The Love Line

Chapter 8

EIGHT

The headphones don’t shake my hands anymore.

Two weeks in, and the chair’s starting to fit. I drop into it a few minutes before air, pull the cans on, and the foam sits cool against my ears. The board in front of me glows with a row of empty call slots waiting to fill. They always fill.

The room still smells of fresh paint and new foam.

It was a spare room at FMG Records until I handed it to Bex, and she turned it into this before we ever went on air.

Sound panels floor to ceiling. A booth built out behind a wall of glass.

A board that cost more than my first car.

She runs the place tighter than any tour I ever played.

She’s behind the glass now with her headset on and her screener software up, mouthing something at a caller I can’t hear and don’t need to.

We’ve built a language in two weeks. Two fingers up, I’ve got two minutes.

A tap on the glass, I wrap it. A nod, I keep going.

She hasn’t had to tap the glass in three nights.

She told me on day one she’d give it six weeks before we knew anything. We’re two in, and she’s already fielding calls from a pair of stations down the coast that want to carry us. She mentioned it once, then went back to her board. With Bex, that’s a parade.

Paige is folded into her corner with the laptop on her knees and her phone propped against the wall, already deep in a clip from earlier in the week. She doesn’t look up when I come in anymore. She lifts a hand instead, two fingers, telling me what Bex is about to.

“That clip from the other night cleared a hundred thousand,” Paige says, still not looking up. “You’re trending in three cities you’ve never set foot in.”

“Is that good?”

“It’s very good. Don’t let it go to your head.”

The light goes red.

“Evening. This is The Love Line with Liam, and tonight I’m all yours.”

Bex points to the first slot on the board and holds up one finger. I press the button.

“You’re on. What’s going on?”

“Hi, Liam.” A woman, warm, a little wound up. “It’s my mother-in-law. I cannot cook one thing in my own kitchen without her telling me what I did wrong. The salt, the oven, how I hold a knife. Thirty years married to her son, and she still stands behind me at the stove like an inspector.”

“Does she cook well?”

“That’s the worst part. She’s wonderful.”

I laugh into the mic. “Let me tell you about my wife and a turkey. One Thanksgiving, early on, she wanted to do the whole thing herself. Wouldn’t let me near it.

She put the bird in, forgot the bird, and by the time we remembered, smoke was coming under the kitchen door.

Fire department came. Three trucks. The whole street out on the lawn in their slippers. ”

“What did you do?”

“We ordered pizza. Best Thanksgiving we ever had.” I let my words hang there for a second while I smile at the memory.

“Here’s the thing. You’re never going to out-cook this woman, and you don’t have to.

Some battles aren’t worth winning. Let her make the stuffing.

Save your fight for something that matters. ”

She’s quiet a second. “The stuffing is really good.”

“Let the woman make her stuffing. Then ask her to teach you. Nothing disarms a critic like handing her the apron.”

The line clicks off. Bex slides me the next one.

“Yeah, hey.” A young guy, dorm sounds behind him, a hallway, a far-off door, somebody laughing two rooms over.

“So I went out with this girl. Three dates. Good dates, I thought. Then nothing. She just stopped answering. I keep going back through everything I said, trying to find the thing that did it.”

“And you can’t find it.”

“No.”

“Because it might not be there.” I pull the mic closer and drop my voice.

“Sometimes it isn’t about you. Sometimes a person just isn’t ready, and they don’t know how to say it, so they say nothing.

The hardest part isn’t figuring out what you did.

It’s accepting that her reasons aren’t yours to fix. ”

“So I just let it go.”

“You let her go. You keep what you learned. Three good dates means you know how to show up for somebody. Plenty of people never figure that part out.” I give it a second. “She’s the one who quit. Don’t carry her bag for her.”

I queue a track between callers, an old one I wrote in my twenties about a road I couldn’t wait to get on.

Harrison’s snare, JD’s low line walking underneath, my own voice a younger and dumber version of itself.

When it fades, I sit there a second longer than the gap needs, and then I lean into the mic and tell the truth.

“I left somebody once. A long time ago. Somebody I loved more than I had any right to. I left because I was scared to stay, and I told myself a lot of pretty stories about why. The truth is I was a coward. Took me ten years to come back to her. Ten years I don’t get back.”

The booth goes still behind the glass. Bex’s pen stops. In the corner, Paige’s hands come off the keyboard.

