliff if he told me it would make him happy. “Things have been kind of… busy, I guess. Kind of.”

“Have they?” Calum questioned me, not so much challenging the statement but more so as if he genuinely hadn’t realised that – surprise! – student life can get kind of full on sometimes.

“I mean… well, yeah.”  I said, leaning back against my chair, leaving my hands beneath Calum’s. I tried to convince myself that it was for warmth, but I was already wearing his hoodie so that didn’t really work out very well. “The mural has been kinda kicking our asses, and the same with my other classes... Plus there’s this whole thing with Polly, and my sister, and my mother and Ashton and work – it’s just…” I trailed off my sentence because it was becoming impossible to finish it without giving myself an anxiety attack. My heart rate was already starting to spike (although, that could have been the caffeine).

“Jesus.” Calum mumbled under his breath, and I nodded my head in agreement while I mumbled a quiet ‘yeah’. “Hold up, your sister? What about your sister?”

“She’s here.” I said simply, thinking back to yesterday morning when she arrived and how weird it was that she’d come unannounced.

“Here, as in, ‘on campus’ here?” Calum asked and I nodded.

“Yeah, she was still sleeping when I left.” I said with a small smile that lasted only a second or two. “I think she’s been having a hard time. I didn’t know she was coming and she seemed kind of off yesterday.”

“Oh.” Calum paused, and I could see the gears grinding in his head from across the table. “If… I mean, you should have said.” He said with a small frown of worry. “If I’d known B was here I would have let you spend some time with her.” I shook my head, waving Calum off immediately. I mean, it was sweet that he was worried about her and about me not spending time with her – but, honestly, this was probably going to be more interesting than anything my sister and I would have come up with to do today.

“Nah, don’t stress.” I told him carefully. “I took her out to lunch yesterday and we had a good talk. And she slept over last night, so I think she’s okay now.”

“If you’re sure.” He said carefully, and then between the two of us we decided that if we had any more coffee we were going to shit our pants.

We gathered our things and, as promised (read: threatened), Calum paid for our meals. I said thank you, even though I’d made him do it, and Calum rolled his eyes at me and continued to dish it back until we’d reached the storage studio where all our paints were, and again until we’d reached the mural.

And we kept talking shit for an hour or so, each of us on one end of the mural and working on the detailing. Eventually we just stopped talking, both of us lost in our own little world of paint and tutus and faceless ballerinas.

“Can I ask you something?” Calum asked me, seemingly out of nowhere, around 10am. He was still sitting up on a step ladder, working on the final ballerina while I was sitting down on the ground and doing detailing on the background in the first section of the wall.

“Is that the question?” I replied with a small chuckle, mostly to myself because I was really on a roll today and it was putting me in a good mood. The quiet was nice, and being quiet with Calum was a lot more comforting than I thought it would be. Turns out, Calum was the kind of guy that didn’t make the silence awkward. He seemed just as content with it as I was – except for now, where I could sense that something was on his mind.

“Ha, ha.” He deadpanned. “I’m serious.” I looked over at him and his expression toward me was pointed. I just nodded back, curious, but also moderately terrified. Calum stared down at me, not concerned or worried, not even angry or upset. He looked more confused than anything. Like he was trying to figure me out or something.

“Why don’t you want to be the ballerina?”

I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t expecting him to ask, but I wasn’t, and the longer he stared at me waiting for my reply, the more uncomfortable I was starting to get. I shifted under the weight of his stare, looking away and turning back to my piece of wall that was meant to look like a shadow (though it was starting to look more like a brown blob than anything).

“I, uh…” I cleared my throat, suddenly unsure of what to say. And I stayed quiet for some time, trying to find the right truth.

“Dallas?” He prompted. I gave a small sigh, and offered a small, tight lipped smile. Not necessarily to Calum, but just into the space between us.

“I, um. I just… don’t think I am up to that kind of standard.” I settled for saying, and when I said the words out loud I knew they were true. I could see Calum not understanding, the look in his eyes almost more confused than they were before, and I bit my lip, trying to find a way to make him understand. “Ballerinas are… perfection.” I explained. “And I’m…” I gave a nearly wild shrug, kind of gesturing to all of myself in the hopes that he’d get it – that I was just me, and that no matter how many time I re-gathered the pieces of me that fell apart, I was never going to find the same peace in my mistakes. I wasn’t upset about it, I’d learnt to accept who I was a long time ago. I just didn’t understand why Calum was so intent on thinking I was any different.

