Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
Cal
I make it eight days on the room plan before I break it in the loudest way physically possible.
Eight days. That’s my personal best at not doing the thing every cell in my body’s screaming to do.
Rhett cracked after six, but Rhett had a rut backing his play.
Eli held six whole weeks, which is basically a superpower.
Me, I get eight days past the mill. Eight days of her handing me coffee with that bright, empty smile.
Eight days of Rhett coming back from her shop cracked open and Eli coming back cracked open, both of them having gone and said their piece as themselves, both of them leaving me for last. Again. The spare. The one who comes after.
And the whole eight days, the smell gets stronger. The city on her. The leaving. Eli says it flat over breakfast, “She’s going to bolt, Cal. I can feel it. I gave her the truth, and she still smells like a woman with a packed bag.” And whatever’s been holding me back snaps clean off its hinge.
They don’t rub it in, either, which is somehow worse.
Rhett doesn’t crow. Eli doesn’t push. They just sit there over their coffee with this awful patience aimed at me, because they know what I know.
She needs it three times, in three voices.
The third voice is mine. And I’m the one man in this pack who’s never once in his life had to dig up the nerve to say a hard thing out loud.
They found theirs. Now I’m sitting at the kitchen table at dawn, working out I don’t have the first clue where mine’s even kept.
My whole life I’ve had exactly one move, and four sleepless nights have shown me it’s the one move that won’t work here.
If it needed proving, last night proved it.
She walked into the bay and caught me mid-rehearsal, crib sheet and all, the one mouth in three counties that never once misfired standing there jammed in front of the only person it ever actually needed to work on.
Lost Harlow’s oven and every word I had inside the same hour.
And she still went home with my flannel under her arm instead of leaving it on the bench.
That’s the one fact I’ve been holding onto all night, both hands, like a rope.
Rhett had a real self hiding under the jokes to show her.
Eli had the soup thing to put down, the useful mask to peel off.
They each had something underneath to reveal.
And I’ve spent four nights trying to work out what my mask is, what I take off, what the real Cal is under the charm.
The answer I keep landing on scares the hell out of me.
I don’t know if there’s anything under there.
I’ve been the easy one, the warm one, the guy people are glad to see, since before I could tie my boots, and I never once had to build a self underneath because the surface always did the job.
Everybody wanted the easy version. Nobody ever went digging, so I never checked whether there was anything down there to find.
So I can’t do what they did. I can’t strip down to some hidden true Cal, because I’m not sure he exists.
The only thing I’ve got, it turns out, is the exact opposite of the smooth thing.
I can walk in there and be as thoroughly un-charming as it is humanly possible for me to be.
I can do the one thing Cal Shaw has never done in front of another living soul.
I can try, out loud, and let the whole world watch me be bad at it.
The walk across the street takes about nine seconds and roughly a year.
My hands are sweating. My heart’s going like I took the stairs at the tower two at a time.
I have flirted with women in burning buildings with a steadier pulse than this, and I finally get why, it’s because none of that ever cost me anything.
This costs me everything, and my body knows it.
The shop’s packed when I get there. Naturally.
Ten days to the festival, half the town crammed inside stringing bunting and bickering over the caramel apples.
Dot. The Pelhams. Mrs. Alder parked in the good chair like a queen surveying her lands.
Della. And Wren behind the counter in her apron, flour on her cheek, running the whole circus, looking tired, beautiful, already about nine-tenths gone.
I stand in the doorway, and every smart thing I’ve ever known how to say walks straight out of my body.
There’s a version of this where I wait for the room to clear. A sane version. I don’t take it, because I can smell the packed bag on her from the door, and sane left me somewhere around night two.
“Wren.” It comes out too loud. The whole shop looks up. Great start. “Can I, uh. Can I say a thing?”
She goes still behind the counter. “Cal—”
“I’m gonna say it bad,” I tell her, and my voice does a thing it has never once done, which is shake.
“Want you to know that going in. My brothers came and said their piece and they said it good. Quiet. True. And I’ve been at the firehouse two days trying to figure out how to say mine better than them, smoother, land it clean, because that’s what I do, I land things clean.
” I drag a hand through my hair. Mrs. Alder’s watching me like the best show she’s had in a decade.
“And I finally worked out that’s the whole problem.
I’ve landed everything clean my entire life.
Never worked for a single thing. I smiled, and it fell in my lap.
You’re the first thing that ever mattered enough to scare me, and I’ve got no smooth move for scared, so you’re just gonna get me.
Bad. Out loud. In front of God and Doreen Pelham. ”
“Cal, honey,” Della says, thrilled, “you want us to clear out—”
“Stay put, I’ll lose my nerve.” I don’t take my eyes off Wren.
“I’m the easy one, sugar. I know that’s how you’ve got me filed, because it’s how the whole world files me.
The fun one. Good time, no weight. And I was scared to death that’s all you’d want me for, if you wanted me at all.
The spare. The guy who comes bundled with the other two.
” My throat’s closing up. I push straight through it.
“But I don’t want to be your good time. I want to be the one still standing in this shop when I’m eighty, driving you crazy, wearing your flour.
I keep thinking about dumb little stuff.
The scones on my boots that first day, how you cussed and went red and then laughed at yourself before I could get a word in.
The night your shop caught and you stood in the middle of it swinging that extinguisher, refusing to be rescued.
You at that counter at five in the morning, talking to your bread.
I want all of it. The dumb stuff. The five a.m. The bad days and the burnt batches.
Not the highlight reel, sugar, the whole thing.
The ordinary version nobody ever sticks around for.
I’ve never worked for one thing in my life, and I want to work for you the rest of it.
That’s the whole damn speech. Told you it’d be bad. ”
I don’t dare look away from her, but I feel them come in behind me.
The bell over the door, two sets of boots I’d know in my sleep.
Rhett at my left shoulder. Eli at my right.
Not a word out of either of them, just there, same as they’ve always been.
Nobody planned it. But there’s the three of us, lined up in a bakery in front of the whole town, and if that doesn’t say it plainer than any speech of mine, nothing ever will.
The shop is dead silent. Somewhere in the back, one of the Pelham twins is quietly crying into the bunting.
Dot Hale’s got a hand pressed over her mouth.
Mrs. Alder looks around at the stunned room, entirely satisfied, and says to nobody, “Best festival prep I’ve been to in years.
” And Wren is behind her counter with flour on her cheek and both palms flat on the wood like it’s the only thing keeping her upright, staring at me like she’s never laid eyes on me before.
Maybe she hasn’t. Maybe nobody has. Maybe this red-faced, sweating, stammering fool is the realest thing I’ve ever set in front of another person, and it took being about to lose her to haul him out into the light.
I’ve got nothing left. No line, no grin, no cool exit. I spent the whole account. So I do the last brave thing I’ve got in me, the pack thing, the Eli thing, the hardest thing I know.
I give her room.
“You don’t have to say anything,” I tell her, quieter now, just for her, even with the whole town leaning in to catch it.
“Rhett, Eli, and me, we’re not a thing you’ve got to solve tonight.
You’ve had people crowd you your whole life.
We’re not going to be three more. But I couldn’t stand here and let you get on a bus believing the easy one didn’t mean it.
” I make myself step back toward the door.
“Because I mean it. God help me, I mean it more than I’ve meant anything. ”
Then I run clean out of words, which for me is a genuine medical event, and I just stand there in her doorway with my heart in my throat and the whole town holding its breath, waiting to find out whether trying was enough.
For the first time in my life, I’ve got no idea how it lands.
For the first time in my life, I had to earn it.
Guess we’re both about to find out if I did.