Chapter 39
“Who you text-een?” Frannie asks as she waddles toward me on the toe stops of her roller skates.
“My mom.”
I stuff my phone in my pocket and hope that Frannie will move on but already know that she won’t.
She takes a seat next to me on the bench at the edge of the roller rink and comments that I’ve been here awhile, not skating, then asks if everything’s okay, her tone syrupy but her eyes like darts.
I tell her everything’s fine and that I just wanted to stretch my feet for a sec before getting back out on the rink.
“Hmm…” Frannie says, thumping her chin like a cartoon character. Some kind of bunny. Maybe a mouse.
“What?”
“Oh, I dunno,” she shrugs, embellishing the casualness, begging for me to ask again.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Frannie’s lips press into a tight line. A violent urge tugs at me, to push her off the bench. It’s not about hurting Frannie. It’s about getting rid of her. Not having to deal with her speculation. Or even just with her interruption.
This is probably the only patch of time that Mr. Korgy and I will get today.
He’s got so much going on. So many obligations between his family and his work and tending to all the things that need tending to in a middle-aged life—colonoscopies and root canals and trips to Home Depot and whatever else.
So when he does reach out, I drop whatever I’m doing to make myself available.
It’s pathetic and I don’t even care. I don’t need dignity. I just need him.
The timbre of our exchanges is intense—frantic and clawing, all-consuming rapid-fire missiles shot back and forth.
The content is dynamic, running the gamut from flirty emojis to horny and hurried sexting to bursting confessions.
I get so swept up in the messages that I can’t see or hear anything else, the rest of my life blotted away while I get lost in the six-inch phone screen that represents him.
Until he signs off with a quick goodbye. And everything is calm and empty again.
So I reread them. Three times, four times, five times.
On work breaks, over dinner, before bed.
I pore over every gray bubble. Find meaning that may or may not be there.
Place extra emphasis on the soft words. The tender ones.
The apologetic ones. The ones where he gives just a little more.
Sometimes I touch the texts, like a widow who grazes her fingers through her deceased husband’s sweaters.
Reverently. Longingly. Clinging to any trace of him.
“You should come skate a couple more rounds with me and Tristan before they close…”
My phone buzzes again and my hand instinctively moves to it.
It knows how limited our interactions are, how clipped, knows that if I don’t get back to him right now I might miss my window.
He might get busy with something else. Shoot off a quick “Sorry, gotta run!” or “Catch you later!” that pulls my heart out of my bowels with how casual it is.
How effortless. How easy it is for him to let go.
To leave. While I’m stuck here dizzy and beating myself up for not getting back to him that much faster, not squeezing one more back-and-forth out of the exchange, one more beat, one more notch on the fuel tank that will keep me going. Until next time.
“You sure every-theen’s okay with your mom?”
We stare at each other. It’s a showdown. She knows I’m keeping something from her, and I know that she knows I’m keeping something from her, and she knows that I know that she knows I’m keeping something from her. But I’m not about to tell her what it is. And we both know that too.
Frannie’s the last person I would tell about Korgy.
She’d march straight to Principal Sanders’s office with her sanctimonious little smirk, arms on her hips while she spills every last detail, getting him fired and then consoling me with a “there, there” pat on the shoulder, explaining that she did what she needed to do to be a good friend. That she did it for me.
“Yep, she’s fine,” I say. “I’m gonna rest my legs a sec longer then I’ll meet you back out there.”
“Okey dokey,” she says, waddling back toward the rink.
I rush to open our text thread, zeroing in on his most recent gray bubble.
Shoot, gotta go give Greg a bath and put him to bed. Catch you later, pretty!
A piece of me dies as I heart the message.