For the first time at camp, I felt like that might be true.

For the first time here, I didn’t feel so—

Alone.

I’d spent way more time than this in way more isolated situations.

And yet, with Callie away at camp, I was literally feeling like I’d never been on my own before. Eating meals felt like a chore and tumbling at night wasn’t even an option. Normally, that was one of the things that helped me. Helped me piece together philosophical meanings and distinguish right from wrong.

Greased the wheels of my emotional discord and made my whole system work again.

In this case, I wasn’t sure what was cause and what was effect. I felt mixed up and emotionally incomplete without Callie around to prove to me what felt right and what felt wrong. I would have used tumbling as a way to sort all of that out in the past.

But tumbling nights weren’t my thing anymore. Not since she snuck around to watch me, and certainly not since we’d made love on that very floor.

Now they were our thing.

And so it seemed the solution had become a part of the problem. A stalemate of sorts where the only key was miles and miles away at Olympic training camp.

I’d considered sending her an email or a message, desperate for some kind of contact, but in the end thought better of it.

She’d asked me for space before she left.

The least I could do was respect it.

I’d been coaching some of the younger kids while she was away, and they were fun and dedicated to the sport. Talkative and loud and not at all flirty.

Which was a very good thing.

Adaptable to change and altogether amenable to all of my instruction, they made my job easy.

I was thrilled to know that Callie was coming back tomorrow.

Besides missing her challenge in the gym, I’d just missed her period.

Somewhat manic in my excitement, I searched for something to do. Something that made me think of her but left out the whole knife twisting in the chest. Motorcycle rides and trips to the beach considered and quickly rejected, I finally ended up here.

A swirling red and white pole twisted outside, and bad fluorescent lighting buzzed and hummed overhead.

A hipster-looking guy approached the chair behind me, unfolding a piece of fabric and looking me in the eyes through the aid of the mirror.

The plain black cape ruffled and rustled roughly in front of me as he shook it out, floating onto my lap and settling like a blanket over my body.

Around my neck it tightened, the feel of hands hooking it at the back of my neck and the way they had to weed through the hair making it even more obvious what I was there to do.

“Yeah,” I confirmed when the barber asked what I was after again. “Short.”

A decision made on a whim out of boredom and loneliness, I knew the results wouldn’t go unnoticed.

And assuming that notice came from the right person, there was a definite appeal.

“Been growing it out?” he asked, finger combing through it with curiosity but keeping his opinion tucked well beneath the belt.

I looked at the long clumps of hair, the way they clung to the side and the front and did it in large numbers.

I remembered Callie admitting how stupid she thought it looked, and how she’d somehow managed to make me feel like that was a good thing.

“Not on purpose,” I admitted and justified all at once. I’d never been conscious of its appearance before, but Callie made me that way.

It wasn’t about vanity though. It was something more. It was about a combination of laziness and escape, hiding behind the hair and the curtain it provided for my protection from the outside world. I got less attention with it long and loose and stupid looking.

Cutting it off was like opening up an invitation to the wolves and admitting that I was ready to handle whatever happened as a consequence.

It was a good analogy for the way I’d handled my relationship with Callie, hiding and settling and accepting both milestones and rejections as they came.

But I wanted to be done with the rejections, even if that meant my belief and tenacity had to live inside my mind and heart temporarily.

I watched as he cut and combed, hacking at some sections with what seemed like a machete and selectively trimming at the very ends of others.

A transformation took shape, the grieving kid my parents left behind falling away to reveal the son my mom was proud to have.

All at once it felt like more than the hair, spiky and neat and unobtrusive in its positioning.

Out of my face and eyes, it cleared my vision in more ways than one. I could see what I needed and wanted, staring me in the face and demanding to be taken.

I didn’t feel inhibited by obstacles. I felt free.

Free to take what I wanted whether her universe wanted me to or not.

When Callie came home, she wouldn’t just be on her way back to the gym and her family and a coach who cared about her enough to let go.

She’d be coming home to a guy who loved her enough to hold on.

And I’d do my best not to—

Let go.

Camp finally behind me, I had the opportunity to move on—go in a direction I wanted if only for a little while.

And the direction was clear.

I was homeward bound.

An already normally welcome concept, today’s version had me damn near beside myself.

I couldn’t wait to see Nik even if the way we’d left it was awkward. I couldn’t wait to hug him even if as I was leaving I’d pretty much told him not to. And I couldn’t wait to bask in him and his affection for as long as I could get it.

I’d worried briefly that he wouldn’t forgive me or give me the opportunity to make up for my mistakes, but the truth was, that wasn’t Nik. He wasn’t the kind of guy who held grudges.

What he was, was the kind of guy who understood me inside and out, even when the things he had to accept were my misgivings and transgressions.

And I was fully committed to making it up to him. I planned to do my best to show him how I felt without holding back and questioning motives and calculating consequences at every turn.

I didn’t expect that I’d be perfect right out of the gate, but I had no doubts Nik would both recognize and appreciate an effort.

My mom had been pretty set in the notion that a month without him would be nothing. But after a little over a week, I knew with utter certainty that I disagreed.

I missed his smile and the lips that created it.

I missed his lively blue eyes and all the ways they told me what he was feeling or what he hoped to get from me.

I missed the way he poked at me and then harnessed the anger he’d created in order to use it for our passion.

And I missed the way he talked to me like everything I felt, no matter how ridiculous, wasn’t, in fact, wrong, but instead couldn’t be more right.

My eyes searched the gym, expecting to find him somewhere on the floor.

His motorcycle sat in the parking lot, shining in the sun and confirming his presence before I ever went inside.

But I didn’t see him among the sea of other people. A rainbow of leotards faded and rolled into itself, mixing and matching and swinging across the spectrum as I scanned from one side of the warehouse to the other.

Disappointment sank my shoulders momentarily until the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

“Hey, Cal,” his smooth, rich voice whispered behind me, pulling my body toward his with the force of a flesh-sensitive magnet.