“If there’s somebody you’re standing at the door on right now, telling yourself the pretty stories about why you have to go, hear me. Don’t take the ten years to find out you were wrong.”

The board lights up. Every slot at once.

“I’m the guy at the door. The one you just described.” A man, gruff, clearing his throat twice before a word comes out. “Split with my wife six months ago. I keep telling myself it’s temporary, that I’ll go back when things calm down. You said ten years and I about drove off the road.”

“How long have you been calling it temporary?”

“…Since the day I left.”

“Then it isn’t temporary. It’s a decision you make every morning by not making it.” I pause, hoping he’s listening. “You don’t have to fix it tonight. You have to quit lying to yourself about what it is. Call her tomorrow. Not to fix it. To be honest. Start there.”

“And if she’s done?”

“Then one of you will have told the truth. Some nights that’s the only thing left worth doing.”

Bex lines up the next one.

“Liam.” A man, older, careful with every word. “I found a credit card I didn’t know we had. My wife’s name. Fifteen thousand dollars on it. She’s been hiding it two years.”

“Two years.”

“I don’t even care about the money. We can fix the money. It’s that she looked me in the face for two years and—” He stops.

“And lied.”

“Yeah.”

I take the volume down. “Listen to me. Money lies are trust lies. The debt is the small problem. The big problem is the why, and you will not get to it in a fight. You sit down, no yelling, and you ask her what she was so afraid of that hiding it felt safer than telling you. Then you listen to the answer. Even if it’s hard. Especially if it’s hard.”

“And if I can’t get past it?”

“Then you find somebody who helps you try before you decide you can’t. You don’t throw out a marriage over a card. You don’t keep one over it either. Somewhere in the middle is a conversation. Go have it.”

Bex points to the next line. I take it.

“Hi.” A woman. Soft. There’s a smile in the word. “I just—I had to call. I listen every night. Your voice, it’s like you’re talking right to me. Like you already know me. Like we’ve done this a hundred times.”

“That’s the job. One voice, a lot of living rooms.” I keep it easy. “What’s on your mind tonight?”

“Oh. I didn’t really have a question. I wanted you to hear me. That’s enough. That’s already more than I—” A small laugh. “Thank you, Liam. Same time tomorrow.”

The line clicks off before I can answer. Through the glass, Bex looks at me a second longer than usual, then writes something on her pad. I file it under nervous first-timer and reach for the next light.

“Hi, Liam, longtime listener of your music.” A young woman, the hum of a car she hasn’t turned off under her voice. “I’ve been with my boyfriend a year. A good year. But he won’t introduce me to his family. Not at the holidays, not at his sister’s wedding, not once. He says it’s complicated.”

“A year is long enough that it shouldn’t be complicated anymore.”

“That’s what I keep thinking.”

“Then stop thinking it and ask it. Out loud, to his face. Not what’s the holdup. Ask him what he’s afraid you’ll find out, or what he’s afraid they’ll say. The answer tells you everything. A man who loves you finds a way to be proud of you in front of the people who raised him.”

“And if there isn’t a good answer?”

“Then you’ll have one anyway. A hard answer beats a year of guessing.”

In between the ones that stick, there are the others.

A man who can’t forgive his brother. A bride with cold feet three weeks out.

A widow who feels guilty for laughing again.

A kid who wants to know if long distance ever works, and I tell her sometimes, if both people are bad at giving up.

They come fast once the board fills, and Bex keeps them moving.

Two fingers, a tap, a nod. The three of us run a relay I didn’t know I’d be any good at.

Bex likes to close light, something easy after the heavy stuff, so I take a couple of short ones and send everybody home smiling. When the outro comes up, my hands are flat and steady on the desk. They’ve been steady the whole show.

She comes out of the booth while I’m still winding the headphone cord around my hand. Her notebook’s against her chest, a pen behind her ear.

“You ran long on the credit-card guy,” she says. “Good answer. Forty seconds too much of it.”

“He was hurting.”

“They’re all hurting. That’s the show. Give him an extra three minutes and you’ve got nothing left for the next one who’s hurting just as bad.” She taps the notebook against her thigh. “But the leaving. That was the night. More of that. Less of the rest.”

“More of bleeding on the air.”

“More of the truth. People can tell the difference.” She’s already turning back toward the booth. “So can I.”

I drive home with the windows down and the radio off. Two weeks ago, I couldn’t have told you what I’d say into that microphone. Now I sit at red lights wanting the only red light that matters, the one over the booth door.

