Chapter 15
LILY
I'm sitting at the counter in Erin's shop, coffee going cold beside me, Erin's encouraging smile somewhere in my periphery.
I put all my money on Johns Hopkins and Stanford, but I also have Chicago just in case. Chicago is home, so whatever happens at least I will not feel completely alone.
Medical school applications, officially in. Interviews in the fall. Decision letters in the spring. And then, same time next year, not here.
Not here. The thought shoots through me like pain, like someone dropped a stone behind my ribs and forgot to take it out. Not here. Not in this shop with the morning light coming through the windows. Not down the street to Ruth's, not in the same town as Rome again. Alone again.
I have to move. Literally have to stand up and do something with my hands or I'm going to sit here and spiral about a future that's twelve months away when I'm supposed to be here, in this moment, in this life I actually chose.
I close my laptop, shove it across the counter like it is to blame, pick up my scissors, and trim the flowers that’ve been waiting. The stems are thick and stubborn and require more force than I'm prepared for, which is actually perfect because it gives me something to fight.
Then I just stare at the wall for a while. Erin pretends not to notice. She refills my coffee without asking, says nothing, moves around the shop with that quiet competence she has, and I love her for it in a way I couldn't articulate without crying.
Which I'm not going to do. Over flowers. Over an application I've been working toward for years. Over the thing I'm supposed to want.
Four months in Harbor Hill, and the strange thing is that it's been exactly what I came for and nothing like what I expected.
I don't know anymore which parts are going to be harder to leave.
The easy answer is Rome and Erin and Poppy.
The honest answer includes a man whose name I haven't let myself say out loud to anyone in three weeks.
And the easy answer is everything else. This town smelling like salt and pine in June.
Everyone just letting me belong here without making me prove I deserved it.
Everyone except Cherry, but I think about her as little as possible and my life is better for it.
The firehouse kiss was a month ago. A month in which he and I have been in the same room approximately thirteen times, spoken approximately forty words to each other, and spent a criminal amount of time pretending not to look at each other.
Rome and I had a huge fight about his involvement in the whole mess. I didn't speak to him for weeks, which for us is unprecedented. But I still sent him angry emojis every night and he still responded with a heart because that's us, that's how we work.
He knows he crossed a line. We also know he'll never let go of the idea that I'm too big for this small town, and nothing I say will change that.
I still have a hard time disappointing Rome. Always will. He's been my one and only family since day one. Even those first ten years when I was technically with our parents, it was him. It was always him. The one who gave up everything so I could have a shot at something.
I don't know how to tell him I'm sorry. Sorry he had to give up his life for me, his ambitions, his shot at a normal young adulthood because he was too busy raising his little sister.
I will always feel guilty about that. He won't hear of it, says he doesn't regret a single day, and I know he means it.
He still got the education and the success he wanted, but I was a burden he did not deserve.
I can't shake the feeling that this is why he pushes me so hard. Experience everything, accomplish everything, reach for every brass ring the world offers. Because he missed out, and he's making up for it through me.
Meanwhile I have the world at my fingertips, thanks to him, ready for the taking. And maybe that's exactly why I don't feel like I'm missing anything.
All I need is to be close to Rome, close to Erin, hopefully eventually some nieces and nephews to spoil rotten and send home sugared up and exhausted. I want a big family, a full house, people around me who know my name and my history. The world can wait, or I can experience it with them.
Now all I can think about is stupid Callahan. The thing about him is that he doesn't stop looking. He's pulled back in every other way. The drives home got briefer, the porch conversations dried up, the distance is back and freshly installed like he went at it with spackle and a vengeance.
But his eyes never quite followed the rest of him. I catch it, just for a second, just long enough to feel it land somewhere in me, before I look away first. Nowadays I always look away first.
Enough of Callahan. It's June. I've submitted my applications. I have a summer ahead of me, and I'm going to live it the way I promised myself I would.
Later that afternoon, I walk the long route to Will's house. I asked Will casually, the day before, whether Cal had plans tomorrow. Will said he was out with Ramsey, some errand in town, probably all afternoon.
