Chapter 11
CAL
March bled into April. April became May. Somewhere in the middle of it, I stopped counting the ways Lily Moreland was making me lose my mind and started accepting it like bad weather. Like something that just happened to a person.
Gran is a Saturday institution at the station. She shows up every week with baked goods that make grown men go quiet and grateful, and Chief Morales once described her lemon squares as "a genuine morale resource" and put it in the log.
She usually comes alone. This time Lily is standing next to her.
I'm on the second floor running equipment checks when I hear her voice. I know it too well by now.
I go to the railing and look down. She's in the bay with Gran, tin in her hands, wearing a sweater the color of good red wine and jeans tucked into boots. She's talking to Torres and Kim like she's known them for years. She hasn't. It's been about forty-five fucking seconds.
Torres is already leaning against the engine with his arms crossed, wearing the look I've spent months trying not to have. Gran watches Lily work the room like a proud mama, and I watch Gran watch her, and none of this is helping.
Lily says something I can't hear. Torres laughs. Kim laughs. Martinez, who doesn't laugh at anything that isn't a pension joke, makes a sound adjacent to laughter. She holds out the tin and they descend on it like she's trained them.
She stands there smiling, completely at home in a firehouse full of strangers on a Saturday morning. Like she belongs anywhere she decides to be.
I go back to the equipment check.
"Cal! Your girl's looking for ya!" Torres shouts from below.
Your girl. Motherfucker.
"She's not my..." I start, leaning over the railing, but Lily has already looked up. The smile she gives me from thirty feet below exists for the sole purpose of undoing me. Of making me forget the rest of my sentence.
I give up. I walk down the stairs with her watching me the whole way, that smile not going anywhere. I take the muffin Torres holds up, give Gran a hug and thanks, and try not to watch Lily charm my whole squad.
She's moved on to Talia and Zuri now, her whole body animated as the twins give hints on how to tell them apart. No one can tell them apart except me. The three of us always work shifts together and they're my closest friends here.
Identical twins who love being identical and messing with people, currently sporting matching short butterfly locs. I know way too much about women's hair and makeup since those two never shut up.
I take another muffin and go to hide in the Chief's office. Chief is off on weekends, so the office is quiet and has a door that closes. I sit in his chair and eat my muffin, looking at the duty roster, enjoying my reprieve.
That's when the door opens. Lily leans in the doorway, taking in the sight of me in the Chief's chair with my muffin like I'm a puzzle.
"Are you hiding?"
"I'm doing paperwork," I say, not looking up.
"There are no papers before you."
"I'm thinking about paperwork."
She walks in without being invited, sits in the chair across the desk, the one for people receiving bad news, and watches me with that patient amusement until I want to do something stupid.
"You have a very flirty squad."
"Really?" Just what I needed.
"Torres was flirting with me," she says, like she's reporting on the weather.
"Torres flirts with everyone." I take another bite of muffin. Blueberry. Very good. "It's a nervous tic."
It isn't. Torres does not have a nervous tic. Torres saw her and did exactly what any man with functioning eyes would do, and the jealousy running hot through me isn't something I recognize.
I don't get jealous. I don't have the right to get jealous. And yet here I am, chewing a muffin with slightly more force than necessary.
"Kim was flirting with me," she adds.
"Kim is married."
"I know, she told me." Lily tilts her head. "Then kept flirting."
I take another bite. Gran's baking deserves my full attention, and that's exactly what I'm giving it. That's my story. I'm sticking to it.
Lily reaches across the desk and her eyes pin me in place. My God, she is beautiful. When will it stop taking my breath away?
With a small smile she runs a perfectly manicured finger through the frosting on top of my muffin. Then she licks it clean. Slowly. Wetly. Eyes on mine the whole time.
Motherfucker.
"Mm, delicious," she says, bright and cheerful, and stands up. "See you out there."
She leaves me there, jaw clenched so hard it is painful. My head goes back against the wall with a thud.
I've been up for twenty-two hours. Twelve-hour shift, a structure fire on Pine, an hour of cleanup, twenty minutes sitting in my car in the driveway because my body knew it was home, but my brain was still running incident review. Then six hours of sleep. Not enough, but what I had.
The shower helped. I pull on shorts, no shirt, and come downstairs for water and caffeine. And find Lily in my kitchen.
