Chapter Nine
Buzz.
Buzzzzz.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
I rolled over and slapped my open palm on the nightstand. Then I slapped it again, hoping to find my cell phone. Fumbling around like a blind zombie for a few seconds, I finally grappled the thing into my possession and squinted at the time.
Noon.
Ugh.
I flopped on my back with the unanswered phone still in hand. I’d had six hours of sleep. Or something like that. Clearly, not enough.
For a second, I
stared at my bedroom door and remembered why it had been so late early when
I finally fell asleep.
Ezra.
Vera. It was Vera’s engagement party and I had celebrated in excess. And everybody knows that when you drink too much you’re wired for hours afterward.
Full of energy.
Unable to fall asleep.
Ugh, again.
Despite my sleepy
state, urgency to destroy last night’s evidence paintings pounded
through me. Like a herd of elephants rampaging on roller skates.
Or maybe that was my head?
Either way, I knew I had a mess to clean up—literally and figuratively.
My cell started to buzz again, and I cursed at the ceiling fan slowly spinning overhead. Instead of bringing the phone to my face, I rolled over and planted my face on the phone—after I’d swiped answer of course.
“Hello?” a man said—just kidding, that was me. I said hello with a man voice because that’s what I sounded like first thing in the morning.
“Molly,” my mom sighed into the phone. “I thought you’d been trafficked.”
I rubbed my eye with my fist. “Huh?”
“Sex trafficked,” my mom clarified. “When you didn’t answer the first time.”
“I, uh, wha?”
“Molly Nichole are you just now waking up? It’s noon!”
My mother was as hardworking as they got. She had been a public school lunch lady for thirty plus years, so that meant she was used to being up at hours that I still considered the middle of the night. She spent her day managing rowdy kids for both breakfast and lunch, and then she went home and managed my dad who was just as bad. She never took sick days or slept in on weekends. She didn’t have hobbies or shows that she liked, and didn’t really know how to have fun in any capacity. She worked, and she worked, and she worked.
And she expected me to do the same.
“It’s Saturday,” I croaked. “My one day to sleep in.”
“Why do you need to sleep in?” she demanded, her voice hardening with concern. When my mother got nervous she didn’t flutter around like a butterfly afraid to land, she tromped through the situation like a dangerous predator that had been threatened with extinction. My mom was not a dainty flower. She was a Tyrannosaurus Rex—lethal except for the tiny arms.
“I threw Vera an engagement party last night, Mom. It ended late. I’m tired today.”
“Hungover you mean.” Well, she wasn’t wrong. “But that was nice of you. Vera’s a good friend.”
My mom loved Vera. She loved the entire Delane family. We’d been neighbors growing up. Well, my parents and Hank were still neighbors. It was only Vera, Vann and me that had moved on.
For her—someone that valued a hard work ethic— Vera’s dad, Hank Delane, was everything a man should be. He loved his dead wife fiercely and honored her memory by sticking around and doing right by their kids. He worked as hard as possible to provide a good life for them and see that they were well taken care of.
Because of him, Vera and Vann had also learned to work hard. My mom saw them owning their own businesses and doing well for themselves as a tribute to the father that raised them. As a kid, she’d encouraged me to spend as much time over at their house as possible. And now as a grown-up, she pushed me to be as much like Vera and Vann as possible.
And if you hadn’t picked up on it by now, she did not think I was doing a very good job of emulating them. Something she blamed on my dad.
It didn’t matter how many times I told her that I worked for a great company or that I could pay all my bills or even that I had a benefits package—which, by the way, was more than Vera could say until recently.
She took my interest in painting as a sign that I was two days away from giving my life over to the bottle and quitting everything I’d worked so hard to achieve.
Art was just an outlet for the lazy deadbeat in me.
Because obviously there was a lazy deadbeat living inside me, listlessly scratching at my interior walls in a half-hearted attempt to slump its way out. “Get out of my way, Work Ethic!” it would yell from the couch of my heart, throwing empty two liters of Diet Coke at my brain all while scratching its hairy butt. “I can’t see the TV, Retirement Plan!”
Then it would yawn, revealing Dorito-stained teeth and grumble, “Okay, fine. I give up,” before it’s head dropped back and it started snoring loudly.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be here all week.
“Molly,” my mom snapped.
“I’m listening,” I answered quickly, half wondering if my daydreaming hadn’t accidentally turned into real dreaming. There was a line of drool down my chin. A good indication that I might have fallen asleep for a second.
“Your father wants to know when you’re coming home for dinner.”
I shoved my face into the pillow and breathed until my pillowcase was hot and smelled like morning breath. I loved my parents. I really did. And they loved me. At least I hoped they did. But family dinners were always stressful.
Deciding it would be better to get it over with rather than drag it out for the next month or ten years or whatever, I said, “I’m free this weekend.”
