Page 41 of The Cadence

“The mystery will be gone,” she agreed. “He’ll know how I look with no makeup on!”

“Wait, he’s never seen you without makeup?” I asked. “Really?”

“No wonder Will Bodine won’t sleep with you,” she said. She actually clucked her tongue. “Poor thing. You jumped right into his house and if you look this bad when you go out in public, I can only imagine what rags you wear when you’re at home.”

“That’s rude!”

“So is telling me that my boyfriend isn’t going to love me anymore!

” she retorted, and she did have a point.

“Maybe you should move out and live separately if you want Bodine. I think that might work better for me and Cully, and it’s not like we don’t already have a physical connection.

We’re having sex so much that I wore him out.

This morning he fell asleep while he was driving and he ran off the road. ”

“Holy Moses! Is he ok?” And I got distracted by his near miss with a pine tree and forgot for the moment what she’d said about how Will wasn’t ever going to fall in love with me—and why he didn’t even want to sleep with me.

After all, he’d had plenty of chances. Chance upon chance upon chance, especially now that the guest cottage was under construction and I was just up the stairs from his bedroom.

I knew the story of how Cully and Kirsten had gotten together because she’d described it several times and in a lot of detail, and I thought about that on the way home.

I let my mind gloss over the specifics of how exactly she’d used the agile tongue that she often bragged about, but I did focus on the fact that she had definitely made the first move.

That move had been to unbutton the top of his jeans and dive right in, which was maybe a little beyond me…

Then I thought of when I had made my own first move, seven years before. “I love you. I love you so much! I’ll do anything for us to be together, forever!” I’d told Will in the parking lot next to the football field at our high school.

And I remembered his response, too: “Uh, Calla…I think you’re a sweet girl.

I like you a lot, a real lot.” The word “but” had hung in the air and then he’d told me all the reasons why he didn’t love me back.

If I wanted to make another move on him, then I’d have to be ready to hear something like that again.

Of course, I was a lot older now and a lot better equipped to deal with rejection.

Just the week before, a woman had contacted me about painting a king-sized headboard for her bedroom, which would have been my biggest project yet.

But then, she’d backed out and said she was going to do something different, and she’d added that she thought my style was a little primitive.

I had thanked her for her feedback while sticking out my tongue at the screen, and then I’d moved on.

Will rejecting me, though, wouldn’t wrap up tidily when I stuck out my tongue and deleted an email.

It would have more repercussions, like, would I still live in his house?

No, I couldn’t do that! I had enough money saved for a new place but now my grandma’s furniture and all the boxes of her stuff had been loaded onto a moving truck and was on the way here from Chattanooga.

And the thought of waking up without the coffee he’d already made…

the thought of waking up and not seeing him…

His rejection would hurt a lot worse, too, because I had a lot more invested in him than in some headboard.

I’d spent seven years harboring a crush, but now my feelings had evolved.

What I’d told Kirsten was right: after living with him, I had seen a lot more of his character and of his flaws, and that crush had grown into love.

When I’d known him in high school, I’d been wild for the person I thought I knew, the handsome, strong guy who was also so smart and confident.

He’d had another side that he sometimes showed me, like when he’d let me see his list of goals or when I’d helped him after his graduation.

I thought about what had happened that day.

We had been in the car on the way to my grandma’s house when his mother had called him but after they’d spoken, we had changed destinations.

“Her words were so slurred that I could barely understand what she was saying,” he’d told me as we drove to his house instead.

It was the first time I’d ever been to that place, and I’d been momentarily awed by its size and grandeur.

Years later, when I saw the Bodine ancestral home that his relatives had lost, I had realized what “grandeur” really was—but at the age of fourteen, I had stood next to Will’s car in their driveway and gaped.

He had already run inside and the front door swung a little behind him. I had approached carefully, but then I’d heard his voice cry out, and it was full of shock and horror.

“Mama!”

Then I’d run, and I had found them on the second story (there were three in that big place).

A woman sprawled unconscious on the floor of a bathroom that was larger than the room where I slept in my grandma’s house.

