26. TWENTY SIX
TWENTY SIX
CORY
I spent the following days alternating between my bed, the couch, and the kitchen. I left the house once to meet the man boarding up the window and door, but came right back home. The sight of my shop made me sick to my stomach. Eventually I’d have to clean things up and sort through the mess, but I couldn’t handle it right then.
So my life became a never ending loop of sleeping and eating, and little else while I tried to pull myself out of the proverbial black hole I’d let myself sink into. Turns out, I could throw one hell of a pity party.
Kinsley called once or twice a day to check in on me, which I was grateful for, but I had a bunch of texts and missed calls from Garrett that I let go unanswered. I wasn’t ready for that conversation.
Most of my anger toward him had all but disappeared by the fourth day of my self-imposed lockdown, but that left me with a whole lot of guilt and a smidgen of embarrassment for how I’d reacted. I needed to apologize, that much I knew, but I was scared it wasn’t going to be enough. That he had seen my damage and decided my brand of crazy wasn’t for him. I was going to apologize, I just needed to brace myself for rejection, and for that, I would need a couple more days.
After six days, I decided I needed to leave. To go outside, get some fresh air, and touch some grass or something. Staying locked in my house for a full week felt too dramatic for my taste, and a little bit pathetic, and I wasn’t that girl.
Siren was all too happy with the decision, and even happier when that decision led us back to the dog park. It felt like a good choice for everyone involved. She got to run around and play, and I got to go somewhere with minimal chances of running into Garrett before I was ready.
My phone rang in my jeans, and I pulled it out, my heart stopping for several beats at the caller ID.
Detective Levine.
I answered quickly, and walked several paces away from the dogs sprinting laps around the fenced-in area.
“Hello?”
“Miss Eastwood?”
“Cory,” I corrected him.
“My apologies, Cory. I wanted to call and give you an update regarding your case. Is now a good time?”
“Oh, wow. That was fast. Yeah, now’s fine.” I looked over to check on Siren. She had one ear stuck flipped over, her tongue lolling out of her mouth. At least one of us could be carefree at the moment.
“Well, as I’m sure you know, Officer Adler gave us a pretty good lead. ”
Even though I’d recently come to terms with Garrett going to Levine with what he’d suspected had happened, the wound was only freshly scabbed over and Levine’s words picked at it.
“Yeah. I’m aware. So, what? It was the guys from my mom’s party?”
“Yes. Garrett was able to identify both Graham Anderson and Luke Parsons as the two who vandalized your business. We obtained warrants for their arrests and brought them in, and they confessed to the whole thing. Not that we really needed it.”
I knew of them both, but while we were never close, our fathers all were. Graham and Luke had been in attendance at most of my mother’s parties ever since childhood, but I’d rarely spoken to them. Kinsley and I spent the majority of any and all parties glued together and actively trying to avoid the other children. Most of them were just as snobby and entitled as their parents.
“Well, that’s good, right? You caught them.” A cheerfulness I didn’t feel colored my tone.
“Yes. We’ve got them in custody until someone posts their bail, which knowing their parents, won’t be for much longer, but then the court will deal with them.”
“Good. Good. Thank you for—”
“Cory, there’s another piece to it.”
I knew what he was going to say even before he said the words, and I wished with every fiber of my being that he’d choose to not say them—to let me remain blissfully ignorant to it all. But he didn’t .
“Both Parsons and Anderson separately confessed that your mother had hired them to destroy your shop.”
How was it possible to feel so completely blindsided by something you knew was coming? By something you were expecting.
I think I would’ve cried if I hadn’t spent almost a whole week doing exactly that. My tear ducts burned, but nothing ever came. My stomach felt like I’d been kicked by a very large, very angry animal, but I didn’t cry. I just stared at Siren running through the grass, envious of the fact that she’d never had to know her mother.
“Okay.” It was far from okay. I was far from okay, but what else was there to say?
“We’ll be issuing a warrant for her arrest and bringing her into custody. I just thought I’d let you know.”
“Right. Yeah, thank you.” My response felt robotic.
“For what it’s worth, and I’m sure it’s not much, I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” I cleared my throat. “Thank you for dealing with all of this so fast.”
“Of course.”
After we hung up, I didn’t move for several minutes.
Garrett was right.
He was right about everything, and I’d screamed at him and told him he was wrong.
I kicked him out of my house.
Why had I defended my mother without stopping to even consider the possibility of what Garrett had been saying? She’d done nothing to earn my loyalty or blind faith. Instead, I’d put all my belief in her, and none in the man that had believed in me since the first moment I met him.
I was a fool.
***
Going home was the last thing I wanted to do, which was how Siren and I found ourselves at Black Stem Studio with Glen, guilt-eating a bag of pretzel M&M’s.
