second one was for generally being the biggest pussy I’ve ever met.”
I couldn’t argue with him on either count, and I didn’t.
I moved my jaw back and forth and heard more Tic-Tac noises.
“You have nothing to say to that?” Cal asked abrasively.
I sighed. “How did you find me?”
He threw his head back and laughed with disdain. “Seriously? Why are you such an asshat? Have you ever heard of the internet? Anyone can find anyone. We both know you’re here.” My face must have betrayed something when he said we, because he rolled his eyes and said, “Yes, Harp. October knows where you are. People on Yelp have reviewed your guitar lessons. It’s not rocket science.”
Part of me wished Cal would hit me again, knock me unconscious.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said. “Did you expect her to come knocking on your door? You’re the last person she wants to see. And she’s the last person you deserve.”
Again, I couldn’t argue with him.
“Cal, why are you here?”
He stood up and strode around the room like he was looking for something. His eyes paused on the corner where I kept my Martin, and the old Silvertone I’d recently acquired from a pawnshop in Columbia Falls. It came in a case that was also an amp, and Cal looked at it mawkishly, probably because he’d had an almost identical one when we were kids.
“Got anything stronger than water in this place?”
I nodded toward the kitchen. “Cabinet to the left of the sink.”
Cal walked into the kitchen, grabbed the tequila from the shelf, opened a few more cabinets, and came back with the bottle and two mugs that said “Cowgirl Coffee” on them. He poured generous shots.
I took the ice away from my face again, pulled two cubes from the dishtowel, and dropped them into my drink.
“Why am I here?” Cal repeated. “I was asking myself that same question on the cab ride over from the airport.” He downed his drink in one swallow and made a face. Paper-belly, I thought, and my heart ached.
I downed my drink too, and it was soothing at first, but once it settled into my gut, I swore it magnified the pain in my face.
As Cal refilled our mugs, declarations of contrition spun around my head, but I thought it best to let Cal do the talking. He was squinting up at the ceiling light, and I wondered if he noticed it was the same fake-bronze, flush-mounted fixture I’d had in my room as a kid, a frosted semicircle with a little knob in the center that looked like a nipple. Cal and I used to call it the boob light.
“I’m here because I’m a fucking sap, that’s why.” He stared down into his drink, ran his thumb around the rim of the mug, and I could tell by the way he was stretching his mouth from side to side that he was getting emotional. “I’m going to tell you something,” he said. “And I want you to think about this. Even during all those years that we’d lost touch, whenever I imagined myself old and gray, retired to some big old house, maybe over on Muir Beach or up in Bolinas, I always imagined you there, the two of us still playing the Tam High setlist, still talking about, I don’t know, guitars and girls, I guess.” He chuckled a little. “And that time I beat the crap out of you in Montana.”
I chuckled too, but tears filled my eyes.
“You’re my family, you fuckhead. Literally the only family member I have. And what you did—” He shook his head. “I confided in you. I trusted you. And the whole time you were—” He stopped, covered his mouth with his palm, rubbed his chin. “I shouldn’t have found out like that.” He met my eyes fiercely, and I stayed with him. “You should have told me, Harp. At the very least, you should have fucking told me.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” I set my mug on the table without finishing my drink. “I also know the word ‘sorry’ is meaningless. It doesn’t sum up even 1 percent of my remorse.” I rubbed my eyes despite the pain in my face. “I would do anything to make things right with you, Cal.”
He moved to pour me more tequila, but I covered my mug with my hand, feeling the need to be at least semi-lucid for the rest of the conversation.