Her voice is soft, almost sad, making questions spring to life inside my head. I try to decide if I should ask about it or not. It’s hard, reading someone else’s pain. Knowing the right thing to do. I’ve drowned in my own so much, had so many people add to it—on purpose or not—that I want to tread the surface carefully. Little ripples dancing across the water instead of jumping in and causing a huge wave.
Ellie and Diana caused me waves. Even Dad, though not in the same way. The last thing I want to do is make the water flood over someone else’s head, too.
“Can I ask who Angelica is?”
The corners of Brenda’s eyes tilt down a little. “My daughter. I think I told you Christian has a sister. She’s a few years older than he is.”
The word is makes my heart jump slightly. I feared a was. Was is so hard when you’re using it in regard to someone you love. “Oh. Where is she?” Is it bad that Brenda’s pain makes me feel another tie to her? I don’t want her to hurt. Don’t want anyone I know to hurt, but in a way it makes me feel less lonely.
It takes Brenda a few seconds before she replies. “I’m not sure. I think she’s with her father. She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
My chest cracks open for her. How can anyone not want something to do with Brenda? Does Angelica talk to Christian? I think about Dad. Things are strained between us, but I know he would never cast me out.
“When I left her father for Sally…well, you can imagine things were hard on her. It was hard on Christian, too, at first. I mean, he had to leave here, and all his friends behind.”
Oh. So now I know why Christian disappeared all those years ago.
“I’ll always regret how I did that. I should have been smarter about it—my children deserved that. Angelica took it the hardest. I should have realized how hard, but I didn’t. I let her be angry and let her tell me everything was okay. It’s one of the biggest mistakes of my life, mija. I will always feel like I failed her. I don’t want any other kids to feel like they don’t have someone there for them.”
“I’m sorry.” All I can think is how incredible she is. Just like Christian, they’re both still going. Sure, there are little bumps in the road. Maybe Christian’s outburst at the center was one of them. But they’re not folding in on themselves like I am. They’re living…and I’m just being.
I’d like to try to live again.
Before I get the chance to say anything else, she announces, “We’re here! This is going to be so much fun!”
…
The first thing I notice when I see Emery is the red tinting her eyes. The frown on her face. She’s never sad, and seeing her like this immediately makes my gut sink. All I can think about is the baby, and I’m hoping and praying that nothing is wrong with her.
“Are you okay?” I ask as I approach her in the corner. Another sign something is wrong. Emery is in a corner alone.
“Peachy.” There is a roughness in her voice I’m not used to.
But I remember crying and how I felt when I lost my baby and it’s all I can think about—the bump under her shirt. Please let everything be okay with her baby.
Emery turns and pushes her way through the crowd. I find myself following her. She stomps down a hall and I’m right behind her when she goes into another room.
“Is the baby okay?” My voice squeaks, and I can’t even finish the sentence.
“Yes! God. Why is it always about the baby? Either it’s all people care about when they talk to me, or they’re so mad about the baby they won’t talk at all. Baby, baby, baby!” Emery falls to a chair and starts to cry.
My eyes are watering, too. I don’t know what’s wrong with her or what to do, but I find myself walking to the chair next to her and sitting down. I put my arm around her the way no one did to me—the way Dad tried but couldn’t bring himself to—and I let her cry.
And she does. So many tears that I wonder how she has any left.
I just sit there with my arm around her, hoping that I’m doing the right thing. That this somehow helps, because if I can’t help myself, it feels good to do it for someone else.
When the tears finally stop, she wipes her eyes with her sleeve, and then her demeanor completely changes. “Wow. I totally freaked out on you there. I’m sorry about that.” She smiles at me. I can’t believe she’s smiling after she just cried so much.
“I’m being stupid,” she continues. “I just got in a fight with my boyfriend and I lost it for a minute. I’m fine now.”
“I thought you didn’t have a boyfriend?”
Her mouth widens as though she just made a mistake. “I don’t. I didn’t mean that. He’s my ex; I just said the wrong word. I’m having a bad day. It’s hormones and stuff.”
“Oh.” Her reply doesn’t sit right with me. There’s something off about it, but it’s not like I’m going to call her a liar. I know how it feels to have people doubt you.
“Thanks, though…for talking to me. I needed to get that out.” Emery reaches over and gives me a hug. “Thank you,” she whispers again and I hug her back. The way she says it, combined with the way she hugs me, makes me wonder if she could possibly be as lonely as I am. You’d never know it by looking at her, but as she clings to me, it seems truer and truer.
“It’s okay. I didn’t really do anything.”
Emery shakes her head. “Yeah you did. I know how hard talking without being prompted is for you, and I appreciate it.”
I roll my eyes. She might not have known me long, but she seems to know me well.
With that, she heads for the door. With her hand on the knob, she turns and says, “Can I ask you a favor?”
“Sure.” I shrug, still trying to figure out what I did to help. But also feeling good that I did it.
