Page 115 of Second Alarm
"Pritchard."
"Fine. Fine. To Hanna. Just Hanna. Without commentary."
Everybody clinks.
Ty, to my left, doesn't clink right away — he's looking at me with the face he has when he's about to say something flat and true that I don't want him to say in front of people. I catch his eye. I shake my head half an inch. He accepts the instruction. He clinks.
I'm, for the record, not engaged.
I'm — we're — in the middle of what you might call a season. Ty asked Cal three weeks ago. Cal said no. Ty accepted the no. At the end of the month, Ty is going to ask Cal again. I haven't been formally asked myself, and I'm not going to be until Cal has lifted the no, because Ty Brennan is the kind of man to wait for approval. I'm, apparently, an idiot now, because I've agreed to this process instead of making the kind of joke I'd have made before all of this. I haven't made any jokes. Riley knows. Derek is making loud guesses in the ledger. Big Jim knows, because Big Jim knows everything, and he's specifically not saying anything about it because Cal has asked him not to — which means Cal is processing it correctly, which means it's going to be yes by August.
I'm not thinking about August.
I'm thinking about the fries.
Cal and I are okay.
Okay is the right word. Okay isn't where we were in May, in the sling and the kung pao, and it isn't where we're going to be by Thanksgiving. Okay is eight weeks of small Tuesdays. Okay is Cal coming over for dinner and eating the thing Ty cooked and saying it wasn't bad, Ty saying thank you, and Cal saying it needed more salt. Okay is Cal still calling TyBrennanand mesisterin the same sentence, like he's still practicing the sentence. Okay is Cal giving Ty a book on his birthday — a Le Carré he hadn't read, the new translation — without saying anything about it, just handing it across the table: "For you, Brennan," in the voice Cal uses when he's doing a thing he isn't going to narrate.
Okay is Cal, at Sunday dinner two weeks ago, saying across Mom's table, "So Ty, Hanna, you want to tell me about the honeymoon fund that Big Jim has apparently been collecting into a shoebox under the bar since June."
"What — "
"Big Jim has a shoebox. He's taking a collection. Derek has been kicking in. Rivera has been kicking in. Gemma has been kicking in. Riley is the banker."
"A shoebox?"
"A shoebox, Hanna. Don't ask how much. Let it go. It's touching. I'm touched. I'm not going to say anything else about it."
He didn't. Mom, at the head of the table, smiled down at her soup. Ty, in my father's chair at her left, reached for the breadbasket with the specific patience of a man who's earned the chair. I watched him do it. I watched my mother watch him. I watched Cal watch my mother watch him. The whole triangulation happened in about two seconds. The chair was Ty's. It had been empty for fourteen years. My mother passed him the salt without looking. He took it.
I didn't cry at Sunday dinner.
I've been good about not crying at Sunday dinner.
Mostly.
Tonight, at the Watershed, I watch the crew without touching Ty. We pass fries and beer, Derek does the rubber chicken gag at Cal — which he isn't allowed to do at me anymore per Cal's very specific request on behalf of Cal's sanity — Chief Rodriguez comes by at one point to clap Ty on the shoulder and say nothing, the way Rodriguez has been coming by to do sinceeveryone was allowed to openly know about Ty and me, and Big Jim sends over a round on the house. Nora is at the table because she doesn't work Fridays, and she's telling a story about a customer who tried to pay in actual pennies. Aiden is laughing into Riley's shoulder, and Cal is explaining to Derek why the rubber chicken joke is officially retired as far as the Larsen family is concerned, and I'm, for the first time in my life, the person in the room who's the least to be afraid of.
Ty orders me a coffee.
Big Jim brings it over. Black. Perfect temperature. Not my order. Ty's.
"You ordered me your coffee."
"It was a joke." He says it flat.
"Since when are you funny."
"Since I started spending all my free time with you, Hanna, I've had to up my game."
"That was two jokes in one sentence."
"I'm going to stop."
"Drink it."
"It's yours."
