Obsession: Callie Douglas, Book One

Chapter Twenty-Four

Three hours later the apartment had been cleaned up, the washing machine was chugging away with my final load of clothes and the last of the furniture had been moved out of the moving van and into my home. I was on the phone with my insurance company when I heard a furious knocking at my front door. Gabe, who was attaching the headboard to my wall for me, looked up. Still speaking to the insurance representative, I carried the phone over to the door and looked out the peephole. Blake was on the other side.

I opened the door and let Blake in, gesturing to him that I'd be with him in a minute. Blake followed me into the living room, him looking around the room before he sat down on one of the cigar chairs. He did not sit long before popping up to look out the window.

I finished off my call as Gabe came through the apartment from the bedroom. "Did I hear someone at the door, Callie?"

"Blake is here", I said, looking at Blake as his face turned florid in anger.

"What are you doing here?" he asked Gabe.

"Right now? I'm attaching Callie's headboard to her wall. What are you doing here?"

"I'm here because Lucas Cooper came by this afternoon and told me that Callie's place was vandalized. I came to see for myself that you're all right", he said, turning to me.

"I'm fine. Just a bit shaken. Luckily, there was no one here at the time, and since we bought most of my furniture today, it hadn't yet arrived and wasn't here to be vandalized. I just talked to my insurance company and they said they will pay replacement costs for my new couch and mattress set, my clothes and bed linens, and for all my dishware. Can I get you a coffee?" I asked Blake.

"No, thanks. I just wanted to make sure my best girl was okay." He came over to me and gave me a hug, dropping a kiss on the top of my head.

I didn't say anything because Gabe was there, but inside my head I was screaming in frustration. I was stiff in his arms and I stepped out of them as soon as his arms loosened at all. "Blake..." I said in warning.

"That's okay, Callie. Gabe will find out sooner or later that you're my girl. He should know that before he gets as besotted with you as I am."

That's it, I thought. No more playing Mr. Nice Guy. "Blake, we need to talk about this later."

"Cal, let's talk about it now. Gabe should know that you're mine."

"Blake, you and I've discussed this many times. I'm not your girl. I've never been your girl and I'll never be your girl. I appreciate the offer, but you need to find someone who can appreciate all the wonderful things about you that make up you. I'm not that person." Blake hung his head and Gabe looked at me over the top. He indicated that he was going back into the bedroom to continue working on the headboard, and he turned and walked out of the room.

"Blake, I don't like hurting your feelings like this, but no matter how much I admire your dogmatic approach, we'll never get together."

"But why, Cal? We've already lived together and that worked out well. And now that you're living in the same city as me..."

"The same city thing happened because you found me an awesome job. As for living together, we lived together for one year about ten years ago. That's over a third of my life ago. That experience made us friends and I don't have so many friends that I can ignore that. With what happened in my apartment, I feel like I can use all the friends I can get right now. That doesn't mean that I want to go out with you. I'm happy being just friends but if you're not, I'll have to quit the friendship and that's not something I want to do. It's up to you as to what will happen now. Can you live with just being friends?"