Page 11 of Base Block

“How would you do it?” he asked. “How would you make me a commodity?”

I studied him and he helpfully held out his arms and turned his head from side to side. “You have a lot of potential,” I said after a moment. “You should lean into the bad-boy thing.”

“I don’t think that people would jump on my bandwagon if they saw how many times I’ve been arrested.”

“But everyone likes a comeback. Anyway, it makes you dangerous and interesting. Damian faked having a record so that he had more cred.”

“That’s really stupid,” he said.

I nodded. “Also, it was easy to look up and see that he didn’t really have one, so people made fun of him. But you could talk about having a hard past without getting into details, and your posts could be about how you’re struggling now but also living it up.”

Now he glanced around the kitchen. “Am I? We both just ate dinner out of the same pot.”

“Watch,” I told him. I stood and pulled on the T-shirt until I had both my arms through the neck and it was like a tube dress. Then I took the sleeves and tied them in front, pulling in the silhouette at my waist. “If I had my hair and makeup done, this would be better,” I cautioned. I hopped to the sink and posed with that dented pot in my hand. “The caption would be, ‘Last meal in Indiana before we head to Michigan for Callum’s audition for the Woodsmen!’ And we could do videos of packing and finding funny things in the closets, like the old medical kit. Then we would show our route, new things we saw along the way, and also settling into our temporary home. When it gets to be the time for your audition, we could show you getting dressed. Not naked, but I bet you have a nice chest so you could flex a little. Do you wax?”

He stared at me, eyebrows lowered. “Wax what?”

“Don’t worry, we would fix that first. After the audition, we could make a video when you were tired and feeling discouraged, but it would show that you weren’t going to quit. We would bring the audience along on your journey and you could teach them about football stuff.”

“If I don’t make the team, there’s no hope of sponsorships or ad revenue. And I wouldn’t call it an ‘audition,’ by the way.”

“You must think that you’re going to make it. You quit your job and you’re trying to get rid of your house,” I pointed out. “It seems certain to me.”

Callum looked at me and considered that. “We’ll see, Rainey.”

Maybe we would. I liked how that sounded.

Chapter 3

I woke up the next morning feeling very content. I lay on a couch that was kind of lumpy and smelled somewhat like mildew and BO, and it was early enough that it was still pitch-black outside. The sound that had awakened me was a male voice shouting “hell!” in the kitchen, which was directly next to where I lay on the lumpy, smelly couch.

I smiled into the gray darkness and sat up. I had spent the night at Callum’s, like he’d promised I could, and it had been great. After dinner, I had been tired and yawning a lot as I’d washed the two forks and one pot. So, he’d shown me the couch and then had tried to find a blanket but had only come up with his grandpa’s old winter coat. It had been a little itchy and also had a strange odor (maybe cigars?), but it had been warm.

Now I folded the coat and I walked into the kitchen, careful not to put too much weight on my injured foot. “Why are the lights off?” I asked.

“Hell!” Callum roared again. He dropped the pot, his only one, and spun around to look at me. “I didn’t want to wake you so I kept them off, and I was being quiet.”

My ears rang with his shout and with the sound of the pot hitting the metal burner—for some reason, he’d been holding it over his head, so it had quite a distance to fall. “What are you cooking?” I asked.

“Nothing. I was trying to catch a spider to put it outside,” he told me, pointing at something on the ceiling.

It was too dark in here for me to see the spider but it was easy to imagine it falling onto my head, so I made a noise like a squeaky rubber duck and quickly hopped away. He turned on the lights and safely removed it.

He explained that he was up early out of habit and he wanted to get to the gym before he finished packing. “I could take you to the bus station on my way,” he suggested.

I had to digest that for a moment before I nodded. “Sure. Thanks.”

“What’s your destination?” he asked.

“I haven’t decided,” I said. “There are a lot of places that I could go.”

“Yeah, but you should…ok. I made some coffee, but I usually just drink it out of the carafe,” he told me. “And to be honest, I’m not sure how clean I get that.”

I had wanted to use dish soap on the pot and forks the night before, but he hadn’t had any, so I also wasn’t sure about how clean the glass carafe would be. “That’s ok. I don’t drink coffee,” I answered. Sage and I had usually started the day in pharmaceutical form rather than with a hot beverage, and I felt a little strange without that boost.

I also felt strange about having to leave here, because I had thought that things were going well. But he had just said that he would take me to the bus…didn’t he like me? Maybe so, but without sex (which he wasn’t interested in), there just wasn’t enough to keep me around. I went to the bathroom and washed my face, then used some of his toothpaste and scrubbed my mouth with my finger. I put my slippers back on and waited in the garage for him to be ready. I hadn’t wanted to go outside, in case I ran into the dog again.

“Ok, time to head out,” Callum said as he joined me. “Let’s get on the road.” We sat in the green car and I watched the neighborhood through the window.