She's at the counter with her back to me, phone propped against the backsplash, something low playing. She's humming, a dish towel over her shoulder. The stovetop has a pot going and the whole room smells like garlic and tomato and home.
Today, she has these wide-legged jeans on, but they're snug on her ass. I take a deep breath and try not to stare. Fail immediately. She's paired them with a plain black t-shirt that meets the waist of her jeans, simple and effortless in a way that makes it worse, not better.
Her hair is up in a messy bun that's already coming apart. As always. Three seconds and my fingers are itching to pull on the elastic just to see what happens, just to watch it fall.
It's a good thing she tries to contain it. Every time that hair falls loose, I go salivating like a dog. Pavlov would have a field day with me.
She turns around, and her eyes move over me like I'm something she's deciding whether to keep. All the way down, all the way back up, completely shameless about it while I stand here half-dressed and unable to remember why I came downstairs in the first place.
"Your dad's in the workshop," she says, a little too quickly. "He's doing good with the cast off."
"Good," I manage. Genuinely impressive, all things considered.
"I left dinner on the stove. Enough for both of you."
"You didn't have to do that."
She picks up her bag, loops it over her shoulder, and walks straight toward me. The kitchen has plenty of space to go around, but she doesn't use it.
She slides past me close enough that her hip presses against my thigh, fleeting, and when she stops just in front of me the height difference means she has to tilt her head up to meet my eyes.
She does it like it's nothing. Like standing this close to me in my own kitchen with my shirt off is just another Tuesday.
"And miss seeing these abs?" Her voice is so low and close, I can feel her breath against my neck.
I have nothing. Absolutely nothing. Every word I've ever learned is gone. All I can do is stare at her and wish she would get up on her toes and press that mouth to mine.
She smiles sweetly and turns for the door.
"Night, Callahan."
The door clicks shut. I grip the counter and don't move for a long time.
11:47 PM.
Dad's been asleep for hours. I gave up on the TV a long time ago. My brain won't shut off, and I know exactly why, which makes it worse.
She hadn't stopped by today, which was for the best. She shouldn't have.
The less she comes around, the better off I'll be.
I know this. I believe this. And yet it was my day off, and like the complete idiot I am, I spent it hoping she'd show up just so I could look at her.
That's all I get, a look, and I'm so far gone that a look is enough.
I curse and grab my phone, wander to the kitchen looking for food. The last of the sarma Zuri's girlfriend Selin made me yesterday is in the fridge. I take the whole plate, sit at the counter, and eat in the middle of the night like the pathetic fool I am. My phone buzzes.
Lily
Good morning. Can you show this to your dad? It's for the jewelry box. He said his phone is broken and I could text it to you. I'm off to Chicago a few days and he needed it by tomorrow. Thanks and have a great day
Attached is a picture of a wooden box. Simple. Beautiful.
My lying, scheming father, whose phone works perfectly well mind you, would make her a dozen boxes if she so much as hinted she wanted them.
Me
I'll show him when he's up. Be safe in Chicago.
Perfectly polite and friendly. I don't even have time to feel the sting of her being gone a few days before another text comes.
Lily
You're up late.
Me
So are you.
Lily
Nervous flyer. Always losing things. Hard to sleep. What's your excuse?
Me
On and off shifts mess up my sleep sometimes.
Lily
Sucks.
Me
Yup. What's in Chicago?
Lily
My parents are in town.
Me
Happy for you.
She hearts the message.
I am genuinely happy for her. That is a feeling I'm getting used to where she's concerned.
She never says she misses her parents. It doesn't take long in her company to know Lily runs toward family like other people run toward exits.
Rome seems to have made peace with their childhood while Lily seems to be stubbornly hoping for something better.
Lily
Whatcha doing?
I look at the food in front of me.
Me
Eating. You?
Three dots appear. Disappear.
Lily
That would sound better without punctuation
I put my phone face-down on the counter like it burned me.
She's going to be the end of me, that is the only logical conclusion.
She's decided to dismantle me one small, targeted strike at a time from the comfort of her own apartment while I sit in my own home completely unable to do anything about it.
I do not respond. I can't. I make it to my bedroom and slump face-down on the bed, groaning into the pillow like a man who has lost complete control of his life. Because I have.
I think about her for a very long time, in every which way, and in the end I can't leave her without responding.
Me
You're too much trouble.
Lily