“Tomorrow then.” My mom turned her head from the speaker to cough. When she returned she sounded older than she had before. I knew she was tired, but this version of her first thing on a Saturday made her sound worn out. “I’ll make your favorite.”
My heart softened with her gesture. She could be sharp-tongued and impatient, but she was gold on the inside. Pure gold.
“Thank you, Mama.”
She chuckled at my endearment. I only called her mama when I wanted something so it had become a kind of joke to us. “All right, Molly. You’re awake now, so go make the most out of today.”
“Love you.”
There was a slight hesitation because she grappled with expressing emotion. Finally, she admitted, “Love you, too.”
I hung up the phone with her and flopped back on my pillow. My mother was the person I loved most in this world. She was also the person that had messed me up the most.
I tried to console myself by believing that was the norm. Most moms meant well. That didn’t mean their children weren’t loaded with baggage that they had to carry for the rest of their lives.
Right?
Was I crazy to think that maybe, just possibly, my mom had overburdened me?
I’d tried to talk to Vera about this before, but she hadn’t had a mom growing up. She looked at my family the same way I looked at hers—with longing and subtle feelings of wishful what ifs.
Sure, through her eyes, I had two parents and family dinners every night. She saw my mom take me shopping and help me sort through drama at school. She had been there for my first period and given me the most awkward sex talk in the history of sex talks. She’d gotten her nails done with me once in awhile, if it was summer and she didn’t have to work in the lunchroom.
But from my first-hand perspective, I also knew family dinners came with a price. And I often wondered if it would be better with only one parent if that meant you didn’t have to listen to two parents fighting all the time. She took me shopping, but only bought me outfits she deemed appropriate and mature enough. She’d spent many nights talking to me about friends from school, as in which ones to hang out with, which ones had potential, and which ones I should avoid at any cost lest I end up catching their dead-beat tendencies. She’d handed me a box of tampons and told me that I could now get pregnant. And that if I ever came home knocked up, she would never speak to me again. And yes, I’d sat through the sex talk with her, but I walked away feeling more confused than ever.
I was also fairly confident that my parents had only had sex the one time and that I was magically conceived in the accidental process.
Getting our nails done now was mainly me forcing her to do it in a desperate effort to get my mother to relax. Because I was terrified she was going to give herself a heart attack, or an ulcer, or a wart on the tip of her nose or something.
One of the great things about Vera being my best friend was that she was a constant reminder of how grateful I should be to have a mom. And I was. But there were parts to my mother that drove me absolutely crazy.
I already knew family dinner tomorrow night would be one of those things.
Stretching my fingers, I ignored the urge to head to my studio to paint. My mother’s voice still lingered in the air and I didn’t want to taint my sacred space by inviting her negative energy. I would likely lose some fingers as they sporadically fell off my body thanks to her intense hatred for all things creative.
No, instead, I abandoned my bed and my phone and did the honorable, mature thing. I took a shower and scrubbed all the booze bleeding from my pores.
God, I smelled like tequila.
I blamed Wyatt, the shot master.
When I got out of the shower, my phone was alight with notifications. It was like a buzzing Christmas tree. I sprawled on my bed again, wrapped in a towel, my still drying hair dripping onto my shoulders and the comforter.
I checked all my socials first, liking the silly pictures from last night that I had been tagged in and smiling at the fun that had been had. Then I switched over to my emails, deleting shopping coupons and car maintenance ads in favor of checking in on work just to prove my mother wrong.
After responding to two emails from Henry, one about the Black Soul project and another vague one about hearing about an exciting opportunity for me on Monday, I declared my mother officially wrong. I’d taken advantage of Saturday afternoon and managed to respond to not just one, but two work emails. Booya.
That’s when I noticed the email that I should have seen first. I had been so curious to find out what Henry’s “secret project” was, and then ultimately so disappointed to discover he hadn’t actually told me that I’d skimmed right over email from the [email protected].
Now that I looked at it, there was a string of three of them grouped together on my Gmail app.
The first one read,
Subject: You know you want to…
Take the job, Maverick. I’ll make it worth your while.
~EFB
P.S. I promise to stay out of your way.
I pondered what the F could possibly stand for while my stubborn will fought career-obsessed butterflies in a battle for power.
Francis?
Frederick?
Fitzgerald?
Ferret?
Ezra Fucking Baptiste? I wouldn’t put it past him.
Moving onto the second email, I opened it with more trepidation.
Subject: About last night.
Molly,
Forgive my late email. I was wired after the party and couldn’t sleep. The truth is, I’ve looked up your profile on your company website, and while I’m impressed with your work, you’re still green. I’m offering you a job that I believe will build your portfolio and credibility. Working for me will help you land better clients. And, you should know that I’m willing to pay whatever your fees are. This is a win-win for both of us.
