Chapter 4
H ow long are you going to do this?” I ask carefully, my chin in my hand.
Maya adds a half-bent box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch to her cereal wall, sectioning herself off from me on the other side of the table. The only part of her I can see is the top of her messy bun, an errant curl sticking straight up like a unicorn horn.
“As long as I need to,” she explains. A box of Frosted Flakes is stacked on top of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It wobbles precariously, but one thin arm reaches out for the napkin holder, and everything stabilizes. I frown. I didn’t even know we had this much cereal.
“And why do you feel the need to make a cereal fort every morning?”
“Because you haven’t said anything about the radio situation.” One pale green eye peeks out from behind the Frosted Mini-Wheats. “And you’re scaring me.”
“Is that what we’re calling it? The radio situation?”
Maya nods wordlessly. It’s been a week since our late-night chitchat with Aiden Valentine of Heartstrings . After I hung up, I tucked Maya in her bed with her mermaid blanket, flicked on the glowing twinkle lights twisted around her bookshelf, went down to the kitchen, and cried into a half-empty bottle of sauvignon blanc. I took two fortifying gulps, dragged my knuckles across my mouth, and then put it back next to a jar of pasta sauce.
I’m not mad Maya called in to a radio station and exposed my dismal love life to the greater Baltimore area. I’m embarrassed . Humiliated. Slightly devastated. I told Aiden way more than I meant to and now I’m having trouble tucking everything back in the place it belongs. I’ve been walking around all week feeling like the whole city knows my business.
Am I that pathetic? Did Maya truly think my best hope was . . . Aiden Valentine of Heartstrings ? The guy who laughed when I said I wanted magic in my relationships? Who said the word romantic like it was a rare, incurable fungal infection?
I’ve been holding everything in my heart, unsure how to bring it up and unwilling to figure it out. I know Maya was raised in an unconventional family structure, but I’ve always done my best to fill in the gaps for her. It’s something her father and I agreed on all those years ago.
Is something missing for her? Does she think I’m unhappy with the life we’ve made for ourselves? Is she unhappy with the life we’ve made for ourselves?
I’ve been wobbling precariously between bone-deep embarrassment and fear that I’m not doing enough for my kid while simultaneously hoping we’d both forget that call ever happened. I guess that’s not going to happen.
I reach for the box of Frosted Flakes and pop it open, unrolling the bag and grabbing a fistful of sugary goodness. My phone buzzes to life on the tabletop with a call from an unknown number. I silence it.
“I owe you an apology, Maya.”
It’s quiet on the other side of the Mini-Wheats. “What?” she whispers.
“I didn’t realize you had feelings about all of”—I shovel the cereal into my mouth, unsure how to categorize the nuclear disaster that is my romantic life—”this,” I say, flecks of cereal flying across the table. I swallow it down with a drag of coffee and try again. “If I had known, we could have talked about it.”
The Cinnamon Toast Crunch shifts to the side. “I didn’t think you’d want to talk about dating,” she says quietly.
I frown. “What gave you that idea?”
“The one time I asked if you had plans to date and you said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’” Her lips twist. Another cereal box shifts. “I thought if I signed you up for the show and told Aiden Valentine about your situation, then you could talk to him. He’s supposed to be an expert. The ladies in the front office at school are always talking about his sexy voice.”
It’s good to know my daughter thinks my situation can be helped by a sexy voice. I reach for another handful of cereal.
She blinks at me, a hopeful smile on her young face. “And it helped, didn’t it? Talking to him?”
I shrug. It didn’t not help. There was something vaguely cathartic about sharing some of my deepest secrets to a stranger on the phone in the middle of the night. I think sometimes I get so caught up in the roles assigned to me—mother, employee, daughter—that it’s easier to shrink down the things that hurt and set them to the side. I never want anyone to worry.
The morning after my talk with Aiden, I drifted through the day in a haze. I felt scrubbed raw, the softest parts of me exposed. Like I stood on my front stoop with a megaphone and yelled out the secrets I’ve carved on the inside of my heart. I kept waiting for people to look at me with pity in their eyes. I heard what you said. I know you’re a disaster. You said you’re waiting for the right thing, but maybe that thing doesn’t exist. Maybe you’re the problem. I expected whispers. Pointing. Laughter. Maybe a coffee tossed in my general direction.
I did not expect the world to spin on, oblivious to my radio debut. Not a single person in my life has said a word, including the shop full of busybodies I’ve dutifully reported to every day this week. Working as a mechanic isn’t an inherently dramatic job, but the three men I work with are worse than a pack of old biddies. I was ready to disappear into the tow truck and never come out again.
