"You need to tell Rome," Erin says again, gentle but firm. "He deserves to hear it from you. Not from Ruth or from walking in on you two in a hallway."
"I know."
"Soon, Lily."
"I know." I take a deep breath, feeling the weight of it. "I will. After I figure out how to say it without him driving to Cal's house and dismantling him brick by brick."
"Rome is not going to dismantle him," Erin says. "I'll handle Rome."
"Erin, you don't have to."
"I know I don't have to. I'm going to." The certainty in her face tells me she has already decided. There's no arguing with a decided Erin. "He'll be mad. Then he'll be quiet. Then he'll be fine. You know the cycle."
This woman loves my brother and me, and is volunteering to stand in the middle of it again after swearing she never would.
"Thank you," I manage.
"Don't thank me yet. Thank me after he doesn't kill your boyfriend."
"He's not my boyfriend."
"What is he then?" Poppy asks.
I think about him in Baltimore, watching me eat croissants like it was the best thing he'd ever seen. He always looks at me like I'm the best thing he's ever seen, like I'm something rare and precious that he can't believe he gets to touch.
"He's everything," I whisper. "He's everything and I'm leaving and I don't know what to do about either of those things."
Poppy scoots across the floor and pulls me into her side. Erin comes closer and rests her head on my shoulder from the other direction. We sit there, the three of us, in my small apartment holding each other up.
"You'll figure it out," Poppy murmurs against my hair.
"How do you know?"
"Because you're you. And he's him. And some things figure themselves out if you let them."
I want to believe that. I want to believe it so badly I can taste it. So I hold onto my girls, and I let myself pretend, just for a moment, that she's right.
30
CAL
Friday night, and the pub is packed the way it only gets in January when everyone's hiding from the cold and cabin fever has settled into bones.
Our booth is the usual arrangement: Ramsey and Poppy on one side, Rome and Erin on the other, Lily tucked beside Erin. I'm next to Ramsey, across from Lily, the standard three and a half feet of table between us that might as well be an ocean.
Ramsey has his arm around Poppy, his fingers tracing absent patterns on her shoulder while she leans into him laughing at something Erin said. His mouth presses to her temple mid-laugh, automatic, and she doesn't even register it because it's so constant it's become invisible.
Rome has Erin tucked under his arm, his hand on her thigh visible above the table, and every now and then he leans over and murmurs something against her ear that makes her smile go wide and private. He does this openly,casually, because Rome Moreland does not give a single damn who watches him love his woman.
I sit across from Lily and keep my hands on my fucking beer.
She's wearing something dark and fitted tonight, her hair down around her shoulders, and there's a spot on her neck just below her ear where I put my mouth this morning. I can see it from here if I look, which I'm trying not to do and failing at intervals of about forty-five seconds.
"Stop looking at her." Ramsey's voice is low enough that only I can hear it, his arm still around Poppy, his eyes still on the table, his beer still in his hand. "You got a death wish?"
"It's physically impossible," I confess, because it is. I'm not made to look away from her. The strain of doing it gets worse every day.
"Try harder."
