Song Chaser (Chasers) (31 page)

I jump up from the bed and start pacing the room, unable to sit still. “I know, Mom. But what am I supposed t
o do? Paisley is my best friend. I don’t want to lose her, but I don’t want to lose Kellee, either.” The thought of either of those happening literally makes me want to vomit. “I know it sounds selfish, but why can’t I have both? Why can’t I have Kellee and still be friends with Paisley, too?”

“I thought you said you weren’t stupid,” I hear
Dad’s voice bellow through the speaker. “But what you just said tells me otherwise.”

“What do you mean?”

“Son,” he starts, and it takes me back to when we used to have talks when I was younger. I can still remember the birds and the bees talk he had with me the summer before ninth grade. “Kellee doesn’t expect you to stop being friends with Paisley. That’s not what she’s asking of you. What she
is
asking is for you to put her first – and that’s not unreasonable. Was Paisley there first? Of course. You’ve known her longer and you’re probably closer with her, but it’s not always going to be that way – at least, not if you plan on being with Kellee in the long run. When you fall in love with someone, they become priority, and you wouldn’t want it any other way because they sneak their way into being first in your heart. You don’t have to lose friends, but you have to let her know where she stands.” He pauses, but I don’t have any words to say yet so he continues. “I mean, what do you think Paisley would do if she were in this situation with Corbin?”

I let that sink in, thinking about how much love Paisley has for Corbin. I saw it growing in her the first week they were together and then when he was deployed it bloomed into a full on forest. When she looks at him, when she talks about him, when she’s around him – he’s everything.

“I still think she would be there for me, if I was opening up my own practice or something.”

“Of course!” he says. “But Corbin would be with her, and he wouldn’t give two shits about you because he would know where he stood with he
r. Did you even try inviting Kellee to come with you?”

“Yes,” I say, but then I think about it. Really, all I had said was that I wish she
could
come. I said that because I knew she has finals this week and other than the concert and work she was planning on studying, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have changed plans and come with me.
Shit
. “Well, I guess not really.”

Mom sighs, “Sweetie, I think this is something you’re going to have to
figure out for yourself. Your dad and I can’t tell you how to feel or what to do. But, I’ll tell you the same thing I told Kellee when we were shopping for your birthday. You’re different around her, you’re
happy
– and if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that happiness doesn’t come easy and shouldn’t be loosely gripped. It should be fought for and cherished.”

I nod and tell her I know because I really do. We end the call a few minutes later after discussing hotel details and I sit in my room alone again, the silence deafening. My parents’ words swim in my head and I try to make sense of what I feel inside, but something stops me from figuring it out. It’s like every feeling I have is there in plain sight but I’m wearing glasses that blur my vision and make them impossible to decipher.

I’m worried I never will crack the code.

You Should Know

Kellee

The cool wind whips my face as soon as I push through the door of Sal’s, falling in line with the busy Saturday crowd on the sidewalk. I zip my jacket up higher and pull my hood up, shoving my hands in my pockets as I walk toward the subway.

Sal tried to get me to talk to him all day, but I just said I was fine and contin
ued working. I’ve never had work shifts drag by as much as they have the past two days, probably because my body and heart are both so exhausted they’re begging me to just go lie in a ditch somewhere and let them rest. Trista has been in the library so much since everything happened that she hasn’t really noticed anything. She questioned me once yesterday when she came home for lunch. I told her I was fine, just tired, and either because she believed me or because she didn’t have time to ask for more details, she left it at that and hasn’t asked since.

Hell, maybe she doesn’t want to ask. Maybe she saw this coming and thinks I deserve it. I don’t know. All I
do
know is the longer I stare at my phone hoping Tanner’s name will fill the screen, the harder it is to not throw it into the river.

I know I was a little shit to him the other night, and the more removed I am from him the more I realize it. I still stand by the fact that he’s not ready to be with me, that he doesn’t know how to balance what he feels for me and what he still feels for Paisley, but asking him to leave and not giving him the chance to talk to me about it wasn’t my smoothest move. I didn’t even really tell him why I was upset, I just expected him to know.

And that is exactly something my mom would do.

She used to pull that shit with my dad all the time. She would sulk in a corner all pissed off at him and when he would ask her what was wrong to try to make it right, she would just look at him pointedly and say, “You should
know
.”

Once again, I wasn’t thinking of him. I was thinking of myself. I was hurt and I felt like I was second place. Shit, I still feel that way – but I didn’t give him the chance to tell me differently, and now he’s gone. He’s on a plane to Orlando and I’m stuck here wishing I would have just told him to take me with him, two concert tickets sitting on my kitchen counter and no one to use them with.

No one I want to, anyway.

I don’t know what else to do, so I pull out my phone and call Mee Ma like always.
We were always close, even before Mom left, but after that it really felt to me like Mee Ma took on both roles – crazy, eccentric grandma and loving, caring mother. She’s been there for all my life celebrations, but unfortunately she’s also the one I turn to for all my life’s undoings, too. I wonder if she’s ever tired of being that person for me.

The line rings twice and then I stop in my tracks when a man’s voice answer
s.

“Hello?”

People continue to rush past me, but my feet are cemented to the spot where I stand. My mouth feels sticky as I try to speak. “Dad?”

There’s a pause at the other end and then he speaks again, “Yes, Kel, it’s me.”

My heart is beating in my throat. I think this is the first time my dad has talked to me on the phone since before I left for college. “Where’s Mee Ma?”

