SULLIVAN
Chapter Thirty
It’s a very long drive home, but somehow I manage to fall asleep within minutes of getting on the highway, and I stay asleep until Knight is nudging me awake, asking for directions to get to my house.
We’re on Main Street in Sunrise Point and there’s drool on my chin, which I wipe, mortified.
I’d wanted to talk to him. We were supposed to have so many uninterrupted hours together, and there was so much I’d been wanting to ask him, to learn about him, but all I remember is him offering me his hand, and after I took it in mine, that was it. And now we’re home.
I don’t want to be here.
The story I’ve made up in my head to tell my mom about why I look the way I do is that I was on a hike with friends, hit a rock with my shoe and pitched forward. I’d bent my wrist too far back trying to catch myself, it broke, and then I face planted.
The kind of break I have is consistent with falling hard and trying to catch myself.
It was the surgeon who’d put the idea in my head when he was explaining the X-ray.
While a fall is such a trite excuse for an abusive man, it is, in fact, plausible.
And the friends thing holds up, too, since I do actually have a few.
One is even kind and amazing enough to drive me all the way home when he already had a flight scheduled.
My mom’s shitty house has a fresh coat of white paint on it, and it doesn’t look quite as shitty. There are even a few strands of Christmas lights strung up, which she probably did for my sister.
I stare at the windows all lit up because it’s just now getting dark outside. “Sorry I was bad company.”
“You obviously needed the rest,” Knight says. “How long are you planning to stay?”
I’m still staring at the house, but I realize I don’t know the answer to his question. “I guess I haven’t thought about it.”
I feel his eyes on me. My subconscious brain knows what he’s probably thinking. That I’m a mess, and I don’t know what to do with myself, and yeah. But my conscious brain finally responds with, “I’m gonna play it by ear.” I can do that now. I can decide how long I’m staying all by myself.
When he’s helping me get my bag out of the trunk, he whispers a curse. “Shit, we forgot your violin.”
“No,” I say. “I can’t play, and anyway—I don’t have one anymore.”
“What?”
I wince, remembering the way I limped out of Adrian’s house with only my bag, my phone, and my swollen wrist held tightly to my chest before dawn had even broken.
I’d been crying, sniveling like a pathetic toddler, and worried way too much about my hand.
“It wasn’t mine. It’s no big deal,” I tell Knight. “I don’t need it.”
“Right now maybe, but…”
“Hey, it’s okay. Violins are everywhere at school. When I can play again, I’ll rent one or something.”
“Sullivan, I—”
“Stop. It’s fine.” And I tell him the thing I keep telling myself to make it all go away, to put the past in the past. “It’s over, remember? I’m free.”
“Can I hug you?”
I laugh. “Of course.”
But maybe I shouldn’t have been so hasty because the moment his arms are around me, I can’t fucking breathe. I feel suffocated and almost unbearably hot. I stiffen within a split second, and he quickly drops his arms. “I’m sorry. Did that hurt?”
The gasp I make is embarrassing on every level.
“No. No. I just…” What was that? I should try again, tell him I’m ready this time, but instead I’m taking a step away, putting some space between us and breathing air that doesn’t a hundred percent smell like him.
“You should get home. Your parents are probably wondering where the fuck you are.”
“I told them I was driving.”
“Oh, well…still. They’ll want to see you.” I should invite him in. I should introduce him to my mom. He’s my friend. He lives in town. That wouldn’t be weird.
Why am I being so weird? Is this me? Am I weird?
“Text me, okay?” he says while I haul my duffel bag onto my shoulder and continue backing away.
I nod. “You can text me, too. I’ll just be here. Or around. Oh shit.” I stop in my tracks. “How are you getting home?”
He frowns down at my car like this is the first time he’s considering this.
Immediately I say, “Take the car. We’ll figure it out later.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It guarantees you’ll have to talk to me again. It’s like—what do they call it? Collateral?”
“I don’t think that’s right,” he says, but he looks just as lost with words as I feel. “I’ll get it back to you tonight.”
I’m on the porch steps now. “I don’t need it tonight. Take your time. We’ll figure it out.”
“Okay. If you’re sure.”
I nod. “I’ll talk to you soon.” On that note, I turn around and go inside. The living room is empty, and moments later as I stand there, looking around the space, at the Christmas tree and the old decorations dating back to when I was a little kid, my car starts and slowly pulls out of the drive.
“Sully, is that you?” My mother comes from the direction of the kitchen, her dark bottle brown hair in a messy bun. She’s wearing an actual apron.
