Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
Ever since I gave the green light to expand, the contractors Bex hired have wasted little time getting to work. It helps that it’s fall, almost winter, and jobs are scarce. Everyone wants to work, especially with the holidays approaching.
It’s wild to think how months ago, Bex came to me with an idea. One I shot down instantly. I didn’t think we’d last a week, and now the show has outgrown the little studio I started mostly to give Elle a place to work with her artists.
A screen to my left runs the livestream for when Paige isn’t working. The other DJs will be able to access our new social accounts with the push of a button. Paige says it’s needed and that we don’t want the spotlight to only be on me.
There’s a second screen for the callers.
Bex screens them on her side of the production booth, same as she always has, and now whatever she pulls comes up in front of me too.
A name. A town. A line about the trouble.
So, I know who’s coming before I punch the line.
This will help us communicate more easily and faster.
The sound is something else. Everyone comes through crystal clear, even when they have noise in the background. Bex knows her stuff and I’m thankful she chose me to be her test subject.
With everything shiny and brand new, I sit at my new console with anxiety building.
Each time the screen lights up with a new caller, I wonder if it’s him.
If it’s the voice of the man I think is my father.
Since the last call, I’ve waited for him to show up, to surprise me in the grocery store, or to call again.
I keep telling myself that when he does, I’m going to ask him flat out who he is and why he keeps calling.
Bex sits down at her desk and waves. We have a good relationship and she’s fitting in well with the community.
Josie has invited her to our house for Thanksgiving and warned her that it’ll be full of people, loud, but we’ll have plenty of food and we always have a good time.
She told us that she’s going back to New York to see her family, thanks to the healthy dose of sponsorships Ben has secured.
My coffee’s cold, which means my hands are cold. Renovated building or not, it’s still cold outside and the brick building can only do so much against the elements.
“Remind me to have the ducts cleaned,” I tell Paige as I get up and head toward the small kitchen.
I push some buttons and wait for my mug to fill.
When I get back to the studio, Paige is setting up the new camera we have.
While it’ll be aimed at me or whoever sits in this chair, once we move, it follows us.
It’s honestly sort of freaky. However, it saves Paige or any other assistant from having to stand there the entire time.
Now, she can sit at a desk—one that she decided needed to be in the same room as me—and monitor comments and continue to post on social media while the live stream is running.
I sit down, put my cans on, and look at the glowing board. Bex is in my ear, “You good?”
I nod. “I’m ready.” I take a deep breath, catch my daughter smiling at me, and press the button.
“You’re on The Love Line.”
“Liam,” the female voice sighs my name heavily. “My husband won’t talk to me in anything but movie quotes. All day. I asked him a real question this morning and he answered me in a pirate voice.”
I laugh before I can stop it. “Does he do it when it’s time to be serious?”
“No. When it’s serious he drops it and talks straight.”
“Then he’s not dodging you. He’s playing, and he trusts you enough to be a fool in front of you. Fire one back at him tonight. Bad accent and all. See what it does to his face.”
Paige has her mouth covered, trying to muffle her laughter.
I bend my arm and say, “Argh.” And then hit the button even though I’m still laughing. “You’re on The Love Line.”
“My husband retired last month, and he has reorganized my kitchen twice and he follows me from room to room narrating his whole day. I love this man. I do. I really, really do. But I need him to find a hobby before one of us doesn’t survive it.”
“I’m not sure a hobby is what he needs unless it takes him out of the house all day long,” I tell her. “Give him a mission. Something with a deadline and a result he can be proud of when he’s done. You need to direct him to a project that doesn’t involve you.”
“ . . .That’s actually good.”
“Try not to sound so surprised,” I say as I hang up. It’s like these people don’t understand I needed a project or my wife was going to boot me out of the house. They’re talking to my project.
Paige is very animated tonight, and I imagine her mom is blowing up her phone with little quips about my advice. It’s okay. I know all the women in my life are in a group chat, and I’m not invited. Hurts my feelings a bit, not gonna lie.
“You’re on The Love Line.”
“Hi, my wife and I made a deal before we married. No kids. Fifteen years in, she’s changed her mind. She wants them, bad.”
“Here’s the thing, people change. We’re allowed to change. It’s growth and it doesn’t always match how our partner’s feeling. People also stay the same and never grow or change. Neither of you is wrong, and that’s the part that hurts.”
“So what do I do?”
“You try to understand. Ask her why now? If the answer is something you can live with, you do what you need to do.”
“And if I can’t live with the answer?”
