"You seem a little nervous today", Gillian struck up a conversation while they were stuck in traffic.
"Me?" Cal looked at her, "I'm fine."
"Then why are you drumming with your fingers on the steering wheel?" Gillian pushed her chin forward pointing at the incessant motion of his hand.
"That's because I'm growing increasingly impatient with DC drivers. You'd think after all this time people got used to the idea of winter road conditions in December, but no, each year, traffic dies down when the first snow falls. Seriously, how can you not expect there to be snow in bloody December?" Cal looked at Gillian with an irate temper.
She just smiled at him and shrugged her shoulders, "If people actually learned from their mistakes we'd probably go out of business."
"Fair enough, but that still doesn't change the fact that we're gonna be late for our meeting."
"They'll be late, too, Cal. They're stuck in the same traffic."
"Wouldn't it be funny if they were like five cars in front or behind us all the time?" Cal's mood suddenly shifted to joking.
Was he deflecting? Gillian studied his face carefully but like so often she had trouble reading him.
"Loker didn't get the job at the Pentagon." Cal mentioned all of a sudden.
Gillian's eyebrows shot up at the change in subject again, "I know. He asked me for a reference."
"And you gave him one?" Cal stared at her incredulously.
"He's old enough to learn to stand on his own two feet." Gillian explained.
"Stand on his own two feet, my arse", Cal scoffed, "that boy wouldn't last a day at the DoD with his attitude problem."
"I know", Gillian repeated herself and explained upon Cal's disbelieving look, "He's also old enough to learn from his own mistakes. We can't protect him forever."
"Let them stumble and fall", Cal looked at her knowingly, "and then welcome them back when they've learned they're not king of the world."
"Kinda", Gillian conceded, "He wasn't happy anymore. He thought the grass is always greener somewhere else."
"He'll be in for a rude experience if he thinks the Pentagon is a lush green meadow." Cal's voice took on a sober tone. "You think that I'm being too hard on him, don't you?"
"I think you're trying to make him into something he isn't." Gillian corrected.
"Tomato, tomato." Cal rolled his eyes.
"Not everyone's got the same devil may care attitude that you do." She reminded him, "Loker isn't you."
"But he needs to grow a pair if he wants to stay in this business. Deception detection isn't exactly a clean business." Gillian knew he spoke from experience. Events he had not even shared with her from the war in Bosnia and his time in Belfast had left a lasting impression on him. And then there was their mutual past at the Pentagon with the whole Jimmy Doyle business. "The sooner he learns that, the better off he'll be in the long run. Torres learned to be tough as a child, Loker's always been mollycoddled."
"He'll come around", Gillian reassured him, "he just hasn't seen the light at the end of the tunnel yet. He's still a bit idealistic about the work we do."
Cal smiled, thinking fondly of their memories, "Like you in the beginning."
Gillian snorted, "Pot meet kettle. What were your words? 'I want to start a business with you, a company that specialises only in finding the truth regardless of the consequences.' For two jaded DoD renegades we went into this whole thing very blue-eyed."
"But I was right. There is a demand for the truth, I was just wrong about the truth at all costs part. And you fell right for it and started to work with me." He admitted, then they both turned quiet for a few moments. "Have you ever thought about it?"
"About what?"
"Leaving?"
Gillian frowned, "The Lightman Group?"
Cal nodded and studied her face carefully.
"Don't do that, Cal."
"But you thought about it."
"The line, Cal."
"Then for heaven's sake tell me what you're thinking."
"Have I thought about leaving you and the company? Yes."
Cal swallowed and was glad they were still only merrily rolling along in the avalanche of cars winding their way through the greater metropolitan area. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to concentrate on the road while having this conversation.
"Why haven't you?" Cal inquired and Gillian thought she detected an intense edge to his voice.
She shrugged her shoulders, "I have my reasons."
Cal shot her a dirty look and prompted her to continue, "Like?"
"Well first of all someone has to keep tabs on you or you'd get into all kinds of troubles." She grinned and Cal returned a smug one.
"And?"
"And second, I can't just up and leave a company I've helped build from scratch. I put a lot of money and time into the Lightman Group and it's not like you can afford to buy me out at the moment."
"So you're staying out of guilt and parenting responsibilities?"
Gillian shrugged her shoulders.
"So essentially you're saying I'm a big child that needs to be looked after", he pouted half-mockingly.
If the subject hadn't been a touchy one lately, she might have laughed at his way with words. However, considering everything that had happened in the past few weeks, she wasn't sure why exactly she had stayed with him through thick and thin.
Gillian sighed, "Ahh, but you're my big child." There was a time when her words would have been laced with covert fondness for him, but this time Cal searched in vain for this affection he secretly craved so much and which always thrilled him beyond explanation.