“Sully! Sully! Sully!” My sister is around my mom quickly, but both of them freeze at the actual sight of me.
I fake a smile, wave my casted hand at them. “I’m fine. Turns out I’m not a hiker.”
Since I slept most of the day, and my mom is celebrating having a few days off with a box of wine, she and I wind up at the kitchen table, the piles of cookies she and Emma made sit on platters between us, covered in several layers of Saran Wrap.
They’ll be taking them to the care center where my sister goes during the summer and days when school is out.
It’s for people with special needs, and much of the staff is there around the clock, even on holidays.
My mother is very annoyed that I didn’t call her when I had to go to the hospital.
I don’t know why I’m surprised by this, but it didn’t even occur to me to call her.
Why heap one more worry onto her plate? But she doesn’t seem all that overburdened tonight, and I don’t know if it’s the wine or the three days off work, or something else she hasn’t told me about.
“Do you even have an emergency contact?”
I did, and it was Adrian. “Yeah, I say, but it wasn’t an emergency. Just a few cuts and bruises.”
“You broke your wrist.” She’s said this multiple times, and that is the wine. It must be, because I certainly don’t need the reminder. I’ve had my share of the box vintage, too, and it’s turned the throb in my wrist to a low thrum.
“Technically not an emergency.”
“Look.” She sounds serious as she puts her elbows on the table and leans toward me. “I know I haven’t been much of a mom to you these last few years, but that was never because I don’t care.”
“I know that, Mom.”
“No, no. I want you to hear this. I don’t like the way you never call me. I don’t like that you don’t spend your breaks here. I hate that I’m losing you to the world when I never really feel like I had the chance to have you in the first place.” She’s teary-eyed now.
I wasn’t expecting this, so I have to take a minute to process it. “You’re not losing me,” I tell her.
“I know you hate coming home—”
“I don’t hate it.”
“I know I haven’t paid enough attention—”
“You’ve got a lot going on.”
“How’s that an excuse?” Her tears spill over her lower lids now, and I wonder if the good mood she was in at dinner was all just a front.
“Look, hey. Whatever you’re feeling bad about, I forgive you, all right? I’m fine. I get that it couldn’t have been easy being a single mom.”
“I should have done more.”
Instead of saying, like what? I say, “You did enough.”
It’s not true, of course. But if she starts telling me about all the things she thinks she could have done better, and I start wishing she had—I might break down, too, and I’ve done enough of that over the last few days.
I’m done with all of it now. The past is in the past. I have my whole life ahead of me. I’m fucking free goddamnit.
She sniffs and wipes at her tears.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, to head off any talk of what might have been.
“Yeah. Yes,” she blurts. “Everything is great. Your sister’s thriving. I’m a supervisor at the store now, so I only have to have the one job. I have some savings—I’m even dating someone.”
“Excuse me, you’re dating?” I ask with a false measure of interest.
She waves a hand dismissively. “He’s just a man from town. He runs the bookstore. He recently lost his wife to cancer. Well, it wasn’t so recently. Three years. Anyway—his kids are all grown, and we got to talking one day while he was in my store, and…we’ve been on a few dates.”
“What’s his name?”
“William. Will.”
“That’s nice. I mean, is he nice?”
“No red flags so far. It’s only been a few weeks.”
“Wow. Is he coming for Christmas?”
She goes from blushing maiden to red alert in less than a heartbeat. “Oh, God no. He’s got family. He’s in Indiana right now. We have tentative plans for New Year’s, but no. It’s much too soon.”
“But you think he may be around for next Christmas?” I press, thinking now about my father and whether this will mess him up or not.
The last time I talked to my dad, he was still supposedly clean, other than THC, and still living with that weird younger dude in the trailer.
Davy. His “roommate.” But that was months ago, now that I’m thinking about it.
Maybe I was too social last semester. Maybe I was too selfish.
Again. I should have checked in. I’m tempted to ask my mom what she knows, but she really does seem happier, if a little drunk, and my father is nothing if not a sore subject for her.
“I guess anything’s possible,” she says.
My phone dings with a text, and I look at it. It’s Knight, saying he’ll be dropping my car off tomorrow morning around ten if that’s okay. I reply with a “sounds good” and look back up at my mom.
“Friend?” she asks.
“I’m gay,” I tell her.
She blinks several times in quick succession. “Okay.”
There’s silence everywhere.
“Boyfriend?” she finally asks, and I’ve got to give her a lot of credit for that.