Thankfully, I think Aiden Valentine is the only one who bore witness to my heartfelt diatribe on romance. I’m ready to categorize the whole thing as an emotional blip and move on.
If Maya ever stops building her cereal fortresses.
I drag the Cinnamon Toast Crunch to my side of the table and stack it behind Tony the Tiger. “I understand what you were trying to do and I’m . . . I’m thankful for it, I think, but it’s something I need to figure out for myself. No more calling radio stations. And no more . . . fabricating grand plans. If you want to talk to me about something, come talk to me. Okay?”
Maya nods, reluctant, still keeping her eyes away from me. She draws a figure eight across the tabletop. “I just don’t want you to be lonely, Mom.”
The bruise over my heart throbs. I reach across the table and grab her hand, squeezing the same way I did when she was three and I was twenty-one and I didn’t have a fucking clue how to do any of it. I still don’t know how to do any of it, but I’m trying.
“How can I be lonely when I’ve got you?” I shake her arm. “And your dad and Mateo. Everyone at the shop. Patty across the street and our not-so-secret wine. I’m not lonely, honey. There’s way too many people in our lives for me to be lonely.”
Maya squeezes my hand back. “You don’t have to be alone to be lonely.”
I open my mouth, then shut it again. I squint at her. “Have you been watching Oprah reruns with Mateo again?” My ex, Grayson, and his husband, Mateo, have a fascination with early nineties talk shows. Most of the advice I get from them comes in the form of an Oprah proverb.
“No,” Maya grumbles.
“When did you get so smart, then?”
“The year was 2022,” she says with a sigh, making her voice sound like one of those nature documentaries. “And a young girl discovered something called the internet .”
I roll my eyes. “All right, smart-ass. Clean up this mess and find your shoes. Your dad is supposed to take you to school today.”
Maya rushes to get her stuff together and I stay sitting at the kitchen table, eating directly from the box of Frosted Flakes while having an existential crisis. You don’t have to be alone to be lonely. I’ve got all sorts of love in my life, but I’m still yearning for something more. I’ve done a really good job of convincing myself I haven’t been, but Aiden Valentine and Heartstrings ripped that little delusion away.
How do I fill that crack? How do I mend it? Dating has never done much for me, but maybe I’ve been doing it wrong. Maybe I’ve been looking in all the wrong places. Maybe I’m tripping over my own insecurities on the way there. Maybe I should try again.
I stopped because it wasn’t working, but what I’ve been doing isn’t working either.
I wish there was a guidebook for this. An instruction manual that could tell me how to take myself apart and put everything back together so I’m good as new. I wish I knew how to make sense of my pieces.
My phone rings and I silence it again, frowning at the number. It’s the same one as before, a contact I don’t recognize with a Baltimore area code. Sometimes if my boss, Dan, is working on a car at the shop and forgot where he put the good wrenches, he’ll call me from the old landline that hangs in the back. But he’s only used it twice, so I’ve never bothered to put the number in my phone.
Maya slides back into the kitchen in her socked feet, a pair of shoes dangling from her fingers. She tosses them against the back door and then starts deconstructing her cereal tower, a lime green pen caught between her teeth.
“Do you have newspaper after school today?”
She nods. “Dad is in the middle of an art piece, so Mateo is picking me up. We’re going to go shopping. I need to start working on my Indiana Jones cosplay.”
“That’s nice. Where are you—”
The rest of my question is interrupted by my back door bursting open. It slams against the wall with a crack, Maya’s shoes flying with it. A tall figure stands in silhouette against the porch.
Maya screams and I immediately throw my cereal box at the intruder. He bats it away with his hand.
“What the hell, Lucie?” the intruder shouts, rubbing at his wrist where the box made contact. “I paint with this hand!”
“ What the hell, Lucie? ” I throw another box at him. “What the hell, Grayson !” He kicked his way into my kitchen, and he’s yelling about how I’m behaving? He’s lucky I didn’t lob the ceramic fruit bowl at his head. I press my hand to my chest while Maya wilts into her seat like a flower, deep-breathing with her forehead against the table. “You kicked in my door . This isn’t Law & Order !”
The father of my child steps into the kitchen and closes the door behind him without looking away, a thunderous expression on his face. Broad shoulders, warm eyes. A faded green shirt that says EAT BERTHA’S MUSSELS from the seafood shack down the street he’s obsessed with. He looks almost exactly the same as he did when we were sixteen and stupid. Right down to the paint splattered across his forearms, a smudge on the collar of his shirt.
