Quarantales: The Complete Contemporary Romance Box Set, page 15
Don’t touch your mouth, nose, or eyes, all the COVID experts say. But it’s really hard not to scrub a weary hand over my face as I ask, “How long is he going to pay this rent? What happens when the world opens back up and he goes back on tour?”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. I’ll get a job.”
“A job where?”
“Somewhere! Anywhere!” E grabs her favorite pillow. “I don’t know why you’re asking me all these stupid questions.”
“I’m asking you all these logical questions because I’m responsible for you.” I snatch the pillow with the silk case out of her hands before she can throw that in the suitcase, too. “I don’t know what this is really about, but if you’d just wait until the fall, I’ll have enough money from rent and the sale of the house to buy us all an apartment.”
“You’re not responsible for us,” E yells, tugging frantically on the pillow. “And fact check, we don’t want to live with you!”
I let go of the pillow and E goes stumbling back a few steps. She obviously hadn’t expected me to give up the fight.
“What? What do you mean?” I ask E. “That’s the plan. That was the plan all along.”
I don’t remember A’s still in the room with us until he says, “E, don’t…C’mon.”
E’s eyes dart from her brother back to me, and it seems like she’s making a decision when she says, “No, that was your plan all along. We never wanted to keep on living with you after college. That’s why we both applied to go to C.M.U.—you know a school all the way across the country.”
Her words don’t just shock me. They cut me, like a knife slicing into my stomach. “No… no…that’s not true.”
I look to A. “That’s not true, right?”
He drops his head and looks to the side. “We didn’t want to hurt your feelings. But we’re eighteen. We just want to start doing stuff for ourselves.”
“You want to start doing stuff for yourselves?” I repeat, my voice caustic. “Well, how about paying me rent then? How about giving me back the last three years I—”
I stop. The “wasted on you brats” fading with the memory of how their mom left.
When the twins and I had staged an intervention about her drinking, she’d turned on us like a caged tiger.
“You ruined my body! My prospects! You want me to go to rehab, talk to somebody about my problems! The only problems I have is all the years I wasted on you brats!”
Her temper tantrum had reduced her twins to tears and apologies she didn’t deserve. And then the next morning she was gone. And the twins had cried like her leaving was all their fault.
And I’d vowed never to hurt them like that. To be there for them, no matter what.
But there’s a difference between that vow and what I was planning to do by moving to Pittsburgh with them.
That new realization hits me like a tornado-level wind. Rhys…he’d been right. At least about this.
I sink on to the bed. “I’m sorry,” I tell them. “I’m sorry I clung to you like that. I should have spent this year figuring out how to let you go. Not smothering you.”
Teenagers, they act so tough.
But hearing my apology melts E out of her defensive stance.
“No, I’m sorry!” She sits down on the bed and throws her arms around my neck. “You’re the only one who’s ever cared enough to smother us. I love you. I love you so much. I just need to get out of here.”
I shake my head at her. “But why? Am I really that terrible to live with?”
E shakes her head. “No, it’s not you. It’s not…”
Her face collapses, and that’s when it all comes out in a torrent of tears.
As it turns out, E not being able to see and talk face-to-face with her non-related classmates did not dial down her high school drama one bit.
After all the unreturned messages, August announced that he had decided to take someone else to virtual prom. Somebody who actually returned his calls. Someone who didn’t play games.
“Clara Reynolds,” E announces with an annoyed huff.
I huff right along with her. Clara Reynolds was the cheerleader who’d been perfectly happy accepting roles she didn’t deserve. But she’d acted a total fool when E finally got cast as Cinderella in Into the Woods. As opposed to admitting to herself that she just wasn’t talented enough to land the part of Cinderella in the spring musical, she’d claimed that she’d been edged out of the role because E had made such a stink about no actresses of color getting major roles in the school productions for three years straight.
It had been peak entitlement and the kind of microaggression you can’t really battle against. So hearing that she’d been replaced by Clara of all people had upset E to the point of wanting to “get the hell out of this stupid, backwater town!”
By the time E’s done with her story, we’re all sitting on the edge of her bed, with A and I on either side of her.
“Did you tell him you were grounded and didn’t have your phone?” A asks. “He’d understand if you told him that probably and uninvite Clara.”
E shakes her head mournfully. “That’s not how it works.”
“Why not?” A asks. “That’s what I would do if I could get a girl to like me.”
“Boys like August don’t care about what you have going on in real life. If you’re not available when they want you, they move on to the next girl,” E answers A like she’s explaining the simple concept of why you have to wash your hands to a six-year-old. “He’s probably hooking up with Clara as we speak. And if I try to get him to like me again, he’ll just make fun of me with all his friends. Like, look at that dumb, trashy girl. She’s so thirsty.”
“You’re not trashy,” I tell her.
“Yeah. You’re pretty and smart,” A insists. “And more talented than Clara will ever be. Forget that dude.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” E assures him. “I want to move to Pittsburgh and make new friends and forget that I ever spent time in this stupid small town.”
Usually, I would be in full agreement. But selfishly, I don’t want E to leave just yet. Also, a few of the things she’s saying just don’t add up.
