8. Calliope
Calliope
Sleep is a luxury only the rich can afford.
I am not rich.
But I sleep when I can.
Especially after leaving work early the night before by sneaking out and running away from my problems. Which have names.
Lazarus. Soren. And Vex.
Which is why banging on my door after only a few hours of sleep makes me cranky and in need of a shotgun.
For threatening. Not shooting. I’m not that completely homicidal.
Unless it is absolutely necessary. Then shoot.
“Go away.” I tunnel under my pillows until the banging stops.
I’m so close to sleep when the lock jimmies and my door creaks open.
I sit up in bed, bleary-eyed, and look down the hallway. It’s a straight shot. From my bed to the front door. Horrible feng shui. But here we are.
“I will shoot you,” I say.
“If you were going to shoot me, then I’d already be dead.” Calypso walks in with coffee and donuts.
I can’t be terribly mad at her.
Until a strange woman with a baby on her hip walks in behind her.
“Can’t shoot a baby.” I yawn and roll out of bed. Wearing a matching short set in pink and green, I stumble to the bathroom to take care of business before I shoot my sister.
Her I can kill.
But then I’d have to resurrect her and clean up the blood and I’m far too lazy for that shit.
“Girl, do you ever eat?”
“No,” I yell through the door, which is a horrible lie. I eat all the time. Just rarely here.
Muttering reaches me under the door. And a baby cries.
Whose fucking baby?
Flushing, I stumble into my ratty living room. I don’t even have a table. I have an island with stools that barely function because the island wasn’t made for stools. It was made to irritate me.
“Callie, this is Madison,” Calypso says, taking coffee out of the holder and handing one to me.
I sip uncaring of how steaming it is because it’s the perfect amount of caffeine. And I’m going to need it if I have to train my replacements tonight.
“Hi, Madison,” I say around the third yawn of the morning.
Have I mentioned I’m not a morning person? I’m not.
“Madison is my Hadley,” Calypso says.
The word does something to my sternum I don’t care for. My Hadley is on a boat off New Zealand. Calypso says it like it’s a thing a person can just have lying around. Like best friends are renewable.
“Say less.” I finally look at the woman beside me.
Honey blond. Tall in a way I’m not. Beautiful the way some women are beautiful, like they were assembled with care by someone who knew what they were doing.
And looking at her makes me reflexively check whether I’m still wearing pajama shorts. I am. Excellent.
She’s also holding a baby with rolls for days and something inside of me wants to just snuggle all the rolls and love her.
“And who might this be?”
My hand reaches out to touch her, just to even feel her skin. Maybe sniff her head. That’s when my memories catch up to me and remind me of all that I lost and my hand falls. I want to hold the baby, but I don’t know if I can.
Also I have never held a live baby.
I had exactly one shot at that and the universe took it back before I got to use the car seat, and I have spent three years pretending that doesn’t matter, and the one rule I made with myself the day I came home from the hospital with empty arms was no babies.
Other people’s. Mine. Doesn’t matter. No.
Calypso goes very still beside me.
The kind of still that means she’s just clocked something the rest of the room is about to. She’s not looking at me. She’s looking at the floor between us like the floor knows. Which she does. Maybe she shared my history with Madison, I don’t really know.
“Oh,” Madison says, quiet, like I’ve spoken my hurts out loud, and maybe I have, because her hands are already pulling the baby back to her own chest. “Oh, honey.”
Madison oozes warmth and understanding. I instantly like her. Because that warmth and understanding makes me want to cry and hug her until everything is better. And as fucked up as it is, she’s Calypso’s person. I can do math, even emotional math and I’m glad that Calypso has someone like her.
Which means she knows what holding her daughter will do to me.
“You don’t have to,” Madison says. “She’s fine here.”
The apartment goes very quiet.
The little girl observes the whole exchange carefully. She has this expression as though she’s trying to learn the people around her. That’s when she reaches for me. Me. One little chubby hand and I’m a goner.
I have to hold her now.
Madison hands her over like it’s nothing. To her maybe it is nothing. To me it’s everything. Handing over that small human is a trust that maybe Madison doesn’t understand.
I understand.
She looks up at me like she’s just decided I’m an acceptable seat. Her head smells like baby shampoo and that particular scent they carry. The one no one can understand but all women obsess over.
Something in me cracks so quietly nobody hears it.
Except Calypso does. She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move.
I know she can somehow feel me. Through that weird connection.
“This is Mable,” Madison tells me gently.
“She’s heavier than she looks,” I’m not really sure why I say it.
I hand her back before my heart breaks anymore and I break down in front of them.
