Chapter 19
Callie
For the next few hours, we discussed our plans, arguing and debating the merits of each idea over and over again. If an idea sounded good to me, Gram disagreed with it, and if we both thought something was a good idea, Poet or Asa shot it down. It was frustrating as hell trying to figure out how we were going to get me out of the mess I was in. The guilt ate at me as the sun dropped from the sky, and by the time Gram had dinner on the table, my stomach was so tied up in knots that I couldn’t even eat. I was also too anxious to ask about my uncles’ connection with the men that were after me—the questions I had just didn’t seem as important as getting far away from them as fast as I could.
Cody was willing to drop out of his expensive prep school in order to move with us to Oregon, but I could tell that the thought of leaving was causing him a lot of anxiety. He was adamant that the school wasn’t important, but I knew it was. He’d been away at private school for two years, and the thought of having to start over was scary for my introverted baby brother. He’d already had his parents and his home ripped from him because of my stupid decisions, I absolutely refused to take that from him, too.
The situation left Gram in the position of choosing between us.
If she moved with me to Oregon, Cody would have to leave school. If she stayed in San Diego, I had to move up North all alone.
There was no right answer.
So I didn’t let her choose.
I chose.
“I’ll move up North on my own,” I finally stated, my heart racing in my chest. “I’d be going to college soon anyway. It’s not like I can’t live by myself eighteen months earlier than planned.”
“Callie, you can’t move all the way to Oregon by yourself!” Gram replied sharply, looking at Poet for backup.
“Rose, not sure what you’d like me to say,” he answered her look, “not a whole lot of options open to ya.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she snapped. “She’ll be all alone in a new town and she hasn’t even graduated from high school!”
“Gram, it’s fine. I can do it. Really. I’ll just get a little apartment and finish school out there. I’ll be fine.”
“Callie,” Gram sighed wearily, looking at me with an apology in her eyes, “baby, I can’t afford to get you an apartment. I’m barely living here, I can’t support two houses.”
Her cheeks tinged red at the confession and I felt like a complete a*shole. Of course she couldn’t afford to pay for another house. While I’d been psyching myself up to convince her to let me move alone, I hadn’t even thought about the money situation. Gram was on a fixed income, and even with her social security benefits and my grandpa’s pension, there wasn’t a whole lot of extra cash left after she paid her bills.
Before I could reply, Asa spoke up from where he was sitting beside me with his hand on my knee.
“I’ll take care of her,” he told Gram before his eyes moved to me, “I’ll take care of you.”
I opened my mouth to say something back, but I looked like a guppy as I closed it and opened it again. I had no clue what I was supposed to say in a situation like that. He’d take care of me? What the hell was he talking about? He’d been watching out for me physically and emotionally from the minute we met, but for some reason, paying my bills seemed like a much bigger deal. It was like the difference between letting a neighbor borrow a cup of sugar and buying them a car. One of those was a completely understandable sacrifice, the other just seemed crazy.
“Asa, you’re a sweet boy, but I can’t let you do that,” Gram stated kindly from across the table.
“I’m a man,” he rasped, looking between Poet and Gram. “I’m a man and I take care of what’s mine.” His voice was solid. Resolute.
I sat there dumbly as they argued. They were talking about me, and yet I couldn’t think of one thing to say.
“You’ve known her for less than a week. She’s not yours. She’s sixteen years old, goddammit!” Gram responded, slapping the table with her hand, frustrated with the entire situation. I think the way Asa looked at me had finally sunk in for her because she looked like she was beginning to worry as she glanced between us. There was a difference between how a teenage boy felt about his girl and a man felt about his woman.
A teenage boy may speak strongly in defense of his girl, full of piss and vinegar and grand dramatic vows of how he’ll protect her—but that only lasts until the boy meets with odds that are no longer on his side. But a man? He’ll make it clear that he stands between his woman and the world, no matter what the consequences are. And then he’ll prove it.
Asa wasn’t making grand promises, vowing to slay dragons or sweep me off my feet. He was making a very serious gesture of commitment, and it was freaking me the f*ck out.
“I don’t want to go all the way to Oregon,” I blurted, breaking into Asa and Gram’s staring contest. “I don’t want to be so far away that Gram can’t drive up and visit me.”
All the heads at the table had been watching the interaction between Gram and Asa, but they all swiveled toward me at my declaration, so I decided to keep going.
“Can’t I just go to Sacramento or something? I mean, that should be far enough away, right? That way, Gram can drive up and see me on the weekends sometimes. And I wouldn’t have to leave California, so all of my school stuff would transfer fine…” my voice trailed off at the end as I ran out of steam.
“That wouldn’t—”
“That doesn’t make—”
Asa and Gram’s arguments were cut off by Poet’s raised voice.
“Now that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea,” he told me with a nod. “Children need their elders around. Moving Callie so far away that her grandmother couldn’t visit, well, that would be a shame.”
He turned his head to Gram and convinced her with only a few words. “She’d be alone, yes? But we have a Chapter in Sacramento that would look after her. And, well, Grease wouldn’t be able to live with her in Sacramento, would he?”
Asa sputtered across the table, realizing that his plan wasn’t turning out the way he’d hoped. He wanted me with him; it was clear by the way he was speaking. And to be completely honest, I wasn’t opposed to that idea, either. I didn’t feel pressured by Asa’s wish to move in together, and at that point, I couldn’t even imagine being without him for five minutes. All of a sudden, the thought of living with Asa didn’t scare me as much as the thought of living all alone.
“Boyo, you understand Callie’s reasoning, yeah? Girl wants to be close as she can to her family and can’t say I blame her,” he said quietly to Asa who still hadn’t said a word. “Question now is how that affects your decision.”
Not one person around that table anticipated the answer Asa would give, because none of us saw a twenty-year-old man supporting a sixteen-year-old girl who wasn’t related to him—especially if she wasn’t even going to be living with him.
“I take care of what’s mine. Doesn’t matter where she lives,” he told us, giving my knee a squeeze before standing up from the table. He kissed my head gently as he passed by me, mumbling in my ear, “Be right back, Sugar. I need a smoke.”
He walked out the front door as if what he’d just promised was of no consequence at all.