Chapter 29
LILY
January was supposed to be the easy month.
Interviews done, applications submitted, nothing left but the waiting period stretching out ahead of me like a long flat road. All I had to do was exist in Harbor Hill, study enough that I didn't fall back on my boards, work at the shop, and keep my hands off Callahan Holt in public.
Two out of four wasn't terrible. Studying was going well. The shop was good. The other two were falling apart at a concerning rate.
We'd gotten sloppy. There's no other word for it. The early months had been airtight: separate arrivals, separate departures, never in the same place without a buffer of people between us.
But airtight is hard to maintain when the person you're hiding keeps showing up in your kitchen at midnight smelling like soap and cold air and looking at you like you're the only warm thing left on earth.
Airtight is impossible when every cell in your body wants to reach for him, and the only thing stopping you is a room full of people who can never know.
The trips out of town were getting harder to hide. Same days, same duration, cover stories that had been solid in September, but were wearing thin by the week.
His fishing trips with Zuri had become statistically improbable. My study weekends with college friends had multiplied beyond belief.
Rome is a smart man, sharper than most. But Rome is also deep in his own life with Erin these days, and people in love tend to look inward before they look around. I'm counting on that. I hate that I'm counting on that.
It's Saturday afternoon, late January, and my apartment has been taken over by wedding planning.
There are fabric swatches on the couch, a laptop open to a venue site, three glasses of wine in various stages of completion. Poppy is cross-legged on the floor with a binder thick enough to be classified as a weapon, flipping through tabs like she's defusing a bomb.
The wedding is late May. I've done the math more times than I'd admit, calculated and recalculated the timeline until I was certain.
I'll still be here. Whatever happens with acceptances, whatever city calls my name in the spring, I will be in Harbor Hill for Poppy and Ramsey's wedding.
I told her so the day the date was set, and the relief on her face made me cry in the bathroom afterward.
"Okay." Poppy flips to a tabbed section and squints at it. "Bachelorette, it says here. If we really must, I want something here. This town. Our people."
"I love that," Erin agrees from the couch, tucking her feet under a blanket and settling deeper into the cushions.
Poppy has a hard time planning her wedding. She gets overwhelmed quickly, distracted easily, paralyzed by too many choices. Ramsey knows this about her, loves this about her, and hired a wedding planner with strict instructions not to overwhelm his bride.
So now we have a binder we need to check through, decisions pre-narrowed to manageable options, and two best friends ready to point at things and say yes so Poppy doesn't have to.
I love how Ramsey loves her. I love that he knows her well enough to smooth the path before she even has to walk it.
"A weekend at the compound," Erin continues, warming to the idea. "We kick the men out and take over. Gran is invited. Beth and Vera are invited. Ruth is absolutely invited because she'll die if we leave her out and I'm not dealing with that guilt."
"Ruth will bring information we didn't ask for," I grin. "It'll be fun."
"Fun until you become the information," Poppy mutters with an eye roll.
She has a somewhat cooler relationship with Ruth than Erin and I do, years of history I'm not fully privy to, but I know she adores the woman underneath the exasperation.
"That's her love language and I accept it," I tell her, and Poppy snorts, but doesn't argue.
We work through the details: food, music, whether Gran can be trusted with a karaoke machine. The answer is a unanimous and clear no. Poppy wants it simple and personal and full of the people she loves, and that's exactly what she's going to get.
I'm reaching for my wine when Erin sets hers down with suspiciously deliberate care.
"So," she says.
I look at her. She's looking at me. Poppy has stopped flipping pages.
"So," Poppy echoes, and there's something in her voice that makes my stomach drop.
"No," I say immediately.
"We haven't said anything yet," Erin points out, her tone mild and completely unconvincing.
"You're about to, and the answer is no."
Poppy closes the binder, sets it aside, and gets comfortable. She has been waiting for this conversation and she is not leaving without it.
"Erin and I have been thinking about this curious thing," she muses, her voice light and dangerous. "Every time you leave town, Cal leaves town."
"What a crazy coincidence," I manage.
