Chapter 8 #2
I stared at the message, hovering over the send button.
This was stupid. He'd just left. He was probably exhausted, probably already in bed, probably trying to get some rest before his next shift.
I should let him be. Should handle this on my own.
Should stop relying on him for every small thing, every moment of weakness, every night when the silence got too loud.
My instincts took over, and I pressed send anyway.
Then immediately wished I could take it back. What was I doing? What did I expect him to do, come running every time I couldn't handle being alone? He had his own life. His own problems. His own grief that he carried just as heavily as I carried mine.
The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Then nothing.
I set the phone down. Picked it up. Set it down again. Told myself it didn't matter, that I'd just go to bed, that I'd figure out how to sleep on my own the way I had for the past three years.
Five minutes later, there was a knock at my door.
I checked the peephole. Cal, still in the same clothes from earlier, holding two mugs. Steam curled up from them, visible even through the distortion of the peephole glass.
I unlocked the deadbolt. The chain. The original lock. Three separate motions, three separate sounds, and I thought about how I used to just turn one handle and walk through. How I used to not care about locks at all.
"Tea," he said. Like that explained everything. Like showing up at someone's door at 11 PM with two mugs of tea was just what you did when someone texts you two words in the middle of the night.
I didn’t answer. I simply stepped back to let him in.
He moved past me into the apartment, and I caught his scent as he passed. Soap. Something woodsy underneath.
We ended up on my couch. The small one I'd bought secondhand when I moved in, the one with the sagging cushion on the left side and the stain on the armrest I'd never been able to get out. It barely fit two people. Our shoulders touched the moment we sat down. Neither of us moved away.
Cal handed me a mug. The tea was perfect. Not too hot, not too sweet. The exact right amount of honey. Of course it was.
"You didn't have to come over," I was always denying him.
"You texted."
The simplicity of it undid me more than any grand gesture could have. He asked no questions and didn’t hesitate. He didn't make me explain, or justify, or pretend I was fine when I wasn’t. He just said, 'You texted,' as if that were reason enough. Like being me was enough.
We sat in the half-dark, the only light coming from the streetlamp outside my window.
It cast long shadows across the floor, turned everything soft and gray.
I could hear the building settling around us, the distant sound of traffic, someone's TV playing two floors up.
Now they were normal, just sounds. Only a short while ago, those very same noises made me feel agonized and alone.
But now, with Cal beside me, they changed. Now it felt almost like peace.
He didn't ask why I couldn't sleep. Didn't try to fill the silence with small talk or reassurances or any of the things people usually said when they didn't know what else to do. Just sat beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him through my sleeve, and waited.
I don't know how long we sat there before I said it. Minutes, maybe. Long enough for my tea to cool. Long enough for the silence to stop feeling heavy and start feeling like something else. Something that didn't need to be filled.
"He used to make me tea when I couldn't sleep."
The words came out quiet, almost a whisper. I felt Cal go still beside me, that particular stillness of someone who's afraid to move, afraid to break whatever spell has made this moment possible.
"Mateo," I added, though we both knew who I meant.
"He'd hear me get up, no matter how quiet I tried to be, and he'd be in the kitchen before I even made it to the living room.
Tea ready. Always too hot, always too sweet, but I drank it anyway because he looked so proud of himself.
Like he'd solved some great problem. Like tea was the answer to everything. "
Following the memory, there was only silence.
I could feel Cal's shoulder pressed against mine, the tension running through him like a current.
I wondered if I'd made a mistake. If talking about Mateo, for the first time between us, had broken something or reminded him of everything that stood in the way.
And then, quietly, the answer arrived: "He made the worst tea. I don't know how you drank it."
I turned to look at him. He was staring at the mug in his hands, his thumbs running along the rim, the ghost of something crossing his face. Not quite a smile. Not quite grief. Something in between.
"At the station," he continued, his voice low.
"Anytime someone was having a rough night, a bad call, trouble at home, whatever.
