25. Calliope #2
“No.” She stands up too quick, the tears streaming down her face.
Calypso isn’t a crier. She never has been.
She holds everything close to her chest, never letting anyone in.
“Don’t stop,” she chokes on the words. “It’s just that you haven’t called me Soso since we were teens, and I didn’t realize how important it was to me until you said it. ”
“Well,” now I’m fucking crying. “Soso, we should go in and get those drinks.”
I didn’t realize I said it. Didn’t realize I called her the nickname that was my first fucking word. The first word I ever tried to say was her name.
And it came out as Soso.
And it stuck.
“Yeah, I’d like that,” she breathes and leads me back inside.
“I still think I’m about to get gonorrhea in here.”
She chokes back a laugh. “You won’t.”
We walk in and I’m really not sure. It’s likely the smallest bar I’ve ever been in. The bar takes up the entire left side. String lights hanging on the side. The window behind me boarded up and a few old men smoking cigars at the bar.
“Ah!!! Lips,” one of the men says. He looks maybe in his forties. Gray beard and salt-and-pepper hair and he’s staring at the bottom of a beer glass like it holds the answers to life. “Now this must be Calliope.” He turns toward us.
“Behave, old man,” Calypso warns before turning to me. “This is Jude, and Rhett. Danny’s regulars.”
I look at the man beside Jude, he’s huskier, blond, and has one of those handlebar mustaches. He’s more reserved than his friend but about the same age.
“Hi,” I say weakly. Calypso always got along with the strangest people.
“Identical twins.” Jude smiles with all the dimples. “You look different though. Life changes ya.”
“Yeah.” I cough.
“Hey Dan!” Calypso calls to a guy walking in from the back, glasses in his hand.
“Hey ya, Lips.” He’s younger maybe a little older than us. He looks more Italian than anyone I’ve ever met.
“My sister,” Calypso shouts like she’s proud to say it. And I honestly think she just might be proud of it. Proud to call me her sister. “Okay now that you’ve met the regulars.” She loops her elbow in mine and leads to the back of the quiet bar where it’s just us two.
“Don’t tell her any lies, Lips.” Jude laughs.
“I’ve never seen a man so sexy at that age,” I hiss to her. “But you have to tell me about the nickname.”
“Eh, Jude fucks like he knows what he’s doing as well,” she whispers so quietly.
“Calypso,” I choke on laughter. “You didn’t.”
“I didn’t,” she evades.
Danny is on his way over to us with shots and beers. Not my usual. In fact I rarely drink anymore and a part of me wants to say no. But also, the other part craves the release.
So when he sets them down, I twirl the shot glass before saying, “Alright. But you have to make sure I get home safe and sound.”
“Done.” She grips her own shot glass. “To us. To our new future. New path forward.”
“To us.” We clink and I toss back what I now know is tequila and chase it with a Corona.
I do in fact choke on it. Calypso pats my back after chugging half her drink.
Danny is already pouring a second shot. “From the two old men.”
“I’m going to regret this.” I toss it back with Calypso.
“Never.” She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and pushes the shot glasses away. “Two more in a half hour. No more after that.”
“You have my word.” Danny nods and walks away.
“I…” have so many questions I don’t know how to frame. “He do that often?”
“He takes notes.” She wags her brows. “I feel warm and tingly.”
“You could date them?” I say twirling on my bar stool. “Danny. Jude. Rhett.” I punctuate each name.
“I’m spoke for,” she grumbles.
“Tell me everything.” I slap the counter already feeling the rush of alcohol.
I never fucking drink, not since…
“Can’t.” She blinks at me clear-eyed. Unlike me. “Tonight is about you.”
“Oh bullshit.” I turn her to face me. “You want to build a relationship. Open up. You can’t build something without letting me in too.”
I think I slurred that.
“I overdosed,” she says.
I feel my world fall apart. I knew things got bad. I just didn’t know how bad.
“Soso.”
“Few years ago.” She sips her beer. Staring into the bottom of the cup just like Jude. “Mads found me. We’d already committed to leaving Chicago. I just couldn’t get out fast enough.”
