SUTTON

 

 

 

Shane’s mom is like a kid at Christmas. The second we brought her onto the KBC lot, she was wiggling in her seat excitedly. She can’t believe she’s about to see the stage where her favorite show goes down. She’s been protesting for the last hour that she doesn’t have to see it, she’ll see everything tomorrow when the show airs, but it’s half-hearted politeness. She’s dying to get her feet on that stage.

Shane was worried about bringing her here after dinner. I think he’s afraid we’ll get in trouble with Eric, but I say fuck him. What can he do? Fire me?

“It looks deserted,” Lynn comments as we pull through the gates onto the lot.

Shane has finally put the roof and doors on his Jeep. He did it for his mom. When I saw the way they greeted each other at the airport, I felt a tug in my stomach that felt a lot like homesickness. I miss my mom and that feels messed up. It still hurts, though. Even after everything she put me through and the hundreds of ways she screwed me up, she was still my mom. My dad was never around. I barely knew the guy growing up, but my mom was there for all of my firsts. She gave me flowers after my first performance on Broadway. She was there in the audience when I won my first Tony. She was my date to my first gala event, giving me my first sip of alcohol that would turn out to be my last. She taught me how to sing. She taught me how to dance.

For better or worse, she molded me into the woman I am today, and when Shane’s mom immediately pulled me into a bracing hug at the airport, I felt an emptiness in a dark corner of myself that I know no one will ever be able to fill. It will be my mother’s greatest legacy.

 “It’s pretty empty right now, but there are people filming,” I assure her. “TV shows and movies that are getting night shots will be on the outdoor sets. Some of them might be inside burning the midnight oil.”

“Will anyone else be inside the Dance the Night Away studio?”

Shane chuckles. “What’s the matter, Mom? Me and Sutton aren’t celebrity enough for you?’

“No! Of course you are. But I wouldn’t say no to meeting Jerry Feagan.” She turns in her seat to look back at me where I’m sitting behind her. “I was a huge Paper Turbine fan in the nineties. I had every album.”

“I’ve never listened to any of their music,” I confess.

“That’s fine. They were terrible. But Jerry was so sexy, I’d listen to him read me the phonebook if he wanted to.”

“Gross,” Shane mutters.

“I can see Jerry being sexy,” I admit. “He’s sort of a silver fox now.”

“He was a ginger back then,” Lynn tells me excitedly.

“Also gross,” Shane mumbles.

“Don’t be mean, Shane. Sutton is probably friends with Jerry and she doesn’t want to listen to you insulting him.”

“Sutton doesn’t have friends, Mom.”

“Shane!”

“No, it’s true,” I agree with him amicably. “I don’t usually like people.”

“But you and Shane seem to get along well.”

“Shane isn’t like most people.”

I feel Shane glance at me in the rearview mirror, but I don’t meet his eyes. I’m worried that if I do, his mom will see what’s between us. I don’t want any questions about what we are or where we’re going. I can’t answer them tonight and I definitely don’t want to lie to Lynn. She’s as sweet as her son. They’re both the kind of inherently good people that make my stomach squirm with nervousness, worried they’ll see what a mess I am inside.

“We’re here,” Mom whispers to herself happily.

Shane chuckles as he pulls into his usual parking spot. “You don’t have to whisper, Mom. It’s not a church.”

“Maybe not to you,” I remind him.

“Right. Sorry, ladies. I’ll mind my manners.”

We tumble out of the Jeep together. Lynn is barely taller than I am and I’m a little relieved to see her struggle with the monster as much as I do.

“You should really get running rails on this thing,” she complains to Shane.

“I can’t. It’d ruin the lift height.”

“What’s a running rail?” I ask.

Lynn gestures to the doors we just fell out of. “It’s a bar that sits a little below the door to give you something to step on to climb up inside. Most lifted trucks have them.”

“Most lifted trucks are lifted for show, not to clear a log in the middle of the woods,” Shane complains. “I’m not getting them.”

Sutton stares at me in amazement. “We’ve been mountain climbing our way up into that thing all night and you could have step stools installed?”

“Hey! I help you get in.”

“Maybe we want to get in without help!”

“Are you going to stay out here yelling at me all night or should we go inside?”

“It’s nice to see that you have a woman who’s yelling at you,” Lynn tells him fondly. “You’re the kind of man that needs yelling at.”

“Wow. Thanks, Mom.”

“You are who you are, Shane.”