“Hey, weren’t we just talking about how much we’re going to miss this town a few days ago?” I ask. “And maybe don’t write August off just yet. Can you walk us through exactly what happened to make him invite Clara to prom?”
“I just told you!” E answers.
“Yeah, well, tell me again. This time step-by-step. Like I gave you your phone back and what did you say when you answered all those texts he sent?”
“I said, ‘Hey,’” E replies, in a tone that insinuates her one-word answer should have been obvious.
“All you said was hey?” A asks, his innocent round face crinkling with confusion.
E rolls her eyes. “What else was I supposed to say? He left me, like, a wall of messages.”
I don’t know what’s cringier. That all E said after two weeks of total radio silence was ‘Hey,’ or that up until very recently, I would have responded the exact same way. If I responded at all.
“And what did he say?” A asks.
“Where the hell have you been?—sorry for cursing Cynda, but that’s what he said.”
“Got it,” I answer, letting it go this once. “And then, what did you say?”
“’Hanging with the fam. How you?’ And then it was like…dot, dot, dot for the longest time. And like two hours later he tells me he invited Clara, who he knows I hate to prom.”
“I know I’m not cool like you,” A says, his voice cautious. “But how you responded after two weeks feels kind of wrong.”
“So this is all my fault?” E demands, her voice immediately becoming defensive.
Apparently this is the one argument A’s not willing to have with his twin. He cuts his eyes at me, like, your turn.
I clear my throat. “No, it’s not your fault per se. I mean, I get it. When you’ve lost as many people as you have, it makes it hard to put yourself out there. Sometimes it feels easier to act like you don’t care about someone, even when you do. But the thing is, it only feels that way. When it comes right down to it, people who never risk looking stupid or making themselves vulnerable end up alone. It doesn’t matter whether you’re here or in Pittsburgh. If you can’t be honest with the boys you like and tell them how you really feel, then you’ll never get the kind of relationship you want—”
“Who says I want a relationship?” E asks, cutting me off. “I’m going to go to Carnegie Mellon and work my ass off and then I’ll become a huge actress. And I’ll show him. I’ll show everyone.”
I admire the determination burning in E’s eyes. But at that moment I know three things.
First, she’s not going to text August back and explain things. She’s only eighteen and she’s just not there yet. Hell, I’m still terrible at explaining myself, and I turned twenty-eight back in January.
Second, she is going to put her heart and soul into becoming a famous actress, and she will succeed. But the third this is…
After she acquires everything she wants, she’ll still be alone. And low-key miserable.
Just like me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Realizing all of this, I hug E and negotiate her down to moving at the end of the summer after I’ve sold the house.
“That will give me enough money to pay for housing for both you and A, since I’m not going to be there.”
The twins don’t argue with me about my decision not to move to Pittsburgh. But E asks, “What are you going to do without a house and a job?”
It starts to rain outside right after she says that. And I try not to take it as a bad omen, as I answer, “I’ll probably move to St. Louis. Or maybe even Atlanta. Someplace with more hospitals and more nursing jobs. From what I’ve been reading, there’s plenty of RN jobs available other places for people who want them. Just not in Guadalajara.”
E shifts, her expression shadowing over with guilt. “You love this town. I wish there was a way for you to stay and us to go to CMU without you having to sell the house.”
“You don’t think Dr. Prince will give you back your job, now that…?” A trails off, but he and I both know what he’s talking about.
“No,” I answer. “That was just...temporary. After this, we’ll both be moving on.”
I wait to feel a surge of anger over what he’s done: buying my dad’s practice and turning it into an DBCare. Taking the small town doctor out of medicine and pushing our country even further into a health system with jacked up prices and less humanity. And for what? Because some messed up girl dumped him three years ago?
All of those things should make me furious. But I only feel sad.
So sad.
It was only six months but memories of that time keep flashing through my head. The laughter. The dates. The lazy mornings when we both had the day off. The amazing sex.
And the quiet afterward as we lay in each other’s arms.
“Derick Miller just asked me to Zoom Prom,” E announces later that night, interrupting the relentless highlight reel.
We’re supposed to be watching the fifth and final season of the She-Ra reboot together. But I’m all caught up in the past and E’s been texting on her phone the entire time.
A, who decided to re-watch the season with us, pauses the TV to ask, “The quarterback?”
“Yep, take that, August Brandt, you Lacrosse Asshole!” E says, raising her phone triumphantly.
I smile and laugh along with her and A.
However, weird feelings stir inside of me even as I pretend to be happy for her. E’s only eighteen. But I’m already relating to the regret she’ll feel in ten years when she learns the same lessons I have. The hard way.
The rain has turned into a thunderstorm by the time I crawl into bed that night. Lightning flashes across my window followed by muted booms a few seconds later.
Maybe that’s why I can’t fall asleep that night. Why my emotions eddy and swirl until there’s nothing but a pool of muddy thoughts inside my head—
Thunder booms again. This time so loud the house shakes, and I hear something drop to the floor with a muffled thump.
I sit up in bed, breathing hard.
