Max
My phone rang so early the day after Thanksgiving that it should have been labeled cruel and unusual punishment. I reached out toward my nightstand, knocking off who knew what until my fingers finally closed around my phone.
“What?” I grumbled.
“Good morning, sweetie.”
Ugh . . . it was way too early for this.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Your father and I are at the airport. Our flight has been delayed.”
Oh no. If she said that they were going to stay even longer, I would go crazy. I had to get back to the band and back to work, and I had reached my crazy quota for the week.
“I’m sorry, Mom. There’s no chance they’ll cancel it, is there?”
“Oh, no, honey. Just something about the pilot’s plane being late the night before, so they’re required to give him so much rest. We’ll be back in Oklahoma by this evening.” Thank God. “But your father and I were talking, and we just wanted to tell you again how much we liked Cade.”
I was pretty sure that was already abundantly clear, thanks.
“You know, we’ve been worried about you. Your father and I had a lot of difficulty with your decision to drop out of college.” A lot was an understatement. I wouldn’t be surprised if they discussed having me committed as mentally unstable. “But we came around.” After a year of fighting, yeah. “We’ve been helping you pay your rent so you can afford to spend time doing your little music thing.” God, I was going to break out in hives if she called my career and lifelong dream a “little music thing” one more time. “It’s just . . . you’ve been here so long, and your father and I were starting to feel that perhaps it was time to face the facts and grow up.”
No. Please no. I was so close. I could feel it. The gig next weekend at The Fire was going to be huge for us. We were even doing a live recording of the set.
It wasn’t like they didn’t have plenty of money. They both had high-paying jobs, and the insurance money from Alex’s death had made our already wealthy household even wealthier. They gave me five hundred bucks a month to help pay my student loans from those pointless two years at UPenn that they’d been the ones to insist upon. You’d think when they were the ones pushing me to go to college, that they would have at least paid for it. But since they hadn’t helped Michael, they didn’t help me. Some bullshit about making my own way. Too bad it had only ever been their way.
Five hundred to them was nothing, and to me it was the difference between doing what I loved and dreaming about doing what I love. I just needed a little more time.
“What does that mean?” I asked. “You’re going to stop helping me? fingernails scrape in her owI wondered if ”
“Eventually, yes.” Shit. I was going to have to double my shifts at the Trestle. Between that and my job at the tattoo parlor, I would have zero time for singing, much less writing my own stuff. “We were going to talk to you about it while we were here, but then we met Cade.”
“What does Cade have to do with it?”
“Well . . . you’re obviously getting your life together. You’re dating a nice, respectable boy and finally starting to take things seriously. Your father and I are so glad you’ve left behind the negative influences you were spending time with before. So, since you’re obviously trying, we’re going to give you a few more months.”
“A few?” I asked.
“Well, we’re going to play things by ear. But as long as you keep taking your life seriously, you don’t need to worry about it.”
AKA . . . as long as I kept dating Cade.
I wanted to scream.
At her.
At the world.
At myself. For being too damn cowardly to tell her exactly what I was thinking. I should have told her the truth about Cade. I should have told her that she was full of shit. I had been taking my life seriously.
I had been taking my life seriously when I left college. Just because I was not taking a familiar road or doing something that made sense to her didn’t mean I was naive or ignorant.
It meant I didn’t want to be a mindless office worker who daydreamed about what life could have been if things had been different.
It meant I was willing to make sacrifices and work two jobs and kill myself to get it all done.
It meant I was brave.
I wished I had been brave enough then to tell her those things.
I wasn’t.
Instead I kept my mouth closed and listened to her prattle on about a charity event she was hosting right before Christmas and how Michael was doing, and how perfect his wife, Bethany, was.
The more she talked and the more I stayed silent, the more nauseated I became. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I lied and said, “Mom, there’s someone at the door. I have to go.”
“Oh, sure, honey. It was good to see you. Tell Cade we said hi and we’ll see him at Christmas.”
“Mom, I’m not sure he’ll make it to Christmas.”
