Page 111 of Second Alarm
"Okay. Thank you."
"It isn't — I'm not saying yes yet. I'm saying I'm open to saying yes. In some future." He picks up his beer. "Not today. Today I'm saying: you're my best friend, and I'm pissed, and I'm going to be pissed for a while, and I want you and my sister tobe happy — because that's the only way the rest of this makes sense. The rest only makes sense if you're happy. So be happy. Brennan. Be happy with my sister. And don't drink her coffee at me ever again. From now on, if you're going to drink her coffee, you drink it at her, not at me. I can't carry the weight of it."
"Okay."
"Good."
"Thank you."
"Shut up. Drink your beer."
We drink our beers. Big Jim puts two new ones in front of us without looking at us, and Cal looks at the fresh glasses.
"Big Jim, are you crying."
"No." Big Jim doesn't turn around.
"Big Jim, your voice is — "
"I have allergies, Larsen."
Cal snorts. I snort. We sit in the booth and drink the second beer, and eventually Cal starts talking about his shoulder and what the PT guy said and what a pain the PT guy is, and eventually he asks about Hanna — very small, almost shy — and I tell him about Hanna. Not those things. About the fact that she's sleeping seven hours at a time now, for the first time in ten years. Cal is quiet at that.
"Yeah. Okay. Okay, Brennan. Okay."
We finish our beers and go home.
Outside the Watershed, on the sidewalk, Cal stops before he gets to his car.
"The barbecue."
"Yeah."
"Did you really wipe sauce off her wrist?"
"Oh god."
"At a public fundraiser?"
"Yes."
"I have to think about this." He shakes his head. "I have to think about a lot of things. Good night."
"Good night."
He starts to walk away, then stops.
"Hanna's making you coffee tomorrow morning."
"What?"
"I called her before I called you. She said she knows how you take your coffee and she said she was going to make yours. Not yours-for-her. Yours. She said you don't sweeten it, but you like it a specific way. She was talking about your coffee, Brennan. She wanted me to — "
"Okay."
"Just Coffee, but reversed. She told me." A beat. "She — you know what she's like," Cal says.
"I know what she's like."
