Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ROB
It’s Saturday morning. Just over a week has passed since Sophie and I announced our fake relationship to the world.
A number of things have happened since then, some good, some…well, I suppose it depends on perspective. For starters, Jonah called me and told me I was an asshole. Patricia unfriended me on all the major social networks and then informed me via text, which surprised me because I hadn’t realized our accounts were connected in the first place. And then my father officially uninvited me to Thanksgiving, which is several months away. I wasn’t going anyway, since I’d already told my mother I was coming to see her in Montana.
I should probably be upset by some of that stuff, but I’m not. I’m surprised by how much I’m not.
It’s actually freeing, being lifted from the obligation of trying to get along with them. I’ve known for a while now that my father would never be proud of me. It’s not in his makeup. My successes aren’t the kind that mean anything to him.
The situation with my family has upset Sophie, however. She’s been a nervous wreck, thinking she ruined my life with her fake-relationship scheme. No amount of reassurance has worked, even though she knows how important it is for me to get approved as a foster parent.
There’s probably only one thing that will convince her. I need to tell her everything. But we made that bargain, and I’m not sure she’s ready to share her story with me.
On Wednesday, Sophie and I met up after her shift to get a pizza. It was one of those places that had a make-your-own-pizza option for kids, and I convinced the server to let us do it. Of course, Sophie gave the thing a smiley face with olives and pepperoni.
While we were making it, Jonah’s friend walked past the window. I noticed because he paused and did a double take. Naturally, I leaned in and kissed Sophie, making it a good one. He snapped a photo, I gave him a one-fingered salute, and that was that.
Afterward, we went back to her place to hang out with Otis for a while, spitballing ideas for possible locations for The Crafty Monster.
Sophie and I used the red condom that night, followed by the green. I didn’t stay over, because staying over would have meant we were something besides friends having a good time, and that’s all we’d agreed to. The rest was for show.
It was the following morning that I got the official Thanksgiving kiss-off, so I guess our little performance got noticed.
Then last night, Travis, Bixby and I got together with Sophie and her friends after our show. We talked and laughed, but I could tell something was weighing on her. Guilt, it seemed like, probably over my exclusion from a family event I’d never intended to go to. From what I can tell, she always feels guilty about something.
After I drove her home, something I insisted any good fake boyfriend would do, I asked her why she felt she needed to apologize for herself all the time. She insisted she didn’t anymore and then pulled me into her room to make use of the blue condom. I didn’t object. If she wants to keep using me for pleasure, or to get back at my brother, she can.
But I’m starting to think I want more.
Which is why I got up early this morning to attend the Saturday morning meeting of the Wise Women Group. To be totally transparent, I went on Wednesday morning too. Constance was the one who recommended the pizza place.
What can I say? I don’t have a sister, my mother’s in Montana, and this isn’t the kind of thing you talk to your buddies about, even though Travis is already getting on my case about my “weird thing” with Sophie. Not a relationship, and not really a fake relationship either. “A situationship,” Bixby called it, which I guess is the closest description. Although I didn’t like him using the same word he uses to describe his half a dozen friends with benefits.
“I knew she’d warm to the lotto tickets,” Ann says, shaking a finger at me. “No woman alive wouldn’t like it if a man showed up with some scratchers. Now, throw a Powerball ticket in there, and that woman will be taking your last name instead of your brother’s.”
“You mean the same last name?” Constance says gruffly, looking up from today’s crochet project. This one appears to be an ugly scarf, the same color gray as the ribbon Sophie and I bought last weekend.
I wore my boutonniere all day last Sunday, catching tons of crap from my friends about it. They knew there was no way I’d suddenly started making flower pins for myself.
“Huh, at least it would make it convenient for her if she’d already had stationery made.”
“Honestly, Ann, young people don’t have stationery made for themselves,” Constance says with a snort. “The majority of them have probably never handwritten a letter.”
Dottie furrows her brow. “What a sad thought. I have a drawerful of passionate letters from all of my beaus.”
Ann adjusts her hearing aid, then says, “You tie them up with bows? Does your man like reading them? Rufus always liked reading my dirty letters. It made him proud to be the man I chose when all those other men wanted me.”
Constance snorts. “You’ve got that dagnab thing in your ear, but you never turn it on.”
“I think we’re getting off topic,” Dottie says, then reaches out and squeezes my hand. “Did you try the other techniques we’ve discussed?”
“Yes, what about the wet shirt?” Ann asks. “We mentioned it again at our last meeting.”
