Chapter 22

My secret talent is getting tired without doing anything at all.

-Text from Cora to Coke

Cora

Day one of being without Coke went about as well as expected.

I muddied my brain with comics, dedicating each and every one of them to the man who had made me realize that what I wanted was something that I likely wouldn’t ever have.

Each one I put into an envelope, and when he came back later that night, I’d handed them to him and closed the door in his face.

***

Day two dawned with me having to do a team meeting with my producer who told me that she was very impressed with my work, then offered me the second largest character’s edits, too.

“I think you’ll be perfect for the job. We had an animator working on him…but something didn’t sit right with the team. We want you to draw a few samples and send them over via email. But, let me just tell you, after seeing all your edits for Mona? Well, let’s just say that most likely you already got everyone’s approval. This is just preliminary.”

After hanging up, my jaw half open, I turned around and reached for my cell phone, almost on instinct.

I had Coke’s number punched in, and the phone ringing, before I’d consciously told myself to do it.

He hadn’t answered, and that’d been the reminder that I’d needed.

Mustn’t call Coke. Even if I had good news to tell him.

I’d once seen a video of how the drink, Coca-Cola, reacted with the acid inside the stomach. It turned a putrid black and foamed as the two substances reacted with each other.

And that was kind of the way that I was feeling right now. My belly was roiling, and every single one of the synapses in my brain were firing, telling me that something was wrong.

I’d done something, and I couldn’t quite figure out if I’d done the right or wrong thing.

***

Day three came with Coke calling me back after getting my earlier phone call.

His call came at 12:01 AM. Then another came at 12:03, and another at 12:04. The final one, at 12:05 came, and then the truck started sounding.

Only, this time, it was different than the others.

Where before I’d get a start of the truck here, a rev of the truck there, this time it was a constant, VRROOOOM. VROOOOOM. Vrrrrroooooooooom.

Over and over and over again the engine revved.

At one point, I’d gotten off the bed and was going to head in that direction, but then I reminded myself that wouldn’t be smart.

Coke was bad for me. Coke was bad for me.

Maybe if I kept repeating those words, one day I’d believe them.

***

Coke was bad for me. Coke was bad for me.

I stared down at my phone and whined.

Coke had sent me a picture of my incubators that we had taken over to his house.

There was the tiniest of cracks in one of them, signaling the arrival of one of my baby chicks.

I put the phone down and refused to look at the video.

He could have the chicks.

Coke was bad for me. Coke was bad for me.

***

Day five dawned with Frankie knocking at my door.

I opened it, and she was looking at me with sad eyes. “I know that you and my dad aren’t talking, but I just wanted to tell you that I’m going back to school. I also wanted to give you this…and tell you about it.”

I frowned at the gray bowl—the one Beatrice had broken the day that I’d left—and stared at it.

“Okay…”

“My grandmother made this for him when he was seventeen,” she said softly, touching the pieces gently with careful fingers. Not because she was afraid to cut herself, but because she didn’t want to hurt the pieces. “When they died, this was the only thing he’d ever gotten from his parents present-wise…ever. The first thing that was only his. Only ever his.”

I stared at it in horror.

Beatrice had likely known that.

“Oh, no,” I said softly.

“Yeah,” she said, then went on to explain a little more about it.

By the time that she was finished, I was nearly in tears.

“My dad’s had a really hard life,” she whispered.

I closed my eyes.

“I think the last couple of months were the only time I’ve ever heard him say that he was happy,” she breathed.

Though Frankie had left, I’d stayed right where I was on the stoop of my house, watching her disappear.

It was only when I heard her car start up that I came unstuck.

But it wasn’t to go inside and get back to the mountain of work that I had to do.

No, it was to go get my car keys and head in the direction of Coke’s office.