First-Time Caller

Chapter 7

B oston is good? You’re enjoying it?”

“Oh, it’s lovely, honey.” I can hear the smile in my mom’s voice, the low murmur of my dad in the background. He says something and she laughs, a light smack against his shirt. If I close my eyes, I can see them exactly. Sitting too close together on a couch by the fireplace, my dad with his arm over her shoulders, tipping her closer for a kiss. “I’m having the best time, Aiden.”

I smile at nothing, kicking a loose rock across the parking lot. “You deserve the best time, Mom.”

She deserves more than that. With the cards she’s been dealt, she deserves only good things from here on out.

“And you?” she asks. “Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah, Ma. I’m always okay,” I respond immediately, blowing out a breath and watching it slip away in a little white cloud. It’s a habit born of three cancer diagnoses in twenty years. I’ve never felt like I’ve been able to be anything other than okay, not while my mom has been the furthest thing from it. Insulating my feelings from my mom so I don’t burden her is like breathing at this point. An old habit that I tug on like my favorite sweater. I roll my shoulders back and try not to give her cause to worry. “Getting ready for the show tonight. Snagging some fresh air while I can.”

Wandering around the parking lot, ignoring Jackson and Eileen and Maggie and—fucking Hughie with his overly eager thumbs-up every time we pass each other in the hallway. The whole station is treating me like our future is on the line with every broadcast, and while that’s probably true, it would be great if I could pretend there was less pressure. An impossibility when Maggie bellows down the hallway about soulmates and true love every ten to fifteen seconds. She started emailing me quotes from Pride and Prejudice . I had to set up a spam blocker.

“We’ve been listening,” my mom tells me, and another guitar string of anxiety plucks in the middle of my chest.

I press my fist to it, digging my knuckles into my down jacket. The chain around my neck that I never take off bites into my skin.

“You’ve been doing so well. Your dad tells me you’ve gone virile.”

I choke on nothing. “I’ve gone, what?”

“Virile. You know, when the whole internet decides they love you?”

I drop my head back and stare at the cloudless blue sky. Hearing my mom call me virile was not on the bingo card for today. “It’s called viral, Mom.”

“Whatever it is, we’re proud of you.” She pauses, and I know what she’s going to say before she says it. “Acadia is next week. Do you think—would you like to join us?”

I make myself pause for three seconds before I answer, hoping I sound convincing when I give her my prepackaged refusal. It’s easier for me if I spend time with my family in doses. All I do when I’m with them is worry anyway. I’d bring the mood down.

“I can’t make it. There’s a ton of stuff going on with the show, and the last time I took a vacation, someone played a wiener commercial for twenty-seven minutes straight.”

“Oh,” she says. She does her best not to sound hurt and I do my best not to notice. “That’s all right. I figured I would ask.”

“Maybe next time,” I offer.

“Of course, honey. You know I’d love to see you whenever you have the time.”

It’s as close as my mom will ever get to calling me out for how little time I’ve seemed to have for family adventures over the past couple of years, but it’s enough to have guilt tugging at me all the same.

“When you guys get back from this trip, I’ll come over,” I tell her, desperate to put a Band-Aid on the cracks I hear in her voice. “We’ll do the whole slideshow projector thing with pictures. I’ll bring popcorn.”

My mom laughs. The same way she did when I was a kid with my chin on her shoulder, my arms wrapped loosely around her neck. She always smelled like soap and the pages of a book. Paper and well-loved leather. Stories in the middle of the night.

“You might regret that by the seventeenth leaf picture,” she says. “Your dad is in botany heaven.”

“When you get back,” I promise.

Someone knocks on the window of the studio behind me. I turn and squint. Maggie is pointing at her watch and then at the door, a silent and aggressive command for me to get to the booth. I frown. “I’ve got to go, Mom. Give me a ring if there’s anything you need, yeah?”

“Of course, honey. Have a good show.”

I’d love to have a good show. I’d even settle for a mediocre show, but Maggie has been demanding fireworks. She was right about the rise in interest after the interview with Lucie went viral. Our caller numbers have more than tripled, and none of them have been truck drivers declaring their love for processed gas station snacks and ranking them in order of finger residue consistency. Hosting has been significantly easier. Fun. Enjoyable. Three words I haven’t associated with this job in a very long time.

I pull open the front door and unzip my jacket, stomping the salt off my boots on the faded rug. There’s a woman waiting by the elevators, studying the directory, which still has information for the dentist office that was here previously.

She frowns and leans closer to the glass case, lips moving soundlessly as she reads.

“Need some dental work?”

She jumps and turns, chestnut-colored hair swinging around her shoulders. It’s long, halfway down her back, with bangs that fall into her face. Sometimes people wander in here looking for the news station, confused by the shared parking lot, but she doesn’t look like she’s gearing up for a television appearance. She’s wearing worn jeans and a pair of scuffed black boots. An over-sized mechanic’s coat zipped to the base of her throat.

