Page 96 of Second Alarm
At three, I realize I'm wearing the same shirt I wore to Hanna's last night and that it smells like her soap. I go home. I shower. I change.
At four fifty-one, Hanna texts me.
Hanna: Cal is asleep. PT guy is gone. Mom is here. I'm going to grab a few things from my place and then come to yours. Thirty minutes.
Me: Okay.
Hanna: You eat?
Me: No.
Hanna: I'll bring takeout.
At five forty-three she texts again.
Hanna: Forgot my laptop at Cal's. Stopping there first. Ten more minutes.
Me: Okay.
At six-oh-two she calls.
"Can you come to Cal's. His coffee grinder is broken and I can't make him coffee for when he wakes up and he's going to wake up in pain any minute and I don't want him trying to brew one-handed — "
"I'll bring my grinder."
"Ty — "
"Ten minutes. I'll come, I'll bring the grinder, we'll grind his coffee, I'll leave before he's up."
"Okay."
This is, as I have time to consider later, the exact kind of decision that in retrospect has a title and a chapter number.The Grinder Decision. Monday's Mistake.There's a specific flavor to the mistakes a man makes in the name of being useful to the woman he loves. I've made this specific mistake before, at the academy, when I agreed — against my own judgment — to sneak Hanna into a late-night drill we had no permission to be at. I haven'tgotten better at recognizing it in the last ten years. Some men improve. I'm the other kind of man.
I bring the grinder. I park a block away, out of habit. I walk up the back stairs of Cal's place the way I've walked them for years, because for years Cal and I've used the back stairs — the front staircase squeaks. Hanna lets me in the door. She has the coffee set out. She's wearing a flannel that isn't hers — it's one of mine — and she hasn't noticed, or hasn't chosen to notice, and I don't mention it. The kitchen smells like the ginger soup she's made for Cal. There's takeout from the Asian place on the table in a paper bag, a mug with hot water and a tea bag, Cal's pill bottle orange and small on the counter.
It's, if I'm accurate about it, the most specifically domestic scene I've been in since the academy. I pour hot water from the kettle into a second mug. Hanna hands me coffee beans. I grind them. She sets up the pour-over. I pour the water over the grounds in the circles she taught me at the academy, the way she told me to do it because it makes a better coffee than the way I was doing it. Hanna is leaning against the counter watching me, her hair up, her feet bare, my flannel on her, and the coffee is blooming in the cone, and the sunshine is coming in the window the way sunshine comes in a Montana kitchen on a Monday evening, and Cal Larsen — my best friend, the loudest man in Copper Ridge, the brother of the woman I love — walks in from his bedroom.
The carton of kung pao chicken, in his good hand, hits the floor.
The carton splits. The chicken comes out and slides under the couch —goes under the couch — the carton rolling to a stop against Cal's foot. Cal doesn't look at the chicken. Cal doesn't look at the couch. Cal looks at me.
He looks at me.
He looks at Hanna.
He looks at the coffee.
He looks at my flannel on her.
He looks at my grinder, which is my grinder, which he's seen me use exactly four thousand times over the years.
He looks at me again.
For one full second he doesn't say anything — because Cal isn't a man who's ever needed a full second, except when the thing being said is the end of something.
"Hanna."
"Cal — " Hanna starts.
