Chapter 10 #2
"She wears these glasses when she reads and she pushes them up with her knuckles and she doesn't even know she does it.
She color-codes everything. She's got a system and she explains it to my dad like she's presenting to a boardroom and he just sits there nodding like he's going to follow any of it. "
I shake my head. "He's not. He's going to go right back to writing 'table for Dave' on a napkin the second he’s back. But she doesn't know that, so she keeps going, and he lets her, because he loves it."
Ramsey says nothing, just listens.
"He calls her angel, man. He calls her angel and she calls him old man and they argue about everything and he tells her stories about my mom and she listens like she's experiencing it all right there with him.
" I'm peeling another label now, hands needing something to do.
"She does my dishes without asking. She hums in my kitchen. Did you know that? She hums."
I rub both hands down my face, and take a breath that doesn't help.
"She stayed late one night and it was dark and I drove her home and she logged into her music on my car and picked a playlist and I haven't changed it. It's been weeks. Weeks of driving her home and letting her play whatever she wants and I haven't changed it."
"Jesus, Cal."
Ramsey looks at me like I've lost my mind. That would be accurate. Just saying all of that out loud is exhausting. I've been so good at avoiding these thoughts my whole life. I just need to do it again. I just need to be more disciplined.
"You're fucked."
"I know."
"Properly, irreversibly fucked."
"I am aware, motherfucker. Stop rubbing it in."
"Welcome to the club." He raises his beer. "Membership is permanent and the benefits are great."
"No thanks. I'm not joining any clubs. Or enjoying any benefits with Rome's baby sister."
There is no club. I haven't touched her. Haven't kissed her. Haven't so much as brushed her hand on purpose. The closest I came was almost tucking hair behind her ear and I pulled back so fast I probably strained something.
I'm losing my mind over a woman I've never laid a finger on. It's either the most disciplined or most pathetic thing I've ever done. Probably both.
"I promised Rome."
"I know you did."
"I don't break promises."
"I know you don't." Ramsey sets his beer down, serious now. "But honestly, Cal? Rome needs to let that go. You're both grown men. She's a grown woman. He doesn't get to decide who his sister dates, and you shouldn't have made that promise in the first place."
"It was last year."
A lifetime ago, and yet I remember it like yesterday.
"I'd met Lily for the first time one night as she was leaving your old place. One fifteen-second conversation. Then again at the diner with all of us, and I don't know what my face was doing because Rome laid down the law right after." I shrug. "She's off-limits."
"And you just agreed?"
"She was leaving soon after. Rome was supposed to leave too, remember? I figured I'd never see her again and the promise wouldn't cost me anything."
"And yet here we are."
"And yet here we are."
There is not much else to say after that. The waitress comes by, Ramsey orders another round without asking, which means he's not done with me yet.
"Can I ask you something?" I ask, because I need someone else's input, not just mine and Rome's.
"Shoot."
"Isn't it strange?" I turn the fresh bottle in my hands. "Me being interested in a twenty-two-year-old? It's been a long time since we were twenty-two."
"Erin and Rome have the same age difference."
"But Erin's not twenty-two."
"No. But that's not what matters and you know it." He leans forward, elbows on the table. "Do you respect her? Is she making her own choices? Because from where I'm sitting, that girl makes more of her own choices than most people twice her age."
"I don't know..."
"Look." He waits until I meet his eyes. "I'm not telling you to break your promise to Rome. I'm telling you the promise was wrong to ask for and wrong to give. If something real is happening here, Rome is going to have to deal with that like an adult. And so are you."
I have no response so I sit there, staring at the table.
"You figure out what you want, Cal. And you figure it out soon." He finishes his beer. "Because dancing around it isn't good for anyone. Not for you, not for her."
He lets me sit with that for a while before we drift to other topics. When the night ends, I pay the tab and walk out into the cold.
Ramsey's wrong about one thing. It's not about age. It's not about whether she can make her own choices. She can. She does. That's half the problem.
The other half is pure math. She's here for a year, maybe less. Then she goes back to school, back to her life, back to becoming the doctor she's been working toward since she was a kid. And I stay here. In this town. In the same house I grew up in.
I will never leave my dad and I'm not even regretful about it. So she'll leave, and he'll be okay, and he'll go back to talking to the ghost of my mom, and we'll find our way back to a routine that doesn't involve Lily coming by anymore.
If I did what I wanted, at best I would get a few months.
At worst, I get a few months and then I have to watch her at every holiday, every wedding, every birthday Rome and Erin throw for the rest of our lives.
Smiling at her across the table like she didn't ruin me.
Making small talk like I don't know exactly how she hums when she's concentrating.
She's not temporary, that's the thing. She's Rome's sister, Erin's family. She's woven into every part of my life that matters, which means if I touch her, if I let myself have her and then lose her, I don't get to walk away clean.
I will lose her forever, in a room I'll have to keep entering. This way, at least I don't know what she feels like. What she tastes like. It's better I don't know what I'm missing.