Then Everything Happens at Once, page 18
I remember how weird the word pandemic sounded when it was first being used, weeks ago, and now it’s like the word. It’s everywhere.
[Baylee] Is your dad home yet? The news is kind of scary.
[Alex] Got back this morning. 🙏
[Baylee] That’s great. I’m glad.
[Alex] Me too. But he’s in quarantine at my house, just in case.
[Baylee] Where are you then?
[Alex] My aunt’s, 2 doors down. For 2 whole weeks. ☹ They’re telling anyone who’s out of the country to get their asses back home ASAP. These r weird times.
[Baylee] And Bookworm is really closed for a while?
[Alex] Yeah. My boss had a video meeting with everyone. Still waiting to see what’s going to happen, but for now closed.
“It’s so weird that places are actually closing,” I say. “How long is it going to last?”
Mom shakes her head, not paying attention to me. Her store is still open, but they’re down to drive-through only because sit-down service is now forbidden.
“Closing the border is a big deal,” Mom tells the TV. “This is going to be bad.”
“Like, how bad?” I ask. “Are we all going to die?”
I was exaggerating, being dramatic, but saying the words out loud . . . Could we seriously all be dying? Is this going to be the apocalypse? The hairs on my arms stand up and shivers run up my back.
“I don’t want you to be scared,” Mom says. “But at the same time, Boss, it’s normal to be scared. Not knowing is scary. But we’re going to make sure we keep ourselves safe. We have to limit our contact with other people. It’s meant to slow down the spread, but in our case, we can’t afford to let it in here, okay?”
“Okay.”
“So you are going to have to limit yourself, too. That means staying home. You understand that, right?”
“Inside the house?”
“I mean no going out anywhere.”
“Oh, well, yes, I figured things being closed meant we weren’t going to be able to go places,” I say. “So, are you going to work still?”
“I have to.” Mom stares off into the distance. “But I have to come up with a plan,” she says, mostly to herself. Then she turns to me. “You get that this means no going over to Freddie’s house, no going to Lara’s or Rianne’s, right?”
I stare at the floor, letting this part of our weird new reality settle over me. My mother keeps talking, stuff about the spread of germs, about limiting contact with other people.
What about Alex?
Well, this will not work. This will not work at all.
[Baylee] Wait does this mean we don’t get to hang out anymore?
[Alex] ☹
For how long?
I was so awkward last time we saw each other. This can’t be the way we leave it now, for who knows how long.
My mother’s phone rings. While she talks to whoever is on the other end, I take the rest of my soup to the kitchen and pour it down the drain, scraping at the skin of congealed tomato soup that sticks to the bottom of the sink.
“I don’t know, Sheila,” I hear my mother say, and my ears perk up. Sheila is Freddie’s mother. “How long?”
I wait in the doorway between the kitchen and Rebecca’s room.
“Okay, fine,” Mom says. “I’ll ask her, then we’ll get back to you. Yes, right away. Give me ten minutes.”
When the phone call ends, my mother turns, presumably looking for me.
“Sheila’s a little desperate,” my mother says, shaking her head like she’s unsure about something. “They’re pulling her mother out of the seniors building she’s in, and they’re taking her to Sheila’s brother’s in Kingston.”
“How come?”
“I think they’re panicking a little,” Mom says. “Sheila’s brother has the four-year-old twins, and their mother will look after them with day care being closed. They both work at the hospital, so they’re in a real jam.”
“Oh.”
“Sheila asked if you could come stay with Shaya.”
“Why can’t Freddie do it?”
“He’s helping and running some errands.”
“You’re letting me go over there?”
“This is a one-time exception,” my mother says.
I tell myself that I agreed to this because I want to help out, not because I’m hoping to run into Freddie.
I head upstairs to take the shower I’ve been putting off taking, scrunch some mousse in my hair, and blow-dry it quick. Halfway down the stairs, I hear Mom on the phone. Rebecca babbles in the background, and it sounds like she’s on the floor, rolling around.