“And why not?”
“Well, he has his own family to see, plus it’s not exactly cheap. He has tuition and loans to pay.”
Like all the rest of us.
“Oh, your father and I will just take of all that. He can stay for a few days and then go on to Texas. We’ll pay for it. I won’t take no for an answer.”
I was so glad she didn’t mind throwing money at someone she’d just met.
“We’ll see, Mom. I really do have to go.”
I hung up and threw my phone somewhere on the floor. I pulled the covers over my head, and hugged my pillow, but the damage was done. I was too worked up to go to sleep.
I fingernails scrapego” drink took a long shower. I made a complicated lunch that was supposed to occupy my mind, but didn’t. I went for a run. I played my guitar. I tried to write a new song.
I did that for two days.
Distraction. Failure of said distraction.
Different distraction. Different failure.
Repeat until insane.
The whole time my phone sat there, taunting me. Cade was one call away. Or a text if I was feeling particularly cowardly.
One question could solve so many of my problems. Or delay them anyway. Wasn’t that what life was? Taking the good while we could get it, and delaying the bad as long as possible.
Cade was good, and he could help delay the bad. Win-win, right?
Except for the part where I had to degrade myself to do it.
How much was I willing to sacrifice for the money my parents were giving me?
I knew . . . I could feel it somewhere in the space between my heart and lungs that this wasn’t a hopeless dream. Anything that felt this good and consumed me so completely couldn’t be hopeless. I thought of all the gigs I’d have to cut back on if I didn’t have that money. Any one of them could be the one that puts us on the track of making music for a living, but if the gigs never happened, neither would our break.
I’d just finished thinking that I wasn’t afraid to make sacrifices.
Could I sacrifice my own pride, bend to my parents, and pretend to be something I wasn’t if it meant following my dream? It wasn’t as if I had to actually be someone else. I just had to pretend . . . for a little while.
Five hundred bucks a month. I suppose people had betrayed themselves for less.
I made it to Sunday evening before I went back to my room and fished my phone out from under the pillow I had stuffed it under to dampen the temptation. Before I could analyze what I was doing, I scrolled through my old texts and found Cade’s number.
Hey. My band is playing this Friday at The Fire in Northern Liberties. You should come.
I tossed my phone down on the bed, and then pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes.
Why did I feel like I’d just hit my self-destruct button?
I was just inviting him to see us play. That didn’t mean anything. I still had a whole week to make up my mind.
My phone started ringing, and I jumped to answer it.
Oh, it was Mace.
He probably wanted to do something tonight . . . or spend the night, now that my parents were gone. I just . . . I wasn’t feeling up to being around people.
I hit ignore.
Cade’s reply came a few minutes later.
What time?
I spent most of the next week avoiding Mace. We saw each other at practice, and we grabbed dinner beforehand a few times, but I just kept telling him I had to work, which was true. And when I didn’t have to work, I told him I wasn’t feeling well, which wasn’t true, but oh well.
When the day of the gig arrived, we were set to meet that afternoon to load up our equipment from Trestle. Spence had a van we used to tr fingernails scrapego” drinkansport what we needed. When I arrived, Mace wasn’t there, and Spence was outside smoking.
He inhaled, and on the exhale said, “You look like shit.”
I did. “Thanks, douche rocket.”
I hadn’t slept well the night before because I knew I was going to see Cade the next day, and I still hadn’t decided whether I was going to ask him about Christmas.
“I’m just saying . . . we need you to look hot for tonight and you look like you’re auditioning to be an extra on The Walking Dead.”
“I’ve had a shitty couple of days, okay?”
“Right. Mace said you’ve been sick the last few days.” Spence made air quotes with his fingers when he said “sick.”
“Stay out of it, Spence. And don’t you worry. I’ll be good by tonight. I’ll look so sexy you’ll be dying to get back into my pants.”
“You know I’m always dying to get back in your pants.”
I rolled my eyes. “Har-har.”
He smiled, and took another drag on his cigarette.
“You sure Mace is coming?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
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