“She’s taking a nap,” he says, his voice booming like it has my whole life. “We were out on the farm early this morning and she wanted to rest.”

I nod, “Oh.”

Silence stretches on between us and I think about hanging up the phone and calling back later, but Dad speaks again. “Everything okay there?”

I falter, unsure if I should talk to him about this. “Not really.”

More silence.

“Well, you can talk to me about it, if you want.”

Okay, now I need to sit down. I look around for a bench and spot one a half a bl
ock up. I half walk, half sprint to it and sit down, my head spinning slightly. “No offense, Dad, but I don’t really feel like I can talk to you about what the weather is like, let alone what’s upsetting me.”

I don’t mean to say the words as accusatory as I do, but once they’re out I don’t regret them, either.

Dad sighs, “I don’t blame you.”

Silence.

This is seriously stupid. I waited so long to get my dad on the phone, to get him to talk to me at all, and this is what happens. It’s like we don’t know each other anymore.

I guess technically, we really don’t.

“Kellee, I’m sorry.”

Good thing I’m sitting down.

“For everything. Your Mee Ma kind of ripped into me after I didn’t get on the phone on Thanksgiving, and that woman has a way of making me see things straight. I haven’t been a good dad, I haven’t been much of a dad at all and I’m sorry for that. It’s just…” His voice trails off for a moment, and I can’t imagine how hard this is for him because my dad was never one for words even before he stopped talking to me. “Your mom leaving has never really left me, and when you said you wanted to leave, too, I felt like I was losing one of the last things on this earth holding me in place.”

“But you didn’t have to lose me, Dad.”

“I know,” he cuts me off. “I know that. I’ve been stupid and I should have been supporting my baby girl but I was too busy sulking in my own life issues to realize I should be celebrating your successes instead.”

Tears swim in my eyes and I’m so pissed about it I want to stomp my feet like a child. I don’t want to cry, but hearing the words come from him warms me. He’s my
dad, after all.

“I know you can’t just forgive me for everything I’ve missed and my behavior,”
he says, losing his ability to find words again. I can sense him pulling back into himself. “But I just wanted to tell you all that. And I love you. I haven’t said that in years but it’s still just as true as it was before you told me you were leaving.”

Ugh, stupid heart. Stop making me want to cry.

“I love you too, Daddy.”

It’s quiet again and then I hear some shuffling in the background. “Oh, looks like your Mee Ma is up. Still want to talk to her?”

I think about talking to Dad instead, asking him for his advice, but something about Mee Ma calms me and I know she’s the one I want to speak to. “Yeah, can you put her on?”

A few seconds later, Mee Ma’s tired voice reaches me. “Hi, sweetie. How are finals going?”

I don’t answer. Now that I have her on the phone, I’m not sure what to say. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what advice I need.

“Oh Lord,” she says. “A pause like that can only mean that you’ve put your hair up into a tight bun again. What’s going on?”

A deep sigh leaves my lips before I lift myself from the bench and start walking toward the subway again, filling her in on everything as I walk. From the amazing moments in Georgia I wasn’t able to fill her in on before to the night Tanner left. I tell her everything I can because I want her to understand the whole story. By the time I finish talking I’ve already reached my apartment and I lean against the kitchen counter, staring at the tickets as Mee Ma thinks. She hasn’t said much as I spoke, and now I can feel her gears working as she tries to sort through everything.

“Well, I’m glad he finally realized what color your eyes were,” she says first, but quickly moves on. “Honey, you can’t give up on what you feel for this boy because of some friend of his in Florida.”

“She’s not just a friend though, Mee Ma.”

“Oh? Because from what you’ve told me, he’s not dating her and it sounds to me like she’s got her hands full with a man of her own.”

I sigh, “Yes, but you also know it’s not that black and white.”

“Oh bull,” she says. “Now I’m not sa
ying you aren’t right in a way. You do need to know what this thing is between you two. You need to feel secure enough in your relationship that if this girl was to become single tomorrow, you wouldn’t have to worry about him running off with her.”

Shit, I hadn’t thought about that. Would he be with Paisley if that happened?

“But kicking him out of your apartment in the early hours of the morning because your emotions were so strung out you couldn’t think straight wasn’t the right thing to do and you know it.” She sighs, “Sometimes I think you act like your mom because you think you have an excuse to. Because everyone around you has said you’re so much like her for so long, you just make it so.”

I think back to the conversation Tanner and I had right before everything went to shit. “Tanner said that maybe what mom gave me was a good thing, the desire to want to be myself, or whatever.”

“And I would say the boy’s right,” Mee Ma says. “But you like to take it and twist it into a negative thing. You take the easy way sometimes, dear, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why.”

Her words sting a little, but I hold back from saying much because I know she’s right.

“The situation with this boy,” she starts again. “It’s not an easy one. It’s not going to get easy anytime soon and you’re probably going to have to work at communicating and he’s going to have to work through the feelings he has for this girl. But if everything you say about him is true, then what the hell are you so afraid of? Is he not worth fighting for?”

I know he is, but at the same time I don’t know if I would be fighting for something I could actually attain. If his heart still belongs to Paisley, it might be null and void all together.

“I don’t know, Mee Ma.”

“Well,” she says pointedly. “There’s your first task. Figure out if the boy is worth it.”

I nod, still staring at the tickets. “I love you, Mee Ma. Thank you for talking to Dad.”

“Oh sweetie, that grump needed an old fashion
ed talking to and that’s exactly what he got, whether he wanted it or not,” she laughs. “And I love you, too.”