Both Ways
It is late; sometime after eleven thirty, and Calleigh really wishes that she can go to sleep. It'd been a long, strenuous day, and she thought that once she finally returned home that she'd just hit the bed and go to sleep. Au contraire. She'd come home and she was still wired, so now she it just sitting on her bed in her pajamas, listening to Norah Jones and attempting to read the latest issue of Cosmopolitan that she actually stole from the lobby at the lab.
She didn't even feel like eating anything, even though her stomach is grumbling a bit.
Her cell phone rings and she leans over to her night stand and she picks it up, knowing who it is.
"Hey," she says softly.
"Hey," Eric says. "Ryan and Billy are okay. They were released about an hour ago."
"That's good," she sighs, hesitating a bit. "Are you going to your place? It's pretty late."
"No," he says. "I'm almost to your place…do you want me to come over?"
She grins a bit. "You don't have to ask, Eric. Of course I want you to come over…please."
"Okay. I'll be there in about ten minutes."
"Alright."
She ends the call then she goes back to reading her magazine, which isn't interesting her at all. She sighs and closes the magazine, and she gets up and tosses it onto her dresser. Then she goes over to her bookshelf and she pulls out her ballistics journal and she gets back onto her bed and flips it open, immediately immersing herself in an article. How is it that she finds the latest bullet composition and shaping much more vital to her personal growth than which type of dress would compliment her figure and give her more confidence?
She hears her front door open and closes, and for a moment, her heart skips a beat, even though she knows who it is-but she can't quite shake her attack.
"Calleigh?"
She lets out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding when she hears Eric's voice.
"In here," she calls, closing her journal.
He appears in her bedroom a few moments later and she smiles.
"Hi."
"Hey," he says. "You're not tired yet?"
"Nope," she says, shaking her head. "You?"
"No," he says as he takes off his jacket and drapes it over the end of the bed.
She tosses her journal aside and crawls to the edge of the bed and she caresses her hands up his chest. Watching her crawl across the bed to him had been completely sexy, and the amazing part is that without even trying hard, she'd managed to titillate him with her crawl with only her green cardigan over a yellow tanktop, purple cotton pants and red fluffy slippers. Even in mismatched bedtime wear she pulled of the crawl very well.
He puts his hands on her waist and leans down and kisses her then she hugs him. His solid arms wrap around her small body and hold her tightly, securely. She likes it when he just holds her like this, especially after a particularly trying day. She'd been so afraid that she would lose her life…again. The feeling of not being able to breathe is not a feeling one ever forgets; gasping for life saving air, feeling her already weakened lungs straining, being unable to take a deep breath; she flashed back to that day in interrogation where she couldn't catch her breath and passed out.
She closes her eyes and wraps her arms around him tighter, trying to bury the memories.
"What's wrong?" He asks, feeling her body tense.
She opens her eyes.
"I was really scared, Eric," she says quietly. "It brought everything back…that day I collapsed. And you know what made it worse?"
"What?" He asks, glad that she's talking about it.
"I didn't know how I was going to die," she says, her voice quavering a bit. "I didn't know if he'd suffocate me or shoot me with my own weapon…there wasn't anything I could do…"
He kisses the top of her head. "I'm sorry I didn't get there sooner."
"No," she says, looking up at him. "Don't be sorry. You got there just in time."
Eric shakes his head. "We've gotta break this close call habit we've got going here."
Calleigh chuckles.
"You know what, that is one habit I would definitely be happy to break," she smiles. "Anymore and we'll have to start keeping a tally."
He laughs, then he caresses over her cheek, turning serious. "I'm just glad that you're okay."
She grins before she kisses him softly again, wrapping her arms around his neck.
"Well," she begins. "I hope that you're not too hungry because I have nothing in my kitchen that could be considered a meal."
"I'm good," he shrugs. "But I am in the mood for some coffee. You want some?"
"Sure," she says.
He nods and he begins to head to the kitchen but Calleigh takes his hand and he turns to look at her.
"Eric?"
"Yeah?"
She bites her bottom lip, not even wanting to bring it up, but she knows that she has to.
"We're still going to talk, aren't we?" She asks.
Eric sighs and he nods. "Yeah, we're still going to talk."
She offers a slight grin as she gently lets his hand go and he begins to head to her kitchen.
The pending conversation they are about to have has been hanging over and between them like a dark cloud. He knows that this whole thing has stemmed from a misunderstanding, and he can't understand why he can't treat it as such. He knows that he's being an asshole, making a mountain out of a molehill, and he decides as he finds everything he needs to make them coffee, navigating her kitchen on auto-pilot because he committed it to memory the first time, that he will tell her as much.
He starts the coffee, then he goes back into her bedroom.
Calleigh's bedroom wasn't exactly what he pictured; he thought that it'd be yellow, for some reason, and floral because he knows that she has a love for things that remind her of home, and floral prints are one of those things, and he expected lace, too. When he saw her bedroom the first time, he'd been surprised.
No lace, no floral prints, and no yellow.
There is softness, but in the form of a chocolate brown vine pattern comforter, Tiffany blue sheets and pillows with brown pillows to compliment, sleek, modern dark wood furniture, brown curtains, but a soothing, lulling blue on her walls. It is her, and it seems to do the trick of relaxing her after work.
She is sitting in the middle of her bed again, and she moves and sits on the edge of the bed, patting the space next to her. He sits down next to her, and she pushes her hair behind her ears and looks at him.
