Only Oscar (Wattys 2022 Shortlist!)

Chapter Ten

The office space in Brooklyn was perfect. 

Good location, good transport links, a coffee shop across the street and a deli on the corner. Better still, despite the building's historic value, it had recently been re-wired for superfast broadband. And it was quirky, with arched windows and red brick walls to provide a contrast with all the modern equipment they would need. 

They'd found it. This was the place.

Oscar felt it with the same rock-solid certainty he knew he had to tell Callie what was happening sooner, rather than later. He'd been unable to resist kissing her, but he wouldn't sleep with her before she knew who she was sleeping with. 

Might seem arrogant to assume they were headed that way, but with chemistry like theirs...

He'd thought of little else in the hours since he left her, his subconscious providing numerous erotic images of them together as he dreamed. Making the switch from friends to lovers was risky but felt right, like something ended so something new could begin and the time they'd spent apart was simply the pause in-between.

While wandering around the empty office space, his thoughts returned to how she would react when he told her. 

Some guy who worked in a cubicle with little hope of advancement before he turned fifty would never be good enough for her. She deserved someone with ambition and goals, and though he wished it had been part of his motivation to succeed, truth was, he hadn't thought of it that way.

In the beginning, it was simply a fun thing to do, one of the geeky projects she would tease him about. Callie didn't get code the way Oscar did and he gave up trying to explain his passion for it a long time ago. She didn't see the beauty in it or get the rush he experienced when he manipulated it to do something new. But that was okay, each to their own as his dad used to say, and over the years it gave him a better understanding of her work. 

He stopped resenting the times she was so lost in a project she was late for whatever they planned to do or didn't show up, at all. He knew what it felt like to be driven by the desire to create something unique, time slipped away. When they lived together –

Whoa, there. When they lived together, not if?

As Harry made plans for the layout of the office furniture and Jasper added to the list of the equipment they needed, Oscar walked over to an arched window.

He was raised to believe when a guy met the woman he was supposed to be with, he knew. It was that way for his parents and until the car accident which ended his dad's life, they were nuts about each other. There were countless times they embarrassed their son with public displays of affection, but as he grew up, he realized he wanted what they had and wasn't prepared to settle for anything less. 

He wasn't 'there' yet with Callie. Who the hell was after one kiss? But he thought it was possible and he wanted it to work with her. 

He just wished it felt like a safer bet.

Callie was an all-in, cards on the table, girl. She threw herself unreservedly and wholeheartedly into everything she did, regardless of the number of times she was dealt a losing hand. In contrast, Oscar kept his cards close to his chest and could bluff like a pro. He took a more cautious approach to the game, weighed up the odds. When he didn't, he got burned. 

It was a lesson he learned early in life. One Callie taught him. 

He'd bet on her before, had shown his hand. And she'd incinerated him.

The sound of raised voices caught his attention, making his brow furrow as he turned around.

"What difference does it make to anything but people's comfort if the fucking desks are two feet further from the wall?" Harry argued, raising a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, obviously suffering from a massive hangover. "Tracking cables across the floor isn't the end of the fucking world."