Page 49 of If Not for My Baby
“I’m glad you’re enjoyin’ yourself,” he grumbles, but I can hear the warmth in his voice.
“You can put me down,” I say between fits of laughter. The bus is gone because Halloran was pulling me—a woman who doesn’t even drink—away from the bar.More laughter. More snot. Halloran doesn’t put me down. Instead he hurries us back inside, where the music makes my head spin faster. At this rate this party is going to go until next year.
Halloran talks to a Rhett-shaped blob but I can’t really hear either of them. Everything is textured with black spots and thumping bass. I’m vaguely aware that I’m still scooped up in his arms like a rag doll and embarrassment begins to sink in. I squirm to be put down, but Halloran only grips me closer to him.
“Stop that,” he says against my ear.
“White knight looks good on you, Tommy,” Rhett jokes.
“He’s not a knight, he’s just fromIreland,” I slur.
“Oh, man.” Rhett laughs. “She’s a keeper.”
“She needs sleep,” Halloran grunts as he tucks me even closer into his chest.
Before I can muster a response, Halloran is carrying me up the stairs. It’s quieter up here, and even quieter still when he ducks us into a dark bedroom. The door closes behind us and I am gently deposited on a bed. The sheets are cool on my flushed face and while I’m relishing that sensation, Halloran is turning on the bedside lamp.
I blink my eyes back open—I hadn’t even realized theywere closed. The room is a bit fuzzy but I can make out a flat-screen TV, fur throw, white sheets, a few giant candles on the mantel…This room looks like one fromMTV Cribs. Someone has definitely saidthis is where the magic happensabout this bed.
I can still hear the music pumping up from downstairs, but it’s fainter. I only notice then that Halloran is on the phone, though his gaze sweeps over me, assessing. “Well, we’re not on the bus, now are we?”
Silence. Someone is laughing on the other line. A man.
My ankles are aching. I am determined to get these stilettos off. I yank as hard as I can—almost, so close…
And topple right off the bed onto the concrete floor, elbow first. Pain blossoms and I whine like a puppy.
“Shite,” Halloran says into the phone, racing over to me. “Yeah.” A pause as he pulls me up and deposits me back on the bed. “Sweet Clem is battered,” he says, searching me for injury, phone cradled between his ear and shoulder. Tears have gathered in my eyes and they multiply when he finds my elbow. “We’ll meet you in Portland for sound check. Just tell Jen it’s me.” More listening as he props me carefully against the pillows, stealing one to put under my arm. Another laugh sounds on the other end. “Feck off,” Halloran says good-naturedly. One last pause, and then a hurried but genuine, “All right. Thanks.”
Halloran sits down on the bed and tucks my feet into his lap. Gently, he undoes the buckles of my pesky heels, allowing them to slip to the ground. My feet swell in all the places the shoes were constricting blood flow, so everywhere.
“Are we in trouble?” I sound seven years old. My elbow pulses in pain. I wonder if my chin is wobbling.
Halloran’s eyes find mine in the low light, his thumb stroking over my ankle in sympathy. “We aren’t, love.”
I have my first bone to pick with alcohol because my vision is too blurred to see Halloran’s expression as he says the word. I know he didn’t mean to call me that. But for a moment, I allow myself to think it wasn’t a slipup. That he’s mine, and I am his. Some part of me—one I wish I could call lost, but know, deep down, never even existed in the first place—comes alive at the thought.
When I sit up a bit to get a better look at my elbow, Halloran draws in a ragged breath and leans close. I feel his hand brush my upper arm and my skin heats—until I realize he’s slipping the strap of my dress back up over my shoulder. His eyes stay on my face as he does so.
“I’m not wearing a bra because of Molly.”
“In any other instance I’d give Molly a token of my gratefulness. My house. Perhaps my firstborn.”
I snort and then tip back into the over-fluffed pillows. Everything feels like I’m underwater. His glorious jaw and hair are backlit by the bedside lamp. At some point he’s opened a window and alongside the swirls of fresh night air, the music from the party funnels in a bit louder. We sit for a while in that music-tinged silence, my feet in his lap.
“We’re on a road to nowhere, come on inside.”
“I love this song,” I slur. My head is a carousel on fast-forward.
“Talking Heads,” he agrees quietly.
“Takin’ that ride to nowhere, we’ll take that ride.”
“It’s me,” I say. Going nowhere fast. My anthem.
Halloran turns to me and cocks his head. A beat later, in some pained realization of what I meant, he utters, “Jesus, Clem.”
His pity knots my stomach. Pity and…far too much booze.
