Quite pleased with the way this is coming along now!
In our last installment, Sabrina had come home to find her boyfriend with four other people in the apartment, all sitting in silence and trying to disappear. As always, your thoughts and comments are appreciated!
When my phone rings into the darkness of the bedroom, I answer out of instinct. When I hear the voice in my ear, I wish I hadn’t.
“That wasn’t very nice of you, Sabrina.”
“Mama, I -”
Johnny groans and rolls over next to me. “Who is it?”
“You left that poor boy sitting all along in that restaurant! Why, I’ve half a mind to send him to Chicago after you, bring you right back here and set you straight! I didn’t raise you to behave that way, and Charlie neither, and-”
“Mama, I’m not-”
Johnny reaches over and plucks the phone from my hand. “You don’t deserve Sabrina, Mrs. Johnson,” he says. “She’s better than all of you put together.” Then he flips the phone shut and heaves it against the wall. Cold air rushes under the covers. I hear a crack, and then the thud-thud of the pieces hitting the floor.
“Did you just break my phone?”
“We’ll get you one with a new number. That way they can’t ever call you again.” Johnny slithers back under the blankets and tucks them close around us.
I smile. “I like the sound of that.”
“I thought you would.”
“For a while, at least. Until things calm down.”
“Why? There’s pay phones, if you feel the need to contact them.”
“They’re my family, Johnny.” I sigh. “As much as I wish they weren’t.”
Johnny reaches out and pulls me tight against him. “You can make your own family. I can be your family. And there are others like us, that know and understand what we go through. They can be your family too.”
I don’t say anything. I’ve never fit with my family, but they’re still mine. We share blood, and 16 years of living under the same roof. But maybe Johnny’s right. They did just try to marry me off. Without Charlie, God knows what would have happened. I might be waking up this morning with Sam next to me instead of Johnny. I shudder, and Johnny feels it.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he says. “You don’t need them anymore. I’m here.”
The thought of Johnny, my protector, the scrawny man who only just stopped wearing eyeliner two years prior, makes me want to laugh. Johnny mistakes my shoulders shaking for tears.
“Let it out, hon – you’re out of there for good,” he says.
I bite my lip and let the pain pull myself back under control.
“They’ll always be part of me,” I say, because I feel like I have to say something.
“They don’t have to be,” Johnny says. “We can go somewhere where they’ll never be able to find you.”
“Where? The south pole?” I mean the words to be biting, but they come out meek and mouse-like.
“We can go to the other side.” In the dove grey light of pre-dawn, Johnny radiates an earnestness that is almost endearing enough to make his words palatable.
“This is better than the other side,” I say, but I’m lacking the conviction I’d felt so many times before.
“Why? We have shitty jobs, a shitty apartment, no way to change that and your family is trying to marry you off.”
“But the other side is dark and empty.”
“Not if we went together.”
I sigh. “We wouldn’t stay together.”
“You don’t know that. The only times you’ve come close you’ve been alone. But we were making it together, that group of us, before you came in.”
“So you would have just slipped away and left me to come home to an empty apartment?”
“No, we figured it would take longer, and you could join us when you got back. But it was happening, and we can do it all together and take on the other side together!”
I close my eyes. I don’t know what to think, or whether there is even any point in thinking. Johnny reaches out and runs a feather-like finger along my cheek. “Wouldn’t you miss
touching me?” I ask, my eyes still closed.
“Who says you wouldn’t be even better to touch on the other side?”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “But I want to find out. And I want you to come with me. Please?”
The word hangs in the air between us, and I try to remember the last time Johnny had asked me for anything more than a cigarette. I can’t think of it, and I can’t think of a reason to keep saying no. Maybe he’s right. Maybe we would go together, and maybe it would be better.
“All right,” I say. Johnny laughs and pulls me tight.
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