When we get to the door, it’s locked. The place is as deserted as the rest of the lot. Lynn’s disappointment is palpable, though she tries to hide it. She suggests that we call it a night. It’s been a long day of traveling for her, and me and Shane have to be back here early tomorrow for the dress rehearsal. All good points, but I’m no quitter.

Plus, I have a key.

“Do all the regulars have a key?” Shane asks quietly when we get inside. He watches as I punch a series of numbers into a lit pad before flicking on a light to scare away the darkness. “And an alarm code?”

I give him a stern look that tells him to stop asking questions.

He promptly shuts the hell up.

The truth is, no one else has a key. Or codes. I shouldn’t have them either, but I got them from Eric over a year ago. He saw the obsession in me. I refused to leave when everyone else was supposed to so he caved and gave me my own means of locking up. He had other reasons for the generosity, though. One late night when he ‘just happened’ to come back to the studio was when we first had sex. A lot of what went on between us happened in this building. It’s haunted in that way. I can feel his hands pulling at my hair as I pass through the shadows of the coffin room. I can taste his beloved lemon drops on his tongue when we make it to the stage. But once I flick on the main lights and Shane’s mom giggles with delight, the ghosts are gone. They’re run off by new feelings, new smells, new sounds that make me sigh with relief down to my marrow.

“It’s smaller than I imagined it,” Lynn confesses in a hushed voice.

“The angles they shoot from make it look larger,” I explain. “And the edges of the audience are always dark so you have no idea how far back the seating goes. It’s not as much as you’d think.”

“Where will I be sitting tomorrow?”

Shane points to the front row along the right side of the stage. “Right there. Across from the judges.”

“Up close and personal with Jerry,” I tease.

Lynn smiles ruefully. “I’ll be sure to bring my camera.”

I frown apologetically. “You can’t. They don’t allow phones or personal cameras in the studio while we’re filming.”

“But you’ll be able to have it after the show when we take you backstage to meet everyone,” Shane promises.

Lynn smiles gratefully. She rocks on her feet, her hands held loosely together in front of her.

“You can go on up if you want to.”

The words are not even fully out of my mouth before she rushes for the stage.

I laugh at her excitement. She’s so enthralled by the entire thing, it brings me back to the first time I stepped into the studio. I felt the same way she does now – like I couldn’t wait. Like I wanted to take the world in one bite and swallow it whole.

“Thank you for this,” Shane tells me quietly.

I glance up at him. His handsome face is happy and smiling. Relaxed like I’ve never seen him. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It is to me.” He looks at his mom exploring every corner of the stage with a massive grin on her face. They have the same smile. They have the same kind of easiness inside of them. It makes me very aware of how complicated I am. “She follows football for me, but she doesn’t love it. She never has. This show, though,” he chuckles to himself, turning his eyes to mine. “She loves this show. She loves you and she loves us together on it. Calling her after every episode to break it down with her is the closest we’ve ever been and it’s awesome. It means a lot to me. So, thank you, Sutton, because I wouldn’t have made it this far without you and that means I wouldn’t have that connection with her.” He nudges me gently with his elbow. “I owe you.”

“I’ll remember you said that,” I promise, feeling warm inside. Toasted as a marshmallow over a campfire.

I bet Shane and his family go camping. They’re wholesome like that. I’ve never been and I suddenly really wish I had. I never cared before because I thought you just go lay in the dirt and get cold, but there’s got to be more to it than that.

I wish I had a different kind of life. A warmer one with a sibling to hate the way Shane hates his brother. With a dad who’s there at dinner every night and a mom who’s there to lovingly make it. I wish I’d had a bike and a pair of roller skates. I wish I believed in Santa, just for a second somewhere in my life. I wish I’d gotten candy from the Tooth Fairy when my teeth came out instead of a pair of veneers to cover it up. I wish my first kiss had been in the rain instead of on a stage with a stranger while thirty people watched and critiqued. I wish I’d waited to have sex for the first time instead of rushing it with a boy in the chorus who couldn’t find the clitoris if it slapped him in the face.

I wish I’d met Shane when I was sixteen; before everything went bad. Could he have saved me? Would I have felt for him then the way I do now? Would I be a different girl? A better girl? A fuller, more beautiful woman, inside and out? Would I dream of having children instead of dreading them? Would I eat meat? Would I own a sleeping bag? Would I understand myself better? Would I be able to say the things that are in my heart instead of locking them up in a cage in the dark, treating their beauty as danger?

Would I be able to admit to him and to myself how very much I love him?

I’ll never know because I’ll never be that girl. All the wishing in the world can’t change that. It’s like Lynn said;

You are who you are.