“And you don’t have to now?”

“No, my life is promised to me here. In a city like this …” Cal sighed, “You can enjoy being alive, thrive.”

“Have you ever not enjoyed it?”

“Chicago?”

I shook my head. “Life.”

He licked his lips as if he was cautiously considering the burden of a question “It’s been worse, but when it was, I knew it would get better because I would make it that way.”

“Is that why you found Abraham? Were you looking for someone to make it better for you?” I ventured, using my fingertips to rake windblown hair off my forehead.

“No,” Cal replied, his southern drawl giving the word an extra syllable. “That’s why he found me.”

I didn’t doubt it. I tried to stop myself from pushing, but for some reason I needed to know if he’d felt low like I did sometimes, if he’d been disenchanted. “But you’ve been down? When you had to survive, sleep on the banks of the Mississippi and all that, you were sad then?”

“I was already free,” he stated plainly.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You can’t be bogged down if you’re free. Have you ever heard a wild bird sing a sad song?”

“I don’t know if I’ve ever paid attention to birds singing at all,” I admitted, much to Cal’s chagrin.

“I don’t understand you,” he said, looking at me as if I were an unidentified being and he was the scientist meant to discover me.

“Do you want to?” I asked before I could stop myself. Something about him made my lips loose, an eager specimen.

“Yes,” he nodded. “I want to.”

I gazed at the sky again, attempting to see it through his eyes, to channel him, but I found myself looking for Cal in my peripheral vision to take in his warm colors instead.

“What was the trip like, from Georgia to here?”

“Long,” Cal answered. “It was an adventure. I have crazy stories.”

“Tell them to me,” I suggested, admiring how the saffron hue of the setting sun gilded him from the crown of his head to the barely there cleft in his chin.

“We’ll be here all night,” Cal chuckled, growing serious when he realized I was looking at him expectantly. “I have to get back to The Gallery and make sure everything’s ready to go for tonight,” he apologized, his regret making me feel exceedingly vulnerable in a way I despised.

“You don’t really seem like management material,” I said, drawing an amused nod from him.

“I’m probably not,” he relented, easily. “I’m better with numbers than anyone else who lives in The Studio and I’m doing a favor for someone I care about.”

I grimaced at his admission of affection, and to my displeasure, he noticed.