Well, I get it: this isn't going how you wanted. I was hoping I had built enough credits with my previous storyies
NoName: see, you get it? Cal's questions was pretty much an answer to Gillian's
"What's your excuse with me then, eh darling?"
Cal's half-joking half-serious statement was meant to ease the sombre weight of the moment, and did manage to get a little huffed smile out of her. Then she patted on his leg and Cal looked down at her, catching her face contracting in a rather unusual expression as she tried to fight back more tears and perhaps bite back another bitter smile she didn't feel was appropriate for the situation. It was a very strange expression, one that Cal couldn't quite identify and, as it always happened when he couldn't read her at all, scared him a little bit.
He was still haunted by the way he had found her at Claire's place, but he had also admired how she had fought back, almost immediately, seeking the confrontation with Mosley and not shying away from it. Anybody with a sprinkle of knowledge in psychology would have understood that it had been a mix of grief, pain and rage powering that reaction, a cocktail of adrenaline perhaps unhealthy but certainly needed. Now that was all gone; with Claire's death vindicated and the man responsible behind bars, now that she knew that she wasn't the only one grieving the loss, all the things that Gillian had put aside in order to be able to function while she was needed were coming back. He didn't like that, to see her like that and even more to wonder exactly how much worse things were underneath the already rough surface: and least of all, he didn't like the things she inadvertently let him see when she was in such a state.
He had put the thoughts aside that day, deciding to focus instead on how to get back at Mosley: after all, we all need to blow off some steam every now and then. If he couldn't help Gillian directly, or figure out what that strange look on her face meant, he could make himself useful by making the boy's life miserable.
But then he had gone home, where he had found Emily calling him out on his feelings for Gillian.
He loved her, yeah, as in being in love with her and the lot: thinking about her, wanting to be there for her like nobody else could, hoping one day their friendship would become something else, maybe because of some cosmic alignment since he had no intention to make a move. Emily's closing question had been straight to the point, and so had been his answer despite sounding so vague. He really didn't know what he was waiting for: sure, he could have come up with a number of reasons why he didn't feel ready, but he knew that none of them would have been strong enough to convince Emily. He could easily hear her in his head, counter each and every one of his objections. Fear of being rejected? Man up, Dad! Afraid to give it a go and see that it wouldn't work? So it's ok to risk your life on a regular basis but not your heart? Worry that she might not take him seriously, miss his cue and accidentally humiliate him? It's Gillian, she would never do that.
The list could go on, on both sides, and that was just another reason why Cal had not been fond of that conversation.
But there was a last obstacle, probably the biggest as well as the most recent one: that look on Gillian's face when he had tried to ease the atmosphere with his joke.
He hadn't been able to figure it out on the spur of the moment, and he probably never would have entirely, but something about it bugged him. And it kept doing so for the following days, when Gillian took time off and then came back to work acting different, distant and on the fence, at least with him. Cal had tried to give the situation the benefit of the doubt, to stop obsessing about it and simply convince himself that with all that she had gone through Gillian was more than entitled to act a little off. But as days had gone by it had become more and more difficult not to read more into it.
Then again, those were also the days of his final diagnosis and Cal had to take into account that the tumour growing inside his brain might have made him see things that were not there. After all, not feeling like himself - or that he could trust himself - was what had pushed him to seek doctor's advice in the first place. So he had waited, giving both of them time: time for Gillian to go through her grief and whatever else had created that thoughtful and painful grimace on her face, and time to himself to come to terms with the fact that he had to face brain surgery and possibly come out of it not as the same as he was before, or not at all.
But the waiting game wasn't one for him in the long run, not with the date of his surgery approaching and with Gillian getting more absent and distant as the days went by. It was that blank stare on her face he was seeing so often that threw him off, and kept pushing him to break the respectful silence and bring it up to her. The point was which 'it' of the two: his tumour or her demeanour, and what he was starting to think might be attached to it?
Somehow he had made the decision, on that Thursday afternoon just before his surgery. He was smart enough to understand that brain surgery wasn't just about him, that other people and their business were going to be affected, and that he should let her know at least about part of it. He had spent the whole day working up the courage to tell Gillian, thinking about how to do it: it had been a very difficult task, to come up with the right way of doing it, until he had realised that there was no such thing and that his best bet was to stick to the facts.
Except when he finally went to her office and knocked, immediately noticing how she snapped out of her thoughts and suddenly panicked at his presence, Cal wasn't so sure of it anymore. It was that blank stare again, empty and far, something that Cal had come to recognise and profoundly dislike. Then he noticed how she quickly opened a random file on her computer, trying to mask the fact that she was simply staring at the space in front of her, and the same uneasy feeling to the pitch of his stomach he had been feeling for days made its prompt return. He swallowed slowly and took it in, alarm bells ringing inside his head. He could understand if she was hiding something from him, a file or document for some reason, but it was unnerving to realise she was hiding the fact that she was doing nothing at all.
Despite everything, up until that point Cal was still determined to go through with his plan and tell her about his tumour and the surgery, to discuss with her the possible scenarios and how to make sure the company they had built together would survive if he didn't. But as the conversation started, forced and tiring and full of hurdles to get through, Cal started to realise that their future was not heading to the same direction anymore when he casually threw back at Gillian what she had said during the last normal conversation between them, about just hoping for the best.
The way she reacted, freezing and looking at him like a deer in the headlights, pretty much sealed the deal in Cal's mind. It was like a revelation, a sudden and painful epiphany that had been in the making for days. Out of the blue, that strange expression on her face he couldn't understand assumed a very clear meaning. What's your excuse with me then: his throwaway line had stuck the landing in her mind, planting a malicious seed that had grown into a poison ivy wrapping her with suffocating strength. The more she tried to avoid his eyes and to look normal, the more Cal could picture the path her thoughts had taken until they had arrived at the destination: a big flashing sign asking with bright lights 'what the hell am I still doing here with him?'.
And that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was that one more look told Cal that she knew he had figured it out.
So he bailed on his plans to tell her, deciding to lie and realising with a heavy heart that she wasn't going to see it or, even worse, care. Instead of surgery and tumour and dispositions, Cal came up with the college visit excuse, again taking in how very little Gillian seemed to be interested in anything related to that. She did engage in the conversation with him, asked and offered things as it might have been expected, but she wasn't really invested in the conversation which became evidently clear when she hesitated on his joke about trying to use reverse psychology on Emily.
It was a slap in the face, even if she eventually did reply in tone, and from then on Cal only wanted to end the interaction and leave, thinking it was quite an indication of how bad things were between them if he was all of sudden eager to go and get his skull open.
There a couple of things coming up after this story: anybody would like a sneak peak?