Madison takes her back without a comment.
Calypso reaches across the gap between us and squeezes my elbow. Just once. Then lets go.
“Mable.” I sip my coffee. “I love it,” I tell her honestly. “What a beautiful name for a beautiful little girl.”
“She’s six months.” She sets her in her lap. “The only saving grace I have is that she sleeps through the night.”
Mable makes a few cooing sounds as though in agreement, drool trailing from her mouth.
“She’s leaking again.” Calypso grabs a tissue.
“Didn’t know you were so maternal,” I mumble.
Calypso just gives me a stink eye before settling on my couch.
“I hate the intrusion.” I sip my coffee again. “Why are you here?”
“It’s Saturday,” Madison says, and the eyes she blinks at me are dark and a little too patient, like a woman who has learned to wait people out. “We do donuts and coffee every Saturday morning.”
“Seriously?” My head comes up.
“You didn’t tell her, Lips?” Madison scolds my sister.
Growing up, Calypso was the extrovert. The excitable one… and that, I’m realizing as I sit here, is the extent of my knowledge of my sister.
We are terrible twins.
“Seriously.” Calypso settles on the other edge of my couch, drawing a blanket over her legs. “We shit talk. Every Saturday. Catch up about our week.”
“Lips started it when…” Madison’s voice catches. Her eyes shine, but she doesn’t let anything fall. “A year ago.”
This time I can’t let the nickname go. “Lips?”
“Lip it.” She lobs a donut hole at me. “Eat.”
“Breakfast of champions.” I grab the donut and pop it in my mouth. “So you crashed my place.”
To include me.
I keep that to myself. Obviously.
“It’s not crashing. I have a key,” Calypso says. I sure as fuck did not give her a key. “That I stole from your key ring and made copies. Besides we are family.”
I take another sip of coffee, buying time. The word family hangs between us like an accusation. We haven’t been family in a long time. Not since everything went sour.
“You don’t have a key.”
“Fine, I have lock-picking tools and I just stole your key.” She pops a donut hole in her mouth this time. “Better?”
“So,” I say, changing the subject, “you bring me a baby and donuts. What’s the catch?”
Mable reaches for my coffee cup with grabby fingers, her chubby arms waving wildly.
“No way, kid. This is mine.” I pull the cup away from her reach. “I share my apartment, my time, and my sister, but not my caffeine.”
Madison laughs with her entire body, it’s charming. “She picks the ones who’ll lose.”
“Don’t I know it.” Calypso smiles at Mable like she’s the center of the universe. “She’s been running our household for six months.”
Interesting. My sister was never the maternal kind and here she is with a roommate who has a baby.
“So, tell me about your week. Did anything exciting happen? New boy toy?”
“Calypso?” Madison laughs, startling the baby who then laughs just like her mom. “Boys? Not since—”
Calypso elbows her in the ribs. “How’s the museum?”
“We are circling back to that.” I twirl my finger in the air. “I got promoted.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Calypso says, lit up. And just like that, something I’d packed away in the bottom of a box years ago pushes the lid off and looks around.
See, the thing says, life could be good.
Just let it be good.
Which is fucked because I love the good things in life, it’s just that life also taught me that it can steal all that good just as fast.
“Yeah,” I draw the word out focusing on the promotion. “I don’t get it. It’s completely out of the blue.”
“Is it?” Calypso snorts. “From what you’ve said, Lazarus is a dick and should have given you the position of…” She snaps her fingers, trying to remember the word.
“Curator.”
“That’s it,” she says with conviction. “Knew the word just lost it somewhere up here.” She twirls a finger around her head.
“Madison, what do you do?” I ask because talking about me has always made me uncomfortable. I’d rather listen.
“Oh.” She blushes a little. “I just—” She glances at Calypso. Then back to me.
Oh there is something weird with these two.
“She lives with me,” Calypso blurts out. “I moved her here with me when I left Chicago.”
“That so?” I tilt my head. “I didn’t even know when you left Chicago.”
“You weren’t talking to me.”
“Touché.” I nod, sipping my coffee. I was knee deep in grief and not talking to her. “Alright. Calypso, what are you doing for money.”
Again they look at each other then back to me.
“You are both hiding something.” I grab a donut hole and pop it in my mouth. “I don’t like it.”
“It’s not bad. It’s just—” Madison pauses, reaching out to lay a warm hand on my bicep. “A really long story.”
Calypso snorts as though it is in fact not a long story.
“I was in a bad situation,” she admits. I absolutely note the glare she throws at my sister. “My ex wasn’t a good man.”