But I didn’t notice any details of anything, not the big four-poster bed that I sprinted past, not the closet that you could walk right into, not the low dressing table with crystal bottles of perfume and fluffy makeup brushes.

All I’d seen was a small, dark-haired woman and then Will kneeling next to her, trying to get her to wake up. There was also a puddle of vomit but I didn’t smell liquor in the air. “What did she take?” I asked him.

“I…” His face, so visible without the beard he wore now, had been blanched of color.

I’d looked around and saw an amber medicine bottle.

Unlike the pills my own mother sometimes had, which came in baggies or containers labeled with names that weren’t her own, this one said “Ophelia Bodine.” I didn’t recognize what they were.

“What is this?” I had asked Will, thrusting the bottle at him.

He’d blinked a few times before focusing. “These are for pain. She broke her ankle a few months ago.”

“Pills for pain” was something that I understood. “How many were in there?”

He had studied the label. “It was a five-day supply. There should have been fifteen.”

That wasn’t so many, but I hadn’t known anything about the potency.

Maybe these had been extra strong pills and when I looked again at the puddle of puke, I didn’t see any evidence that they’d come back up.

Was this what his mother had been doing instead of attending his graduation? Where was his stupid dad?

It hadn’t been in my mind to seek more help, since I never had for this kind of situation in the past. “I’ll make her throw up,” I’d said briskly.

“What?” he had asked, still confused. “I need to call an ambulance.” He took out his phone and that was when I met his father. A man who looked so much like Will, except that he was blonde and a lot smaller, had barged into that bathroom.

“What the hell did she do?” He had stared contemptuously at the unconscious woman on the floor.

“Dad, we need help. She took too many pills,” Will had told him, and handed over the bottle.

“She had these and she didn’t tell me?” He seemed annoyed that he hadn’t known about her stash rather than concerned about his wife’s condition. “She’ll be fine.”

“I’m calling nine-one-one.”

“Like hell you are,” the man said, and he’d grabbed Will’s phone.

“Dad!” Will had yelled. “Give that back.” He was so much bigger that he could have forced its return, but he had stood frozen as his father walked away.

“She’ll be fine,” he had repeated over his shoulder. After a moment, we heard the front door slam.

“Jesus Christ. You don’t have a phone, right?” I hadn’t. “I’ll go to a neighbor’s house,” Will said, but he didn’t move. “She’ll be humiliated.”

I was used to adults acting crazy and I hadn’t bothered to pay much attention to the scene between him and his dad.

I was busy turning his mom onto her side and getting ready for the purge.

“It’s going to be gross,” I warned him, and then I’d stuck my fingers down her throat.

I had done it before and I held her jaw with my other hand to try to avoid a strong bite.

After a moment and a lot of retching, the pills started to come back up.

I did it a few times until I was sure that there wasn’t anything left in her stomach.

“Get her into the shower,” I had commanded next, and he’d carried his mother into a separate little room where I helped him to sit her up against the tiled wall.

Then I’d turned on cold water and we had all been drenched by it, but it had worked.

She’d shaken her head and moaned but then, she’d opened her eyes.

“Who the fuck are you?” she’d slurred at me. “Leave me the fuck alone!”

“She never cusses like that,” Will had immediately said, like a few objectionable words were going to offend me, or that they were the problem at hand.

“Did you take anything else besides those twelve pills?” I’d asked her loudly. I had counted the remains of the medication as it came up.

It had taken her a few moments, while the cold water continued to run on our heads, before she’d answered no.

Then we had gotten out of the shower and he had helped his mom find some dry clothes as I had cleaned the mess she’d made in her beautiful room.

She’d had coffee and dry toast, which had always been my own mother’s recovery choice when she’d taken things too far.

None of us had spoken as we’d sat around the kitchen table.

It was the same table where we’d also sat after the death of Will’s father, the blonde man who hadn’t helped.

Will was now sitting on a tall barstool in his own kitchen when I arrived, but it was a very different experience when compared to finding his mother on the bathroom floor. I felt an immediate rush of happiness when I saw him there.