Clearer in the Night (20 page)

I smiled. “Okay.”

“Good. Oh, and Cait?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t fuck a stranger between now and then.”

From anyone else, it would have been a slap in the face. From her, with her eyes sparkling and laughing, it was an air kiss and a huge hug. “What if he’s super-hot?”

“Get his number and call him later.”

“Not just regular hot. Super-hot. And enlisting, maybe. Into the secret death squad branch of the armed forces. Heading off to certain death.”

“Later.” She pointed one ‘I’m watching you’ finger at me, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“I love you.”

“I’m glad you’re not dead.” She shut my door and walked out of the room.

Shannon was the most unshakeable person I’d ever known. She said it had to do with her mom getting called out for crisis after crisis, and having other peoples’ breakdowns being normal dinner table conversation. At some point, she said, you either fell apart or you just settled in for the ride.

Maybe…maybe it was time to see just how unshakeable she could be.

“Huh,” Shannon said, when I was done explaining.

I’d met her half hour deadline with three minutes to spare. We’d taken her car and driven to the coffee shop where I had been employed until so very recently. Two mochas and a chocolate bomb truffle cake later, I’d spilled my entire story while she sat still and listened. She studied the artwork on the walls, a strange mix of wannabe Picasso-meets-Pollock, and some decent black and white photography. The tables were small, square, and intimate. There were friends sharing good times, there were students caught up in the throes of summer sessions, and there was us. Me, telling a story that must have seemed impossible, and her, listening quietly, asking only for occasional clarification.

I waited a minute, sipped my mocha. She stared at the wall, chewing on her lips silently. Finally, I said, “That’s all I’m gonna get? Huh? I just told you that things are going to get really hairy when the moon gets full, and the best you can do is ‘huh’?”

“Well, it actually explains a lot. Why this guy—Wes—was asking me a million questions about you, and then the way he was groping you on the dance floor, the way he’s following you now all moony eyed—ha, moony eyed, I kill my—”

“Wait, no,” I said. “Wes isn’t a wolf. He said he’d help me.”

She snorted, and gave me her most skeptical side-eye. “Help you by making sure you have someone to spend your eternal damnation with, maybe. I’m telling you, Cait, that guy is a creeper.”

“You’re not being fair.” My hands hugged my elbows, and I sat back in my chair. My eyes felt hard, my skin flinty. The way we’d gotten together—sure, it was unconventional, sure it was weird, sure, last night had completely sucked, but—there was more to it than that. He’d been trying to protect me, since the beginning, he’d said it…

She reached over and tapped me between the eyes with one finger. “You’re not thinking with your brain.”

“Hey—”

“Look, it takes one to know one. Do with that what you will, but don’t lie to yourself.”

She sat back, all satisfied, and took a bite of cake. And the killer was that she did have really good instincts. It was kind of a requirement, with the kind of scene she mostly enjoyed. One of the last times we’d gone out together, she’d turned around to pick up her purse, and as her skirt flared, I saw huge, hand shaped bruises on the backs of her thighs. “Holy shit, Shan,” I’d said, before I thought.

“What?” she’d said, spinning in circles as she tried to see her own ass.

“You are covered in bruises,” I said, trying not to stare and point.

“Shit, I thought this skirt would be long enough to cover. Give me a second to change.” She disappeared down the hall, and after a minute, I followed her.

“Yes?” she said, as she skimmed her skirt down, her back to me. The worst of it seemed to be right on her ass, but the marks moved down her legs. She looked like someone had bent her over something and paddled her ass black and blue. Of course, knowing her, that was probably what had happened. She didn’t turn towards me as she pulled on a new skirt, this one longer, and tighter to make up for it. “Say what’s on your mind, Caitlyn.”

Her tone warned me off, and I chose my words very carefully. “I just want to make sure you’re safe. Because you’re my best friend.”

I watched the defensiveness melt out of her posture, and she turned back to me with a small smile. She was quiet for a moment, and I watched the dust motes dance in a last ray of sunshine. “Part of it is not feeling totally all the way safe. Knowing that you’re doing something dangerous, outside of the normal ho-hum. At any moment, it could all spin out of control.” Then she grinned, all seriousness gone. “What makes it hot is that it doesn’t. So I didn’t feel safe, exactly, but I felt like I could trust him not to lose control. Can you grok that?”

I rolled my eyes at her geek speech, pretending for a moment that I didn’t do it just as often as she did. “Yeah, I get it.” I decided against trying to explain the longing that was tightening my throat. Trusting someone that much. That sounded like…something worth having. I mean, I didn’t have any interest in getting my ass kicked, or the consent games she played, or any of that. But the trust. Yeah, that part sounded nice.

“If you need to see it first hand, see what it’s like, so that you know I’m okay, I can speak to someone next time, see if you can be invited.”

“That’s okay,” I said, maybe a bit too fast. “Just—let me know if you need help, okay?”

“Ditto,” she said, and we’d moved on. So, yeah, I’d always trusted Shan’s judgment when she offered it. I’d never brought any of my toys home to play, because I knew they wouldn’t meet her standards. But still, somehow, it was a bitter pill to swallow today. I took a big bite of chocolate cake. “I want to like him anyway,” I said.

“There isn’t a rule against that,” she said. “But you need to keep your eyes open. Wide open. See him in public places, make sure people know where you are, and for pity’s sake, make sure to tell them when you get home, okay?”