“Can you not tell anyone I saw Max? It’s just…it’s embarrassing.”
I get it. I know what it’s like to be embarrassed, for everyone to know your business. And it’s not like I don’t have my own secrets, too. I shudder with the memory of seeing Jason at the store. Of following and talking to him, proving how weak I am. I don’t even hesitate to say, “Your secret is safe with me.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Now
I stand at the door to my pottery room, willing it to be different this time. I’ve had an awesome day. I spent an hour and a half at Brenda’s, laughing, smiling, and being Brynn. I was there for Emery when she needed me. It wasn’t a lot, but it was hard for me and I did it, and somehow, it seemed to help. Again…old Brynn. She isn’t so bad, is she? I want to be her again, not this person I’ve become. I want to try to get back some of the things I’ve lost.
You can do it, you can do it, you can do it.
The door creaks as I open it. I don’t remember it always doing that, or maybe I just never paid attention before. Maybe I’m stalling by standing here wondering about this.
But do I have a right to go in here? The right to sit down to do the thing I did while she was dying?
I step backward.
I can do this. I can do this.
I can’t do it. Why can’t I go inside? Mom would want me to go inside, I think…
And I do. I step inside and go straight to the CD player and turn it on. It’s one of Mom’s favorite songs—Jermaine Jackson and Whitney Houston. It was her and Dad’s song and I’d been listening to it that day because I always listened to music out here.
It’s all too much.
“Ahhhhhhhh!” I let loose a scary-movie scream and slam the palms of my hands into the door. It flies backward and hits the wall. The scream that’s probably been trapped inside me since before Jason. Since the day Mom said she had a headache and I got annoyed with her and went to my pottery room. Everything blurs together now and it’s hard to know what is and was fact or fiction in my life.
“Ahhhhhh!”
I’m out the door now.
A loud crash sounds behind me and I stumble backward again, clutching my chest.
“Holy shit, you scared me. Are you okay?” Christian stands behind me, breathing hard, his guitar in his hand.
“Yeah…yeah, I’m fine.” Maybe a little crazy, but fine.
He looks around like he expects someone to jump out at any second. “Do you always scream like that when you’re okay? I was sitting on my porch and it sounded like someone was murdering you over here.”
“Umm, you thought someone was trying to kill me yet you brought your guitar with you?”
“Jumped the fence with it and everything,” he says, semi-smugly.
“What were you going to do? Hit him with it?”
Christian actually blanches. I swear the boy pales. “Are you kidding me? This is my prized possession.”
I shake my head at him. And here I was thinking myself crazy. “Again, then why did you bring it?”
“Well, that’s obvious. What if the scream was a distraction to get me over the fence so someone else could steal my guitar?” He stands there looking absolutely serious.
“Oh my God!” I playfully push him. “You’re nuts.”
We both laugh for a few minutes before he quiets and then looks at me, really looks at me like he wants to figure me out. Like I’m a puzzle and he wants to fit all my pieces together to see what I make. I’m curious what it would be, too.
“Seriously, you cool?” he asks, all humor gone from his voice.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m caught off guard or what, but I say, “I can’t do it. I’ve always been able to lose myself in my pottery and now I can’t even go in the room.”
Christian stares at me, and then the right side of his lips tilts up. God, he is so cute. I wish he wasn’t.
“Maybe it’s the music. That shit would kill my creativity, too.”
Without an invitation, he goes inside and turns off the power on my CD player. Then, he heads right over to one of the extra chairs, sits down, and starts to play a song that sounds a lot like the Plain White T’s.
“Hey there, Bryntastic, sit your ass down in that cha-ir.”
Something twitches in my chest. “I think I like, ‘Hey there Delilah, what’s it like in New York City’ better,” I tease him.
“What?” His fingers are still moving on the strings. “How can you say that? My words are original and fit the situation, so quit stalling and sit down.” When I cross my arms at him, he adds a “Please.”
This is completely stupid. I know there is no way that listening to Christian play his silly song is going to make me find my muse again. It’s not going to make me feel okay about doing what she gave me when I let her die. “I can’t.” My voice cracks.
“You can. Just come inside. You don’t even have to make anything.”
Shaking my head, I say, “This isn’t going to work.”
“Damn, you’re negative.”
“No. I’m honest.” I wonder if it’s his mom’s psychology books—the ones she said he reads—that make him seem so much smarter than me, or if it’s just because he’s already been through so much and he found his way out of it.
“Doesn’t hurt to try. Plus, you can’t tell me you don’t want to hear me play, chica.” I give him the evil eye and he winks at me. “Can’t hurt, right? Just come in and listen. If it helps, cool. If not, you’re no worse off than you are now.”
“Why?” I creak out. “Why do you care? I haven’t been very nice to you.” I hate myself for it. I’ve been horrible.
“Maybe I remember who you used to be. Maybe it sucks to see people lose themselves. Or to lose yourself.”