Page 4 of Full Tilt
“That I’m doing well?” I finished. “Notwell,Mom,” I snapped, and wiped my nose on the back of my hand. “We’re a fuckingsensation.We’re thenext big thing…”
“You know I don’t care for all this foul language, Cassandra,” she said. Now her voice was turning to stone, walling me out. But I couldn’t stop.
“You tell Dad that, okay? You tell him I made it, and that Idid it without his fucking help or approval or…or his goddamn roof over my head.”
“I’m going to hang up now, Cassandra.”
I sucked in a breath, instantly regretting every word. I needed to hear more of her voice.“Mom, wait. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”
The line was quiet, and I thought she’d hung up until I heard her draw in a shaky little breath.
I eased one of my own and closed my eyes. “I’m sorry. Tell Dad…” I swallowed down the tears. “Tell him I love him. Okay? Please?”
“I will,” she said, though I didn’t believe it. Not for a second.
“Thanks, Mom. And I love you too. How are—?”
“I have to get off now. Take care.”
The line went quiet for good.
I stared at my phone a few moments more. A tear splatted onto its face, and I wiped it away with my thumb. I thought about pressing the ‘call’ button again. I could call her back and tell her I was sorry for swearing. Or I could call back and say I wasn’t fucking sorry at all. I was never calling again. I was as done with them as they were done with me.
Are they done with me?
The thought made my heart ache. No, not yet. My mother held on. She needed my phone calls. I knew that. But if I never called her again, she wouldn’t call me. I knew that too. She was still a bystander in her own child’s life.
I slumped against the concrete wall. I could hear the crowd on the other side growing restless. It sounded like a thunderstorm moving closer. If we didn’t take the stage soon…
I needed a smoke.
I pulled a battered soft pack of cigarettes from the top part of my thigh-high boot and lit it from a matchbook tucked into the cellophane.
I drew in deep, exhaled, and slumped lower against the wall, weighed down by all the tears I didn’t cry over the last four years.They threatened to burst out now in my own thunderstorm. I battled it all back, inhaled it hard, wrapped it in smoke and pressed it into my gut where it sat like a lead weight.
Dad won’t even talk to me.
I exhaled the thought back out.So what? Who cares what he thinks? He’s never given a shit in twenty-two years, why would he start now? Fuck him.
A brave speech, except I would’ve given anything to hear my dad’s voice, and not have it be laced with disappointment or anger. To hear him say he missed me or he loved me. To be told I could come home any time I wanted and the door would be open…
But he’d shut and locked that door, maybe forever, and the foundation on which I’d been built was crumbling to dust.
The crowd roared on the other side of the wall. They were clamoring for us. For me. They loved me.
And as Roxie Hart would say, I loved them for loving me.
I took another pull from my vodka and rose from my crouch just as Jimmy Ray busted through a door on the landing above mine, looking frantic and wound up.
Our manager was in his mid-forties with thinning hair. His suit—always Armani, since a mid-size label signed us three months ago—hung a bit loose over his lanky frame. His wild eyes landed on me, and he collapsed against the wall in exaggerated relief, his hand over his heart.
“Jesus, kitten, give me a coronary why don’t you? The gig was supposed to start half an hour ago.”
I ground out the cigarette under the heel of my boot and plastered a smile on my face. “Sorry, Jimmy. I had an important phone call. But I’m good now. Ready to kick ass.”
“Glad to hear it. This crowd is going eat us alive if we don’t get out there, a-sap.”
I moved past him, but he stopped me, his hand on my chin, studying my face.
