In the Unlikely Event

I never wanted the money. I only ever wanted my dad in my life.

“You look gorgeous, love.” Callum captures my chin with the back of his thumb, tilting my head up.

Do I, though? I’m the opposite of what a man like Callum would usually go for. I have pale, borderline-sickly skin, big green eyes always framed by an industrial amount of eyeliner, a nose hoop, and an undying love for everything punk rock, which is probably getting a little old at my ripe age of soon-to-be twenty-seven.

Right now, my red-gold roots are showing at the top of my long, silver-ombre hair. Like strawberries in the snow, Callum says when my roots are showing. I’m wearing a messy ponytail, and I have on a striped red and white dress, which I paired with Toms and a studded choker. Put simply, I could pass as a Victorian ghost who got lost at Spencer’s.

Sometimes I suspect that’s what drew Callum to me in the first place. That eccentric, vibrant shell that could elevate his status more than any plastic trophy wife could.

“Look how open-minded and hip Callum is, with his hipster, artistic, holds-on-to-an-actual-job girlfriend. Her breasts are unenhanced, and she is not on a first-name basis with the saleswomen at Neiman Marcus.”

“I look like something from the cast of Beetlejuice.” I laugh, kissing his neck. His low rumble vibrates against my body.

Callum removes a lock of my hair that has escaped my hair tie with the back of his palm and presses his lips to the flesh he just exposed at the base of my neck.

“I like Beetlejuice.”

He’s never watched it. He told me so on our first date, but correcting him seems redundant, and like I’m trying to find non-existent issues in our relationship.

“You know who else I like?” He dips his head down for another kiss. “You, in that Tiffany’s necklace I bought you.”

Eh, yeah. The one he gave me, along with a sensible dress, because I’m cool, but not always cool enough to look the way I do next to his friends.

“Careful. I’m turning twenty-seven in a couple months. You might give me ideas,” I tease. The words feel empty on my tongue, but I know how much pleasure he takes in hearing this.

“My father told me not to threaten a whore with a dick. Do you know what that means, Aurora Belle Jenkins?”

That’s my tall, stockbroker, Wolf of Wall Street boyfriend. With his Eton and Oxford education. With his impeccable manners and dirty mouth.

The man whose only fault is being exactly what my mother wished for me.

Rich. Powerful. Well-bred.

Stable. Sweet. Boring.

What Mom doesn’t know is I like Callum despite all of those things, not because of them. It took me six months to relent to his persuasion, because I knew she’d like him, and the things my mother likes are usually artificial and shallow.

He’d been chasing me around for months. Finally, he showed up at the bar located beneath his apartment—coincidently the one I work at—and slammed his palm against the counter.

“Tell me what it’d take to make you mine,” he slurred that night.

“Stop looking put together and on the sanity spectrum,” I deadpanned. “You remind me of everything my mother wants. And my mother wants all the wrong things.”

“Is that why you keep saying no?” He frowned, confused. “I come here every night, begging for a chance, and you turn me down because your mother could like me, God forbid?”

I shrugged, reaching for another steaming-hot glass, wiping off the condensation.

“I’m a clusterfuck, love. I failed my first year at Oxford. Miserably. And not for lack of trying.”

I arched an eyebrow, giving him a really? smile. I needed more to work with.

Callum blew out air, shaking his arms like he was getting ready for a marathon.

“All right, let’s see. I have a birthmark the size of my fist on my arse. I still eat Lucky Charms for breakfast. Every. Single. Day. My personal trainer says I have the arms of Rhys Ifans, also known as Hugh Grant’s roommate in Notting Hill. I…I…I can’t swim!” He threw his arms up in the air, triumphed, as everyone around us lifted their heads from their drinks and smiled.

I chuckled, shaking my head. Maybe he was imperfect, but he was far from the kind of mess I was usually attracted to. Debbie, AKA Mom, had always complained that I only went for the last of the litter. The broken, misunderstood, messed-up ones who couldn’t offer me more than a heartache and STDs.

It wasn’t untrue. I didn’t look at men very much, but when I did, they always came with more issues than Vogue.

Callum had leaned forward then, his entire torso plastered on the counter, and framed his mouth with his hands, pretending to whisper in my ear.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“I’ve a feeling you will, anyway.”

“I think you were put on this earth to destroy me.”

I laughed, taking a step back. The conversation with Mal from all those years ago floated to the front of my mind, reminding me I’d heard those words before. Things Mal and I said to each other always lurked in the recesses of my thoughts.

Mal had told me I could kill him.

He didn’t know that in a way, he’d killed me, too.

Every day I lived without him slugged by like a snail, leaving a trail of slimy goo in its wake.

“Okay, fella. Time I call you a cab.” I tapped the back of Callum’s hand.

That was before I knew he owned the penthouse upstairs.

“I’m serious,” he pouted again.

He knew he was attractive. Knew his angles, the charm in his accent, how to work a girl into giving him her number. Unfortunately, I was immune.

Putting another clean glass aside, I threw the cloth over my shoulder.

“Can I tell you another secret?” He dragged his thumb across his lips.

That’s when I noticed his lips were ridiculously kissable, even without the pout.

“Do you always ask for permission before you say things?” I cocked my head.

He laughed. “Usually, believe it or not, I’m the one people ask permission from. Anyway, I’m not even drunk. This beer? It’s the only pint you’ve served me tonight, and it’s full. I don’t come here to get pissed, Aurora. I come here because of you.”

I paused, my eyes glued to his pint. He was telling the truth. I knew because I served him every night. It occurred to me that he was the exact opposite of Mal—the fancy clothes, the properness, the sobriety. Maybe he was what I needed to rid my mind of lingering thoughts of the Irish poet.

Which meant Callum was also the exact opposite of my father.

Which meant that for the sake of my sanity, I should at least give him a chance.

He was my redo. My second chance. My redemption.

“So? Would you give me one date?” he begged. “I promise to prove to be wonderfully unstable, with a dash of incompetence, and provide you with plenty of unpredictability.”

“Fine.” I rolled my eyes with a giddy smile.

“Ha!” He slapped the bar in triumph. “It was the unstable bit that did it, wasn’t it?” He settled himself back down, pushing his beer away like he finally could, like it revolted him. “Always gets the ladies,” he said.

I take a deep breath, meeting Callum’s eyes in the ballroom. “I’m sure you’re about to tell me all about the whores and the dicks,” I say, his erection throbbing between my legs through his cigar pants and my dress.