“Does no shirt count?”
She considers this before shaking her head. “No, sometimes subtlety is better.”
I smile and rub the stone in my pocket. “Uh. I think we should clear something up first. I’m not out to marry her. I mean, she was just engaged, for one thing, and for another…I’m not at that point in my life.”
Another snort from Constance. “You’re, what, twenty-five?” Glancing at the others, she says, “Young bucks that age don’t settle down. It’s not until they’re thirty or so that they get half a brain in their head.”
There’s a teasing glint in her eyes, and I’m pretty sure she’s messing with me. “I’m thirty-one, actually.”
She makes a humph sound. “You’d better get on that.”
“We don’t need to discuss marriage,” Dottie says, which is both surprising and a relief. “What you want is for her to know you love her.”
The words hit like a fist to the gut, and I can feel sweat beading on my forehead.
“I wouldn’t say I love her,” I tell them, forcing a laugh. “I mean, we’ve only been getting to know each other over the past month. These things take time.”
“Son, when you get to be our age,” says Constance, “there’s not much time left, and you start thinking about what’s really important.”
“Like winning the lottery,” Ann says with a smile.
“Or spending time with dear friends,” Dottie adds.
“Or giving advice to a young whippersnapper who’s probably not wise enough to take it,” Constance puts forth. “If you like the girl and want to continue ‘getting to know her,’ tell her. It’s that simple. No need to pussyfoot around the issue. And don’t text it to her. Tell her face-to-face, like a man.”
Damn it. I don’t like that she’s got a point.
“A grand gesture wouldn’t hurt,” Dottie says. “A grand gesture can really sweep a woman off her feet.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t try to kidnap her,” Ann says, either mishearing or misinterpreting. “That only works out well in those books.”
“When you’re right, you’re right,” I say, tapping the table with my hands. “I’m going to ask her over for dinner tomorrow night.”
I can’t tonight. It’s one of the rare Saturdays that Travis and I are working at The Missing Beat.
Sophie doesn’t get off until late on Sundays, but she has to eat at some point, right? I’m supposed to show her the apartment soon anyway. Our meeting with Nelly is coming up, and Sophie needs to seem comfortable in my place. At home.
“Do you know how to cook, my boy?” Dottie asks, taking my hand. From her tone, she’s not confident I could successfully follow the instructions on a box of mac and cheese.
“Sure. I’ve been living on my own for over a decade, and I haven’t died of starvation once.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Ann says, making a face. “We’d better help him. I’ve seen what my teenage grandsons eat, and it’s not pretty. If he greets her with a bag of orange chips and a pile of taco meat, she’ll hightail it.”
Constance scoffs and looks up from her work. “What he doesn’t need is this girl thinking he can’t do anything without a woman to do it for him. Who wants to be romanced by a man who can’t boil spaghetti, for God’s sake?” Waving her crochet needle for emphasis, she says, “Make something you know how to make, and make it well.”
“But we will provide you with dessert, dear,” Dottie says. “I must insist on that.”
“Speak for yourself, Dottie,” Constance retorts. “I’ve got my own date to prepare for.”
“I am, dear. And I have something for you and your paramour too.”
Constance gives her a fond look that shows her grousing is at least partially an act. “I won’t say no, and I imagine our young friend here won’t either.”
“I won’t,” I agree. “I might be able to cook, but I can’t bake.”
“It’s true there’s no perfect man,” Ann says with a sigh. “But you should pick up some of those temporary tattoos. That will help.”
You know what? I think Sophie would find that pretty fucking funny, especially knowing that the Wise Women recommended it to me. Truth is, I have a thing for making her laugh. She’s got about a dozen different laughs, from soft and sweet to so unrestrained she can’t breathe. I’ve taken a liking to all of them.
Dottie excuses herself and comes back with a huge box from the bakery next door, which is run by her very pleasant, very bigmouthed boyfriend. And I walk away with what feels like a whole cake before stopping at a couple of stores to find the fake tats I want.
It’s only once I’m back in the car that I realize I haven’t even asked her to dinner yet. I’ve been assuming she can come—that she wants to come. Sure, it’s tomorrow, not tonight, but most people plan farther ahead than that.
Smooth move, Price.
I feel surprisingly jittery about writing the simple text, even though Sophie and I have been so easy together.
Dinner tomorrow, my place? I figure it’s a good idea for you to get comfortable there.
I’ll cook.