“Yes, I understand what you’re saying, but with everything going on, I just feel that my child’s well-being is at risk—” She pauses, presumably to listen to the person on the other end. “I understand that . . . yes, I’m aware that’s how things work.” Another pause. “So, you think it’s fair to put my child at risk while you wait to see what happens?” More pausing, frustrated sounds from my mom. I sit on the stairs, listening, making sure to stay out of sight. “I would appreciate that. Yes, I will. Sure—go ahead and cancel. Fine.” A brief pause, then: “What a bitch that woman is.”
I settle at the kitchen table to start in on my quickest makeup look, winged black liner, mascara, pink gloss, and a touch of highlight powder. “What’s going on?”
“You know how they are,” Mom says, as she picks my sister up from the floor, and I know she means the nursing agency. “They tried to send a couple of brand-new nurses tonight to train. We’re supposed to be staying home and limiting our contact with other people, and this dingbat scheduler tries to send a couple of strangers to come wing it with Beck. I don’t think so.”
“So there’s no nurse tonight?”
Mom shakes her head, and I can tell she’s already planning for tomorrow’s exhaustion from having to be the one to look after my sister all night. She sits with Rebecca in her lap and does that little tapping motion on Beckie’s back, like she’s trying to burp her. Rebecca smiles and waves a little fist around.
“Well, maybe I can sleep here with her tonight, and I’ll just call you down if anything happens?”
“I might take you up on that, Boss.”
Mom rearranges the long feeding tube by pulling at it like it’s a vacuum cord getting in the way. It makes me remember the time Beckie got her fist hooked around it and pulled the whole thing right out of her stomach, which is basically like poking a hole in a water balloon—a mess of formula and stomach liquids. I was, like, twelve, and I panicked, trying to apply pressure to the little hole like it was a bleeding wound while my sister rolled around like nothing was happening.
“Wake me up if I’m asleep when you get home, okay?” Mom says.
I nod.
Thirty
When I get to Freddie’s, his mother lets me in. She rushes around the foyer, dragging empty suitcases to the door, her cell phone tucked between ear and shoulder.
“Tell your mother I appreciate this so much,” she says. “So much.”
“You and Freddie are both going to Kingston?”
“Just me. Freddie is at the pharmacy, filling some prescriptions, and he’s trying to stock up on some things. Then we’re headed over to pack my mother up. Freddie should be back in a couple hours, tops,” she says.
“Oh, okay.”
Shaya is in bed, as promised, although I wouldn’t have minded hanging out with a baby tonight. She loves when I read to her, changing my voice for different characters. Right now, she sleeps diagonally in her crib, her faint breathing coming through clearly from the baby camera I carry with me. I sit in Freddie’s living room, scrolling through the TV apps, trying to decide on a movie.
[Alex] My dad sneezed twice. Not me sitting here convinced he’s got rona.
[Baylee] ☹ He doesn’t. He won’t.
[Alex] ☹
[Baylee] I’m sorry. I wish I could be there to cheer you up.
[Alex] Me 2. What r u up to?
[Baylee] Babysitting my friend’s sister. They’re driving up to Kingston to bring his grandmother to an uncle’s house.
[Alex] How wild do we think this is going to get before everything goes back to normal?
[Baylee] Realistically, it’s not like this could become an apocalypse, right?
Alex doesn’t respond.
I settle on Dirty Dancing so I can skip to all the good parts, where you just know Baby is feeling the butterflies that always live inside me. Each time I throw my phone across the couch, I am convinced I won’t pick it up again for a while. Eight seconds later, I’m reaching over to grab it and check again. Just in case.
[Mom] Beck fell asleep! I’m going to bed, too, okay? Just nudge me when you get home.