~EFB
One more thought. I see that you are drawn to grey and yellow, but I’d rather not.
Was he serious?
Grey and yellow?!
What did he know
about design? Nothing! Nada!!! Zilch! He should stick to what he was good at—
being an asshole—and leave me and my favorite the trending colors alone.
And. AND! He’d spelled grey with an E when everybody knew that gray with an A was the American-English spelling.
And it was romantic.
It was the romantic way to spell gray.
I mean for that reason alone it was obvious this man was a sociopath. Or worse. A realist.
Gross!
Fury convinced me to open the third email. Well, fury and morbid curiosity.
Subject: This will be good for you.
I’ll see you Monday. We can discuss the details then.
~EFB
Also, I don’t know if I said it already, but I just wanted to thank you again for your work on the engagement party. I appreciate all that you did.
One final thought, since she’s a pain in my ass and reading over my shoulder, I’m forced to tell you that Dillon says hello. And that she enjoyed meeting you.
That’s all, Molly. Talk to you soon.
For half a second,
I pondered all of his post scripts and how he seemed to say more at the end of
his emails than at the beginning. But then I pushed away that adorable weird
quirk to make room for the justifiable outrage boiling in my blood.
He’d insulted me on so many different levels. It was hard to decide which one should be the most upsetting.
From assuming I was more interested in money than integrity to insulting my design style again to assuming I would take the job simply because he demanded it. The man was intolerable.
He clearly wasn’t used to hearing the word “no.” Or “no, thank you.” Or “not a chance in hell, buddy.”
I had the strongest urge to paint again, but only so I could create something vaguely in his image and then turn it into a dart board.
Sitting cross-legged in the middle of my bed, I repressed the flattered preening of my ego. Okay, for like a hot second I could admit that it was nice to be considered for Ezra’s website revamp. And not just considered, but aggressively sought after.
I had no doubt he would pay well. And somehow I knew that if I demanded more money, he would pay that too.
Not that I would. I wasn’t totally greedy.
But not for one second did I really believe that he would keep his nose out of my business. In fact, for hardly knowing him or seeing him or wanting anything to do with him, he was perpetually in my business.
I held my phone with both hands and tapped out the quickest reply I could. There was no reason to prolong whatever was happening here. The emails needed to stop. The unsolicited advice needed to end. And Ezra Baptiste just needed to disappear from my life altogether.
Subject: Let me stop you right there.
Dear Ezra Franklin Baptiste…
Hello, Ezra Fenwick Baptiste…
What up EFB…
Ezra,
There’s no need to call me Monday since we’ll have nothing to discuss. I apologize that you’re so set on the idea of us working together when I am super set on us not working together. If you’re really that interested in SixTwentySix though, I’m happy to refer you to another designer that I trust.
Best,
MM.
P.S. Tell, Dillon I say hello back and that I enjoyed meeting her too. And that she’s hands down my favorite Baptiste.
I pressed send with a feeling of complete satisfaction. I’d remained professional, polite and persistent. All the right P’s. Now he would get the message loud and clear and move on.
He was a successful business owner with restaurants to run and empires to build. His attention span was probably the equivalent to a chipmunk on crack. Monday would come and go and so would his thoughts about me or what I could do for his business or my penchant toward gray and yellow and all things green.
And I would be more vigilant to avoid Ezra as often as possible. Now that the engagement party was over, I wouldn’t need to seek him out again, and the chances of me ever running into him on accident were very slim.
It wasn’t like we ran in the same circles or shopped at the same organic, uppity grocery stores or vacationed on the same private tropical islands. I would stay on my side of the city and he could stay on his.
There was only Vera’s wedding to worry about, but we would be back to being strangers by then. Like divorced strangers. We could share joint custody of Vera and Killian, alternating weekends and Wednesdays.
We would pass each other coming and going or at the occasional party hosted by our mutual friends, but he had his world and I had mine and ne’er would they ever meet.
I stared at my phone, refusing to close my eyes and conjure his eyes, his nose, or the breadth of his strong hands. I ignored the tingle in my fingers begging me to paint and draw and create something that could capture that unnamed thing in him I found so obnoxiously fascinating. As I finished my hair and put my makeup on, I stubbornly refused to head back to my studio and examine what I’d done the night before.
As I made lunch and took two Tylenol, two Advil and an Alka-Seltzer, I chose to forget about the advice Ezra had given last night and the way he’d focused so intently on me.
And then I proceeded to erase from my mind the three emails today, the emails from before that, and every interactions I’d had with him since I met him.
He had his life. And I had mine. And everything about us was too different to even consider working together or near each other or in a general vicinity of each other. We were too different and too set in our own ways.
Good luck, Ezra Fezziwig Baptiste. Godspeed.