I think Glen knew I didn’t want to go home, so he let us stay while he worked on a client of his. Watching him work was mesmerizing, and I found it fascinating how he was the one who taught me everything I knew, but we still approached tattooing so differently. Where he started on a piece versus where I would’ve started on it, how he sat versus how I sat, so much came down to the artist behind the gun. It was one of the reasons I loved it so much. Ten tattoo artists could be given the same tattoo to do, but at the end of the day you would have ten completely different tattoos.
After his client left and it was just us in the shop, he sat back down on his stool and got comfortable.
“All right, what’s going on. kid?”
So, I spilled everything to him, just like I did with Kinsley, starting with the vandalism—which I had already told him about—and ending with my phone call with the detective. Well, minus the romantic bits, as was stipulated by rule number three of our friendship.
“Sounds like the boy was right.” His voice was rough as he leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest.
I buried my face in my hands, scrubbing them roughly across my eyes as I removed them. The last week felt like it’d aged me at least four years, despite all the sleeping I’d been doing.
“Yeah.”
Glen shrugged like he didn’t see what the problem was. “So, apologize to him and move on.”
I glared at him. “He’s going to hate me, Glen. I hate me.”
“He might, but you’re not going to know until you talk to him.”
When I didn’t respond right away, Glen continued. “Listen, I’m going to be straight with you.”
“This sounds too familiar to how Kinsley started right before she gave me some ‘tough love.’”
He chuckled. “I’ve always liked that girl.”
I waved him on.
“He said some shit you didn’t want to hear, and I don’t blame you for getting mad. I don’t. I would’ve acted the same way. But your response came from a place of hurt, and I think Garrett’s a smart enough guy to understand that. I don’t think he’d hold this one against you.”
I nodded because he was right. Garrett was a nice guy, I’d always said that, but the problem was I wasn’t sure I deserved his forgiveness. Garrett deserved someone who was as sweet as he was. I was a metaphorical dill pickle. He needed a girl who was a cinnamon bun, or a donut, or something.
Glen pointed a tattooed finger in my direction, my face giving away too much of where my thoughts had strayed. “You didn’t like it when he made decisions for you, don’t you go doing the same to him. You go apologize, tell him how you feel, and put the ball in his court. Let him decide whether or not he wants to play.”
I cringed. “Play? Really? Word choice man, gross.”
Glen shoved up from his seat grumbling. “You know what I mean. Now get the hell out of my shop before I call him down here to remove you.”
I laughed, taking my almost empty bag of M&Ms with me as I stood up. Siren met me at the door.
“Hey, Glen?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
I couldn’t tell if he blushed through his beard, but something about his facial expression read a whole lot gentler than it had a moment ago.
“You’re too stubborn and prideful for your own good sometimes. Work on that.”
I snorted a laugh. That was a thing he’d always told me when I was his apprentice. Any time I screwed up or had something I needed to improve on, he’d tell me and follow it up with “work on that.” It was his version of Kinsley’s Oreo method, and even though he hadn't said anything nice just then, it worked.
“I’ll work on it.”
It was dark when we left, the sun setting much earlier now that it was officially autumn. I drove home, Siren curled up on the passenger seat, my mind racing faster than the wheels on my Jeep were spinning.
I don’t think I’d really given myself enough time to process everything with my mother, but I also didn’t think I’d make any progress on that front until I talked to her, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that quite yet.
Garrett, however, I was ready to apologize to. I missed him. I missed his hugs, his jokes, his ability to make me feel at peace with myself, and the way he kissed me like maybe I’d disappear if he stopped. I missed him so fucking much, and I think that’s what made me so scared to talk to him. Owning up to being wrong, I could handle, but him taking my apology and telling me to get lost? It physically hurt to think about that option.
My house felt so empty now that I’d realized how much I actually wanted Garrett in it. I hadn’t noticed it the past few days when anger and sadness were my main emotions, but in their absence, all the rooms felt too big, too dark, and too quiet.
I knew if I called him, he’d be over in less than an hour, but it was late and the conversation we were going to need to have would no doubt be lengthy and emotional. It wasn’t one that was going to start at nine o’clock at night, when he probably had work in the morning.
But as I lay in bed, still awake at one in the morning, tossing and turning with anxious energy, I wished I’d just called him. Siren had abandoned me around eleven to go sleep on the couch as a result of one too many run-ins with my feet .
I was about to give up on sleeping all together and just go to the kitchen to make a snack, because of course now I was hungry, when a sharp tapping sound hit my window.
What the hell?
When the sound came again I got out of bed and slowly approached the glass. All I could see was darkness at first, and then a flashlight flicked on.
And there stood Garrett with a palm full of rocks.