“I always do,” I said, and I gave her all the credit in the world, because she didn’t actually roll her eyes at me. We both knew that I was lying. I was scrupulously trying to keep my random encounters in the realm of safer sex, but beyond that? At least she could have asked for references on the various people she played with. There wasn’t much time for a background check when you were fumbling with buttons against the bathroom wall in a skeezy bar.

“How’s your mom?” Shan asked, and the total and complete innocence of the question had me narrowing my eyes. She tried to look all meek and mild behind her coffee cup, and then gave a huge sigh. “My mom’s worried sick about her. I was informed I had to dig for info. So, spill.”

“She’s a mess,” I said. “She’s an utter hot mess. I don’t even know what to do.”

Shan spun her cup in her hands. “Are you sure you should be staying there with her?”

“What other choice do I have? Leave her there alone to kill herself, buried under filth and empty liquor bottles?”

I watched her switch over to shrink-face. It was subtle, a casual and slight shift, but she was suddenly a breath away from specs and a bad German accent. A lifetime of trying to have normal conversations with my mother had acquainted me with the phenomenon. So the too-casual way she said “What is it that you think you can do there?” didn’t fool me.

“Don’t analyze me,” I said. “You’re not a shrink, not yet, and I am not your patient.”

“Okay, sorry.” Her hands were up. “You just don’t look great at the moment.”

I took a long breath. It shuddered rather more than I would have thought it would. “I can’t abandon her, okay? I can’t just disappear like—” I cut myself off before I could actually say it out loud, but Helen Keller would have picked up what I was putting down.

She reached out and took my hand. There was a point in time when I would have flinched at that, right after she came out as bi, when I was younger and more idiotic. Today, it was just a relief to be touched by someone who didn’t want anything from me. I gripped her hand until my fingers turned white.

“Listen to me, sweetie,” she said, and I did, even though I couldn’t look up from where our hands were intertwined. “They didn’t disappear. They died. And that wasn’t your fault.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious, you got anything else for me?” I sighed, pulling my hands back and scrubbing at my eyes. “Obviously it wasn’t my fault. I was a little kid.”

“Do you believe that? All the way down?”

So many tears. So many tears I hadn’t cried. I swallowed them hard, just like always. “She’s my mother. Yeah, she was useless after they—were gone—but she’s my mother. What else am I supposed to do?”

“Secure your own air mask first,” she said. “You need to take care of you before you have a shot in hell of taking care of her. Even your mother’s precious Bible says that.” She took my hand back and squeezed it hard. “You’re not alone in this. Mom, the church ladies—everyone wants to help. Everyone loves you, too. But your mom has had walls around her for years, and frankly, you’re no better. So people are waiting for it to be okay to help. They’re not interested in making things harder for you.”

The laughter bubbled up, but stopped at the knot in my throat. “I don’t even know how to respond to that. Stepping on my toes? How long has this been going on? And why didn’t anyone freaking tell me that she was—like this?” My hands were shaking again, and I tried to take a sip of mocha to cover the trembling.

She was being slow and careful with her words. “When you see two people drowning, do you jump in and try to save them, or do you yell at the first one to save the second?”

My cheeks flared hot. “What are you saying? I’m not drowning.”

She sighed. “Caitie—”

“Don’t call me that!” My voice rattled china and made babies cry. And made calm, mellow, happy, Shannon burst into an angry rage.

“I called you Caitie first,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “When she was pulling your hair and laughing about it, when she was telling boys that you hated that you wanted to kiss them, when she was just your annoying, mean big sister, not Saint Sophie, I was your best friend, and I called you Caitie.”

There was something there, in her eyes, in her thoughts. I couldn’t quite touch it, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Sometimes, I was starting to suspect, it was better to not know exactly what people were thinking. After all, we all filtered what we had to say, and for good reason.

But there was something there that I couldn’t quite ignore. A deep sort of anger that I had no idea Shan had ever felt, and certainly not towards me.

The right thing to do was to—I don’t know, apologize? At least acknowledge that there was some truth to what she said. Maybe talk about it, open up and say what it felt like to be the one who still had to live up to parental expectations and be the sole carrier of all hopes and dreams. Maybe try some honesty for a change.

And then what? After I lit my entire world on fire and toasted s’mores while it burned, what next? Admitting that I had fucked it all up, top to bottom. Short step from there to admitting that Mom tore my heart out and shat on it on a daily basis. I yanked my hands sharply back from Shan’s. “Anything else you’d like to say?”

The rage in her eyes was tempered with a deep sadness. “I love you, sweetie. Always have. I always wanted a sister, and I got one in you. But if you think I have it in me to sit still and watch you kill yourself—you’re just plain wrong.”

I nodded, trying to pour that icy cold river into my eyes and face. “Good to know. I’m going to go now. You can call me later, when you’ve calmed down.” There, that took care of the last trace of pity in her eyes. I’d rather have her hate me than pity me. I was about to walk away, but that chocolate cake was staring at me. I cut what was left in half, took the larger half, and pushed past her. She didn’t try to stop me, didn’t turn to watch me go. I tried to take a bite of the cake as I pushed the door to the outside and fresh air open, but it was so sweet that my gorge rose, and I spat the mouthful on the sidewalk so that I wouldn’t throw up.