5
CAROLINE
“Speak to a Girl” by Tim McGraw & Faith Hill
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“You stupid fuckin’ bitch!”
I flinch, knowing what’s coming before John grabs my bicep in a rough and painful grip.
He pulls me forward, my head snapping back. He’s getting worse. The thought filters through my mind and I know, I know next time might be the time that he doesn’t stop at just hitting me a little. It’s been escalating over the years, but the past few he hasn’t stopped at just the verbal abuse, manhandling me more and more roughly each time I do something that pissed him off until that doesn’t even seem like enough for him. Even if it‘s just moving through our house, I never know what’s going to set him off.
“I’m sorry, John!” I cry, holding my hands up in front of my face in case this is that time he doesn’t stop.
“Fuckin’ disgusting,” he spits, giving me a shake before pushing me from him. I stumble but don’t fall. “I asked for a Bud and you bring me this cheap off-brand shit. Go to the store and get my fuckin’ Bud or you’ll find out what it’s like to be sorry.”
I grab my keys and run to the car, my hands shaking the whole way. In the five years we’ve been in Austin, he’s gotten worse and worse. Actually, the first couple years weren’t bad. But when we turned twenty-one and he was able to get beer more often, things changed. The clerk at the twenty-four-hour mart doesn’t even look at me while he rings up my purchase, handing me my change with a mumbled good night.
I spend the drive home thinking about just leaving. I could go. He’s likely drunk off the very beer he turned his nose up at by now. There’s nothing in the house I want. I long ago started carrying bigger purses so that all my important papers were always with me. My hands tighten on the wheel, the cross street that takes me back to our shack of a house just ahead. My foot pushes down on the accelerator at the same time that I decide to leave.
Then everything goes black and all I can smell is smoke.
I jolt up in bed; the memory of the crash so real I can still smell the smoke. It takes me a moment, but as soon as the fear from that dream clears from my mind, I realize my mistake. It wasn’t the dream that had me smelling smoke. My whole loft apartment is filling with it. I jump from the bed, grab my phone, and call 911, rattling off my address before I even realize why it’s filling the room so quickly.
My stomach drops.
“No!” I scream.
I grab my bag, rushing to the back stairway, and press my hand against the wood to check for heat, making sure the exit—the only one—is safe. I turn the handle, the smoke even thicker in the stairwell, but I run down as fast as I can without tumbling to my death. When I reach the bottom, and see the front of my bookstore in flames, I trip, falling hard to my knees. It takes me a few unsteady tries, but I get out the back door and run around the building to watch as the flames grow. I drop my purse and clutch my phone as I pray that the fire department is quick, watching the flames lick and dance closer to destroying everything I hold dear.
I don’t realize I’m screaming and crying until I feel two strong arms pulling me from the ground.
“Shh, Carrie,” Luke says with sympathy, and I turn to bury my face in his chest.
“How did you know?” I wail.
“Volunteering night,” he answers, rubbing my back. I pull away long enough to see him wearing his fire gear, and it only makes me sob harder. “The boys will put the fire out, darlin’. It hasn’t spread to the top yet, so let’s think positive, ’kay?”
I shake my head against him and continue to cry, my mind lost somewhere in the nightmare that woke me up and the one that was waiting for me.
“Holy shit! Caroline!” I lift my head off Luke’s shoulder just in time for his sister to collide with us. He silently shifts his hold so that he has both of us as Lucy wraps her arms around us. The two of them create a Hazel family circle around me as I burst into another fit of tears. I have no idea how long we carry on—Luce and me—but he holds us strong the whole time, watching as his fellow volunteer firemen battle the fire inside my bookstore. By the time the all-clear is given, Lucy has moved to sit next to us on the curb across the street and Luke has shifted my body so I’m sitting across his lap, Lucy’s hands grasping mine. I finally stopped crying shortly after the paramedics checked me over, but I can’t help the deep depression that had settled into my bones watching my life go up in flames.
“It’s gonna be okay, Carrie,” Luke says again when I hiccup.
“It will be, Caroline. It will,” Lucy agrees, tightening her grip on my hands.
“It’s all gone.” I continue to look at the charred remains of the front half of my store and feel my chin wobble.
“It’s not, sweetheart,” Luke tells me, trying to get my attention off the store with his hand on my chin, but I pull away from his grasp and continue staring. “We’ll get you settled. Insurance will handle the damage, and the fire only got to your kitchen and bathroom. I’ll get in there tomorrow and get out everything I can, and you can stay with me and Luce until they finish rebuilding.”
I don’t speak. I can’t. The Sequel was so much more than just a store. It represented everything I had overcome. And now it’s gone—even if just temporarily.
I don’t remember Luke driving me back to his and Lucy’s house across town, but by the time he pushed a pill into my mouth and poured a drink of water down my throat I’d already started crying again. I didn’t even question him, trusting him without doubt. By the time I felt my lids getting heavier, Lucy was lying on one side of me and Luke on the other, all three of us stuffed in her double bed. I wasn’t the only one who’d been scared tonight. I might’ve lost a part of The Sequel, but I can only imagine what my best friends thought when they didn’t know whether I was hurt or not. I curl into Lucy’s side and feel Luke’s arms tighten around me.
You would never know that we had hadn’t known each other our whole lives, being as close as we are. I met Lucy when I was nineteen in school in Austin, and we instantly bonded over the fact that we’d grown up in neighboring towns. We shared a dorm for a month before John moved me into an apartment with him, but Lucy and I remained close. She decided to move back home with me after I opened up The Sequel in Wire Creek. She wasn’t wrong the other night on the way to the PieHole when she told me some people share a bond as close as family without being related.
This, right here, is my family, and even though I’m heartbroken about the store, I still have them.
The rest will figure itself out.
I hope.
I finally stopped crying shortly before I fell asleep, but not once did my best friends let go of me all night.