Page 48 of Crescendo
“Oh—all right. Bye then,” I said, and she went to hit the end call button and missed, dropping the phone on the table and scooching her chair, getting up.
Not in a million years could I have predicted the stomach-dropping horror of what came next, though, the part I had an unintended audience to, and that was Natália lighting up and saying,
“Hi, baby!”
She pushed around the table, and I thought I’d throw up when I heard Melinda’s voice as the one to respond. “Hey, hot stuff,” she said, her voice drifting from the background as I heard a door close. From off-screen, I heard Natália giggling.
“You look cute in that,” she said. “I bet it’d look cuter on the floor.”
“Oh, yeah?” Melinda said, when I desperately needed her not to. “Why don’t you show me your artistic vision for that?”
Oh, Jesus, I was going to throw up. I hung up the call, and with my blood boiling, I called Melinda. Predictably, she didn’t pick up, and I called again, and I paced around the room muttering curses until the third time I called, when she finally picked up, sounding out of breath.
“Hey—” she blurted. “The fuck’s going on, dude? Is someone dying?”
“Yeah, my fucking trust in you,” I said.
“What?”
“ Are you fucking Natália? ”
“Uh—huh?” I heard her fumbling for words on the other side. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Natália left the call running by mistake while she went to go rip your clothes off just now—”
“Ah, shit—”
“And I’m of half a mind to book a ticket back there right now and rip your skin off of your bones —”
“Dude, listen—”
“Are you fucking kidding me? You wait until I’m out of the country to—”
“It’s not that!”
“Melinda, she’s like a child!”
“She’s twenty-six , for fuck’s sake, dude! She’s an adult! There’s only five years in it!”
“She’s—” I guess she was twenty-six. In my head she was still perpetually that doe-eyed innocent twenty-one-year-old who was a little scared of the world and what would come next in it.
“She’s like a fucking daughter to me, and you know that, and the second I have my back turned, you start sleeping with her in secret? ”
“It’s—oh, Jesus Christ—” She groaned. “Look, I wasn’t planning on keeping it secret or anything—”
“Oh, you just started fucking her without being able to help yourself, and you forgot to ever mention it to me?”
“Dude, calm down. We’re both adults doing—”
“ Calm down? Natália’s giggling over getting you naked and calling you baby and you’re strolling into her place calling her hot stuff —”
“It was just—something that happened,” she blurted. “I told her we should take it slower, that we had to figure out what we would tell you—”
“Didn’t sound that fucking slow to me. When was this?”
“Uh…”
“You started fucking her this morning and I’ve broken your streak—”
“No! It started weeks ago and we’ve been trying to—”
“ Weeks? I fucking knew it—”
“It’s not—”
I dropped hard onto my desk chair, sliding it back across the room, opening and squeezing my free hand as I held the phone to my ear. “So, what was it? The day I left? The day after?”
“ Look, she was just—she was having a really rough time with the project coming together, and she came to see me, and I was giving her a place to rest and recharge and relax. Okay? Just… looking after her. Letting her talk through her blocks. And she spent a lot of time around my place, and we just got…”
“Handsy.”
“No! It’s—it’s not just a physical thing, for fuck’s sake, dude, I really like her.”
Oh, god, I was really getting sick. “That’s worse. At least if you just want to fuck her and then leave, then you’re done with her after.”
“We got really close. She’s been having a rough go of it with you gone—”
“So it is about me going,” I said. “I’m evil and I abandoned her and so you had no choice but to take her in and make love to her—”
“ Lydia. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s not your fault—”
“I can’t believe you didn’t even say anything to me,” I said, my voice—was I crying? Christ, I was. That probably wasn’t just about Natália, was it? “That I had to catch you in the act like a couple of teenagers. Except you’re older and you should know better.”
“She’s not a teenager!” She sighed, hard. “Lydia, shit, I am so sorry. I really didn’t want it to happen like this. I swear we were holding back so long because we—”
“Forget it. You have Natália waiting to go… rip your clothes off and… ugh. Can’t keep her waiting. I’m going to go throw up.”
“I’m not—”
I hung up, throwing my phone at the bed and flopping face-first into the sheets after it.
Ugh. I was overreacting. They were both adults.
I was just pissy and sad because I sucked at music and all my attempts to run away had failed, and the woman I cared about had all but told me you have to disappear once this is over, and then I find out that I’m nothing but an obstacle to the two people closest to me while they go…
I didn’t want to think about what came next.
The thought of Natália in bed with Melinda, dirty-talking her—it felt like I was thinking about my actual child in bed with someone.
I needed a walk. Just a little stroll. Anything to get me out of these thoughts before I actually threw up.