"Every time," Erin repeats. "Same days. Same duration. You went to Stanford for four days in October. Cal told Ramsey he was visiting his aunt. For four days. In October."
"He has many aunts. One lives in Connecticut."
"Are you really still trying to deny it?" Erin asks, and there's no judgment in her voice, just gentle, inexorable patience.
I pick up my wine and take a very long sip.
"And Columbia?" Poppy continues, relentlessly. "You were in New York for three days, but I am pretty sure you didn't even apply there. Cal told the firehouse he had a personal thing. Three days. In New York."
"He could have been doing anything in New York. It's a big city. People go there."
"Cal hates cities," Erin says flatly. "He has said this to me personally, multiple times. He once described Manhattan as a sensory emergency."
"Maybe he was there to get laid," I blurt, reaching, grasping at anything. "He goes out of town for that. Everyone knows that."
The silence lasts about two seconds.
"Oh, he got laid alright," Poppy drawls, as she and Erin both dissolve into full, helpless laughter that fills my entire apartment.
I sit there holding my glass, watching two of the most perceptive women I know laugh themselves stupid, trying very hard to ignore that my face is on fire.
"We're not dumb, Lil," Poppy gasps, wiping her eyes. "We love you and we're happy for you and we are not dumb."
Erin straightens up, tucks her hair behind her ears, and levels me with a directness that makes her the person I can always trust.
"This is a safe space," she says. "I'm not telling Rome. I've known for a while and I made that decision then and I'm sticking to it. But you should tell him, Lily. Soon. Before he figures it out the way we did."
My stomach turns over. "How long have you known?"
"For sure? Since Christmas. The pinky thing."
I close my eyes in mortification. "What pinky thing?"
"Every time you passed each other. In the kitchen, in the hallway, at the table. Your pinkies touched. Every single time," Poppy tells me.
"Nobody else would notice. I did because I know what sneaking looks like. I did it with your brother for weeks before anyone found out," Erin fills in.
I press both hands over my face and sit there, behind my own palms, in the dark of my own making.
We'd been so careful. Months of separate arrivals and coded texts and never looking at each other too long in public.
And the thing that gave us away wasn't a look or a word or a car parked on the wrong street.
It was a pinky. The smallest possible point of contact, the thing we invented because we couldn't touch any other way.
The thing that felt like ours, like a secret no one could see.
"Okay," I say into my hands before I drop them. My girls, the women who took me in and never let go, sitting right here waiting for me to trust them.
"Okay," I say again. ”What do you want to know?"
Poppy's face lights up like Christmas morning, and she bounces slightly where she sits.
"Everything. But first and most critically." She fixes me with a look of absolute seriousness. "Is sex still as pleasant as ever?"
"Sex," I say, choosing my words with great care, "is no longer pleasant."
They wait, leaning forward, barely breathing.
"Sex is filthy and all-consuming and sometimes I can't walk properly the next day and I have never been happier in my entire life."
Poppy slaps the floor with her open palm. Erin's wine sloshes dangerously close to the rim of her glass.
"There's more," I continue, because the hell with it. They wanted the truth and I was so tired of holding it alone and these women had earned every word.
"He has a slightly dominant side, nothing too bad. He tells me what to do and I do it and it's the hottest thing that has ever happened to me."
"I knew it," Poppy whispers reverently. "I knew it. The quiet ones, Erin. It's always the quiet ones."
"He calls me his good girl," I say, warming to this now, feeling the relief of confession spreading through me like wine.
"And his trouble. And when I push him far enough, when I'm bratty enough, his little slut." I pick up my glass and take a sip and hold both their gazes. "My favorite is when he can't choose between praising me or degrading me and is a blabbering mess."
The apartment goes silent for exactly one second. Then Poppy and Erin scream into an embrace, clutching each other like I've just announced I won the lottery, and I sit there, finally not hiding, and the relief is so enormous I feel lighter by actual pounds.
"Cal's little slut," Erin says, emerging with mascara that has migrated significantly. "The sweetest, most polite man in Harbor Hill. The poster boy for safety and good manners."
