Page 16 of More Than A Feeling

My ears started to buzz, and then I didn't hear much after she said:Callum and Sabine decided to start dating…like it was a decision one made. LikeI have decided to stop shaving my underarms? Or,I have decided to only eat foods with red coloring in them?

"Mom, I'm not coming over for any more holidays at your place or anywhere where any of you are," I interrupted her. "Lose my number, yeah?"

I hung up while she was still screaming at me, calling me selfish and ungrateful. Yeah, that was me. I'd finally decided to be good to myself and my family had a problem with it. Well, they could all go fuck themselves.

But I couldn't deny that it hurt like a motherfucker that Callum was dating Sabine, which was why I was drowning my sorrows in Sazerac at Peychaud's.

Thinking about Callum with Sabine in his bedroom (which wasoursfor a nanosecond) wounded my heart in ways I didn't think were possible. Apparently, he'd moved on. At least this way, Callum would not date some other unsuspecting moron who thought she was his number one girl because he asked her to move in with him. He'd be with hisactualnumber one.

I really thought we had something real.

"You make me laugh," he told me when we went bicycle riding around the quarter.

I sat on the handle in front, on a small seat, while Callum pedaled. It was insanely cozy and romantic.

"I do?"

He nuzzled my cheek. "Yeah, Grian, you do. I haven't laughed in... fuck, so many years, and now you go get us a bicycle so I can do all the work."

"That's because I don't know how to ride a bike," I confessed.

"What? Everyone knows how to bicycle."

"I don't." No one bothered to teach me, and I just never learned. "But I do have a driver's license."

"That doesn't mean you know how to drive," he growled.

Since Seamus's accident, Callum was sensitive about drivers and driving, and the one time I'd driven with him he'd declared I sucked at it.

"I'm a good and safe driver," I protested.

I had to be, given the dangerous locations we often found ourselves in while testing out software. Just last year, wewere stuck in an "unnamed country" testing an air-missile guidance system when our two-person SEAL protective team was attacked. We had to haul ass, and I drove Orion and Viper out of harm's way in a non-bullet-proof Jeep, bullets swarming around us. If I could navigate a war zone without crashing or dying, driving in New Orleans was a piece of cake.

"How about we take a drive down the bayou, and you can show me how safe you are at it?" he suggested, and my heart skipped a beat. He never came up with ideas for us to do together—that was always my thing.

"Yeah, that would be great."

We'd gone in his Porsche Boxster with the top down. We stopped at a hole in the wall and had hot boudin balls and gumbo with beer.

"I've never been on dates like this," he confided in me.

"What do you mean?"

"Usually, we meet at a restaurant, eat dinner, and then go to her place or mine to fuck."

That sounded boring.

"We do that too," I pointed out.

"I know, but we do so much more."

"You've gone out with other women, Callum."

"Sure but…always a party or a society something."

He sounded so tremendously sad that I chuckled to change the subject and lighten the mood. "Hang with me, child, and I'll teach you all the new and cool ways to date."

"I don't think any of the women I used to date would want to eat fried gator nuggets at Bubba's in the ass end of nowhere."

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