Page 109 of Second Alarm
"I'm — "
"I know you are, Cal."
"How do you know."
"Because you called me, Cal. You called me this morning and told me to buy you a beer at the Watershed. You didn't have to call me. You could've held this against me for the rest of your life and you'd have been — "
"Don't." He shakes his head. "Don't tell me what I could've done. I called you because I've been lying in bed for a week thinking about every time you and I had lunch at Peak Grounds, when you ordered a black coffee and I ordered a latte. And I've been realizing that the black coffee — the way you drank it, without hesitating — you were drinking my sister's coffee with me, Brennan. For years. You were drinking her coffee."
"Cal."
"I know what you're going to say. You weren't doing it at me. You were doing it because when Hanna left, you didn't know what to drink, and you landed on the thing she drank, because — "
I don't say anything.
Cal looks at me. His eyes are a little wet.
"Is that true."
"It's the pattern."
"God. Brennan."
"I didn't make a conscious decision. I just liked it."
"You started drinking black coffee after the academy."
"Yes."
"You hated coffee before then."
"Yes."
"You started drinking black coffee back then because my sister drank black coffee."
"I started drinking black coffee back then because Hanna was gone and I missed her and the coffee I had seen her drink was the only thing I could still participate in that she had — "
"Oh my GOD."
"Cal."
"That's the most unhinged — "
"I know."
"You've been in love with my sister for ten years and you drank her coffee for TEN YEARS to cope."
"Yes."
He stares at me.
"I was going to make fun of you tonight. I had a whole routine — Just Coffee for forty-five minutes. I had jokes. I had — " He stops. Something breaks open in his face. "I can't make the jokes, Brennan. Because that's the saddest — "
He's laughing.
The wet Cal laugh I haven't heard in days. Not a big laugh. Not recovery yet. A laugh. I'm thirty-three years old, in a booth at the Watershed on a Monday night, sitting across from my best friend who I was afraid for eight days wasn't going to be my best friend anymore, and my best friend is laughing at me because I've been drinking black coffee for ten years as a coping mechanism, and the laugh is the best sound I've heard in a decade.
"You're such an idiot."
