4. Caius #3
"Oh, please. You think I didn't notice? The way you'd go all quiet when she came by with Ryan? How you'd find any excuse to stick around when she was visiting?" Ma's smiling now, fond and knowing. "A mother notices these things."
Hallie's staring at me, and I can't read her expression. Surprise? Curiosity? I'm too busy trying not to combust from embarrassment to figure it out.
"I think that's lovely," the juice cleanse girlfriend offers. Nobody asked her, but she keeps talking anyway. "Childhood sweethearts are so romantic."
"We weren't—" Hallie starts.
"Basically were," Sean says. "Remember that summer Hallie had her appendix out? Caius visited her every single day."
"Because Ryan asked me to."
"Ryan asked you to visit once. You went fourteen times. I counted."
I'm going to murder my baby brother.
Hallie's looking at me again, and her hand is still on my thigh, still tangled with mine, and the whole table is watching us with varying degrees of amusement and speculation.
"Dessert!" I announce, standing abruptly. "Let's have dessert."
Ma laughs but takes pity on me, rising to clear plates. Hallie moves to help, but Ma waves her off. "Sit, sit. You're a guest. Caius can help me."
Which is how I end up in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher while Ma cuts the apple tart, humming something that sounds suspiciously like a wedding march.
"She's wonderful," Ma says quietly.
"Yeah."
"You love her."
My hands still on the plate I'm rinsing. "Ma?—"
"Don't 'Ma' me. I've known you your whole life, Caius Michael. I know when you're gone for someone." She sets down the knife, turns to face me fully. "Does she know?"
"Know what?"
"How you feel."
I should lie. Should brush it off, keep up the charade. But this is my mother, and I've never been good at lying to her.
"It's complicated."
"Love usually is." She reaches up, cups my cheek with her flour-dusted hand. "But that girl in there? She looks at you the same way, love. Don't be too stubborn to see it."
She leaves me with that, carrying the tart back to the dining room, and I stand there with my hands in sudsy water, trying to process what she just said.
She looks at you the same way.
No. That's just good acting. Hallie's a people-pleaser, she's playing the role, she's?—
"Caius?" Hallie's voice from the doorway makes me turn. "Your mom wants to show me baby pictures. She says it's mandatory girlfriend hazing."
The photo albums come out after dessert, because apparently my humiliation isn't complete without visual aids.
We're crammed on the couch, Hallie tucked against my side, while Ma flips through years of O'Connor family history. Baby photos, school pictures, holidays. My siblings periodically chime in with embarrassing stories that make Hallie laugh, that sound that's quickly becoming my favorite thing.
"Oh, this one!" Ma stops on a photo from my sixteenth birthday party. I'm wearing an ridiculous paper crown, grinning at the camera, except I'm not looking at the camera at all.
I'm looking at someone just out of frame.
"Wait," Hallie says, leaning closer. "Is that?—"
Ma flips the page, and there it is. The same party, wider angle. Teenage me in my stupid crown, and there's Hallie, fifteen and laughing at something Ryan said, completely oblivious to the way I'm staring at her like she hung the moon and stars.
The heart-eyes are unmistakable.
Hallie goes very still beside me.
"You can really see it in this one," Nora says helpfully, leaning over the back of the couch. "The yearning. Very Shakespearean."
"Nora—"
"What? It's cute. In a pathetic sort of way."
Hallie's looking at the photo, then at me, then back at the photo. Her mouth opens, closes. "Caius..."
"It was a long time ago," I say quickly, but my voice comes out wrong, too rough, too honest.
"Was it?" she asks quietly, and the question hangs there between us, heavy with implications I'm not ready to unpack.
Ma mercifully saves me by snapping the album shut. "Well! I think that's enough torture for one evening. Hallie, love, you're welcome any time. And Caius?" She fixes me with a look that's pure Irish mother. "Don't you dare let this one get away."
"No, Ma."
We make our goodbyes, endure another round of hugs and well-wishes, and finally escape to the truck. The silence feels different now, charged with something that wasn't there before.
I start the engine, pull away from the curb, and neither of us speaks for three blocks.
Finally, Hallie says, "That photo."
"Hal—"
"Were you really looking at me like that? Or is that just what it looks like out of context?"
I could lie. Should lie. Keep this thing between us clean and uncomplicated and fake.
But I'm tired of lying. Tired of pretending. Tired of acting like Hallie Miller hasn't been living in my head for over a decade.
"Yeah," I say, hands tight on the steering wheel. "I was really looking at you like that."
She doesn't say anything for a long moment. Then, so quietly I almost miss it. "Oh."
And I have no idea what that oh means, but it's going to keep me up all night trying to figure it out.