He's here. Somewhere. Between the firehouse and wherever he lives, going about his days like I'm not blocks away unpacking boxes.
Maybe he's been replaying it, too. Six months of that voice crack living rent-free in his head, same as mine.
"You're smiling," Erin says, cutting through my thoughts.
"I'm not."
"Your whole face is smiling, Lily."
"It's the lavender," I insist, turning away so she can't see. "I'm having an allergic reaction."
She grunts, and bumps me with her shoulder.
Outside, February is gray and cold. Inside, Harbor Hill is small and quiet and mine. I grin at the dahlias like an idiot.
2
CAL
Ihave a clear, boring system. Wake at six. Coffee, black, standing at the kitchen counter because sitting feels like wasting time. Check on Dad. He's already in the workshop by then, door cracked, radio on low, talking to Mom like she's sitting on the stool by the window.
I don't interrupt. Just listen long enough to know he's okay. Whatever version of okay he's been running on for eleven years.
Then the firehouse. Twelve-hour shifts, sometimes twenty-four. I like the structure. The job tells me where to stand, what to carry, when to move. Leaves little room for thinking about anything else.
After shift: pub with Ramsey. A beer, maybe two. Home by ten. Chat with Dad. Shower. Sleep.
Days off are spent with Dad or around town doing whatever needs doing. Fixing Mr. J's porch railing. Helping Ramsey. Dropping supplies at the firehouse. Harbor Hill issmall enough there's always someone who needs a hand, and I'm always available.
The system works. It worked through every out-of-town weekend I never talked about. Through every woman whose last name I didn't learn on purpose. Through all of it, it was consistent and mine.
Then a girl walked down a staircase last summer and I forgot my own name.
Six months ago, Lily Moreland said "I'm not everyone" when I first met her, and I've been trying to get my footing back ever since.
I'm a grown man, a firefighter. Someone who's carried unconscious people out of burning buildings without flinching. And I was rattled for seventy-two hours because a twenty-one-year-old said my full name in a nice way. If the guys at the firehouse found out, I'd have to move states.
Rome had spotted enough from one interaction to pull me aside afterward. Stay away from my baby sister, he'd said, with emphasis onbabyand her young age of twenty-one thrown at me repeatedly.
I had promised easily. Because she wasn't staying, and I was sure it was nothing.
She was just the most beautiful person I'd ever seen in my entire life, but so what? Beautiful people exist. They walk around in the world all the time and other people manage to function normally around them. I could be one of those people. I could look at her and feel nothing and go back to my system and forget she ever existed.
She went back to Chicago, I went back to my life. Everything was going great, and with a little time I would have forgotten all about her. Then she moved here.
First time I saw her again was at Erin's shop. I stopped in to grab flowers for Dad. He likes them in the kitchen and workshop, says Mom always kept flowers there and the house feels wrong without them. I've been picking them up every week for years now. It's part of the system.
I push open the door and she's behind the counter, not Erin. The air leaves my lungs in a way I'm going to say didn't happen.
Long brown hair, waves and waves of it, spilling over one shoulder and almost down to her waist. The kind of hair that looks like she just woke up and also like she could be in a shampoo commercial, thick and wild and catching the light from the window in a way that makes me forget I'm here for flowers.
Freckles are scattered across her nose and cheeks like someone flicked a paintbrush at her. Those full lips, soft pink, slightly parted as she concentrates on the stems in her hands.
And then her eyes, the ones that were the hardest to forget. Gray, pale and striking, the color of storm clouds or winter mornings or something equally stupid and poetic that I am not going to say out loud.
She's wearing an oversized sweater slipping off one shoulder, exposing the strap of something underneath and a stretch of bare skin I lose my mind over.
She's wrapping stems in brown paper, humming off-key to something I can't hear, completely unaware that I've stopped functioning at the sight of her. Again.
