Page 107 of Second Alarm

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I call Ty.

He answers on the first ring.

"Hanna."

"Hi."

"Hi."

"I told him."

"Okay."

"He's going to punch you again."

"Okay."

"He said you're still his best friend."

Ty doesn't say anything, but I hear his breath change.

"Ty."

"Yeah."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"I'm going home. Mom’s making soup."

"Okay."

"I'll see you tonight."

"Okay, Hanna."

I hang up.

I walk down Linden Avenue in the sun and I don't feel, for the first time in my adult life, that I'm running away from something. I'm walking toward the soup my mother has made me. Toward my own life with my brother still loving me and seeing the man I love tonight. Toward the work of becoming a person who stays.

Chapter 20

Ty

It's eight days before Cal speaks to me again.

Eight days is the length of time I learn to do the following things: measure the apartment in paces (twelve by nine), wake up at four a.m. to a pre-dawn that isn't the old pre-dawn, ice my jaw less and then not at all, watch Hanna across the bay at Station 7 without touching her, let her touch me when we're in her mother’s kitchen, eat her mother's soup on a weekday, and specifically not drive over to Cal's place, no matter how many times my truck keys feel like they're going to walk out of the kitchen by themselves.

I read a lot. I finish the Le Carré. I start and stop three others. I don't manage to finish any of them, because my brain, which has been letting me read with half of itself for ten years, is now loud. My brain has opinions. My brain wants to run scenarios about Cal. My brain is bad at reading.

Hanna stays at my place on Thursday. She stays at her Mom’s on Friday. On Saturday she cooks me eggs and says, "He texted me." I ask what he said. She says, "He asked if I was okay." I say good. She says, "That's the first thing."

On Monday morning my phone rings.

It's Cal.

"Brennan. Watershed. Six o'clock tonight. I'm off shift. You're off shift. You’re buying."

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