I pad upstairs and peek in on Shaya. I tell myself this is necessary, to make sure that what I’m seeing through the camera is what’s actually happening for real. I’m not up here because Freddie’s bedroom door is at the end of the hallway, closed but unlocked.
His bedroom is dark wood furniture, gray carpeting, a skinny shelving unit of Blu-rays, and screenwriting books neatly arranged on a simple work desk. I flip through one of his books, tracing the notes he scribbled in the margins, stuff about character arcs and beats, whatever those are. When I open the left wardrobe door, his cologne is sitting on the shelf in front of his folded sweaters, just like I knew it would be.
I sit on the edge of the bed, and I bring the bottle up to my nose.
My judgy self assures me that I look like some desperate junkie huffing glue.
Alex hasn’t responded to my text, and now I’m thinking about Freddie. Is this still about wanting what I can’t have? Is that why I’m sitting here, on Freddie’s bed, wondering what it would be like if he showed up to find me here? I just want that feeling of him looking at me.
How can it be that Alex and all the butterflies she gives me don’t stop me from wanting Freddie to be here right now, from wanting to smell this cologne on him?
What is it that I need to do to unhook from him?
This is so like me, though, wanting absolutely everything, having no idea how to set limits. I literally never just grab a bowl of chips—I take the whole bag and I have to eat the whole bag. Leaving crumbs at the bottom doesn’t mean there’s anything left. Why am I like this?
I need to be smart.
The sound of the garage door opening sparks fear, and the cologne nearly falls out of my hands.
I rush to place the bottle back in its spot. Then I turn off his bedroom light before leaving Freddie’s room. When I’m halfway down the stairs, the door to the garage opens. Freddie ditches his shoes by the door, pulling off his light sweater, which leaves him in a white tee.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hey.”
I make my way to the front door, holding on to the baby monitor until I can hand it to him.
“She’s still sleeping,” I tell him.
“Good,” he says.
“Okay, well . . .”
“Stay.”
“I can’t.”
“You’ve been ignoring me,” he says.
“You ignored me first.”
“When?”
“After . . . that night.”
“I wasn’t ignoring you,” he says. “You made me think I did something wrong, Bay. That you’re pissed at me.”
“Well, it’s neither. Sorry. I’ve just been busy.”
He doesn’t look impressed by my answer. “Too busy to send me a text?”
I shrug, and he heads for the living room. He collapses into the corner of the couch, closing his eyes with his face aimed up at the ceiling.
“I can’t stay. I have to go,” I say, taking a few steps back.
“Why? Why are you trying to run away from me?” he says, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “I knew this was going to happen.”
“What?”
“You—being weird because of last week.”
“I’m not being weird because of that.” I pause. “I’m sort of, um, having a thing with someone right now, and I shouldn’t be here.”
The internal cringe at telling Freddie that someone else is interested in me that way—it’s intense, and I stare at the floor.
“Oh,” he says.
“Yes.”
“What kind of thing? An exclusive-dating thing?”
“No.” At least, I don’t think so.
“So you need to leave because you have a thing?” Freddie says.
I meet his gaze. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . you are distracting.”
“How do I distract?”
“Because every time I see you—” I break eye contact with him now. “No, never mind.”
“Tell me.”
The baby monitor crackles away as I take a couple of slow breaths, wondering if he really does want to go down this path. I do. I want to so bad.
“I can’t think properly when you’re around.”
I wait, but Freddie doesn’t respond. He gets up to find the baby monitor, where Shaya’s rhythmic breathing continues. I watch as he hooks his Spotify playlist to the Bluetooth speaker on the fireplace mantel. What I’ve said replays in my mind.
Freddie presses the light switch, plunging the room into near darkness. With that small gesture, so much of my anxiety flies out the window. He comes to sit directly next to me.
“How come you turned the light off?” I ask.
“You like the dark,” he says. “You’re always more chill when the lights are off.”
A thoughtful gesture that makes me smile. His cologne is everywhere.