He must have stopped halfway through his session to stomp over here.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me?” he asks, both of his eyebrows rising high on his forehead. Grayson’s and Maya’s hair falls in exactly the same way. Furious, ferocious curls that can’t be tamed no matter the amount of hair product used. When Maya was born, she looked like Mowgli from The Jungle Book . She hasn’t exactly grown out of it. Neither has Grayson.
“No. I have nothing to tell you.” I huff out a breath, trying to get my heart rate to calm down. He keeps staring at me, and I raise both of my eyebrows right back. “What about you? Anything to say? Maybe, Sorry for putting a dent in your back door ?”
He shakes his head slowly. “No, I don’t think I’m going to apologize for that.”
“What is it, then? Just wanted to give me a heart attack this morning?” He remains silent. I don’t understand the entrance, but Gray has always enjoyed a touch of drama. I think it’s the artist in him. His husband, Mateo, says it’s his desperate need to heal his inner child. Whatever it is, I don’t have the patience for it this morning. He moved out of this house and into the one next door almost a decade ago, but I swear to god, he acts like it’s an extension of his own home.
“Are you ready to take Maya?” I gesture toward her limp form, still slumped in her chair. “She was just putting her shoes on. You can go pick those up, by the way, since you’re the one who ricocheted them across the room.”
Gray doesn’t move to retrieve her shoes. I have no idea why he’s in my kitchen, ten minutes early, looking like a bat straight out of hell. “Do you need to borrow my ketchup again?” I ask slowly. “I told you to take the whole bottle.”
He shakes his head, still watching me with that wary, weird look. “No, I don’t need the ketchup.” He props both of his hands on his hips. “What I need are some answers.”
“About what?”
“You.”
“Me?” I point to my chest. He nods.
“What about me?”
He drags his palm over his face with a slight shake of his head. It’s the same look he gives a blank canvas when he has no idea what he wants to do with it. Frustrated. Dumbstruck. I’m inspiring him to new levels of speechlessness today. With a sigh, he kicks out the seat next to me and collapses into it, his hand overlapping mine on the handle of my mug. I try to pull away, but he just holds on tighter.
“You know you can talk to me, right?”
I yank my hand away and bring my mug to my chest. “I talk to you every day of my life, Grayson. You’re freaking me out.”
Anxiety curls in my gut. The last time he stormed over like this, Mateo had sliced his hand open with a pair of garden shears. I glance over his shoulder and out the back window. The gate that connects our yards is wide open, squeaking back and forth on rusty hinges. “Is Teo okay?”
“Mateo is fine. He’s also upset with you, but he’s fine.”
“Why is he upset with me?”
“Oh shit,” Maya whispers. She’s still sitting with her forehead pressed to the table, her hands clutching the edge.
“Language,” Grayson and I both half-heartedly correct her. Maya slowly props herself up across from us, her face pinched. I’d laugh if I wasn’t so damn confused. The kitchen is a mess. One of Maya’s shoes is wedged under the oven. There’s cereal scattered across the floor like sad, processed confetti, and Grayson is staring at me like I stole his cookies and crushed all his dreams.
Maya’s eyes dart to Grayson and hold.
“Dad,” she starts. “It’s not a big deal.”
“I’ll talk to you in a second, tiny Machiavelli.” His eyes narrow and his jaw tightens. “I can’t believe you did this without me,” he mutters under his breath.
“Oh shit,” I whisper.
Because there’s only one thing Grayson would be this pissed about. The man hates not being included, and if he knows Maya hosted an emotional intervention without him, the very thing he’s been trying to do for years, then that can only mean—
He knows. I don’t know how he knows, but he knows.
He knows about the radio interview.
“Mm-hmm.” He nods as realization slowly slinks its way across my brain. “Now you’re catching on.” He drops both of his palms on my shoulders, gently shaking me. “Why didn’t you tell me you’ve been having trouble with dating? Me”—he rocks me back and forth again—”the platonic love of your life.”
“Gray.”
“I’ve known you since you were three years old and stealing my Sesame Street figurines, and you’ve been telling me lies .”
“I haven’t told you a single lie. I’m—”
He cuts me off with a swipe of his hand through the air. “I’ve been trying to talk about this with you for years, Lucie. Years. And you decide to tell a stranger on the phone that you’re looking for magic?” He blinks owlishly, looking for all the world like I told Aiden Valentine I wanted to meet a man under a bridge for something illicit. “ Magic? You told me dating gives you indigestion.”
That is . . . partially true. But the rest of it—the real reason I don’t date, the anxiety that there might not be someone out there for me to fit into the life I’ve made for myself, that maybe I want too much, that I’m being too whimsical and naive, that it’s too late for me—I haven’t wanted to talk about that with anyone. Especially Grayson. My oldest friend. The father of my child. My coparent. The platonic love of my life. Grayson has never had any trouble being exactly who he is, and he didn’t have any trouble finding Mateo. I didn’t think he would understand and I didn’t want to give him a reason to worry.