“Then you let her go so she can become the mother she wants to be. It’ll be hard to accept but you don’t want to bring a child into this world if you don’t want them. They’ll know it. You’ll know it.”
Every line’s lit. The show’s the best it’s been in weeks.
“You’re on The Love Line.”
“My ex is back. We were engaged, he destroyed us, and now he’s two years sober and says he’s a different man and wants another shot.”
“People can change. You’re talking to someone who is proof.
I was selfish and I was scared and I ran off from the best thing I ever had.
” That’s as far as I take it. “Here’s what you need to ask.
Is he proving it, or just saying it? Sober’s real work, so give him that much.
But pay attention to his actions. And the first time he reaches for the old version of the man he used to be, you show him the door. ”
“Thanks, Liam. I think I know what I need to do.”
I take the next call.
“You’re on The Love Line.”
“I want to propose, but I can’t afford the ring she deserves. Do I wait until I can?” He sounds young and very nervous.
“A ring is a promise and a token of love. I don’t even know when the practice started, but maybe you be the one that changes.
Buy her what you can and then you work to get something different later.
She may surprise you and fall in love with the one you slip on her finger because it’s something you picked for her. ”
After that call, we take a break and play some music. I refill my coffee, use the bathroom, and tell Paige not to get any ideas about a ring.
She laughs and something tells me I’m in for it with her. I sit back down and press the button.
“You’re on The Love Line.”
“My boyfriend won’t say I love you back. It’s been a year.”
“Does he show it?”
“…He fixed my car. Twice. He walks my dog in the rain.”
“He’s saying it in a language you’re not recognizing as words. Ask him for the words too. But don’t miss the ones he’s already handing you.”
I handle a few more calls and am shocked to see the board all lit up. There’s no break. Then it comes up on the second screen. NO NAME. And Bex’s voice changes, careful with it. “Older gentleman. Says he’s called before. Won’t leave a name.” She waits. “Your call. I can cut him loose.”
The line blinks. Bex stares at me through the glass. Paige watches me over the top of her laptop. All I have to do is nod. He’s a dial tone. He goes back to wherever he is, I finish my show and drive home.
I don’t nod.
“Put him through.”
Bex holds my eyes through the glass. I nod anyway. She puts him through.
“You’re on The Love Line.” My voice comes out easy, smooth.
“It’s me,” he says. Slower than before. Rougher. “You know that by now.”
“I know it.”
“I won’t keep you.” A wet breath. “I called to tell you I’m done calling.”
“You’ve called three times.” Something in my voice goes hard. “Every time you tell me you’re going to do the hard thing, and every time you don’t. So do it, or don’t. But quit practicing on me.”
“You’re right. I’ve been practicing.” No fight in him at all, which is worse. “It’s the only nerve I ever had. But I’m out of the time I’d need to get brave. The doctors gave me a number, and it’s come and gone.”
“Then say it to him.” The host is still in the chair, and the host has a job. “Not to me. Not to a phone receiver. He’s the one who’s meant to hear it.”
“He won’t take my call. He’s got no reason to.” Another of those breaths. “This is the only door left, and I don’t even believe he’s behind it. I think I’m talking to a kind stranger and letting myself pretend it’s him, because the pretending is the last thing I’ve got that still works.”
I should cut him off. Go to break, kill the line, any of the ten things a professional does when a call comes apart on live air. My hands stay where they are.
“So here it is,” he says. “I had a son. A good one. Better than I had any right to make. And I broke him for sport, because I couldn’t stand that he was softer than me and stronger than me at the same time.
I did it on purpose. For years. I called it making him a man.
” His voice drops to almost nothing. “It was jealousy. A grown man jealous of a boy. My boy.”
Here it is. The first true thing he’s ever said about what he did. I’ve wanted it for thirty years. Now that it’s in the air it changes nothing at all. It also changes everything. Both at once, and I can’t pull them apart.
Through the glass Bex is on her feet, I hold my hand up. I move my head, barely, no. Paige is by my side, holding my hand.
“I’d give what’s left,” he says, “the week of it, the days of it, to hear that boy call me one thing. Anything. I won’t.
I know I won’t. I gave that up a long time ago, on purpose, same as everything else.
I only wanted to say it out loud one time, somewhere it wouldn’t hurt anybody who didn’t have it coming. So. Thank you for letting an old man—”
“Sterling.”
It comes out of me before I know it’s coming, in a voice that isn’t the host’s and isn’t one I know, into the mic, out to every kitchen and truck and phone in the county. On the line my father makes a sound I have never once heard him make.
I know I’ve opened a door I didn’t intend to and I’m not sure I can shut it now.