He also told me that the tomato plants I'd begged him to let me put in the back garden needed watering, and that the good shears were on the second shelf in the shed if I wanted to do something useful.
So I walk through the part of Harbor Hill where the June warmth is generous and everything is in bloom.
Through residential streets where someone planted roses along a fence and they've gotten entirely out of hand in the best possible way, spilling over the wood slats in shades of pink and coral and deep, dramatic red.
The air smells like cut grass and salt from the harbor, and by the time I turn onto the Holts' street, I'm feeling warm-cheeked and easy in a way the last few weeks haven't let me be.
Then I see the Escalade, parked in the driveway. Black. Enormous. Completely unmistakable. Completely not supposed to be there.
I stop on the pavement outside the gate and stare at it. Will played me like a fiddle.
I weigh my options. Turning around and power-walking home would be both cowardly and conspicuous, and I promised myself I was done being a coward about this.
My brother didn't raise me a pussy. So I open the gate. The porch steps have a specific creak on the third one. I learned this months ago. I step over it out of habit, which is a very funny habit to have developed about a house that isn't mine.
I've made it to the door when it swings open. We both stop. Callahan is clearly mid-exit, keys and phone in hand, and he goes completely still in the doorway.
Dark t-shirt. Jeans. That jaw with two days of stubble on it.
His hair is a little longer than it was weeks ago, curling slightly at the ends from the heat, and he's got the kind of face that still catches you off guard even when you've been looking at it for months.
Which says something unfortunate about the state of my self-preservation instincts.
"I thought you were with Ramsey today."
He sighs, eyes closing for a second like he's asking the universe for patience. He knows just as well as I do that Will is to blame for this.
"Your dad said you'd be gone all afternoon."
"My dad lied."
"I was going to water the tomatoes."
The second it leaves my mouth I want to die. Of all the things I could have said. Of all the ways I could have played this, I went with tomatoes.
He smiles though, his gaze dropping to his feet before coming back to me. "The tomatoes don't need watering. It rained yesterday."
I stare at him. He stares steadily back. I've been set up by a fifty-year-old troublemaker who doesn't have a single guilty bone in his body, and there's really nothing to do about that now.
I should say something easy, something Lily-shaped that would slide this moment sideways into something manageable.
Instead I say: "You don't have to hide in the doorway. I'm not going to bite you."
His whole face goes still. I hate his stupid long lashes. Hate that I notice them.
"I'm not hiding."
"You're hiding a little."
He steps out onto the porch, closes the door behind him, and we stand there in the afternoon like two people who have nothing to say, but I know so much could be said.
Then, suddenly, he says something else entirely.
"I'm sorry."
I blink. "For hiding?"
"For the..." He stops, gaze going to the street, then back to me. "After the firehouse. I shouldn't have left you standing there. I handled it badly."
There it is. Weeks of carefully maintained quiet, and here we are. I've imagined this conversation various times. In most of those versions I was significantly cooler than I'm currently feeling.
"It was just a kiss," I say steadily. "The world did not end so no worries."
Something tightens across his face, quick and unguarded. Intense Callahan is a sight to behold, and I wish I didn't see it.
"It wasn't..." He exhales, gaze dropping to the street again, several deep breaths moving through him before he finishes. "It wasn't a small thing. Not to me."
Oh. That's not fair. That's not a fair thing to say while standing three feet away from me with afternoon light doing something golden to his face and weeks of silence still sitting between us.
I want to shake him. I want to kiss him. I want to ask him to say it again, slower, so I can memorize the exact sound of his voice dropping on those words.
Instead I hear myself say, ”Callahan. Don't say things like that if you're not going to do anything about it."
"You know why I can't."
I see the agony he's in. It's written all over him, the wanting and the holding back, and maybe three months ago that would have been enough. Maybe I would have softened, given him more time, more grace.
But I'm fresh out of patience for men who won't stand up for what they want. Especially when what they want is standing right in front of them, offering freely, and they're holding back because of some bro code to a man who doesn't get a vote. Even if that man is my whole world.