I rolled my eyes.  I knew what it was.  I was there when my mother came home laughing to herself because she’d seen and randomly bought a full-on tango dress complete with a flower hairpiece and dramatic ruffles at the bottom.  “Remember when Lake and I used to dance down the hall to the kitchen? Wouldn’t it be funny if I wore this to wake her up one day?”

“If she was five.”

“Oh – you,” she huffed.  She wagged an accusing finger at me.  “You, Callum Pike, are never any fun at all.”  But then she came to the couch, grabbed my head and planted a kiss on it because she was unflappable in her Lake-inspired moods.

The next morning, I woke up before anyone else.  My internal clock hadn’t kicked the early bird habit from high school, when I had an hour of wrestling practice before class even started.  I was having my first breakfast when my mother came downstairs to ask me how she looked in her ridiculous dress.  I told her she looked like an extra in a low-budget movie.  She knew it wasn’t a compliment but she decided to take it as one and that made me laugh enough to follow her and go witness the stupid dance.

The dream started every time with a flurry of red – my mother’s dress as she rushed to the hall after the speakers finished the first song.  She always let a different one play out first – a way of guaranteeing that Lake had already stirred enough to realize that there was music and music meant she should get up and get ready to dance.  Her end of it generally started with groaning and calling out from behind her door.  “No! Please! I don’t want to do this anymore!” Pretty much every time, she wailed something to the like but it never actually stopped her from laughing her ass off when my mother burst into her room with some deliberately shitty interpretation of a Latin dance move.  It made no sense considering the Fifties jazz on the speakers but it didn’t have to because it had them both cackling like it was the funniest thing in the world.

“Heaven… I’m in Heaven…”

Their song wafted in my ears.  I saw the red ruffles moving, heard my mother’s laugh as she delighted herself down the hall.  “You better be awake by now, Sleeping Beauty,” she called when we didn’t hear Lake’s usual protesting.  I shouted something about her hurrying up because I was hungry.  The food always smelled too good to wait for but everything we did in that house hung on her approval, so I stood there, vaguely entertained but still thoroughly annoyed.  I was planted square at the end of the hall when my mom burst into Lake’s room with a laugh and a “ha!” and a big cha-cha move.  Her arms were high in the air, reaching straight for the sky.

I remembered the sound when they fell straight to her sides.

“And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak…”

I remembered the twisting in my stomach because while I didn’t have a view of her face, I knew from the way she stood that something was wrong.  I was a prideful, eye-rolling kid.  But urgency paced my every step down the hall that morning because my mom was standing there as if the world had just ended and for some reason, my heart knew that for once, she wasn’t being dramatic.  I could feel the moment was real without even seeing her eyes.  The air had decidedly shifted.  Joyous just before, it filled suddenly with shadowy gloom and now their gleeful song was grating on me.

“And I seem to find the happiness I seek…”

It echoed loud, flared with distortion in my ear.  I memorized the tune with those famous lines sandwiching my mother’s piercing cry.

“When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.”

Chapter Fifteen

Lake

Three mornings in a row, I woke up in Callum’s apartment alone.  I didn’t take it personally because he had work and we still spoke normally later in the day.  He still smiled and tipped my chin up to kiss my lips.  Little things still bothered me slightly.  I caught him looking at me several times when I turned around, and without a hint of warmth in his eye, but I forced myself to dismiss it because it likely meant nothing.  Callum always had a serious look to him, even as a kid.  It wasn’t till the fourth morning that I confirmed something was wrong.  We were making breakfast and he’d been quiet, giving short answers to all my questions.

When he finally gave a full sentence, I wished right away that he hadn’t.

“I’m going to Scotland on Friday.”

My head snapped up.  I stopped chopping the basil.  “You’re – what?”

“For the Times article.  They want to extend it so Oz and I are going to fly there and give Ana a tour of Dufftown and the distillery.”

“I…” My voice drifted off because I realized my question – “How long will you be there?” – was pointless.  He wasn’t going to fly there for less than day and come back.  I stared with pure awe at his blank expression.  “You’re leaving the day before my birthday.”

“Yes.”

“You remembered that?” I would’ve preferred that he’d forgotten and made the plans by mistake.  But he confirmed it wasn’t the case.

“I remember your birthday, Lake.”

My heart beat fast.  I could’ve sworn there was something accusing in his tone.  I remember your birthday, Lake.  I’ve remembered six September Fourteenths since you left and every single one has ripped me to fucking shreds.  He might not have been implying those words exactly but it was probably something similar because those words were mine.  I’d spent every July Eighth for the past six years tearing myself apart.  I agonized by midnight of each birthday, my mind starting with the image of Callum’s shirt splashed in champagne as he had drunk, celebratory sex.  By night, I’d be tired but sleepless, wondering what changes this year had brought the boy I’d grown up loving – the boy who was now, unquestioningly, a man.  I imagined how his looks, his mind, his heart had changed and I was convinced, no matter what new Callum my brain conjured up, that I’d still love him like I always did.

And that was exactly how it ended up happening, even despite what he said – that he hadn’t thought once about me after I left.  It hurt but it was for his sake that I hoped he was lying.  Because I’d thought about him every day in the two thousand or so that I was gone, readying my heart gradually, piece by piece for the moment I would return to him and be face to face with the pain and passion that was us.  But since coming back, I still was rocked with daily guilts and regrets and memories both wretched and beautiful that stole the air straight from my lungs.  Even when I’d been preparing myself for it.

If it was all coming back to Callum at once, I could only imagine that he was silently, stoically warring through the most jagged tempest of emotions.

Still, I couldn’t quite forgive him for this.

“You said we had plans for my birthday.  I thought you said we were doing something special.”  Hurt quivered in my voice but I could feel the anger creeping in to overwhelm it as Callum stared back at me, vacant.  Unfeeling.

“Our flight had been for another day but we had to reschedule.  There’s nothing I can do about it.”

He was using his business voice on me.  On top of that, I knew he was lying.  I was as well versed with his lies as he was with mine.  But what bothered me most was the fact that he knew.  He knew I knew but he didn’t so much as care to sound convincing or apologetic to lessen the blow.  I was visibly wounded and he didn’t bat an eye.  The attitude was nothing like the Callum I’d been living with for the past month or so and I could tell, with all the fury in my racing heart, that it was deliberate.

“What’s going on with you?” I demanded straight to the point.  I kept my cool but I knew I was fighting a losing battle.