My Sister Is the Warlord Queen novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: His Shirt

The doctor let Roisin go at nine that night on the condition that she didn't climb stairs.

The apartment over the bakery had nineteen of them.

"My place has an elevator," Cal said. "And a guest room. And a door that isn't a hole."

Roisin looked at him, then me.

"Is this a trick to get my sister into your apartment?"

"Yes," Cal said.

"Okay," Roisin said. "As long as you're honest."

His place was the top floor of an old ropewalk building in the Navy Yard.

Brick walls, steel beams, a window the size of a garage door looking out over the harbor.

There was almost no furniture.

A couch, a table, a lot of books about ships.

"You live like a monk," Roisin said, lowering herself onto the couch.

"I live like a man who's on a tug six days a week."

"Do you have plates?"

"I have four plates."

"Do you have food?"

He ordered Thai from the place on Main Street and got one of everything because he didn't know what she liked.

We ate on the floor around his coffee table with the four plates.

Roisin had her feet up on a pillow like the doctor said and her sonogram propped against a soy sauce bottle where she could see it.

"So how long have you two been doing this?" she asked.

"Doing what?" I said.

"The thing you were doing on the counter when I came downstairs last night."

Cal choked on a noodle.

"We weren't doing anything," I said.

"You were about to do something. I've seen you about to do something. You did it to the paperboy in eighth grade."

"I punched the paperboy."

"Same face."

Cal was laughing now, quietly, his hand over his eyes.

"She punched someone in eighth grade?"

"She punched someone every year from fifth to tenth grade," Roisin said. "Then she joined the Army so the Army would let her."

"That's not why I joined the Army."

"Why did you join?"

"Because it paid."

That shut all three of us up for a second.

Roisin looked at her noodles.

"It paid for my braces," she said to Cal. "And my school shoes. And culinary school. And this." She nodded at the sonogram. "Probably this too, somehow."

"Roisin."

"I'm just telling him. Somebody should know."

Cal looked at me across the table.

He didn't say anything.

He didn't have to.

At eleven Roisin got up, kissed the top of my head like I was the little sister, and limped down the hall to the guest room.

She stopped in the doorway.

"The walls are brick," she said. "I'll put a pillow over my head. Have fun."

She shut the door.

I put my face in my hands.

"I like her," Cal said.

"Everybody likes her."

"I like you too."

I looked up.

He was sitting on the floor across from me with his back against the couch, still in his flannel shirt from the hospital, sleeves rolled, the city lights on the water behind him.

"I can sleep on the couch," he said. "If today's been enough."

I stood up.

I held out my hand.

He took it and let me pull him up.

"Today's been a lot," I said. "It hasn't been enough."

I pulled him down the hall backwards, my fingers hooked in his belt loops, his mouth on my neck before we made the bedroom.

He tasted like Thai chili and I didn't care.

"The room at the end," I said. "Hurry."

"Bossy."

"You have no idea."

I walked him through the doorway and stopped with my back against the brick.

Cold through my dress, rough on my shoulder blades.

Good.

It kept me sharp while his hands found my waist.

"Take this off." I shoved at his flannel. "I want skin."

He shrugged it off and let it fall.

The white T-shirt underneath was thin enough to see the shape of him, broad chest, the muscle in his shoulders from years on boats.

"Now the shirt."

He pulled it over his head in one motion.

I put my hands on him.

Flat against his chest, then down, nails dragging over his stomach.

He made a sound low in his throat and caught my wrists.

"My turn," he said.

He peeled the dress off me like he was unwrapping something he'd paid for and wanted to savor.

It hit the floor.

I stood in my black cotton underwear with his hands on my bare hips and his thumb stroking the scar through my eyebrow.

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