“You’re pretty great, Dal.” He said softly, and I nearly didn’t hear him because he was so high up. My head snapped up to where I could see him, and when I looked he was smiling softly at me, the way he did when I knew he’d been watching me for longer than I’d been looking at him. I just rolled my eyes at him and turned away again, wishing that I hadn’t tied my hair up into its bun so it would be easier to hide my blush.

“Right.” I huffed. I didn’t believe him, but I couldn’t help smiling as if I did. The familiar warmness, the butterflies… it was almost exciting, if I thought about it from the right angle.

It wasn’t long until Calum spoke again.

“Are you nervous for showcase?” He asked, less serious now and the air between us a little lighter. I shrugged.

“I’m always nervous.” I said pointedly and the boy didn’t even laugh which offended me slightly (but only slightly – it was a fair point, he didn’t need to be a genius to see I was completely terrified by life). “But yeah, I guess so. I mean, I only have the mural reveal that night. But still.” I gave another shrug, content with my answer and Calum seemed to accept it too. When I looked back up at him he seemed lost in his art again, one brush in his mouth, his pallet in his left hand as he concentrated deeply on the beading of the final tutu.

“Are you?” I asked, relaxing for a bit, letting my posture slouch as I looked up to Calum’s great height.

“Hmm?” He murmured.

“Nervous.” I clarified. “About showcase.” He didn’t reply for what felt like forever. I couldn’t tell if he was just distracted by the art or if he was thinking, the way I did. I’d turned back to my pallet and started painting again by the time Calum replied.

“I don’t think so.” He said conclusively, and I’d almost forgotten what I’d asked already. “We… well, look at this. We’ve done some amazing work.” I hummed in agreement. Showcase was in just over a week, and even though we were still so behind, what we had was pretty damn cool. “My folio is being displayed in the library, too.”

“Really?” I was surprised at how exciting that sounded to me. Calum nodded and he seemed to beam down on me like the walking embodiment of the sun that he was.

“I can’t wait for you to see it.” He said, and I was just so blown away by his confidence. I’d never seen someone so… in their element. It was… hell, it was kind of inspirational if I was honest.

“So you’re not nervous?” I asked again with a crooked smile. “At all?” He shook his head with a small chuckle.

“Nah.” He waved me off. “I’ve got bigger things to be nervous about.” His smile turned into a tiny smirk, and from where I was sitting it looked like he shot me a wink. I snorted unattractively, biting my lip so I didn’t laugh in his face (figuratively, of course. There was still six feet and a step ladder between us, you see).

“Are… Are you talking about our date?!” I asked, completely bewildered, at this point, at the look of seemingly genuine anxiety inside the boy’s chocolate eyes.

“It is still happening, right?” He asked fearfully and I couldn’t help the eyebrow quirk.

“Uh, yeah.” I managed to chuckle out before his worries started to catch on, and my ability to jump to the worst conclusions got the better of me. “Why, do you not want it to?” I asked, all traces of amusement slipping from my face, and a whole new level of panic rising in Calum’s.

“No!” He said almost too quickly, and he immediately realised what that sounded like and tried to correct it before I had a stroke and died the night before our first official date. “Shit, n-no… Argh, yes! I mean yes!” He closed his eyes for a second and took a breath, letting it out in a small laugh of his own that wasn’t really making me feel better, but he was trying, and that was the main thing.

“I do still want it to happen.” He explained through that small crooked, awkwardly adorable smile. “I’m just… well, I’m kinda nervous.” I shook my head, looking away and trying to hide my blush yet again.

“You don’t have to be nervous, Cal.” I said quietly. I shrugged again before I looked back up at him – but only for a moment. “It’s just me.”

“It’s more than just you, Dallas.” He drawled out, and when I looked up with a cocked eyebrow, Calum was wearing that same pointed look from before. “Anyway, I’m excited too. I like spending time with you.”

The grin I gave back was slow and crooked and filled with warmth and I couldn’t stop it even though I was trying my hardest.