"Eric…"
He takes her hand in his. "I'm sorry, Cal. I made something out of nothing, and I was an ass…you don't have to explain."
"Yes," she insists. "I do. But before I go any further, I just want to let you know that absolutely nothing happened between me and Terrence. We just rode around the track, okay?"
He nods. "Okay."
She couldn't deny that she saw the hurt on his face when he discovered that she had Terrence's phone number in her phone. She'd probably be a bit prickly too if she found that Eric was hanging on to a female acquaintance's phone number stored in his phone when he is trying to navigate the waters of a new relationship. She keeps asking herself the same question Eric had earlier:
Disregarding the picture, if she knows that nothing happened and hadn't intended for anything to happen, and it had just been one afternoon like she said, why keep the phone number?
It's a perfectly relevant question which she intends to answer for both of them. This issue has been invading their space, like the proverbial big doofy pink elephant in the room.
"Eric, you know me better than anyone," she says, lacing her fingers with his. "And…I know that you've seen me through the relationships I've had in the past. You've seen them fail, and you've seen me play a big part in those failures."
"You didn't-"
"Yes I did," she insists. "And you know it. I've taken responsibility for those relationships, especially with Jake."
Eric tenses at the mention of his name. "That wasn't your fault, Cal. He mistreated you time and again."
"Because I let him," she says. "He didn't take anything I said seriously because I kept letting him come back into my life, I kept letting him treat me like something on the side because I didn't realize that I deserved better, that I didn't have to be in a relationship by myself."
He shakes his head. "You're selling yourself short on that one, Cal."
She grins. "I know that Jake is a thorn in your side, but whether you like him or not, he taught me how to expect and deserve better."
He looks at their joined hands.
"So," she continues. "With my relationship history, and realizing my place in your life and your heart, putting Terrence's number in my phone was…an insurance policy. I'm not even all that attracted to the guy, but I took it anyway because I was scared, and confused."
"I didn't mean to make you feel that way."
"I know…but I already knew how you felt about me, and what you wanted. I thought about us over and over again…"
Her eyes begin to glisten with tears.
"And the more I thought about us and about what we could have, the more scared I got because you're my friend…my best friend, Eric. I thought about how devastated we'd both be if our relationship didn't work out and we ended up losing our friendship. At the very least Eric I want us to always be friends, even if we don't work out."
He pulls her into a hug.
"I'll always be there for you," he says softly. "No matter what happens. I promise."
She nods. "I wanted to protect myself from getting hurt. It was new to me, you know? Thinking about you in the realm of a relationship. We've been working together for seven years, and it's scary to walk into work and look at you and realize that there's something more between us than just us being coworkers and friends. I would need something else to focus on in the aftermath."
Admitting that Terrence would have been a rebound is slightly embarrassing because it betrays her weaknesses. It exposes her vulnerability and her willingness to accept something less than she knows she deserves because of fear. Fear of something real and good, fear of a man in her life that would give anything just to even see her.
"Y-you can't make me pay for another man's mistakes," he says. "You're assuming that it won't work because of the past. All I want is the chance to be the man to you that you want and need. I want to prove to you that I'm willing to step up and treat you right, and make a concerted effort to make this work because you deserve it. I want to deserve you and be worthy of you, even though sometimes it scares me. It scares me too Calleigh, but I'd rather try than be afraid and never know."
She looks at him. "I know that. I've known for a long time."
Her tears spill over and she closes her eyes.
"And when I saw the chocolates on the table in my lab…"
How could something so big between them come down to a little box of fancy truffles? Delicious truffles at that? It was his heart right there, sitting inanimately on the table in the form of wonderful chocolates wrapped up in a bow. And she'd taken them, still not knowing if she could want him.
"Just the fact that you remembered," she says, smiling a bit. "That you thought about me and gave me something that I like so much…the fact that you listened and made sure that it got here in time to surprise me…I knew. And I'm so sorry that I hurt you with this, Eric."
"It's okay," he says. "Like you said earlier, it was before you and me. If I didn't trust you with my heart, I wouldn't have done it. I trust you, Calleigh, and I wanted to make you happy."
Calleigh smiles and she puts her hand on his cheek and kisses him softly.
"And make me happy you did."
With that, she gets up and she goes over to her bedside table and picks up her phone, then she goes to sit next to him, wiping her tears.
"Cal…"
"It has to go both ways, Eric. I want you to trust me like I trust you…completely. No doubts, nothing in the way of that. Completely."
She goes into her address book and scrolls down to the Ts, and finds Terrence's phone number. Without a moment's hesitation, she highlights it and presses delete. She deletes everything, then she looks at Eric, grinning.
"Just you and me," she says.
He smiles and caresses her cheek, hearing the coffeemaker beep from the kitchen. "Well now that we've dealt with all the unpleasantness…the coffee's ready."
"Good," she giggles, letting him gently pull her up from the bed after he got up. "Pop quiz: how do I like my coffee?"
"Two sugars, two second pour of hazelnut creamer, a smidgen of two percent milk, and a cinnamon stick to stir with."
"Damn, you really are a good listener, Delko," she smiles as they head to her kitchen. "And to think I had my doubts."
"Eh, I'm just trying to court you," he teases. "Get you to marry me."
"Are you now?"
"Yeah," he grins as he sets two mugs onto the island. "And if we do end up getting married, give it a couple of months before I start tuning you out."
Calleigh raises an eyebrow at him.
"Just make my coffee."
Eric feigns a blank stare. "Huh?" Then he laughs when she rolls her eyes.
"Don't quit your day job, Delko."