“Not quite.” She winces, turning halfway to look at the sign again. “I think I might be in the wrong place.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Not a root canal,” she murmurs. She sighs and her shoulders curl inward. “Though that might be preferable.”

I shove my hands in my pockets and wander closer. She’s tall. Probably just an inch or two shorter than I am. Her hands clasp loosely together in front of her, nervously toying with a key ring shaped like a crab. Maggie will kill me for shooting the shit in the lobby while she’s banging on glass windows in the back, but this woman looks like she’s facing a life-or-death decision while reading outdated dentist information.

“Can I—” I clear my throat. “Can I help you?”

The words sound clumsy as they trip out of my mouth, but she doesn’t seem to notice, still staring at the sign.

“With a root canal?” she asks, distracted.

I laugh. “I don’t think you want me in your mouth.”

That statement earns her full attention. She turns to look at me slowly, arching one dark eyebrow. Her eyes are a pale green beneath her bangs.

“I mean—I don’t—I don’t have any dental qualifications. To be in your mouth.”

Christ. How did it get worse? I’ve somehow managed to . . . make it worse. I rock back on my heels and stare at her while she stares back, an amused smile curling at the corners of her mouth.

I silently beg for a conversational assist. For one of the ancient ceiling tiles to give and release some of the equally ancient plumbing on top of my head, dragging me through the floor to the basement.

“Help me out here,” I beg.

“I thought you were supposed to be helping me.”

I scratch once at the back of my neck. “Any chance we can restart this conversation?”

She gestures at me with her hand. A quick flick down and up again. “And stop all of this from happening?” She shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

Her lips twitch into a full smile and she grins at me. Beautiful , I think hazily, my brain clearly somewhere on the floor with the dust bunnies and the Slurpee stain Eileen left six months ago. She’s really fucking beautiful.

Maggie is going to kill me. I’m surprised she hasn’t barreled out of her office with another armful of oranges, demanding I do my job while pelting me with fruit. I don’t usually cut it so close to showtime, but I feel fundamentally rooted to the spot. Unable to move or . . . string together an appropriate sentence, apparently.

“All right, well.” I clear my throat and look longingly in the direction of the hallway that leads to my booth. There’s a sanctuary down there in the form of soundproof glass. “Best of luck with your dental needs.”

I flinch. I can’t believe I talk to people for a living.

She laughs and my head cocks to the side. That sound is familiar. A wisp of smoke I can’t quite get a hold of. Maybe in another life I was a person who was capable of having a reasonable in-person conversation with a stranger.

“Thank you,” she says. Her forehead crinkles in gently amused confusion. “I think.”

I nod and stare at her for another beat before turning and heading in the direction of the hallway. I’m changing the topic for tonight’s show. Conversation starters with strangers and why you should avoid innuendos about oral sex. Worst opening lines and how to say with body language that you’re usually more put together than this, but life has thrown you a curveball or seven and you’ve got no idea if your head is screwed on straight.

Maggie pops up from behind the door like a tiny radio gremlin, hell-bent on ratings glory. She’s glaring at me, because of course she is, but then she looks over my shoulder and her frown twists its way into a smile. It’s the same smile she gave me in her office when she cooked up her Save Heartstrings plan.

That smile means nothing good for me.

“You made it,” she calls, a portrait of politeness. I think she’s trying to channel a Julie Andrews character from 1964. It’s unnatural. I’m so fixated on that weird-ass smile on her face that I miss the fact that she’s talking to the woman waiting in the lobby. I’m on a two-second time delay, watching everything happen in slow motion. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

The woman smiles and it’s nothing like the smile I earned when I embarrassed myself with sexualized dental comments. It’s tight and more than a little anxious. She drags her hands against the front of her jacket and then shoves them in the pockets. Makes a face and pulls them out again, holding one forward for a handshake.

“Thanks for inviting me.”

Maggie flutters forward, bypassing her extended hand for a hug instead. My frown deepens. I’ve never seen Maggie willingly hug anyone. I watch the woman’s face carefully to make sure she’s not slowly being suffocated or stabbed with a defunct ballpoint pen.

Maggie pulls back. “No pressure. Just like I said on the phone, okay? I figure you can meet everyone today and decide what you want to do from there.”

I’m still on my time delay as Maggie drags the woman across the small lobby of our radio station, an almost manic smile on her face. I realize three things in the span of two heartbeats.

1. Her eyes are the exact green of Hedera canariensis , the ivy my dad planted in my parents’ front yard. He makes me stand with him and examine it every time I go over there, listing off botanic factoids like an encyclopedia.

2. The name patch sewn onto the front of her jacket says Lu in short, neat letters.

3. I know where I’ve heard that laugh before.

CALLER: What does she look like? Lucie.

AIDEN VALENTINE: I have no idea.

CALLER: No idea?

AIDEN VALENTINE: No idea. I’ve only heard her voice.