Page 55 of The Someday Daughter
“I’m not a refined person,” I tell her, and she snorts. Glances at me.
“Maybe not in this exact moment, Captain Underpants.” She gestures at the ice mask, and I pull it off my face.
“Captain Underpants doesn’t even wear an eye mask.”
“Ah,” she says, returning to the mirror. “So you’re familiar with his work.”
My phone buzzes, sitting on the bathroom counter next to Cleo’s makeup bag. We both look at it.
DAD-O: I’m proud of you, mouse
I grab the phone off the counter and Cleo looks away, swallowing. The text makes me hate myself. The fact that I’m someone who needs to be comforted at all, that Dad and Camilla must have talked. What that conversation must have sounded like. And that there’s nothing to be proud of now.
I stare down at my bare feet on the tile floor. The white polish on my second-to-last toe is chipped and I hadn’t even noticed, which makes me feel completely out of control. Cleo draws a breath and I think it’s finally going to happen; she’s going to saysomething to console me and it’s going to send me right over the edge.
But she just says, “So can I call you ‘mouse’?”
And I laugh—this wet, halfway-to-tears sound—and Cleo smiles, reaching over to flick me in the shoulder.
“Go put that dress on,” she tells me. “We’re outta here in five.”
Broadway is a neon vein in the dark, so loud I think we’re there when we’re still three blocks away. The street is wide and carless and packed with people, shoulder to shoulder like the starting line of a charity 10K or some sort of postapocalyptic pileup. Everyone leaving town—the final, frantic beeline for the evac helicopters.
“What’re we looking for again?”
Mick’s right next to me, but I can hardly hear him. He’s wearing jeans and cowboy boots he bought this afternoon and a white T-shirt so thin and tight that I can see every hard line of his abdomen straight through it.
“Lady June’s,” Cleo shouts. Her cowboy boots are pearlescent, shining red and purple and blue as we pass the lit faces of three-story bars spilling country music into the street. Every building’s windows are open, thick with bodies dancing inside. I can’t hear myself think, and when I glance at Silas I understand that was the point of this.
“Do we know the cross streets?” he asks, and when Cleo shrugs he does, too. His eyes find mine as Cleo forges ahead, and I watch them catch on the dress she gave me—short and tight, though much less so by comparison on this street than it felt back at the hotel. I feel very warm. Silas smiles and tips his head after Cleo.
“Don’t dawdle, now.” Mick wraps an arm around my shoulders, steering me out of a bachelorette party’s line of fire. Their bride is in a white cowboy hat and looks like she’s been crying for a solid hour. “If we lose you, Camilla will kill us.”
“You won’t lose me,” I say, in the same moment Silas says, “We won’t lose you.”
“Can never be too careful,” Mick says, and I let him take my hand when he reaches for it. It makes me feel less out of place here—physically connected to someone who belongs. The bar lights play across his face and I think of his last name, moonlight, and how Mick really is that way—always shining, even in the dark.
“Glenna here?” Cleo shouts it at the bouncer half-propped on a stool under a sign shaped like cowboy boots. It’s pink and neon, buzzing into the dark,Lady June’ssplashed across it.
“Who’s asking?” he says, and when he looks at Mick it’s so careful and so prolonged that I realize he’s checking him out. Mick grins wickedly, and Cleo waves her hand in front of the bouncer’s face.
“Hello? Tell her it’s Cleo Mori.”
“Tell her yourself,” he says, and when he juts his chin over Cleo’s shoulder a short Black woman in a tight denim dress materializes with a stamp in her hand. She hugs Cleo, rocking her back and forth, the entirety of her face split into a smile.
“Hey, you,” Glenna says when they pull apart. She stamps the back of Cleo’s hand, then motions for Mick to stick his out. “Y’all be good in there and don’t make me regret this.”
“We’ll be honorable as a pack of church ladies,” Cleo says, and when Glenna takes my hand she barks out a laugh that’s so huge and unselfconscious it makes me want to stay next to her all night.
“Maybe not that good,” she says, and Cleo’s hand darts out for my wrist.
“My big sister’s best friend,” she shouts, dipping her mouth close to my ear. Her fingers are still locked around my arm, pulling me into the crowd, and I can feel a hand on my back that I sincerely hope belongs to someone I know. It’s mobbed in here, hardly room to breathe. “They cut holes in all my bras when I was in middle school and now we love each other. So it goes.” She presses me against the bar next to her. “Beer?”
“Um, I don’t—” but there’s already a plastic cup of it in my hand, foamy and wet.
“To Nashville!” Cleo screams, loud and yet barely registering. The four of us cheers high in the air, like we’re about to play a soccer game and this is the huddle. “To being fucking hot and young and free!”
When everyone else takes a drink I do, too. It’s fizzy and cold, and it makes me feel like someone else. The stamp on the back of my hand is a cowboy boot with the lettersOKinked inside it; I blink at it and decide that maybe I can be, just for now.