So I tucked it all away in a neat little box and buried it until I couldn’t feel the sting of it anymore. Not until Aiden Valentine shoved a crowbar in there and wedged it right open.
I push Grayson’s hands off my shoulders with a scowl. My stomach is somewhere on the floor with the Frosted Flakes, my heart in my throat.
“You heard it?” I ask.
“I did.”
“How?”
“Well, Lucie, I’m not sure if you know this, but when you’re on the radio, people can listen to the things you say.”
I scowl at him. “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid. I know how the radio works. But it’s been a week since the broadcast. How did you— when did you hear it?”
He leans sideways in his seat and reaches in his back pocket, still frowning at me. He unlocks his phone with a flick of his paint-stained thumb, then scrolls. He scrolls and scrolls some more. Maya’s chair creaks under her and I resist the urge to hightail it up the stairs and bury myself beneath my comforter.
I thought we were in the clear. I thought we were moving on.
Finally, after the longest minute of my life, Grayson tilts his screen so I can see it.
“I think the entire Eastern Seaboard has heard it.” He flicks up with his thumb, and message after message with the same Heartstrings logo appears. It’s the broadcast, I realize. Shared over and over and over again on some social media site. “You’ve gone viral.”
I drop my mug to the floor with a thunk . It doesn’t crack, but it does tip over, turning the dried cereal on the floor into a soupy mess.
“Oh shit,” Maya and I say in unison.
I dart through the back door of the mechanic shop, my hood over my head and a scarf wrapped around the bottom half of my face. It’s excessive, but I need the comfort of multiple layers right now. I’m back to thinking everyone on the street is judging me, though it’s certainly more likely now than it was a week ago.
The interview went viral. A week later and the interview went viral . How? Why? I wasn’t brave enough to read any of the commentary from Grayson’s phone before he snatched it back, tucking it in the pocket of his ratty jeans while I sat at the table in a stupor. He’d given me an ominous We’ll talk about this later as he ushered Maya out the door for school, and that was that.
Joke’s on him, though. We absolutely won’t be talking about this later. We won’t be discussing it ever again because I plan on packing all my belongings into the back of my tiny Subaru and driving off into the sunset. I’ll pick Maya up from school and we’ll drive to . . . San Jose. I’m sure there are plenty of cars to fix in San Jose.
“All right there?”
I smack my elbow on the edge of my tool cabinet as I fight with my puffy jacket. “Fine,” I mutter, not bothering to look over at Angelo, already at his station. I beat my coat into submission and toss it across my rolling chair. I need coffee and a mental reset. I need to go back in time and slap that phone out of my hand. I need the ground to swallow me whole.
I need to pretend like everything is fine.
“You sure?” He tosses a grease-stained towel over his shoulder and peers at me from over the top of his glasses. Angelo has somehow managed to not age at all for the past decade I’ve worked here, hovering somewhere around sixty-five. He says it’s the ouzo his brother ships him from Greece. I think it’s all the laughing he does at other people’s expense.
The lines by his eyes deepen. “You don’t usually look so”—he waves his hand, a quick flick of his wrist—”stressed before nine in the morning.”
I also don’t usually have my love life a topic of regional conversation, but I suppose we’re all trying new things today. I yank my coveralls off my hook with more force than necessary, tearing the tag before shoving my legs in. I loop the sleeves around my waist and tug them into a loose knot.
I need to start working so my mind can disappear. When my hands are busy, everything else seems more manageable. Fixable. My brain takes the back seat and I follow the steps to put everything in exactly the right place.
I lean over the half wall that separates our stations and grab the clipboard with today’s assignments. I can hear Harvey somewhere in the front bellowing the wrong lyrics to “Bye Bye Blackbird.” Dan’s in the office frowning at his computer screen, and Angelo is standing here, distracting me. Everything is exactly where it always is, and I can be too. As soon as I calm down.
Angelo drops his hand onto the middle of the clipboard, obscuring the list. He has a scar across his knuckles. A smudge of grease between his thumb and forefinger. “I’d like your attention, please.”
“I can see that,” I mutter. I suck in a deep breath to brace myself and then focus on him. He’s still watching me carefully from behind his glasses, an unusual seriousness in his blue sky eyes. Angelo always looks as if he’s just blown in off the harbor, white hair wild and windswept. I try to find some of my patience beneath my panic. Best to play it cool and all that. “What can I do for you?”
