"Your brother happens to have very nice forearms."
"No."
"Really nice forearms." She's settling in now, getting comfortable, and I can feel the trap closing around me. "Thesort that do make you forget what you were saying mid-sentence. I'm not ashamed to admit it."
"I will pay you actual money to stop talking."
"And hands." She holds up her own hand, studies it like she's comparing, like this is a perfectly normal thing to do in the middle of a flower shop while discussing my brother's body parts. "He has these hands that just…"
I cover my ears. Physically. Like a five-year-old who doesn't want to hear that vegetables are healthy. I don't care. Some things cannot be unheard.
"I am going to walk into the harbor."
"…when he rolls his sleeves up and you can see the veins running down his forearms…"
"ERIN."
"…and honestly, Lily, it's a lot to handle. I'm only human."
She's glowing. Actually glowing, lit up with the sheer joy of torturing me. Poppy has one hand pressed to her mouth like that's going to contain the laughter spilling out of her. Traitors. Both of them.
"That's it." I untie my apron and throw it on the counter, because I refuse to stand here and take this. "I'm going next door. I'm going to sit with Ruth and drink a hot cocoa and talk about the Beckett boy and no one is going to mention my brother's hands or Callahan's teeth or anyone's anything."
"His teeth specifically?" Poppy manages between wheezes, wiping her eyes. "You said sex on legs and now you're specifying teeth? What about his teeth, Lil?"
"Goodbye!"
"Have fun with Ruth!" Erin calls after me, not even trying to hide her mirth. "Tell her I said hi!"
I shove through the door and the cold hits me immediately, sharp against my flushed cheeks. I can still hear them behind me, the sound spilling out onto the sidewalk. I stand there for a moment, the chill biting at my skin, and try to arrange my face into annoyed. I'm smiling. I can't help it.
4
CAL
"That one," Ramsey says, pointing at the glass case like a man who has finally achieved enlightenment after three hours of staring at diamonds.
I lean in, squinting at the display. It's a ring. A very nice ring. Also the forty-seventh very nice ring I've looked at in this store alone, and somewhere around ring thirty-two my brain stopped registering the differences. They've all blurred into one shimmering mass of metal and stone.
"It's good," I offer, because I have to say something.
"You said that about the last one," he shoots back, still fixated on the case.
"That one was also good."
"That one was white gold." He finally turns, giving me a look of profound disappointment. "Poppy doesn't wear white gold."
I straighten up and decide to die on this hill because I have nothing left to lose. "They're all circles, Ramsey."
He stares at me like I've just suggested we burn down the store. "They are not all circles."
"They are literally all circles," I argue. "That is the defining characteristic of a ring. It is a circle. You put it on a finger. The finger goes through the circle. That's the whole system."
The woman behind the counter watches us with polite patience as if she has seen many friendships tested in this exact spot. Ramsey ignores her entirely, turning back to the case and pressing his finger against the glass.
"I want her to cry."
"She's going to cry no matter what," I point out. "She cries at commercials."
