Page 61 of Second Alarm
"I know."
"Anyway. That's the whole thing. You figure out your own love life. I'm out." He shoves a bite of pasta in his mouth with the face of a man who's said the hard thing and is moving past it at lightning speed.
I can't eat the pasta.
I can't eat the pasta because I'm a liar. I'm lying to Cal at the kitchen table on a Tuesday night while he's sincerely apologizing for loving me badly, eating pasta, and my brother just told me — in the only way Cal knows how to tell anybody anything — that he's going to try to be better, and I'm going to burn in hell.
"Hanna."
"Yeah."
"You okay? You're not eating."
"I'm eating."
"You've had one bite. Are you tired or something?" He leans forward. "Should I get Gemma?"
"No, I'm — "
"Ty!" Cal yells, because when in doubt, Cal yells for Ty. It's a habit he formed somewhere around when our father died andhas never broken. "Ty, come here, Hanna's being weird. She's not eating pasta."
"Don't yell for Ty, Cal — "
"She's being weird!"
Ty appears in the kitchen doorway looking exactly like a man who's been listening from the apparatus bay.
"What."
"She had one bite and she's sitting there." Cal waves his fork. "I don't know, she's in her head. You're good at fixing her. I've noticed this over the years. I don't know why. Fix her."
"I can't fix her."
"Hanna." Ty gives me the voice he's used on Cal for a decade — indulgent, long-suffering. "Are you okay."
"I'm fine."
"She's lying," Cal says.
"I know." Ty doesn't move from the doorway. "But I can't fix her, Cal."
"You always fix her."
"Hanna can fix Hanna."
"Hanna fixes everybody else." Cal's fork goes down. "Who fixes Hanna? She can't be her own fixer. Tyler."
"Cal — "
"One sentence. One Ty sentence. You know what I mean. Her face is going to do a thing, and she's going to eat her pasta. Just do it."
Ty looks at me with the expression of a man who's been conscripted. "Hanna. Eat your pasta."
I look at him.
Cal turns to me.
I pick up my fork and eat a bite.
