Nineteen
Mary’s head hurt from a thousand different things. Just fuck him and get it over with seemed like bad advice. Bad advice that worked better than expected. Bad advice because it came from a place of almost total ignorance, and then just by sheer coincidence worked out.
And of course, if she was high at the time, it made perfect sense for Cara to be giving out the kind of advice that most people discarded as the worst possible suggestion.
And of course, to be perfectly fair, Mary had gone and done exactly that, in spite of her better instincts, because she never did anything her better instincts told her to do first, and because it was a mistake that she wanted to make in the first place second.
And of course, there was a lot other that made her head hurt. She hadn’t had a cup of coffee in thirty-six hours, and in that time, she’d slept maybe three hours. She was almost tempted to take one of Cara’s cigarettes, even though she wasn’t a smoker, as long as it would keep her going.
But she wasn’t going to start herself off on another addictive behavior. She had everything pretty-well worked out at that point, and she wasn’t going to start digging another hole that she’d have to work her way out of when she realized how bad a mistake that she’d made. She was already deep enough in Roman Townsend that she was in over her head.
So when someone called her a junkie, normally, she might have been able to handle it. Ex-junkie isn’t even an insult at that point. It’s just the reality of the situation. She was an ex-junkie.
What made it frustrating was that she’d been working for ten years to get clean, and seven of those years to get other people clean. This was her life. It was something that she worked hard on. And Cara, of all people, was important to her. Important to her sobriety and important to her life. And it was a symbol.
She tightened up her fist, and felt her body getting good and ready to bloody his nose. Her mind was something else, though, and she had already decided that nobody wins hearts and minds by getting themselves into fist fights. Not even with people who deserved it.
“I didn’t ask your opinion,” she said instead. “I don’t seem to recall anyone asking your opinion.”
“Yeah, well, whatever you say, sweet cheeks. Why don’t you go for a walk and find someone else to suck the money out of?”
Mary’s blood pressure rose by half again, and her body started to surge with adrenaline. Fight or flight, indeed.
“Tom, shut your mouth before you say something stupider than usual.”
“You’re really going to just let this harpy stick around and suck you bone dry, huh, big guy?”
“Go cool off, Tommy.”
“I’m cool as can be.”
“Then go find something else to do. I don’t need you here making my decisions for me.”
“No?” The man, Tommy, she guessed was Roman’s manager. They had a bad relationship. And he said the word, no, like he was pretty sure that the answer was yes and he was daring Roman to double down on the big mistake he was going to be making by refusing.
“Not even a little bit, Tom. Go on. Go watch a football game or something.”
“Yeah, when this all blows up in your face, just give me a call, will you?”
Mary could see the lines of Roman’s jaw tightening. He worked them loose again, only for his jaw to tighten again all on its own an instant later.
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Your friend’s not particularly charitable.”
“No,” Roman said. His jaw was still at the tightening phase of the cycle, and his teeth barely came enough apart to fit a toothpick as he ground the words out. “He isn’t.”
“I’m sorry if I’m asking too much. I just…”
“Look, I told you. I’ve been in this sort of stuff since I was a kid. You need someone to come along, I can come along. You sure she’s receptive to the talk, though? You can’t change somebody. Not if they don’t want to change.”
Mary’s chest tightened at the question. That had been her experience the past week. She didn’t know anything. And as she was getting closer to Roman, the thing she knew least of all was when to mention how closely related Pete was to their first meeting. It wasn’t right to keep him in the dark. Not forever. But before two nights ago, it hadn’t seemed important to mention.
Now it seemed like she’d put it off too far, like she should have come into his room with nothing but a trench coat on and then cried out, just as he pulled her in for a kiss, that Pete was his son.
When was she supposed to have mentioned it?
She sucked in a deep breath. Whatever. It was a problem, but it was one that she would solve. One that hopefully could wait until she was done with the latest in a long series of calamities that she couldn’t bring herself to ignore.
“I don’t know.”
“So maybe?”
“More than maybe. She was clean for years. She was married, for Christ’s sake.”
Roman nodded and a line furrowed between his eyebrows. “Yeah. Okay. Then we’d better at least try, right? You know what happened with her?”
“I had stuff going on. She had stuff going on. I think it’s been, I don’t know… two months since I called her?”
He pursed his lips. “Yeah. Okay. So if we’re lucky, she’s not long on the stuff.”
“If we’re lucky.”
“But we’ve got to assume we’re not. So come on, I guess. Let’s go find your friend. You know where she’ll be?”
“No,” Mary said. “But I know where she was.”
“Then that’s going to have to be good enough.”