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“But she—”
“I don’t care about none of that.” Calli waved me off. “Whatever was between you and her,youbrought somebody else into it, and got that young lady hurt. She doing alright?”
“Jess? She’s fine.” I shrugged. “A little banged up, but that’s all.”
“Then she got lucky; the lion queen has some decorum. I would’ve pulled my pistol out.”
“No you wouldn’t.” I laughed, until… the look on her face told me that wasn’t meant to be funny. “You…wouldn’t, right?”
“Ihave,” she corrected me. “Your granddaddy tried to play one of those games with meonegood time, thought making me jealous would tighten up my attitude. I put an extra hole in both of their asses and would do it again too.”
“Calli… you’re serious?” I asked her.
“As a stroke.” She winked at me. “Why you think your granddaddy had that limp? I gave him that,” she said proudly. “And it’s not to say Ididn’tneed to tighten my attitude up. I was a hellion, and he wasn’t wrong for thinking it. But there’s a way to go about things andthatwasn’t the way. You get what I’m saying to you?”
I grunted an affirmative answer, then turned to look out the window too.
At this point, it didn’t even matter who was right.
This rift had gone on longer than it should and felt as if it had undone all the progress we’d made toward being anactualcouple.
Not just strangers who fucked.
We were enjoying each other and then… she went to the doctor.
I thought something was wrong with her.
I hadn’timmediatelyjumped to the worst conclusion.
But then she was all sneaky and cagey about it, not wanting to just tell me what was going on, and it felt like… like I’d imagined us growing closer.
Like she couldn’t trust me and like Idefinitelyshouldn’t be trusting her.
And in a way… she was right.
Shecouldn’ttrust me, not the with the way I’d reacted to something she insisted was a mistake. And when I really thought about it rationally… probably was.
It was just hard to accept.
Why?
I… wasn’t even sure.
Calli reached for my hand, giving it a light squeeze.
“Pride is gonna cause you to lose the very thing you thought was important, baby,” she said, giving me an encouraging smile. “Let go of whatever is holding you back and apologize to your wife so you can move forward. I don’t know how much longer I’ve got and that one ain’t giving you any babies on bad terms.”
I shook my head, turning my hand over to return her squeeze. “Two months ago you were telling me you planned to be here a good while longer. Why you talking like this now?”
“Reality is setting in.” She laughed. “And when it’s my time to go, I’m going.”
I knew that, obviously.
It still wasn’t something I wanted to hear, though.
Calli’s mortality had been staring me in the face a while, but with her seeming to take on a rapid decline in the past year… things felt so much more urgent.
More important.
