Calico by Callie Hart
For Mike, Jen, Kevin and Tiffany.
CHAPTER ONE
CALLAN
Callan Cross is a Cunt
NOW
Attending a funeral purely so you can piss on a headstone is pretty fucked up. There are plenty other things about me that are very fucked up, but today my urge to urinate on a dead man’s freshly turned grave is hitting the top of the list. I’ve only ever been to one funeral. That’s not to say that as a twenty-nine year old man, I’ve been lucky enough to avoid loss. Not to say that acquaintances, friends and even work colleagues haven’t died before. That first funeral was just such a doozy that I vowed I would never attend another of the maudlin, bullshit events. I use my work as an excuse. National Geographic have called me away to Nepal to take photos of snow leopards. I’ve been doing fashion shit (which I hate doing) in Paris. I’ve landed myself a huge commercial gig out in the middle of bum fuck nowhere, Idaho, taking structural shots for an architect/lawyer/pharmaceutical firm. My excuses are all interchangeable; I just will not go. I’d rather choke on my own puke. This time, though…this time, I’m making an exception.
“You’re going back to South Carolina? I thought you hated it there?” Rae, the girl I’ve been fucking for the past three months, rolls onto her stomach and sparks up the joint she’s just constructed. She’s naked, and the low light from the lamp on the bedside table beside her casts shadows in the subtle slopes of her body—the hollow between her shoulder blades, the dip at the base of her spine, the pronounced curve of her buttocks. I met Rae at one of those fucking terrible fashion shoots. It was for some couture bullshit magazine, and half her face was painted turquoise. She was wearing a scrap of silk that barely covered the very curves I’m studying right now. The hair stylist on site had created a fake bird’s nest in her hair, complete with fake fucking goldfinch, the sight of which had made me seriously fucking uncomfortable. Birds in general have that affect on me.
Rae had been sitting on a chair, leaning forward, and I’d directed her to open her legs a little further so the material of her dress hung down in between. Rae had done as I’d asked and more. She’d spread her legs as wide as she could, and then she’d purposefully shifted the material of her dress out of the way entirely.
She wasn’t wearing any underwear. She also didn’t seem to care that there were two other people in the studio when she gently stroked her middle finger over her pussy, either. Models have no sense of body shame. They’re so used to being naked, primped and preened over, pulled this way and that. I’ve had enough experience working with them to know that they’re not going to be shy if you need to see them naked. Rae was going for shock value, though. She was trying to get my attention, and it worked. I didn’t let her know that, naturally. I continued taking pictures, trying not to smile, while the editor of the magazine turned purple and nearly passed out.
Rae blows pot smoke down her nose, and then offers me the joint. I decline. “Such a fucking baby,” she says. “You should just do it. Give in. Let go. You’d be a hell of a lot less uptight. Who died, anyway?”
Rae’s never liked that I don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. I don’t gel very well with her lifestyle. She puts more coke up her nose than half of the Hollywood A-listers I work with. I slap her ass, growling under my breath when her flesh bounces. “A guy I used to live next door to. A guy I didn’t like very much.”
Rae rolls her eyes. “Your ex-next door neighbor from a million years ago? You’re a perplexing man, Callan. I know fifteen sexual positions you could be bending me into this weekend, and you’d rather go eat cucumber sandwiches and drink stale coffee with a bunch of weird old people. I have to say, I think I’m offended.”
“Be offended, sweetheart. I’m going. That’s all there is to it. I’ll be back on Tuesday. I can fuck you all you want then.” I kind of want her to leave, but I’m over the habit of kicking her out of my apartment right after we hook up. It makes her crazy, and while there are plenty of women I could be having sex with here in New York, Rae is simple. She doesn’t want a relationship. She’s not expecting me to propose at any point. She does fuck like a fiend, though, and she has the dirtiest mind on the face of the planet. I’ve grown accustomed to letting her sleep over, regardless of the fact that it pains me to share my personal space sometimes. I’m buck naked as I hop off the bed and begin gathering up the clothes and personal effects I’m taking with me back to Port Royal.