Page 100 of If Not for My Baby
As if that was all the confirmation Mike needed, he turns back to the fridge and grabs two cases of beer, handing one to me. “When you were offered that scholarship from whatever fancy-ass music college Ev went to, why didn’t you take it?”
“I couldn’t leave my mom. You know that.”
Mike shakes his head. “You, Clementine, have a bad habit of beating the pain before it can beat you. I don’t reckon even you know why you do that, but I’d suggest looking into it. One day avoiding everything that could hurt you might just leave you with nothing at all.”
—
The world’s longest game of Monopoly finally ends when Beth leaves us all destitute—devoid of property, money, and our dignity. It’s nearly three in the morning, but I’ve been checked out for hours. Mike’s words have snagged in my mind like a needle on a record. We say our goodbyes and good nights and I think of his warning as I drop Ev’s car at her place. Heart strangely hollow, I stand by her mailbox and call her once, but it goes to voicemail.
I get back to find Tom and my mom putting away the game and cleaning up stray pizza crust. When her bonesbegin to ache, Tom helps my mom to her bed upstairs and he and I tidy the rest of the house in silence.
“It’s not going to fit us both,” I say, observing my twin bed from the doorway. “You take it.” A yawn sweeps across me. “I can crash on the couch in the basement.”
Tom kneads his fingers into my neck. “Come on.” He walks in and clicks on the fuzzy green bedside lamp.
“You’ll be uncomfortable all night.”
“Not possible if I’m holding you.”
He toes off his boots and then strips to his briefs, shaking his long curls loose from their tie. Illuminated in a funky lime-green glow, with the bandage still plastered across the swollen bridge of his nose, he looks like an acid trip. Then he crawls into my daisy-covered childhood bed and I shake my head.
“What?”
“You don’t fit,” I say, stripping to my underwear and finding an oldFunny GirlT-shirt in my drawers. “I warned you.”
“It’s fine, see?” He’s a little cramped, and his ankles hang off the end of the bed, but sleep will be feasible. That wasn’t what I meant, though, and the thought clenches in my stomach. I turn off the green light.
Slipping in beside him, I try to exhale the entire day. I can’t reconcile the fact that we performed a sold-out show this evening for fifteen thousand people. I’ve lived forty lives in the span of seven hours. I’m able to let go of almost everything minus my conversation with Mike.
Avoiding everything that could hurt you might just leave you with nothing at all.
“Was it nice to be home again?”
Tom’s voice is so gentle, I turn my face away to swallow a wave of emotion. “Mhm.”
“Clem?” When I don’t respond, he brushes the hair from my face to get a better look at me in the moonlight. “Clementine? Have I done somethin’ to upset you?”
Yes,I want to say.You made me fall in love with you.
There’s an uncanny feeling of some divide, cleaving itself down the center of me. The Clementine that grew up in this very bed. Slept in it, every night, nobody else in the creaking house but her mom and her dog. That Clementine, sore from being on her feet all day, saving every dollar for the three of them, her high notes drowned out by the roar of the showerhead while everyone else was asleep…
And this Clementine—the one who lost a thousand dollars’ worth of Conor Callaghan’s chips in Atlantic City, who rode in Rhett Barber’s Thunderbird along I-84, and was offered the opportunity to audition for theWest Side Storyrevival. The Clementine who, despite all protective barricades and padlocks, has fallen grotesquely in love. Horrifically so, and with someone who not only makes a living never staying in one place too long, but who’s all but told her he’s hooked on heartbreak. That Clementine, the first one tells her, is an utterly foolish little girl. A child who’s going to have to grow up real fast in the next seven days. The realization ripples through me like a pebble breaking an untouched lake.
“No, I—” My voice breaks. I swallow hard. “You ever watchThe X-Files?”
The duvet rustles and Tom shifts behind me. “Mhm. Why?”
I stare at the secondhand bookcase across from the bed. If I strain my eyes, I can almost make out all the titles I know are shelved here.Sharp Objects. Murder on the Orient Express. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.Perhaps I can’t read them at all, and I just have them memorized.
“Did you like Scully?”
Tom is quiet for a moment. I can hear the wheels turning in his head, trying to parse out why on earth I’m talking about Dana Scully at three in the morning. He settles on, “She’s a fine character, sure.”
“But she’s always wrong.” My eyes have begun to burn. “I bet she wishes she could be a believer, like Fox is. I bet Eurydice wished she could believe in the power of song the way Orpheus did. But these women…their skepticism kept them safe. Because everything outside of logic is…is unknown, and the unknown is…is—”
“Terrifying,” Tom supplies.
I can’t speak past the lump in my throat.
