Chapter Five

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"You with us, Oz?"

Giving Callie space to work through a problem alone wasn't something Oscar had been asked to do before. Probably explained why he found it so difficult. He missed her. There was no point pretending he didn't, and even if he could, the compulsion to check his phone every ten minutes would have been a bit of a giveaway. 

"Yeah," he replied.

"You sure?" Jasper pushed. "Cos Harry's asked you the same question twice." He reached for another slice of pizza from the open box on the coffee table. "Still nothing from Callie?"

Oscar tossed his phone onto the sofa beside him and picked up his beer. "What was the question?"

"Whether we should look at the place in Brooklyn," Harry said. "We all think it's the best of the bunch, right?"

"Your call. You're the office-slash-personnel-slash-logistics manager." Oscar took a long pull of amber liquid from the bottle and set it back down.

"And you're the C.E.O.," Harry countered. "You've got the final say on everything."

They were empty titles until people found out the company existed. But it hadn't stopped them tossing them around behind closed doors, trying them on for size. Another reason Oscar wasn't entirely focused on the conversation, most likely.

'Like you tell me everything?'

The words echoed inside his head since Callie said them. He could have told her then, had planned to tell her soon, should have told her months ago. Hell, he would have told her at the start if she didn't doze off every time he talked tech. 

Maybe he should text her to check she was okay. She hadn't told him not to. So, why hadn't he? 

Oh yeah, that's right, because he was giving her space.

"Set it up," he told Harry. "If it's everything it claims to be on paper, we want it."

Jasper grinned. "Can you believe we're doing this?"

Since he'd been asking the same question at least once a week for the past six months, Oscar and Harry didn't do more than smile in reply. But it did feel surreal and exciting and, at times, a little over-whelming. Things Oscar would have liked to talk to Callie about, given half a chance.

When his phone chirped, he launched himself at it.

"Callie?" Harry inquired.

"No." Disappointment pressed heavily on his chest. "One of the guys from work." 

Reminding him they had yet another mind-numbingly boring set of statistics to deliver in the morning. He wasn't gonna miss those.

"She's still coming to my party, right?"

"I think so," Oscar replied.

She hadn't indicated otherwise and he was counting on her fondness for the rest of the nerdketeers, as she'd so aptly named them. 

It meant he would see her Friday night. Two days away. He could hold out that long, even if the three he'd already endured without her felt like years.

He wasn't certain which reaction he feared most when they were face-to-face again: A bright, bubbly Callie who tried to make everything seem fine when it wasn't, or a distant, quiet Callie like the one who helped him choose a gift for his mother.

Neither option appealed. But he couldn't fix what was wrong until she told him what it was.

His pensive mood cast a dark shadow over the room for the rest of the proceedings but it was good to know they were still on track. Within a couple of months, if the Brooklyn office space panned out, their new company would finally see the light of day.

When Harry left, Jasper looked across the room from behind his trademark mad professor spectacles and studied Oscar's face with a quiet, knowing gaze. "Must have been one hell of a fight you had with Callie."

"We didn't have a fight," Oscar said. He started to clear up before they headed to their rooms to grab some sleep, but gave up, flopped back down on the sofa and reached for what remained of his beer. "I'm not sure what happened."

"Want to tell Uncle Jasper about it?"

"No."

"Well, you know where I am if –"

"I just don't get why she felt the need to check me out. It's not like she's never seen me before. If there was a spark between us, we'd have noticed." He peeled back the label on his bottle with a thumbnail as he continued thinking  out loud. "It's not like I'm even her type. She's always gone for the wrestler and bouncer guy, short on intellect, high on brawn. That's not me. It'll never be me."

"Wait. Callie Morris checked you out?"

"It wasn't her idea."

"Does it matter? Fact is, she did. I thought you two were just friends..."

Yeah, that's where Oscar got stuck, too. Remembering how Callie reacted when he pushed her on whether she found what she was looking for made him frown. She'd been evasive, got upset. Because it was there or it wasn't? Because she was afraid it could be or knew it never would? 

He needed to know what she was thinking.

"You're missing the headline, my friend," Jasper insisted. "Callie Morris. Checked. You. Out. She's a babe. You're a certified nerd. That's huge."

It was pretty ground-shifting, Oscar felt that at the time. But what was he supposed to do about it?

"You should ask her out."

Oscar looked at Jasper like he'd grown a second head. 

It would be awkward as hell. Any of the usual small talk people made to break the ice would be pointless when they knew each other inside, out. Admittedly, there were some things she didn't know about him and he supposed there had to be things he didn't know about her, but a lot of those things would be of a more intimate, sexual nature, territory where friends didn't go. They'd have to cross a line to get there and once they did, there would be no going back. 

He needed to know what she wanted.

"You can't say you've never thought about it," Jasper stated.

Not without lying. He was a guy. Callie was hot. It didn't require more explanation than that. But any time his thoughts strayed in that direction, he slammed an invisible door in his mind. Their friendship meant too much to him. He wasn't prepared to gamble it on the six weeks of dating bliss Callie allocated a guy before she got restless and moved on.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Jasper added. "That's what you'd say if you were sitting where I am right now. You're our fearless leader, remember?"

Oscar nodded. He knew in his gut forming their company was the right move. It was an opportunity to build something special, something with a strong foundation which would stand the test of time. There had been an element of knee-jerk reaction timing-wise, but they wanted the same things, had trust and mutual respect, had already proved they could work together and had survived some pretty goddamn big bumps along the way.

It reminded him of his relationship with Callie. 

 What would his gut instincts say about the odds of success for them as a couple? Maybe he should open the invisible door and look at the other side before he asked that question. But even if he discovered he wanted something more, she'd have to want it, too.

He really needed to talk to her.

After Jasper retired, Oscar stayed on the sofa, listening to the soundtrack of city noises playing outside the windows while he ran the pad of his thumb over the screen of his phone. That talk had to happen soon. He couldn't take much more mind bending. From his point of view, it wasn't a problem either one of them should work through alone. If they'd reached a crisis point in their relationship, were faced with something which could tear them apart, they had to tackle it together.

He would give her until Harry's party but that was it. 

Then they were talking, whether she liked it or not.

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