Cal's look seemed to bore into her. That wasn't the whole truth. He wasn't giving up on that one so Gillian finally threw her hands up in the air, "Sometimes I don't know anymore why I'm staying at all."
Now Cal was really grateful they were stuck in traffic because he'd probably have swerved off road at this comment.
"Are we breaking up?" He looked at her and frowned when he realised he used Emily's exact phrasing. He hastened to add, "Professionally."
"No!" Gillian exclaimed upset but then conceded, "I don't know? Are we?"
Cal was silent and pondered the age-old question, truth or happiness, never both. Only they were not really happy right now were they? Maybe sometimes truth was the best policy. "Emily asked me that question last weekend and initially I laughed it off but…we haven't been really close recently, have we?"
"No, not through my fault, though." Gillian thought of Cal's new alliance with Wallowski and couldn't hide her distaste from her voice.
"She's convenient and useful", Cal had no problem to read her demeanour and draw the proper conclusions.
"She's dangerous and poison to the company. And you're like the proverbial moth drawn to the flame." Gillian amended his evaluation of Wallowski.
Cal sighed, "We need her."
"Do you need her more than me?" Gillian challenged him and suddenly the temperature in the car seemed to drop twenty degrees.
"Are you giving me an ultimatum?" Cal's voice rose in anger and glared at her in disbelief.
"No", Gillian kept her voice purposefully low to keep their conversation from escalating into an argument while they were stuck in a car with no place to go, "but you asked me whether I thought about leaving and the truth is, the thought didn't really cross my mind before you started to question my loyalty and ally yourself with…" the word enemy almost slipped out but she just caught her guard in time, "her."
It took Cal a lot of willpower to keep his indifferent mask in place when he picked up on the hurt in her voice. He never realised how much he had hurt her. "That's not all, isn't it? In spite of my shabby behaviour lately, don't you think I deserve to know when I'm about to lose my best friend and partner?"
Gillian frowned. It had been a long time since Cal referred to her as that and an even longer time since he'd made her feel like that. There was a time when she giggled at her thoughts that she felt like she was the Bonnie to his Clyde, only he never let her take any real risks. He hadn't given her a reason to giggle in a long time. Right now she felt like he almost didn't have the right to call her that anymore at all.
"Out with it. Let's take the opportunity to air out our dirty laundry."
She played hard to get, dismissing it as Cal making fun of her, but he had none of it. She might not be able to read him as well as he was able to read her but she'd picked up on a lot of his behavioural cues, his facial ticks and especially his voice patterns. Gillian knew he wouldn't let go until they've hashed out every minute detail of their fucked up relationship.
"There was a time when I felt like the Bonnie to your Clyde", she looked at him sheepishly and cursed that she was blushing, "but ever since you went all Reservoir Dog on me it feels as if you don't value my input at all. You never listen to me anymore. It's as if you don't need me anymore. Worse, it feels like you don't want me there anymore."
"That's not true!" Cal blurted out with worry, "I do need you." And in his thoughts he added, And I've always wanted you in more ways than you can imagine. "I just…"
"You what?"
"I want you to…. I don't want to…" Gillian would have found his struggle for words amusing had the topic not been so serious. He let out a long and defeated sigh, "You should be leaving; you should've never joined me in this crazy adventure in the first place. Alec was right, it had insanity written all over it from the beginning. All I've done is caused you grief and got you into troubles."
Gillian laughed out loud and Cal looked at her funny. She knew him well enough to know this was his Achilles' heel or she would've become incensed at his patronising presumptions.
"Don't you think I'm old enough to decide what I want in my life?"
"If you want me in your life, maybe it's time we've had your head examined", Cal quipped.
'That's what I've been telling myself recently", Gillian admitted jokingly but Cal noticed some statement of truth on her face. Did she really want him in her life? Was that the true reason she'd stuck it out with him while he pulled one kamikaze stunt after another? And did she mean that as a friend or as a business partner or….heaven forbid…did she imply more?
"I wouldn't know what to do if I lost you. I'd probably perish in peril." He joked but there was a serious undertone to his musings.
Gillian wanted to say, rightly so, but instead opted for the more reconciling, "You haven't been showing that lately."
"I know. I've said some awful things to you. I don't deserve you. See that's what I mean. All I seem to accomplish is making your life miserable." He whined.
"You used to redeem yourself." That caught his interest. Gillian could tell he wanted to ask why and how but didn't know how without letting on how much the situation between them bothered him. What bothered him most was probably her use of past tense.
"Are we as they say FUBAR?" The military acronym sounded almost comical coming out of Cal's British mouth.
Gillian laughed out loud, "No, I just think we both need to rearrange our priorities and figure out how we go from here."
"Time heals all wounds, eh?"
"Something like that, yeah."