Chapter 11 #2
Only for old people like you
I can't help but smile, which is how I know I'm too far gone. When I notice I'm holding the phone against my chest like an utter fool, I school my face, curse myself thoroughly, and throw it across the bed.
Rome is out of town for a week for some project with a new client. He'd mentioned it at the diner and I thought: fine, that's nothing, Rome being gone changes nothing.
Rome being gone means the pub booth has one fewer set of eyes on me. That turns out to change quite a lot.
Lily sits next to me, close enough that her arm settles against mine on the table like it belongs there, and I let it happen because a starving man doesn't turn down crumbs.
Poppy and Ramsey are across from us with Erin beside Poppy, conversation moving fast because the group's been scattered for a while. I'm a functioning adult at a table with people I like. Everything is completely normal.
Lily shifts to reach for the bowl of chips in the center, her shoulder pressing into mine until she shifts again and it isn't her shoulder anymore.
The soft curve of her breast drags against my arm and my brain short-circuits.
Just stops. I thank every god out there that Rome isn't here because I'd be a dead man if he saw what that two-second contact just did to me.
She says nothing about it when she settles back, casual, easy, like she didn't just ruin me.
Twelve minutes later she rests her elbow on my forearm, just puts it there like I'm furniture, and keeps listening to something Ramsey is saying about a contract gone sideways while I sit here trying not to move so she doesn't move.
I don't move my arm or comment, just keep very still and watch Ramsey's mouth form words I'm not absorbing. She leans in slightly and says, ”You don't have to do that."
"Do what?" I inhale the scent of her shampoo. She's moved her hair across her other shoulder, and the sight of her exposed neck isn't helping.
"Pretend I'm not here."
I pick up my beer. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Okay." She settles back. "Neither do I."
She stays there with her elbow on my forearm and her shoulder warm against mine.
I excuse myself to the bathroom nine minutes later.
I stand at the sink and run cold water over my wrists and neck, having a very serious conversation with myself in the mirror about boundaries and self-control and the fact that she is Rome's sister and this is a terrible idea and I need to get it together.
It doesn't help. When I get back she's shifted just enough that we aren't touching, and she doesn't meet my eye when I sit down. That's worse than if she had.
Ramsey catches my eye from across the table with an obnoxious smirk. I ignore him and spend the rest of the conversation willing my hands not to reach out and push her hair behind her back.
She's been here for two hours. Dad is in the workshop, happy as anything with his cast off and a piece of walnut that needs attention.
Lily is on the living room floor with her laptop and a cup of tea, cross-legged, working on Dad's papers while I sit on the couch with the television on low, pretending to watch it.
This has become a thing. The comfortable version of absolute torture.
At some point, she closes her laptop and stretches her arms over her head, and I find something on the television to focus on very hard. She picks up her things, and once the zipper on her bag is in place and she goes quiet, I know trouble is waiting.
"I want to ask you something."
She doesn't sound like herself, so I turn.
"Sure."
"Do you have a regular schedule? Like, set days you're on shift?"
She's fidgeting with the zipper on her laptop bag instead of meeting my eye.
"It rotates. Every few weeks." I mute the television. "Why?"
She picks up her mug and walks quickly to the kitchen. I'm up in a second and following her.
"Why?" I insist again, but no matter how much I search her face she won't give me anything.
"So I know when to come by." Her voice is so low and small that I take a step back, because I've never seen her like this, never heard her like this.
"For your dad. I still want to come see him. I want to make sure I'm not..." She trails off. Starts again. "I was thinking it'd be easier if I knew when you weren't here."
"Why?" I repeat before I can remove the emotion from it.
She looks up, and I wish she hadn't. Her face is tired, open and honest in a way she usually keeps tucked away where I can't see it. It isn't the smile she deploys like a weapon, the one that says she knows exactly what she's doing and is enjoying every second.
"It's getting harder, Callahan." She swallows. "Being here. With you, I mean. That's all."
She picks up her bag and says something about telling Dad goodbye on her way out. I hear the back door, then his voice, then hers, then the front door a few minutes later.
I don't move from my spot. She wanted to know when I wasn't here. She's building her schedule around my absence just as I did with her when she first moved here. While I have spent the last months building everything around her presence because the alternative is harder to bear.
It feels like a closed door. I stand there for a long time after she leaves and do the thing I'm least good at: being honest with myself.
I'd told myself this was manageable. The visits, the dinners, the playlists still running in my car, the hair clip that's been on my bathroom counter for so long I stopped seeing it. Manageable. Fine. A problem I was handling.
But the idea of coming home on a random day and knowing she wouldn't be here, knowing she'd checked the schedule, found my name, and come on another day instead, is all wrong.
That isn't manageable at all. I press the heels of my hands against my eyes and sit in my quiet living room, trying to locate a version of this that doesn't feel like it's eating me from the inside.
Outside the workshop light is still on, and I can hear Dad in there. The low sound of the radio, the familiar rhythm of him and his one-sided conversation with my dead mother on a warm evening in May.
Everything exactly as it was. Except it isn’t.