Page 102 of Second Alarm
My best friend hit me, and I'm still standing, my lip is bleeding, and my jaw hurts. Somewhere a few blocks over, my best friend is sitting on his kitchen floor eating cold Asian food and hating me and also — in a place he hasn't reached yet — loving me. Because Cal Larsen isn't capable of loving anyone less than completely, and he's loved me completely for thirty years. That love isn't going to go away overnight. It will come back eventually, because I have faith in the version of Cal who's been loving me all along.
I have faith in Hanna.
I have faith in Cal.
I have faith.
That's new.
I ice my jaw and I wait.
Chapter 19
Hanna
Iwake up on Tuesday morning in my own bed alone, because I didn’t go to Ty’s last night. I made that call last night on the back stairs of my brother's apartment, and I don't regret the call, but I miss him anyway.
The light comes through the blinds sideways the way it does when the sun has come up without asking.
I lie on my back, look at my ceiling, and run the sentence one more time.
Cal. I love him. I've loved him since the academy. I'm not sorry about that. I'm sorry about the ten years of lying to you. I'm not leaving him again, and I'm not leaving here again, and I'd like to be your sister while I do it. Please, Cal.
That's the sentence.
I've had it since four-fifteen this morning. I've written it and erased it and written it again, and I've finally put it on a sticky note I won't take with me because that would be absurd, but which I'll reread six more times before I leave, because I'm a woman who's about to go to her brother's apartment and tell him the truest thing she knows without opening with a joke, and I've never done that, and I need the sentence on papersomewhere in the building so that when my mouth betrays me I can remember what I meant to say.
I tell my mother first.
"I'm going to go over there. Alone."
"I know." She doesn't argue.
"He's going to — "
"Hanna. Stop listing what he's going to do. He's going to do what he's going to do. You're going to go, and you're going to say what you have to say, and whatever he does, you'll let him do it, because he's earned the right to do it."
"I — "
"And you'll stay, Hanna."
"I will."
"You won't leave. You won't get in the car. You won't drive anywhere."
"I won't."
"Good."
"Mom — I’ll come home after. When it's done."
"Hanna." Her voice is warm. "I'll have soup on."
"Thanks, Mom."
"I love you, honey."
"Love you too."
