"Thanks, Rome," I manage.
He nods and goes back to eating. We talk about interview prep and Poppy's wedding and whether Gran is going to behave at the ceremony or cause an incident, which we both agree is a coin flip at best.
Later, I walk home with my brother's voice in my head.
I trust you. Three words, offered without conditions, from the person whose opinion matters more to me than anyone else's on this earth.
I hate lying to him, but the other option isn't much of anoption, not when everything is still so new and fragile and ours.
We're leaving in two days. Callahan is picking me up before dawn, a packed bag already in his trunk, a hotel booked in Baltimore where nobody knows our names.
My first interview at Hopkins is Thursday, and he's going with me and for three whole days we get to exist in a world where we're just two people who want each other.
I let myself want it, fully and without apology. I let the excitement sit right next to the guilt, both of them taking up space they have equal right to.
26
CAL
She eats breakfast like it's a competitive sport. I ordered room service while she was still asleep, the tray arriving with eggs, toast and fruit and coffee and some kind of pastry things I couldn't identify.
Lily surfaced from the sheets at the sound of the cart, blinking at the light like a creature emerging from hibernation, and now she's sitting cross-legged on the bed in my t-shirt and panties and nothing else. Eating a croissant, and getting flakes on the duvet. Talking about the interview with her mouth half full.
Her hair is knotted on top of her head in a way that's already coming undone, and there's a pillow crease on her cheek that she hasn't noticed yet. I sit opposite her with my coffee and watch her, enjoying every single thing about this moment, about her, how she exists in space like the world arranged itself around her and not the other way around.
I lose myself in her. The way her hands move, the way she licks butter off her thumb, the way her whole bodyparticipates in the story she's telling. When I refocus, she's mid-sentence.
"…and then it came back and I just went with it. I either nailed it, or I sounded confident enough that no one could tell the difference."
"You nailed it," I tell her.
She meets my eye over her croissant, skeptical. "You don't know that."
"I know you."
The smile creeps in slowly and pleased, spreading across her face like sunrise over water. She goes back to eating without commenting on it.
In the months I've known her, I've come to understand that she handles compliments by tucking them away quietly, storing them somewhere safe where she can take them out later and turn them over in private. The ones she expects, the surface-level ones about her face or her body, she bats around like a cat with a toy. But the ones that see her, really see her, those she keeps.
This is day three in Baltimore. Her interview was Thursday morning, and I waited outside in the rental car trying not to think about what it would mean if she got in.
I knew before she said a word that it had gone well. Her whole body was buzzing with that specific Lily energy, the kind that meant she had walked into that room and owned it, made them remember her, and left them no choice but to want her.
I kissed her in the parking lot, in broad daylight. No checking the mirrors, no scanning for familiar plates, no calculations about who might see and what they might say.
We spent the days after exploring. She wanted to seeeverything, and I was content to follow her through whatever caught her attention, which turned out to be a lot.
The harbor. The bookshops. A bakery she'd read about online that had a line around the block, which she insisted was worth the wait, and she was right.
She dragged me into a vintage store and made me try on a leather jacket that I looked ridiculous in. She took a photo, smiled at it, and hugged her phone to her chest like she'd captured something precious.
We ate dinner at a restaurant where the waiter called her ma'am and me sir, and we sat on the same side of the booth because we could. She put her head on my shoulder somewhere between appetizer and main course, and I rested my chin on her hair as calm and ease found me.
I hadn't known how much I needed that, the freedom to have her close in the ordinary middle of an ordinary evening, and not only in stolen moments after dark. I hadn't known until I had it.
Every block we walked was a block in a city that could become hers. On campus, students moved in clusters with their backpacks and their tired faces and their whole lives ahead of them, and I watched Lily watching them.
This could be her life next year. These streets, these people, this pace. A big life. A life far away from me.
