Page 50 of Second Alarm
"The main thing is that I'm not — I think I'm not ready to date. I just moved, and Mom had the scare, and I don't think I can take on the project of getting to know someone right now."
"A project," Cal says.
"Dating is a project, Calvin."
"No, it isn't."
"It's a months-long project. You sit across from a stranger and exchange data. It's inefficient."
"You're describing it like it's a drill."
"It is a drill."
"Hanna."
"Cal, not every person is ready for that, and I'm not, and I know you were doing it out of love — but I don't think you should set me up with anyone for a while."
"Got it."
"I mean it."
"I said got it. I'll back off. I was just trying to — "
"I know."
"Yeah," Ty says quietly, from the couch.
"I know you were," I say.
Cal cracks another beer. Ty takes a sip of his. His knuckles on the bottle are white. He hasn't said more than a few words to me since I walked in, hasn't looked at me once, sitting on that couch with the discipline of a man holding very, very still because moving would mean doing something that can't be done.
I know that discipline. I invented it.
I look at Ty sideways, under the pretense of looking at the television.
He's wearing, under the hoodie, a gray t-shirt with a small faded logo on the chest — a running shoe. A Brooks t-shirt. I know the Brooks t-shirt, because I bought an identical one in a mall in Portland and mailed it to a P.O. box, without a return address, from a post office in Beaverton, as a birthday present — because I couldn't bring myself to send it to his street address and couldn't bring myself to not send it at all. I watched for a year for him to reach out about it or throw the package out. He did neither. I decided it had been lost in the mail.
It clearly wasn't lost in the mail.
It's on him. On the couch. Next to my brother. On a Thursday night.
I'm going to be sick.
"Hanna?" Cal says.
"I'm holding." I stand up and slide my flats back on. "I'm tired. I'm going."
"I thought we were doing the debrief."
"We did it. He was nice. I'm not ready. You're not setting me up again. That was the debrief."
"That was a short debrief."
"I'm a tired woman, Calvin."
"Fine. Drive safe."
I walk to the door. At the door I pause without turning around and say, to the ceiling, "Goodnight."