“Chicago,” I repeat slowly. “You were in Chicago.”
“I know I know, don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.” I’m not, “I’m nostalgic. We’d planned to run away together. Build a new life. But then.”
“I didn’t believe you and everything fell apart.” She keeps twisting that goddamn shot glass. “Sometimes I think about how differently life would have been if I believed you. Maybe I wouldn’t have died.”
“You died?”
“Ugh.” She rubs her temples. “Loose lips, Calypso,” she mutters to herself.
“What the fuck happened in Chicago, Soso?”
“Everything.” She sniffles turning to me. It’s like we are in our own little bubble here in this bar where the bartender makes sure you don’t drink too much and even sets pretzels before us. “Nothing. I don’t know.”
“You can tell me, you know.”
“I know,” she sighs. “I don’t know how.” She knocks on the bar top. “When did you start talking about James?”
“I haven’t,” I admit. “Barely to my therapist. And only what I need her to know but nothing too deep. I just, I needed you then and I felt like you shut me out and now I’m learning that you were fighting your own demons. Is that why you took his side?”
“No. Yes.” She sips her beer. “I didn’t know how to support you when everything went down. I didn’t know how to be the sister you needed in that moment. I only knew how to be me. And I wasn’t a good person then, Cal. I was running from a string of bad choices, and I couldn’t find a way out.”
I nod slowly. I get it. Calypso always turned to addiction to numb her pain. I chose blankets and depression. Sometimes with ice cream and Hostess cupcakes.
Two sides of the same fucked-up coin.
“He ah. He was with her the night, the night she stopped moving.” I feel the grief building inside my body. The only escape is out. “I knew ya know. I knew. I just knew.”
“Hey you don’t have to.”
Oh but I do.
“I was emotional. Hell even the nurses didn’t know what to do with me, they sent me to psych where all I did was lie about how I really felt.” The memories of that day. That day. Crash over me. “Meanwhile my baby was in the morgue. And my husband grieving in another woman’s bed. I needed you.”
“And I needed you.”
“Why.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Bullshit.”
“If I tell you then you’ll hate me,” she whispers.
“What?” Everything in me deflates. “Soso?”
“I can’t lose you again.” Tears bloom and drip down her beautiful face.
“I can’t and now I’m terrified if I tell you everything then you’ll hate me forever and I’ll lose this this connection I’ve wanted more than anything in the world and I can’t lose you again you understand I can’t.
” She grips my hands. “I can’t lose you. ”
“You won’t lose me,” I tell her but now I’m not so sure.
Because she’s holding back. Holding something big back. Something that had nothing to do with her addiction. Or her life in Chicago and everything to do with me. I can feel it.
Too bad the door creaks open and laughter steals the moment from us.
I dismiss the crowd coming in. And lean into her. “One day, I hope you tell me. And I’ll believe you. Every word because there is a story here that I want to hear.”
“Just know I’m so fucking sorry.” She leans her head toward mine. “When you called me that night,” she pauses and closes her eyes. “I was chasing a high and just wanted to get you off the phone.”
“Soso.”
“Our world ended the same night, just in different fonts.”
“I see that now.”
“Hey girls,” a stranger says.
Fucking hell, I turn to see the group of men who came in lounging around the bar. Some fucking with the karaoke machine. Others ordering drinks. Men and women alike.
“Hey,” I draw the word out because what drives a man to come up to two women in deep conversation and interrupt it.
Calypso reacts quicker than me turning in her seat. “Go.”
“I don’t think so.” He leans on the counter. “See this seat’s not taken.”
“Right.” Calypso hops off her seat and grabs my elbow, there’s an urgency to her that didn’t exist before. “We were leaving anyway.”
“Ah c’mon. I didn’t even get a chance to introduce myself.”
“I don’t care who you are,” Calypso says.
But I’m starting to notice other people around the bar looking our way.
“You should,” he says. “She should.”
Pretty sure he’s talking to me.
“I don’t know who you are.” I hop off the seat ready to follow Calypso out.
“Name’s Otto.” He smiles and there’s a wrongness to it. “I’m good friends with Vex.”