I drum my fingers on the wheel, waiting for an answer that doesn’t come. Okay, so she’s busy, or she hasn’t woken up yet. Her shift doesn’t start until noon. But the buzzing anxiety has set in, digging claws into my brain.
I go about my business, meeting up with Emil the way we’ve taken to, and then help one of Bixby’s friends move.
By five o’clock, several hours later, I still haven’t received a reply from Sophie, It’s all I can do to ignore those claws digging ever deeper into my brain and meet up with Travis to prepare for our Parents’ Night Out. We hold the event once a month—parents leave their kids with us so they can go out on date nights, and we play music with them and then get pizza and watch a movie. Sometimes the movie is music themed, like School of Rock . Sometimes we let the kids take a vote.
We’ve got a nice spot for our program, a unit in an old warehouse in a neighborhood that’s not quite convenient to anything, and therefore slightly less expensive. Which is not to say inexpensive. Everything in this town is so much pricier than when I was a kid. We won a grant, though, because Travis is knowledgeable about any number of things, grant applications among them. The sound in here is sick, the acoustics so perfect it could make a man weep.
I fucking love my job.
This and Garbage Fire saved my life. When Bad Magic blew up, the bitterness over what could have been mine was hard to let go of. Hundreds of bottles of whiskey and beer did nothing to blunt the feeling. They only made me hate myself for being weak enough to develop the same disease that had nearly killed my mother. The only thing that helped was making something of what was left of myself.
So usually it’s not hard to fully immerse myself in this place and my role here. But apparently I’m acting like a psychopath, because it only takes my buddy five minutes to ask, “What the fuck’s gotten into you? You’re acting like you just took five shots of espresso.”
I swipe my hair back from my face and glance out the window.
“I’m the one talking to you, Price, not the window.
I roll my eyes at him but admit, “t’s just…I’m a little worried about Sophie. She hasn’t answered my text.”
“Have you tried calling her, bro?” he asks, giving me a look that says he knows very well that I haven’t.
“I suppose I could.”
He laughs, shaking his head. “Speaking of. I got a crazy call last night.”
“From who?”
“This woman Lilah. We had a thing, like, nearly eight years ago, when I was on the road. I’m shocked she still has my number.”
“She wanted more of your Travis charm?”
“I don’t know what she wanted. It was pretty weird. She asked me if I still lived in Asheville, then where I live in Asheville. I figured she was in town, you know, like she wanted to get together, but then she basically hung up on me.”
“Huh, that is weird. You think she’s going to send a flaming bag of shit to your doorstep?”
He laughs, but I can tell he’s still chewing on it. “Nah, man. She was a lot, but she’s the one who ended things.”
I shrug. “Keep one eye open, I guess.”
“Go call your girl. We gotta be fresh by the time the kids get here. There’s been some drama between Stephen and Grant.”
Stephen and Grant are brothers, and they get along about as well as Jonah and I do.
“Oh joy.”
I duck into the hallway and dial Sophie before remembering she’ll be at work, too. I leave a voicemail and then another text, feeling needy and not liking it. But she’ll get back to me eventually.
Unless Jonah got to her…
It’s a stupid impulse, but I check our social media profiles, breathing out a sigh of relief when I see they’re still linked, that photo of us front and center.
Reflexively, I trace my finger over Sophie’s face on the screen, and feel like a real idiot.
I tell myself what I’ve been repeating for a couple of days now. It’s just a rebound. Don’t get hung up.
But I am, obviously, and I don’t even know why or when it started. Maybe it started the moment I saw the video of her throwing that ring at Jonah’s face. It’s certainly been building ever since.
I remind myself that the important thing is for Sophie to show up next week for the meeting with Nelly. No matter what happens, she wouldn’t bow out before that. I know she wouldn’t.
Rubbing my temples, I head back inside, in a pretty awful mood, to be perfectly honest.
My mood doesn’t improve after the kids show up. Stephen and Grant keep bitching at each other, and it takes twenty minutes for us to settle on a movie to watch. School of Rock , which we’ve already seen about a dozen times.
After the last of the kids take off, we straighten up the room, both of us quiet.
“You want to go out for a bit?” Travis asks as we finish, but I can tell he doesn’t want to go out for a bit.
It hits me that he’s not looking so great either, like maybe he didn’t sleep last night. His eyes are heavy, his hair a bit messy for him. Trav’s the only type A drummer I’ve ever met. It’s like all the chaos in his soul goes into his music, and he’s got nothing left. That, or he’s always setting the beat for his own life. Maintaining order helps with his anxiety, he says.
