Rose Tattoo | tattoo artist/single dad!calum

chapter 8

"What are you doing tomorrow?"

Stevie stared down at her cellphone, the seemingly harmless text from Calum unopened but completely visible as a notification at the top of her screen. She'd been staring at it for nearly five minutes, debating leaving it that way and pretending that she didn't see it as she went on about her day as if nothing had happened, but she'd convinced herself somewhere along the way that that wasn't an option. The last thing Stevie wanted to do was ignore Calum but, try as she might, she couldn't bring herself to open the text.

Stevie was hesitant to admit it but she genuinely enjoyed Calum's company. She felt at ease around him, something she hadn't felt in a long while, and ghosting him would hurt her just as much as she imagined it would hurt him. However, she didn't want to play along and give him the wrong impression.

Calum's text was vague, vague enough that she didn't know exactly what he wanted, but she could imagine what he was hoping for. Although he clarified - after seeing the panicked look on her face, she was sure - that whatever happened between them would remain unlabeled, she saw it on his face. She could see it in the way that he looked at her, in the way that he smiled at her, that he wanted something more than friendship. She hadn't allowed herself to think about it but if she would allow herself to admit it, she would know that she wanted that, too.

In another life, Calum would've been the perfect partner for her. He was - at least thus far - everything she had hoped for. However, the timing couldn't have been worse for her.

Although she couldn't admit that Calum's crush on her was not one-sided, she could admit that she wasn't in the right mental state to attempt to form a committed relationship with anyone. She was barely holding herself together, every day was a struggle just to leave her apartment; she knew that it wouldn't be fair to place that burden on someone else. And though she had no issue with the fact that Calum was a single father - in fact, she admired him deeply for the love and devotion he clearly held for his son - she knew that she was nowhere near emotionally ready to enter a child's life.

Stevie tended to distance herself from others in times of crisis. She worried about the effect her mental state would have on them and kept interaction to a bare minimum as to avoid hurting them when she inevitably fell into a depressive spiral and became a shell of herself. She'd hurt plenty of people in that way over her lifetime, had been hurt that way herself a time or two, and she was afraid that Calum would be next. She didn't want to break such a pure heart, someone who so clearly deserved the world. Calum deserved someone good, someone who could be wholly present, and she knew that that wasn't her.

Stevie wasn't prepared to spend time with Calum, to open up to him and have him hand her his heart. She wasn't prepared to think about anyone other than herself and she knew that was selfish but she'd rather be proactively selfish, prevent anyone from getting too close, than hurt them by pulling away when it was too late.

However, she was selfish in another way. Calum made Stevie feel at ease. When she was with him, her anxiety didn't feel so suffocating. She didn't feel like the world was crumbling at her feet. She could see a light, somewhere in the distance, instead of the all encompassing darkness that she'd grown so used to and she desperately wanted to hold onto that feeling. Although she felt that she couldn't give him what he wanted, she still wanted him in her life.

So, instead of ghosting him the way she knew she should, instead of telling him that she was busy and stopping him in his tracks, she ushered him closer. "I should be writing but I'll probably end up laying on my couch with Max," she sent. She stared at the message thread for a moment, contemplating turning off her phone and tossing it into the garbage can beside her desk, before she realized how that sounded. She wasn't sure that Calum knew she had a dog so she quickly typed a follow-up message. "My dog! Max is my dog."