“Weak bitch.” I’m the only one in the room to hear the admonishment. I’m the only one who needs to.
Exhaustion must have demanded her due, because I don’t even recall falling asleep. When I wake, the room is darker and colder. I’m not in LA, the land of sand and sun. It’s still New York, and it’s still cold, and maybe that’s as it should be. I slip out of the wrinkled clothes I flew and slept in and put on leggings and a Columbia sweatshirt before padding down the stairs in search of food. Surely Bertie made something for me.
I’m in the kitchen, foraging between the pantry and the fridge, when I hear the weeping. I drop a drumstick on the counter and follow that sorrowful sound. Seeing your mother cry for the first time is always hard for a child. I don’t know that it’s any easier because I’m twenty-one years old. I can’t recall ever seeing her tears, not this way. Not sprawled on the living room floor surrounded by shattered glass and spilled liquor.
“Mother, let me help you.” I reach for her, but she wrenches away.
“Leave.” A broken sob drowns the word. “God, why can’t you just leave me alone like everyone else does?”
Her words are always sharp, but I think she sharpens them to their finest point for me. And they always find their mark, bull’s-eye in my heart.
“Get up.” I grab her arm despite her efforts to keep it from me. “There’s glass everywhere.”
“Bertie will get it,” she slurs.
I look more closely and realize she’s drunk. Totally, sloppy drunk.
I loop her arm over my shoulder, half-dragging her to the couch where I prop her up. Her head droops to the side, and I see the tracks of tears in her usually flawless makeup.
“Mother, he isn’t worth this.” I keep my voice soft but try to sound convincing.
“How would you know?” The words roll around in her mouth, a soup of consonants and vowels. “You have no idea.”
“I know that if a man cheats once, he’ll do it again.”
“Once?” A bitter laugh cracks her face open. “You think this was the first time? Oh, God. I’ve lost count. There’s the ghosts of a hundred Nina Algiers in our bed.”
“Then leave him.” I take a seat beside her, grabbing her hand to urge her. “You’re stronger than this.”
“No.” She says the word sadly, quietly, helplessly. “I’m not.”
When she looks at me, I see that it isn’t just the decanter that’s shattered all over the floor. My mother is shattered, and there’s shards of glass, decades old, in her eyes.
“I love him,” she whispers. “He’ll have to leave me, because I love him, and I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to let go.”
The strongest woman I know? Tough as nails negotiator? The enemy you never want to face, leveled by love?
“I can’t believe you tolerate it, Mother.”
“Oh, spare me, Bristol.” Her disgust and anger trip over each other to get to me. “You’ll be here one day if you’re not careful. In this same spot, with this same broken heart.”
“You’re wrong.” Something in my heart whispers that she’s right, but I can’t acknowledge it. I won’t.
She sits up from her drunken slump and looks me right in the eyes with sudden clarity.
“You are just like me, maybe worse,” she says. “You need too much. And you’ll love too much, too, if you’re not careful. I fell in love with the wrong man a long time ago, and people like you and me, we don’t know how to stop.”
“Stop saying I’m like that.” The words throb in my throat before I can release them.
“I don’t have to say it.” She drags herself up and over to the bar, grabbing another bottle and pouring herself a drink. “You already know it’s true.”
Even knowing all that Grip has done, there is still some part of me that wants it to all be a cruel joke so I can forgive him. Give him that second chance. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I am like her. But if I am, I’m learning her lesson here, today. She loves the wrong man so hard that even when he hurts her, she can’t turn it off.
If that’s how we love, then it’s better to never start.
Grip
Six Years Ago, After Graduation—Los Angeles
By the time I arrive, Bristol’s welcome party is in full swing. Maybe that’s best. Maybe it will make things less awkward. We haven’t seen each other in two years. When she wouldn’t answer my calls or text messages, or even confirm she received the book of Neruda poems I mailed to her, as hard as it was, I had to let it go. I messed up, and she shut me out. I told myself I’d try again when she finished college and moved here to LA. Rhys and Bristol kept in touch and made progress over the last two years. Now, she’s here to do what she said she would—manage Rhyson’s music career.
I’ve entered Grady’s house more times than I can count, but I’ve never felt nervous crossing this threshold. Like can’t-eat-need-a-drink nervous. And there hasn’t been anyone to really talk to about this. I know Bristol didn’t tell Rhys what happened between us, and I took my cue from her. How we resolve this is our business, no on else’s. I hope once we get this shit sorted, once she understands, we can see if there’s anything left of what we started two years ago. If it’s even worth trying. It wasn’t long enough to be love. It’s too deep, and I’m too old for a crush. It’s too raw for infatuation. I may not be able to put a name to it, but it didn’t vacate the premises when Bristol left. I can’t evict it.
The living room is packed, crowded with people I don’t think Bristol knows. They’re our friends, and all they know is that Rhyson’s sister is moving to LA. I walk in on some joke already punch lined because everyone is laughing. I slip in, wanting to go unnoticed. Jimmi immediately makes that impossible.
“Grip!” She unfolds herself from the cross-legged pose on the floor and throws herself at me. “I wondered where you were.”
I squeeze Jimmi but look over her shoulder and directly into Bristol’s silvery eyes. Only for a second before she looks away and dives back into a conversation as if I don’t exist. But that second tells me a lot. It’ll take more than an apology to fix things between us. She looked right through me as if I wasn’t there. As if she wished I weren’t.
She looks even better than before. Her hair is shorter and sits just above her shoulders instead of down her back. Her face looks leaner, like something chiseled all the illusions away from the soft flesh and striking bones, sharpening her. Black jeans, high-heeled boots, and a silk blouse that leaves her arms and shoulders bare and ties behind her neck. She had a high shine before, but now there’s something more polished about her. The sophistication gleams even brighter. It could have been that big time internship she got with Sound Management in New York. Or maybe she just grew up.
“Dude.” Rhyson stands, too, coming to dap me up and grin. “How’d the session go?”
“Good.” My eyes stray to Bristol, who is still in deep conversation with a small group of people. “We knocked out both verses in no time.”
“Nice.” Rhyson glances at his phone and grimaces. “I’m still waiting on that call from the label.”
“For real?” I reassure him with a grin, though I know I can’t un-knot his stomach or calm his nerves while he waits to hear back from the record label considering signing him. “They’ll call.”
Rhyson’s finally ready to perform again, but he’s going back in as a contemporary artist instead of a classical pianist.
After a few minutes, I work my way over to the circle of conversation Bristol is embroiled in. I even take an empty spot on the couch facing her, restricting myself to a few furtive glances, though I’d rather stare.
“So, Bris,” Luke, our friend from high school says. “What are you gonna do while you wait for Rhyson to make it big?”
“I’m not sure I’m ‘waiting’ for him to make it big.” Bristol’s laugh is husky and assured. “I think it’ll be my job to ensure he makes it big.”