CHAPTER 11

Five days later Callie nodded at the two guys she left in a car outside Arizona's building, walked through the lobby, and caught the elevator to Arizona's floor. She was carrying a bottle of red wine and she felt good.

She wondered if this was what regular people did all the time. Casual dinners with friends on weekdays.

Tim had told her not to bring a 1000 dollar bottle of French wine and instead buy something less…obviously extravagant. She'd gotten him to get a bottle from the store around the corner from the hotel.

She hadn't known what to wear but had finally settled on tight black jeans and a lose dark red blouse.

Even though they would have gone very nice with her outfit, she'd left her custom made Louboutin's at home, not wanting the red soles of the shoes mixed with her imprinted initials to give away her income bracket. She'd put on regular black heels instead.

When Arizona opened the door Callie lost a bit of the ease she had just felt simply because the blonde looked absolutely stunning. Blonde curls framing her beautiful face and…scrubs?

"Hey, great you're here" The blonde gave Callie a hug and a huge smile "Leave your jacket here and come on in. I just got here a short while ago because the surgery ran late, but dinner should be ready soon" The blonde disappeared into the kitchen area.

Callie hung her jacket 'She's actually cooking?'

The brunette rounded the corner and saw Arizona in full cooking mode, cutting vegetables on the kitchen island and stirring something in a pot.

"You cook?"

"Uh…yeah. You don't?"

"I'm sure my mom would slap me if she heard me say this, but no, I don't cook" Callie chuckled "It smells amazing!"

Arizona smiled at her "When you move back into your place I can come and teach you"

"Yeah, that would be great" Callie said without feeling a bit of regret about the whole not-really-having-a-real-apartment-and-lying-about-it situation. In that moment it felt almost natural to live in a make-believe world. She loved it.

"Oh, and sorry about my outfit. I just took a quick shower at the hospital, and all I had to put on were these" the blonde said and pointed up and down her body "If you take over this stirring, I'll go change real quick"

Callie grabbed the spoon and Arizona ran into the bedroom. While Callie was standing by the stove her mind wandered into the other room where Arizona was surely only dressed in her underwear now. Callie swallowed thickly. She shook her head. She wasn't going to ruin this new friendship by pining over a straight Arizona.

Arizona came back into the room and took over cooking again.

When dinner was ready they sat down at the breakfast bar. Arizona hadn't bought a dining room table yet and she was contemplating whether she actually needed one or not.

"This place is really coming together" Callie said while looking around.

"Well, I used my hammer" Arizona chuckled. The comment earned a laugh from Callie.

Arizona had already painted the place and pictures where already hung. Callie was quite impressed with how fast and good it had all been done.

They talked their way through dinner and later they took the conversation and their wine to the couch.

"I didn't have time to make dessert, but I have ice cream. You want some?" Arizona asked.

"Sure"

Arizona got up and got the ice cream. Very unceremoniously she sat down again, handed Callie a spoon and held the tub of ice cream between them.

"Dig in" she said.

Callie looked at the ice cream. Then she looked at Arizona who was already enjoying her first spoonful, and then she shrugged and dug her spoon into the caramel colored ice cream.

Arizona loved ice cream. And she loved having people over. It was something she had really missed while living at the hotel and not knowing anybody in the city. But now she had Callie and she was also getting to know her colleagues better. Things were good.

She looked at Callie who was licking her spoon while looking at some books Arizona had lying on the coffee table.

Callie smelled good. She had an old-Hollywood way about her; her face, her hair. And Arizona thought that the latina would probably be very warm to touch. Wait, what was that? Arizona swallowed, wondering if Callie's perfume was toxic. Or toxic enough to make her mind wander off in weird directions.

"How do you always look so…together?" she asked the brunette.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, your hair, your clothes. Everything. Very composed. When I get off work at the end of the day I look like I've been in a cage fight"

Callie laughed. She actually didn't spend that much time on her looks and contrary to what people believed she didn't have a beauty team to help her get ready in the morning. She liked to handle that herself. Doing her own hair and make-up was one of the things she had left that didn't involve a lot of planning and involvement of other people.

"I'll take that as a compliment" Callie then said "but it's not something I put a lot of thought into"

"Really?"

"Yeah. I just sort of roll out of bed"

"I doubt that" Arizona said "You look…I mean…kinda radiant" She pointed up and down Callie.

Callie tilted her head and looked at Arizona.

"Radiant? Thanks" she said in a low voice that made Arizona shiver. The blonde shifted in her seat. Why did she feel uncomfortable all of a sudden? And why the hell had she used the word 'radiant'? Something wasn't right, and the blonde hurried up and made conversation to make the sensation go away.

"Well, I'm an army brat, so I grew up wearing mini camies. I was pretty dirty most of the time" she said.

"Tell me about that. Growing up in the Midwest" Callie said with a soft voice.

Arizona started talking about her childhood, her family, and the army base. Callie asked a bunch of questions, and the conversation flowed freely. Having conversations with Arizona forced Callie to learn a whole new social code and the latina was loving it. Living in Miami her family hadn't had much, but as soon as they moved to New York and her dad's business took off, they'd been wealthy. Very wealthy. And even when Callie tried really hard, she couldn't remember any time where she'd watched TV on the couch while eating ice cream out of the tub. Or gone swimming at Coney Island. Instead she'd spent an awful lot of time with nannies and she'd always been dressed to the nines in outfits that were not supposed to get dirty because the family was always going to some sort of fancy dinner or fundraiser or extravagant children's birthday party.

And now, sitting next to her, was somebody who'd grown up in the middle of nowhere, worn muddy clothes her whole childhood, and eaten apples right off the tree. It baffled Callie.

Callie was pulled out of her thoughts by Arizona's voice.

"I think I'm going crazy"

"Why?"

"I think I saw Eric today"

"Eric?"

"The guy…my ex-boyfriend"

"Oh. OH! Really?"

"Yeah. I don't know for sure, but when I left the hospital there was a car parked close to mine and it looked like he was sitting in the driver's seat. I didn't get a good look because…well because I didn't want to get a good look"

"Should you tell someone about this? I mean, if he's breaking the restraining order, you should inform the police, right?"

"But what if it wasn't him, Callie?"

"What if it was?" Callie shot back. She instantly regretted her tone "I'm sorry, I just…If he's here, in New York, there's a reason to worry, right?"

Arizona sighed "I just don't want to open that can of worms, you know?"

"I know. Listen, I know someone who'll be able to check if he's moved his address to New York. I could contact them and then you'd know, okay?"

"Thank you" Arizona whispered.

"Now, let's say it wasn't him in that parking lot and concentrate on this ice cream instead" Callie said to lighten the mood. She was already thinking about how to figure out what – if anything – this Eric guy was up to.

An hour later Callie got up to leave. She got her jacket and reached for the door knob.

"Callie?"

Callie turned around and looked at the blonde who was handing her a note pad.

"Can I have your phone number? I think they're tired of taking my calls at the hotel reception" Arizona smiled.

Callie froze. Now it was too late for her to get an extra phone with a number she could give Arizona. She would have to give her the real one.

"Sure" she said and scribbled down the number on Arizona's note pad before she walked out the door.

And just like that doctor Arizona Robbins was now in possession of her private phone number that she didn't give out to anybody. Not even to people she'd known for years.