Ramsey stares at me as he pushes his glasses up his nose.
I am a nearly thirty-year-old man. A firefighter, someone who once talked a man off a ledge with a cool head, reduced to this.
Ramsey's mouth twitches.
"Don't do it..."
He presses his lips together, but his shoulders are already starting to shake.
"Ramsey, I swear to God..."
He loses it. It rolls out of him in waves, and despiteeverything, despite the mess I've made and the shame sitting heavy in my gut, even I crack, because it is objectively the most pathetic thing I've ever said out loud.
Ramsey wipes at his eyes under his glasses, trying and failing to get himself together.
"Ramsey, fuck you, man."
"Say thank you," he wheezes, barely getting the words out. "For what? For arriving? Leaving?"
"For existing, apparently," I exclaim. "I told you, I've lost my mind. But you go ahead and laugh."
It takes him a long time to settle down, and what's left is the unflinching honesty that's always made Ramsey the person I trust most in the world.
"You need to be careful from here," he says.
"I know."
"Not for Rome's sake." He leans forward slightly. "For hers."
I drop my eyes to my beer, shame and regret slicing through me so sharp it's almost physical.
"You kissed her and walked out like that?" Ramsey shakes his head slowly. "That wasn't one of your proudest moments, my friend."
I can't believe I just left her there. Standing with her heart on her sleeve and tears she hadn't wiped and her hand still holding my shirt like she could keep me there if she just held on tight enough.
"Figure out what you want," Ramsey says. ”And then either do it or don't. But stop leaving her in the middle."
Figure out what you want. The problem is I know exactly what I want. I've known for almost a year, since the first timeshe looked at me. Knowing I can't have it is the hardest part of it all.
LILY
The last personI want to see after the disaster with Callahan is fucking Cherry.
I'm outside Ruth's, iced coffee in hand, doing nothing more threatening than existing on a public sidewalk and trying to piece together the wreckage of my dignity.
The May air smells like cut grass and spring. I can't enjoy any of it.
Cherry materializes like a vulture waiting for an opportunity.
"Lily." She says it like she hasn't spent the last several months directing a low-grade chill my way every time we ended up in the same room.
"What do you want, Cherry?"
She falls into step beside me, uninvited, and we walk half a block in a companionable silence that is not companionable at all. I can feel her watching me from the corner of her eye, and I keep my gaze forward, sipping my coffee like I have nowhere to be and nothing on my mind.
"I've been meaning to check in on you," she says finally, her voice warm with manufactured concern.
“How kind."
