"Ah."
"On purpose."
I exhaled through my nose and stared up at the water stain on my bedroom ceiling that had looked like a duck for so long I'd named it Gerald. "Okay, yeah. That tracks."
I threw the covers back and sat up, reachin' for the t-shirt I'd left on the nightstand. Calvin stayed flat on her back, eyes on Gerald, arms crossed over her stomach.
"He just sat there." She said it with somethin' between admiration and frustration. "Like a statue. Didn't move. Didn't say a word."
"That's Rhett." I stood and grabbed my jeans off the floor, tossin' her one of my flannels from the chair in the corner. She caught it without lookin' and sat up to pull it on.
"That's insane."
"That's also Rhett."
I headed for the kitchen and she followed, the soft pad of her bare feet behind me in the hall. It hit me somewhere between the bedroom door and the refrigerator. Her wearin' my flannel, me rootin' around for the butter, the whole morning unfoldin' like it was somethin' we'd done a hundred times before. Like it was just ours.
I cracked the first egg into the pan before I trusted myself to keep talkin'.
"He's not gonna chase her. Man sat on his hands for twenty years while I played house with the woman he was in love with. Coulda said somethin' at any point." I shook my head. "Didn't. That's just Rhett."
Calvin leaned in the kitchen doorway, watchin' me with her sleep-mussed hair and her crooked-buttoned flannel like she belonged exactly there.
"So what, he's just gonna let her—" She stopped herself, pressin' her lips together. "Not my business."
"Since when?"
She pushed off the doorframe and crossed the kitchen to flick me in the nose before drifting toward the coffee maker.
"Ow." I grinned, crackin' the second egg. "It'll work out. That's all I know. Those two have got more stubborn between 'em than a mule with a grudge, but it'll work out."
Calvin leaned back against the counter beside the coffee maker, arms crossed, starin' at the drip like she was willin' it to go faster. Close enough that our shoulders nearly touched. She didn't pull back. That still got me, every time. The not pullin' back.
"You look out for her."
"I like her." Simple. Final. The tone of someone who didn't plan to elaborate.
I hadn't expected that either, honestly. Wasn't sure Calvin had liked many people in her life long enough to notice. But I just nodded and turned back to the stove, lettin' the quiet settle between us while the butter popped and sizzled and the coffee started to brew.
We ate standin' up, both leaned against the counter, shoulders touchin'. She stole the better half of my toast without askin' and I let her without commentin' and neither of us said a word about any of it.
When the plates were empty she set hers in the sink, rinsed it, and that was that.
"I gotta get back," she said, not unkindly.
"Yeah." I rinsed my plate and set it with hers. "I'll walk you out."
She pulled her jeans on in the bedroom while I found her boots by the door. Handed them to her when she reappeared, still wearin' my flannel over her own shirt from last night. She glanced down at it, then back at me with a question she didn't quite ask.
"Keep it," I said.
She pressed her lips together, fightin' the smile tryin' to break free. She looked back down and finished pullin' on her boots.
I walked her through the back door and down the steps to the lot where her truck sat. The morning was already warm, the sky that particular shade of early blue that didn't last long. She tossed her keys once in her palm, caught them.
"Today was good," she said, squintin' a little against the light.
"Yesterday," I corrected.