“You okay?” I ask.
He laughs and lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I don’t know. It was kind of jarring, hearing from her. Last I heard she was pregnant and marrying some old rich guy. A producer.”
“The one she dumped you for?” I say. “Harsh.”
“Yeah. Hearing from her put me in a funk, I guess.” He gives me a knowing look. “You’re in a weird state too.”
“Yeah.” I tap my fingers against my arm. “It’s this thing with Soph. She hasn’t gotten back to me all afternoon.” I swear. “I sound like one of our kids.”
“Let’s sit for a minute.” He nods to the couch in the corner of the room. We carry over the leftover pizzas and a couple of seltzers and settle into it, facing the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking a parking lot. Like I said, the unit was relatively cheap, and relatively cheap places usually don’t come with views.
We shoot the breeze about everything but Lilah and Sophie for a while, eating some of the cold pizza. I ask if he’s still been texting with Hannah, and he gives me an oh, please look. “If Lilah was a tornado, that woman’s a hurricane.”
Maybe we’re both avoiding going home, knowing there’s nothing much to greet us there—unless Lilah really did send him a flaming bag of shit. Travis is like me. He doesn’t even have a goldfish, let alone a cat to sit by the fishbowl. He likes his space, but I can tell the solitary nature of his existence gets to him sometimes, just like it does with me. My friend and I live parallel existences, intersecting plenty, but always returning to the baseline. The empty apartment. The feeling of missing something that isn’t there and maybe never has been. The tug toward something more . He has a sister he keeps in touch with, but she lives in New York City and doesn’t visit much. His dad, who was already sixty when he was born, passed away years ago; his mom is on her third husband and living in Europe.
Eventually, Travis forces me to circle back to the topic of my family. And I rehash all the crap they pulled this past week.
“Look, man,” he says. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going for it. You’re better off without them. Your dad and Jonah only bring you down. You don’t need that.”
I nod, because he’s right. My feelings about my father have always been complicated, but up until recently, there was still a part of me that hadn’t let go. I felt it loosening its grip at the coffee shop last week, and it felt fantastic. I tell him as much.
“That’s right,” he says, clapping me on the shoulder. “We’ve got this , man. We’ve made something great here. Better even than Bad Magic.” His mouth purses to one side. “They suck anyway. Have you heard their latest single?”
Have I heard it?
Of course I have. I follow their every success and failure. I’m only human. Besides, their lead singer, David, was my childhood best friend. Was being the operative word in that sentence. He took it personally when I couldn’t come on tour with them. He acted like it was a choice, not a decision that had been ripped from me. We’ve talked a few times since, but it’s been years since the last time we exchanged a word. He hasn’t looked back, only forward, and who could blame him?
I smile ruefully. “You know it was fucking good.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “We’re better. But I’m glad no one outside of this area knows it. Being on tour sucks. And the music should be just about the music, not about what’s popular or what other people want, you know? We’ve got everything we need.”
I can tell he means it—or has convinced himself he does—but it’s not true for me anymore.
He gives me the amused look of a man who knows me well. “I like her. Now, she’s good for you.”
I smile at him. “Thanks, man. I’d like to be good for her too.”
“You will.” He hesitates before adding, “Have you told her what Jonah did?”
I think about my deal with Sophie—a past for a past. But maybe that’s unfair. She might need me to show her the ultimate trust before she can do the same. “Not yet,” I say. “Maybe it’s about that time.”
He grins at me. “You do have it bad. Just don’t start writing pop music. I can’t take it if you become a pop music guy.”
This makes me laugh, because the songs I’ve been writing recently could probably be classified that way. “I have a couple of new ones for our next practice. They’re gonna make people want to dance.”
Hopefully, they’ll make her dance.
The thought plants an idea in my head. “You said the show at the Peel is on my birthday.”
“It is, and you said you wouldn’t do it. I believe the words ‘over my dead body’ were used.”
“I’ve changed my mind. If Bixby is down, let’s tell them we’re in.”
“Oh, the mercurial artistic temperament. Let me guess. You want to see Sophie in leg warmers?”
I roll my eyes. “Seems fun. That’s all.”
It also seems like a banner opportunity to give her a real prom experience, though I’m definitely not admitting that yet.
“Yeah, right,” he says with a laugh. “But I do want to see Bixby in fluorescents. I’ll see if the Peel still has room for us.”