Page 44 of Your Chorus
The words leave me with a bitter laugh before I can stop them. Kay’s eyes go wide, and I curse myself for drinking so much. I’m talkative when I’m tipsy.
“I wasn’t screwing my mom’s boyfriend,” I say slowly. There’s no way I can just leave this hanging now. “That’s not what I meant. I...I just...Look, my mom had a lot of boyfriends. A lot. I’m not trying to slut-shame my own mother, but when you have a kid, it’s just not a great environment to be having these random men in the house all the time. She...liked to party, my mom. She probably still does. She said she was out trying to find someone to look after us, but it was a small town, and you know how kids talk to each other. It just...It sucked.”
Kay nods, her lips pressed into a tight line. I can feel the whole story threatening to spill out.
“One day this businessman from Quebec City, Philippe, showed up in town to work on some sort of logging industry project, and he fell head over heels for mymaman. I don’t know why; they hadnothingin common, but he was crazy about her.Complètement fou. He brought her flowers for no reason and cooked her dinner. She’d never been with a guy like that before. He was just sonice, and her life was so fuckingperfectwith him, and meanwhile, I was still getting made fun of in the halls at school. I had guys asking me if I was as easy as my mom and shit like that. A bunch of them would follow me around after school in a car sometimes. I started ditching my last class of the day just I could get home safe. It made me so fucking angry that it could get better for my mom all of a sudden and still be so shitty for me, and she’d donenothingto deserve it. She was still drinking every day. She still forgot to pay the bills. She wasn’t a better person all of a sudden.”
My chest starts heaving at just the recollection of it, and I force myself to breathe deep.
“I know that sounds petty, but I was sixteen. Sixteen-year-olds are petty. I wanted to hurt her, so...I started flirting with Philippe.” My voice gets small, but I keep going. I can’t look at Kay now. “It was just little things at first, like having inside jokes and standing a bit too close to him. I knew it made him uncomfortable. I knew he didn’t like it, but I kept going...”
Besides Monroe, I’ve only ever told Cole about this, and I even kepthimin the dark for years. I don’t know why it’s all coming out in front of Kay. Maybe it’s the wine, maybe it’s the tension that’s been building up inside me since before the tour even started, but I feel like I need to release this, and somehow, right here and now feels like a safe enough place to do it.
“He proposed to her a few months later,” I tell Kay. “They’d been dating for less than a year. She kept talking about this fairytale wedding they were going to have like we weren’t still struggling to put food on the table. It’s like she hardly even saw me in her future at all. I got more...intense with the flirting. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to stop it. I tried to kiss him one night when she was out. He pushed me away, but I kept telling him it was okay. I wouldn’t leave him alone, and it was like he just...snapped.”
Kay’s hand flies to her mouth. I shiver as I continue. My sentences are all jamming together now.
“He pushed me up against the wall and held me there. He kept saying, ‘C’est ?a que tu veux?This is what you want?’ I didn’t want it anymore, not at all, but it was like he couldn’t stop. He put one hand over my mouth and the other one under my shirt. He kept saying, ‘You wanted this, you wanted this.’ It was like he was begging, like he was trying to apologize, and I was crying, and thenMamancame in...”
I can still see the look on her face.
“She was so mad. She started screaming at me, and that’s when I knew I had to run away. I broke something, and there was no way I was ever going to fix it.”
“Roxanne.” Kay cuts me off before I can continue. “That’s not...It’s not...You can’tpossibly—”
“You can say it’s not my fault,” I interrupt, hating how shaky I sound, “but it keeps happening. It keepsfuckinghappening. I make people do things they don’t want to do. Cole and I...Cole and I were friends for a while after we first met. He found me a job and a place to live. He made sure I was okay, and he didn’t want anything in return. He was...everythingto me. I looked up to him so much. He saved me. He really did. He didn’t just find me at a bus stop; he helped me find myself.”
Just talking about him makes me feel stronger, but there’s no happy ending coming up.
“He was dating this girl—I won’t get into it because he’s really private about it, but she was his link to the family that raised him, and if he hurt her, he’d hurt all of them. They meant so much to him. Theydomean so much to him, and he was going to leave her anyway. He didn’t want to, but he would have. I made him feel like he had to. I couldn’t split another family in half. I couldn’t destroy anything else, so I left. I don’t know if anyone ever told you this, but I left Montreal for a while. I went to Quebec City for a year.”
Kay shakes her head, and I continue.
“It was okay at first. I got an apartment. I got a job in a restaurant. I started dating this guy. It was the first time I’d ever officially dated anyone. I didn’t feel the same things for him that I did for Cole, but I did like him a lot. He was so hurt when I ended things—one more person I managed to fuck over, I guess—but I missed Montreal too much. That city is my life. It’s my home. I thought I’d been gone long enough to go back. I thought Cole would forget me. We ran into each other, though...”
I don’t realize how long I’ve been silent until Kay’s hand on my arms jolts me back to the present. I turn to her.
“We did something terrible, Kay. I know that girl didn’t treat him well, but we shouldn’t have...I mean, how can we be happy when the whole reason we’re together is a mistake? I’m a...I’m a bad influence. Iwreckpeople.”
“Roxanne,” she says, her voice edged with intensity, “pleasetell me you don’t blame yourself for all that.”
I just raise my shoulders in a helpless shrug. I can’t give her the answer she wants.
“Tabarnak,Kay, it’s like I’m cursed.”
“You arenot.” She squeezes my arm until I look at her. “You arenotcursed. Nothing about other people’s actions says anything about you. You were a sixteen-year-old who was treated horribly by a grown man who had no right to do what he did to you—no matter whatyoudid tohim—and by a mother who turned on you instead of defending you when you needed it most. As for Cole, well, he’s a grown man too, and he made his decisions himself. You don’t control people, Roxy. You’re not a curse.”
“That’s nice of you to say—”
“I’mnotjust saying it.” Her words are so earnest they sound fierce. “It’s the truth. I...I think you need to talk to someone about this, Roxanne. Really talk. I hope you don’t take that the wrong way, but this is...more than something you bitch about over wine.”
She holds up the nearly empty bottle and gives me a sad little smile that I return with one of my own.
“Yeah,” I admit, “maybe you’re right.”
I know I’m just trying to placate her, but there’s a muffled part of me that can still recognize the truth when I hear it. I didn’t know talking about it could feel like this—not exactly good, but satisfying, like when a blister has finally healed enough to break.
“Here. Finish that.” The bottle gets thrust into my hand before she pulls out her phone. “I’m texting Matt to call off date night. You and I can have a night in. I’ll make someone bring us pizza.”