“My mother has a saying.”
He stares at me expectantly, waiting for me to engage in this ridiculous conversation. My patience is somewhere in my disaster of a kitchen, along with my dignity. “Okay?”
“She always used to say, ‘There is truth in wine and children.’ She’d usually say it after my idiot brother spit out something ridiculous at the dinner table, but she’d say it nonetheless. ‘Wine and children.’” He snaps his fingers. “Three times a day, at least.”
“Do you—” My whole face pinches tight in confusion. “Do you need some wine?”
“No,” Angelo answers simply. “It’s before nine in the morning. Don’t be silly.”
Don’t be silly. Okay. I’m the one being silly.
“Listen. I’m having a weird morning. If you could just tell me what you’re tiptoeing toward, that would be great.”
Angelo continues to frown, clearly put out that I’m not hanging on to his every word. The music at the front of the shop swells louder as Harvey elbows his way through the door that leads to the small reception area, his coveralls unzipped to his belly button, a white T-shirt beneath. He’s still serenading an audience of zero, eyes closed as he does a ramshackle waltz to his station.
“It’s his turn for the music today, huh?”
Angelo huffs. “Unfortunately.”
“It’s not so bad.” I slant my eyes away from Harvey using a broomstick as a dance partner. “Certainly better than that garbage you put on every third Thursday.”
His spine straightens. He is indignant. “Country music isn’t garbage.”
“Sure.”
“Tim McGraw is a talented artist.”
“If I hear ‘Don’t Take the Girl’ one more time, I will not be held responsible for my actions.”
Angelo rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. “Well, you’ll hear it in another week. I can guarantee that,” he snaps. He frowns and flicks his hand in dismissal. “I don’t even want to tell you my story anymore.”
“Oh no,” I say dryly, fighting to keep the grin from climbing my face. “Not that.”
This is good. This is what I needed. A distraction from everything else. I needed Angelo’s stories and Harvey’s warbly singing and Dan smacking at his computer because he forgot how to print something again.
I go back to the clipboard in my hand and try to figure out where I’m supposed to start today. There’s a muffler that needs work on an old Ford Focus. A tune-up on a pretty pink Volkswagen Beetle that all the guys have been ribbing me over. Maybe I’ll start there.
Angelo’s hand appears over the list again.
I sigh and drop my head back with a groan.
“What?”
“‘Wine and children,’” he says again, snapping his fingers. “There is truth in children. And I’m glad you listened to yours.”
“Maya?”
He gives me a saucy look over his glasses, swinging that damn towel back and forth. “She is your child, yes? I remember attending a birthday party or seven over the years.”
“She is. But what are you—”
“LU!” Harvey bellows my name across the garage. The music cuts out and his shoes squeak as he speed-walks across the floor. Dan stands in his office, watching us with interest.
Harvey skids to a stop and grins at me. “Proud of you, kiddo. You spoke your truth.”
“Stop calling me kiddo. You’re approximately eight months older than me.” I press two fingers between my eyebrows and close my eyes as realization hits. “You know.”
“Yup!” Harvey says proudly. “Sheila sent me the audio that’s all over the place. Said I should take notes about what you were saying. But then I realized that the you I was listening to was actually you and I almost spit my beer clear across the room. Didn’t know you had so many feelings.” He claps a meaty hand on my shoulder. “Good for you.”
“Wouldn’t have killed you to mention the shop!” Dan yells from somewhere near his office. I refuse to open my eyes and look. I’m going to stand here like this for the rest of the day. Time will march forever forward and I’ll be here, standing in the middle of the mechanic shop with my eyes closed.
It was easy to be brave when I thought it was Aiden and a handful of random listeners. People I don’t know. But apparently it was people I know, and now those people know something deeply personal about me. Something I never intended to share with anyone.
My phone starts buzzing in my pocket again and I take it out with a sigh. It’s the unknown number again. The fourth time this morning. Feeling curious and more than a little sorry for myself, I shuffle back to the limited privacy of my station. Answering my phone is a solid enough excuse to ignore the way my coworkers are staring at me. It’s the lesser of two evils.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” a woman says on the other end of the phone, sounding breathless. “Is this Lucie? Lucie Stone?”
Unfortunately. I’d love to be just about anyone else right now.
“It is. Who is this?”
“My name is Maggie and I’m calling from 101.6 LITE FM. I’ve got a proposition for you.”
CALLER: What about Lucie?
AIDEN VALENTINE: Lucie?
CALLER: Yeah. The woman who called in with her kid.
CALLER: Has she found anyone to date yet?
AIDEN VALENTINE: I have no idea.