And wait for the twins to come running in. They grew up in California before moving to St. Louis. So they didn’t understand anything about real weather until they came out here. When the thunder gets too loud, I sometimes end up with two teenagers huddled in my bed. And we watch Netflix on my computer until the storm passes.
But I guess they really have grown up. My door remains closed, even as my heart beats wildly.
Eventually, I turn on the lamp and get out of bed to investigate whatever made that thump.
The answer is scattered across the floor of my closet.
My keepsake box lies sideways along with its contents: my Queen America participation trophy, my father’s notepad, the one Dansko shoe, and the two letters from my biological mother….
They’re all spread out on the closet’s carpet. Separate, but somehow part of the same big mess.
My first instinct is to shove everything back into the box, then return it to the shelf where it belongs.
But then suddenly a memory flashes into my head, clear as a bell in a sea of forgotten things.
My mother singing, “I Told the Storm” when we went to church with my grandparents in St. Louis.
She wasn’t part of the choir at the Lutheran Church we went to in Guadalajara. But once when we visited my grandparents in “Beverly Hills,” we went to the church she grew up in for Sunday Service. The old pastor said, “Why is that Lil’ Marilee Smith in the back of the church? Come up here, girl, and join the choir for a song.”
My mom, a proper doctor’s wife, had, of course, demurred. But the pastor, who apparently didn’t care that the service had already clocked two hours, insisted until the whole church was in a tizzy. The pastor, my grandparents, people who knew my mom as Marilee Smith, even folks who didn’t know my mother from Adam were insisting she get up and sing.
I’d never heard my mother sing and I just stared up at her wide-eyed, wondering what all the fuss was about.
I soon found out when she finally agreed and joined the choir on stage in her yellow Jackie O dress and white church hat.
My mother couldn’t just sing, she could “sang” as Black people from Missouri with thicker accents than us liked to say.
She started out slowly but by the end of the song, she was a wild thing on stage. Jumping and hollering, waving her hat and sweating as she sang about how she told the storm that it was time to pass.
Dad had shouted and clapped along. But I had stood there wide-eyed and stunned. I’d never seen my mother sing gospel like that. And I never would again.
That pastor died less than a year later and he was replaced by a young reverend who’d actually gone to a formal divinity school and didn’t carry any fond memories of when my mom used to sing in the church choir.
It would be years and after both my grandparents’ deaths before I heard the original Joyful Noize version of the song. And yeah, that choir did a fine, soul-stirring job. But I’ll go to my grave thinking my mother sang it better.
And it’s her voice, not the ones from the Joyful Noize choir that keeps me from immediately shoving everything back into that box.
My hand goes to pick up the second letter, the one I refused to read. And instead of hiding it out of sight, if not mind again, I sit crossed legged on the floor to read it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The thunderstorm is still raging and I’m soaked to the bone by the time I make it across the yard in bare feet. It’s a good thing I cut all my hair off because my old horse of a ponytail would not have made the journey.
I’m not wearing any make-up and my eyes are red from crying, so I can only imagine what I look like when Rhys opens the door.
“Cynda,” he says, his eyes as angry as mine are sad. “Why are you knocking on my door at two in the morning?”
His face then suddenly morphs from hard to concerned. “Is there an emergency? Is everything okay with the twins?”
My heart melts at his questions. How had I forgotten that about him? Some of the other doctors advised their residents to care less about our patients. Years of working in a St. Louis City emergency department had hardened their hearts. But not Rhys.
He’d been the kind of guy I’d call to share a Weiss Fox beer after losing a patient bad and quick. He’d cared, truly cared about people. Even when he didn’t want to.
I thought this would be hard, but actually it’s quite easy.
“No, I’m knocking on your door because I’m sorry,” I yell over the pouring rain. “I’m sorry for breaking up with you by text. I’m sorry for not explaining myself. I’m sorry about not telling you how I really feel.”
He shakes his head and opens his mouth—probably to say something else about how he’s still not ready to forgive my trifling ass.
But I push on before he can. “I didn’t break up with you because I didn’t care about you. I broke up with you because I cared about you too much. That’s the last thing I talked about with my father. How I liked you enough to bring you home to meet him. But then he died, and I was scared. So I clung to what I still had. The twins, this town, because I was afraid. But I kept something.”
I raise up the glittery purple Dansko that I grabbed before running over here. “I kept this shoe even though I knew I’d never get the other one back. I couldn’t throw it away. And I don’t regret staying here for the twins after their mom left. But I do regret ending things the way I did with you. The thing is losing my mom really messed me up and losing my dad made it even worse. I didn’t want to put myself out there because I really didn’t think I could take losing anyone else. But the twins don’t want me to move with them to Pittsburgh. And I just read the second letter from my biological mom. As it turns out, she’s a lot like me. She had to fight herself and a lot of demons to finally find some peace, and now she’s happy, but she has so many regrets. About the things she did and the things she didn’t do. She’s upset she was too scared to come to her parents’ and sister’s funerals and that she didn’t get up the courage to write me until now. I don’t want to live my whole life being scared. Or regretting the things I didn’t say or do.”