"That man," I confirm.
"That man calls you his little slut?"
"With reverence, my friends. Like it's sacred. And I eat it up every time."
Some exchange happens between them that I'm not part of. When they turn back, they're both grinning in a way that can only be described as sisterly and unhinged.
"Well," Poppy announces, straightening up with the air of someone about to deliver a proclamation. "I guess it's official."
"What's official?"
She holds up her wine glass like a scepter.
"The holy trinity. Complete at last."
Erin groans immediately. "No, Pop, stop. I need a better name," she protests, but Poppy is not listening.
"Ramsey's breeding toy." Poppy points at herself, zero shame, the proudest woman alive. "Cal's little slut." She points at me. Then she turns to Erin with slow, delighted precision. "And Rome's anal girl."
Erin's face goes through about six colors in two seconds. She grabs the nearest pillow and holds it over her face and groans into it with the full force of her mortification.
"Take it back," she demands, muffled by the pillow.
"I will never take it back. That is your title and you earned it."
"I did not earn it, you bitch," Erin grunts, still hiding, still blushing so hard it creeps down her neck.
"You told the town and you told me how you both love a little D..."
Erin tackles her to the floor, pillow pressed firmly over Poppy's face.
"Don't finish that sentence or Lil will never speak to me," she hisses.
She lets her go after a moment, and Poppy surfaces from behind the pillow with her face crimson. But Erin blushes the most, her cheeks flaming, her eyes refusing to meet mine.
"I have nothing to say," Erin announces primly, choosing survival over honesty, "and you will not elaborate, Poppy, or I will kill you."
"You don't have to say anything," I assure her. "Your face said it all and I hate every word."
"I hate both of you," she mumbles.
"You love both of us," Poppy reminds her sweetly.
"That is unfortunately also true."
Poppy picks up her glass again and raises it higher.
"To us. The Holy Trinity. The best of Harbor Hill. God help anyone who crosses us."
Erin and I raise our glasses. We clink. We drink.
Poppy makes a sound of deep satisfaction and settles back against the couch.
"I'm so happy for you, Lil," she says, calmer now. The teasing has dropped away and underneath it is Poppy at her realest, warm and direct and completely sincere. "Cal is a good man. You deserve a good man."
"He's more than good," I tell her, and I mean it in a way I won't elaborate on. If I start talking about him properly, I will start crying on the spot, and we've had enough emotions for one afternoon.
"You need to tell Rome," Erin says again, gentle but firm. "He deserves to hear it from you. Not from Ruth or from walking in on you two in a hallway."
"I know."
"Soon, Lily."
"I know." I take a deep breath, feeling the weight of it. "I will. After I figure out how to say it without him driving to Cal's house and dismantling him brick by brick."
"Rome is not going to dismantle him," Erin says. "I'll handle Rome."
"Erin, you don't have to."
"I know I don't have to. I'm going to." The certainty in her face tells me she has already decided. There's no arguing with a decided Erin. "He'll be mad. Then he'll be quiet. Then he'll be fine. You know the cycle."
This woman loves my brother and me, and is volunteering to stand in the middle of it again after swearing she never would.
"Thank you," I manage.
"Don't thank me yet. Thank me after he doesn't kill your boyfriend."
"He's not my boyfriend."
"What is he then?" Poppy asks.
I think about him in Baltimore, watching me eat croissants like it was the best thing he'd ever seen. He always looks at me like I'm the best thing he's ever seen, like I'm something rare and precious that he can't believe he gets to touch.
"He's everything," I whisper. "He's everything and I'm leaving and I don't know what to do about either of those things."
Poppy scoots across the floor and pulls me into her side. Erin comes closer and rests her head on my shoulder from the other direction. We sit there, the three of us, in my small apartment holding each other up.
"You'll figure it out," Poppy murmurs against my hair.
"How do you know?"
"Because you're you. And he's him. And some things figure themselves out if you let them."
I want to believe that. I want to believe it so badly I can taste it. So I hold onto my girls, and I let myself pretend, just for a moment, that she's right.