Page 69 of The Cadence
“I had to be more mature because I took care of myself for a long time,” I explained. “I’ve tried to talk to them and neither will listen, but…” I hesitated. “If I were you, there are a few things I would try.” I gave her my ideas.
“You bitch!”
I had been expecting some anger after my conversation with Miss Sloane went public, and here it was. The day after we’d had that lunch, I walked into the grocery store and Kirsten bore down on me from the direction of the bakery department. She was obviously furious. “Bitch!” she hissed again.
“Let me put away my pocketbook,” I requested, but she was more interested in fighting right here in public. The store was starting to get more crowded as the weekend approached, even if it was another out-of-town game. There would be no tailgating but there were still snacks to be made.
She stomped as she followed me toward the back and didn’t lower her volume at all. “How dare you tell my grandmother to take back her money? How are we supposed to get a house now? Why don’t you mind your own business?”
I turned and put my hand over her mouth. “Stop yelling. It’s not polite when you’re inside,” I said sternly. “Your grandmother asked me to come have lunch because she’s so worried. If she doesn’t want to buy a house for you, then that’s her decision.”It had been my advice that Miss Sloane needed to turn off the financial tap and rescind her offer of financing their property purchase, and she had chosen to listen. “It’s her money, so she gets to do what she wants with it!”
Kirsten shoved my arm away. “Remember that I saved you from a molester!” she shouted.
“Stop yelling or I’ll put my hand back,” I warned. “I thanked you and I also made you a batch of cookies that you liked a lot. I really appreciated it. I also think that you’ll come to appreciate how your grandma is looking out for you and your future.” Another thing that I had suggested would make Kirsten safer: she would have to get a driver’s license, or she would not be allowed to take any of the cars on the road. She would need to return to college, either the one she’d attended before or the one nearby, or she had to get a full-time job. If she didn’t, she would go back to live with her parents somewhere near The City.
“She’s not trying to control you…well, she is,” I conceded, “but only because you need some control. She’s setting standards because she loves you.”
“My grandma doesn’t love me! If she did, she’d want me to be happy,” she retorted. She’d still been too loud, but at least she wasn’t yelling anymore. “I’ll only be happy if I live with Cully.”
“Like heck she doesn’t love you!” I said. “Why is she trying to make you finish your degree?”
“She wants me to be bored.”
“No, she wants you to set yourself up for success for the rest of your life. She does want you to be happy and that’s also why shedoesn’t want you and Cully to live together. She’s afraid that if you do, you’ll break up.”
In fact, I was pretty sure that Miss Sloane would have been glad if they’d split and she had no thoughts about trying to shore up their relationship. But I’d had a revelation while I was driving here for my shift. The only reason that Kirsten wanted to live with him was to make him love her, to force him into really feeling it. It made sense that threatening the opposite effect would make her think twice about the idea.
“We’re very happy together,” she announced. “That won’t change!” But I watched her face, and her expression moved from anger into contemplation. “Why would we break up?”
“When you live with someone, you find out everything about them,” I answered. “Are you ready to show him all that? All your flaws?”
“What flaws?” Kirsten challenged angrily, but then she contemplated more. “One thing I like to do is eat hard-boiled eggs with anchovy paste,” she said slowly. “My grandmother made a few comments about how that smells.”
I was nearly gagging from the thought of that snack.
“Cully might think it was weird,” she continued. “And he might not like it that I only paint my toenails while I’m naked.”
“No, he would probably like that a lot. But do you see what I mean?” I prompted her. “If you don’t want him to know everything about you, then you can’t live with him. Because he will find out.”
“The mystery will be gone,” she agreed. “He’ll know how I look with no makeup on!”
“Wait, he’s never seen you without makeup?” I asked. “Really?”
“No wonder Will Bodine won’t sleep with you,” she said. She actually clucked her tongue. “Poor thing. You jumped right into his house and if you look this bad when you go out in public, I can only imagine what rags you wear when you’re at home.”
“That’s rude!”
“So is telling me that my boyfriend isn’t going to love me anymore!” she retorted, and she did have a point. “Maybe you should move out and live separately if you want Bodine. I think that might work better for me and Cully, and it’s not like we don’t already have a physical connection. We’re having sex so much that I wore him out. This morning he fell asleep while he was driving and he ran off the road.”
“Holy Moses! Is he ok?” And I got distracted by his near miss with a pine tree and forgot for the moment what she’d said about how Will wasn’t ever going to fall in love with me—and why he didn’t even want to sleep with me. After all, he’d had plenty of chances. Chance upon chance upon chance, especially now that the guest cottage was under construction and I was just up the stairs from his bedroom.
I knew the story of how Cully and Kirsten had gotten together because she’d described it several times and in a lot of detail, and I thought about that on the way home. I let my mind gloss over the specifics of how exactly she’d used the agile tongue that she often bragged about, but I did focus on the fact that she haddefinitely made the first move. That move had been to unbutton the top of his jeans and dive right in, which was maybe a little beyond me…
Then I thought of when I had made my own first move, seven years before. “I love you. I love you so much! I’ll do anything for us to be together, forever!” I’d told Will in the parking lot next to the football field at our high school.
And I remembered his response, too: “Uh, Calla…I think you’re a sweet girl. I like you a lot, a real lot.” The word “but” had hung in the air and then he’d told me all the reasons why he didn’t love me back. If I wanted to make another move on him, then I’d have to be ready to hear something like that again. Of course, I was a lot older now and a lot better equipped to deal with rejection. Just the week before, a woman had contacted me about painting a king-sized headboard for her bedroom, which would have been my biggest project yet. But then, she’d backed out and said she was going to do something different, and she’d added that she thought my style was a little primitive. I had thanked her for her feedback while sticking out my tongue at the screen, and then I’d moved on.
Will rejecting me, though, wouldn’t wrap up tidily when I stuck out my tongue and deleted an email. It would have more repercussions, like, would I still live in his house? No, I couldn’t do that! I had enough money saved for a new place but now my grandma’s furniture and all the boxes of her stuff had been loaded onto a moving truck and was on the way here from Chattanooga. And the thought of waking up without the coffeehe’d already made…the thought of waking up and not seeing him…