Mateo would make tea. And it was always terrible.
Too much sugar, steeped too long, sometimes he'd forget and microwave it instead of using the kettle.
" A pause. "We all drank it anyway. Every time. Nobody ever told him it was bad."
A laugh escaped me. Unexpected, almost startling in the quiet room.
A real laugh, surprised out of me by the image of Mateo's crew, these tough firefighters who ran into burning buildings for a living, grimacing through cup after cup of his terrible tea because they didn't want to hurt his feelings.
Cal looked up. And he smiled.
Not the careful, controlled expression I was used to.
Not the polite smile he gave strangers or the tight smile he gave when he was trying to hold something back.
A real smile, crinkling the corners of his eyes, softening the hard lines of his face, transforming him into someone I barely recognized.
I'd never seen him smile like that and I wanted to see it again.
"He had the worst jokes," I said, chasing that smile, wanting to keep it there. "So bad. He'd tell them and then laugh at his own punchlines before he even got there. Half the time I didn't even understand what the joke was supposed to be."
"The puns." Cal shook his head, but he was still smiling. "God, the puns. He'd go through phases. Remember the month he was obsessed with firehouse puns? Every shift, a new one. Wrote them on the whiteboard in the kitchen."
"I'm not great at small talk, but I'm pretty good at fire talk."
"That one wasn't even a pun. It didn't make sense."
"He thought it was hilarious."
"He thought everything was hilarious."
The sentences chased each other, barely having time to breathe before the next one began. It was a rhythmic back-and-forth of memories,
We were both smiling now. Sitting in the dark in my tiny apartment, shoulders touching, trading stories like cards, laying them out between us one by one.
Mateo singing in the shower, loud and off-key, convinced he sounded like Frank Sinatra.
Mateo talking to strangers in grocery store lines, making friends with everyone from the checkout clerk to the guy behind him complaining about the wait.
Mateo burning pancakes every single Sunday but refusing to let anyone else take over because "it's tradition, Lucy, tradition matters. "
I told Cal about the time Mateo tried to teach me to cook his grandmother's recipe and nearly set off the smoke alarm. How he'd stood there fanning the detector with a dish towel, laughing so hard he could barely breathe, while I scraped charred onions into the trash.
Cal told me about Mateo's first week at the station, when he'd accidentally called Chief Warren "Dad" during a briefing and then tried to pretend it hadn't happened.
How the whole room had gone silent, and then Mateo had just shrugged and said, "What?
He's got dad energy." How even the chief had laughed.
I laughed until my eyes watered. Cal laughed with me.
And somewhere in the middle of it, somewhere between the stories and the laughter and the warmth of him beside me, I realized something.
It didn't feel like betrayal.
Maybe... it was something I deserved
The clock read 2:17 AM when Cal finally stood to leave.
I walked him to the door, reluctant to let the night end, reluctant to return to the silence. He paused in the doorway, one hand on the frame, looking at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"I miss him," he said quietly.
My eyes filled before I could stop them. "Me too."
A beat of silence. The space between us felt charged with something I didn't have words for.
"I don't think he'd want us to be this sad forever," I said. The words came out before I could second-guess them.
Cal's expression shifted. Something moved behind his eyes, hope or fear or both, I couldn't tell.
"No," he said slowly. "He wouldn't."
We stood there for a moment longer, neither moving. I thought about reaching for his hand. Thought about asking him to stay. I thought about all the things I wasn't ready to say but was starting to feel anyway.
"Goodnight, Lucy," he said.
"Goodnight, Cal."
He stepped into the hallway. I watched him cross to his own door, unlock it, glance back at me one more time before disappearing inside.
I closed my door. Locked it. Pressed my forehead against the wood and let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
We'd said Mateo's name out loud, together, and the world hadn't ended. I'd smiled remembering him, and the guilt hadn't swallowed me whole.
Maybe this was what healing looked like. Not forgetting, but finally being able to remember without breaking.