Two nights later I’m back in the chair before Bex has the board lit, which earns me a look through the glass I choose to take as a compliment. The slots fill while I’m still pulling the cans on, and she points me at the first one before I’m ready for it.

The first voice of the night is young and a little embarrassed. “Okay, so. We’ve been married four months. And my husband plays video games. Which is fine. Except it’s six hours a night. Every night. I eat dinner alone while he’s got a headset on, yelling at strangers.”

“Six hours.”

“Six hours.”

“That’s not a hobby. That’s a place to hide.

” I give her a beat to sit with it. “The question isn’t the games.

It’s what he’s climbing into them to get away from.

Could be work. Could be growing up. Could be the marriage, and that’s the one you need to know.

So you turn the TV off, not as a punishment, as an invitation, and you ask him what six hours a night gives him that you can’t. ”

“And if he gets mad?”

“Then he’s mad because you found the door he’s been hiding behind. Stay kind and stay in the room. Mad you can work with. It’s the quiet that ends marriages.”

The next voice is older, tired in a way I know from the inside. “I take care of my mother. She’s sick, she lives with us now, and it’s a lot. My husband says I’ve disappeared into it. That I’m never his wife anymore. Only her daughter.”

“Is he wrong?”

A pause. “No.”

“Then here’s the hard part, and I’m only saying it because nobody else will.

You can love your mother all the way to the end and still be neglecting your marriage.

Both things can be true at once. He’s not wrong to feel lonely.

You’re not wrong to show up for her. But somebody has to say the quiet thing out loud, so I will.

You need help. Not because you’re failing.

Because no one person was built to be a daughter and a nurse and a wife with nothing left at the end of the day.

Get the help. And give that man one night a week that’s only his. One. Start there.”

She’s crying. I let her.

“My ex won’t stop texting me.” A man, younger, sheepish. “Two in the morning, mostly. ‘You up?’ That kind of thing. We’ve been broken up eight months.”

“And you answer.”

“…Sometimes.”

“You called a radio show to ask a stranger whether you should block your ex. You already know the answer. You’ve known it eight months. You’re not calling for advice. You’re calling for permission.” I lean in. “So here it is. Block the number. You have permission. Go to sleep.”

He laughs, caught out. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah.”

The last call is two voices on one line, a husband and wife passing the phone back and forth, cutting in over each other.

“He wants to retire,” she says. “We can’t afford it.”

“We can if we’re careful,” he says. “She wants to work till we’re ninety.”

“I want to not eat cat food at eighty,” she says.

“Okay.” I get them both quiet. “Can I tell you what I think you’re actually fighting about?

Because it isn’t the spreadsheet.” I wait until neither of them fills the gap.

“Sir, you’re scared that if you don’t stop now, you’ll run out of good years to enjoy not working.

Ma’am, you’re scared that if you stop too soon, you’ll spend those same good years lying awake about money.

You’re both trying to protect the exact same thing.

You’re just scared of losing it from opposite directions. ”

Quiet on the line. Then the wife, smaller, “Well. When you put it that way.”

“Put the spreadsheet away tonight. Tomorrow, you plan the life, not the money. The money serves the life. Never the other way around.”

Bex fades the outro. The light goes dark. Paige is already on her feet, phone out, three clips trimmed before I’ve got the cans off.

“The one about you leaving, it’s going to push out numbers to a whole new level,” she says without looking me. “I just posted it.”

“Course you did.”

“It’s good, Dad.” She glances up, one second, no more. “It’s really good.” Then she’s back in her phone, and that’s how I know she meant it.

Josie’s asleep on the couch when I get home. Her reading glasses are still on, a book open and tented on her chest, one bare foot hanging off the cushion. The lamp lays warm light across her face.

I crouch by the couch and take her glasses off first, careful at the ears. I close the book over my thumb to keep her page, set it spine-up on the table. I pull the blanket off the back of the couch and lay it over her legs.

She stirs without opening her eyes. “Hmm. You’re home.”

“Go back to sleep.”

Her hand comes up, finds my collar, and pulls. I let her bring me down. She kisses me slow and three-quarters asleep, her mouth soft, no hurry in it.

“Show’s good. I miss spending the evenings with you though.”

“I’ll always be waiting for you.”

I sit down on the floor beside the couch, my back against the cushions, close enough that her arm drapes over my shoulder. Her fingers find my hair. I close my eyes and let her keep them there.