“Would you ever tell anyone about this?” I ask. “About us?”
“No.”
“Because you’re embarrassed?”
“No,” he says.
“Really?”
“Really,” he says. “I wouldn’t tell anyone because it’s not a thing to be telling people about.”
“Okay. Yeah,” I say. “That’s how I feel, too.”
I want this to be private. Separate.
“Bay?” His head comes up right next to mine. I’m staring ahead, deeply focused on the fireplace. “You being around makes me feel things, too.”
I let go of the breath I’ve been holding.
When he kisses me, I feel it everywhere. His body exerts this pressure against mine, making me recline on the couch. I wish I could stop visualizing myself standing next to the two of us sandwiched on the couch, seeing all of me squished unattractively under his amazing body, but I can’t. The judgy projection is standing there, making sure I know just how wrong this is, how much I don’t belong in this scene.
This is the other night, with Alex.
“Freddie, I’m kind of nervous.”
He holds himself up over me, his face lined in shadow. “Why? Don’t be.”
“I just . . . don’t understand why I’m here right now, when you could be with someone else.”
“What someone else?”
“Lara.”
I shouldn’t have said her name. Why would I do this now?
He sits up with a deep sigh. “Why do you always wonder why it’s you and not someone else? It’s like you don’t want to be here.”
“They never look like me, though, the girls you’re into,” I say, because once I started telling him the truth, the pressure just flew away. I want him to know what it’s like. “Since when are you into—what did Garrett say again? Oh yeah, all of this?”
“Maybe since I realized all of this was into me?” he says, then he’s shaking his head. “Bringing up Lara and Garrett in the span of a minute—you really know how to kill the mood, Bay.”
We sit there, in silence, while everything we’ve said hangs in the air. My eyes are aimed at the dark spot where the floor at my feet would be. Where do we go from here? I guess . . . home.
I push to my feet and reach for my purse.
His hand stops me, grabbing for mine.
“You’re not seriously leaving,” he says.
“I, um, killed the mood?”
“Maybe for, like, three minutes,” he says, pulling at my arm. “It’s not hard to get it back.”
“Really?”
“Just don’t bring anyone else up,” he says. “It’s just me and you, okay?”
Freddie takes his place back on top of me, and I’m scared to reach for his arms, even though I’m dying to run my fingers over his biceps. I want to touch him, but I feel like I don’t have the right to.
“Wait,” I say, pulling my mouth off his. “When is your mom coming back?”
“Come on! My mom? You’re bringing up my mom right now?”
“I’m sorry! I’m just worried she’ll walk in.”
“Kingston is a four-hour round trip, minimum. The way she drives, it’ll be more like six.”
An hour later, Freddie’s lips are against my ear, and he says, “I could make out with you forever, but I kind of want to do more.”
“Me too.”
So I take his hand.
Upstairs, in his room, he sets up the same playlist on his room speaker.
“Can you do me a favor?” I ask.
“Sure.”
“Can you, um, play the soundtrack to Dirty Dancing?”
He lets out a little laugh, then starts scrolling.
We don’t go all the way, but we get pretty far into it. Sometimes it’s overwhelming—so much stuff going on at once. Other times it’s flashes of feeling totally self-conscious, worrying about how parts of me are situated at any given time, about the sounds I’m making. But those flashes don’t last, because mostly, it’s the best thing ever.
Thirty-One
The next morning, Mom is asleep on the floor next to Rebecca, who snores in her crib. I tiptoe to the kitchen in an oversized T-shirt. The shirt hangs loose over a shoulder, revealing my hot-pink bra strap. There’s a huge cartoon chicken on my shirt, but I feel . . . nice. My makeup is smudged, and my hair is wild, but through the reflection of my front-facing phone camera, I am not hating what I see. This feeling wrapped itself around me last night, like a pair of sparkly wings, and it’s still here this morning. It’s as though I am aware of every inch of my skin.
