Breaking the Rules

by Katie McGarry

  Not listening to my father or Noah or anyone, I kept it. Last April, I thought I could sever my mother from my life—that after one meeting with her, I could move on, but she’s still here, surrounding me, haunting me, like shrapnel embedded too deep to retrieve.

  Noah slowly rounds on me as if I’m teetering on the edge of a bridge, ready to jump. As I meet his eyes, I realize he’s not far off. “She called people. She told them to buy my stuff.”

  He assesses the phone then refocuses on me. “Your mom?”

  I nod.

  “Who’d she call?”

  “The galleries...” I trail off when the door to the gallery opens and laughter drifts into the night. My mind jumps around, searching for another answer, hoping for a plausible solution other than that I’ve been handed the truth.

  But maybe Mom didn’t call. Maybe this woman is wrong. Maybe the curator is mean and she’s evil and before I can think it through, my thumb is over the button. The phone springs to life. Numbers dial. Little lines grow with the cell phone reception. The phone rings loudly once.

  Noah bolts forward. “What the fuck do you—”

  “Echo?” The desperate sound of my mother’s voice shatters past the confusion and slams the fear of God into my veins. The phone tumbles from my hands and crashes to the ground.

  The phone beeps—the call lost—and Noah stands openmouthed over the cell as if I murdered someone. “What the hell, Echo?”

  “I...” The rest of my statement, my train of thought, catches in my throat. I called her. I knot my fingers into my hair and pull, creating pain. Oh, my God, I called her. I initiated contact, and now the door is open...

  Cotton-mouthed, I whisper, “What have I done?”

  Noah scrubs both of his hands over his face. “I don’t know.”

  “This is bad.”

  He steps forward. “It’s not. You hung up. She’ll assume it was a mistake.”

  The phone rings. Each shrill into the night is like a knife slicing through me, and the panic building in my chest becomes this pressure that’s difficult to contain—a pulse that’s hard to resist. Answer, answer, answer!

  “Think about this, Echo.”

  My eyes snap to Noah’s. “I need to know.”

  “She’s not going to give you the answers you want.”

  “What if she did call the galleries? What if my success was a pity offering from her?”

  “Echo—”

  Closer than him, more desperate than him, I swipe the phone off the ground before he can move, but the phone stops ringing. My hands shake, and this desperation claws at me as I run a hand over my neck, searching for whatever is constricting my ability to breathe. “I could call her back.”

  With both hands in the air like he’s handling a kidnapping negotiation, Noah edges in my direction. “You could, but let’s discuss it first.”

  My fingers clutch the phone. “If she did this I need to know. I need to know if she asked people to buy those paintings from me.”

  “What if she did? Why does it matter?”

  “Because if she did, I’m a failure!”

  He halts, and his eyebrows furrow together. “That’s bullshit.”

  “But it’s true.”

  “It’s not. Nothing good happens when you talk to your mom. What makes this different? What she says to you, what she’s done—it fucks with you!”

  “She’s my mom!”

  “And I’m the one holding you in the middle of the night when you can’t decipher what’s real and what’s a dream. She’s not here. I am. Not her!”

  Anger explodes up from my toes and spirals out of my body. “You don’t understand! It’s more than the paintings. It’s more! She’s my mom. You don’t understand what it’s like to be torn between wanting to hate someone and wanting them in your life, then hating them all over again!”

  “Fuck that, because I do. My mom’s family contacted me. They want to meet me. The goddamned people she ran from want me in their fucked-up lives.”

  Noah

  Echo and I stare at each other, and I suck in air to get my breathing under control. Her eyes are too wide, and my heart’s pounding too fast. It’s not how I meant to tell her, but it’s out, and I can’t take it back. The edges of my sight are blurry. I’ve drunk too much, but I’m glad the truth is out.

  “What did you say?” she asks.

  I yank the folded email out of my back pocket and offer it to her. Echo reaches for the paper like she’s seconds from handling a ticking time bomb. She unfolds it, and I slump against her car. Rainwater pooled on the hood, and it soaks through the bottom of my jeans. Damn this entire week to hell.

  Too many emotions collide in my brain, and I rake both hands through my hair to ward off any spinning. The alcohol was supposed to help, not hurt.

  “It’s not that long, so quit stalling.” The email is short, to the point, and every misspelling informs me that the shit I’m in is deep.

  Ms. Peterson,

  We no the adoption is compleet, but we’d like to see the boys for a visit. My Sarah wood have wanted that. If not the younger ones, then Noah. He’d be a teen by now. Let him decide.

  Diana Perry

  The paper crackles as Echo folds it again, and her heels click against the blacktop. Her sweet scent surrounds me followed by the butterfly touch of her fingers on my wrist. “Noah.”

  She lowers her hand to my thigh and damn if fire doesn’t lick up my leg. Even when I’m drunk, my body responds to her. My legs automatically drop open, and the tension melts as she eases herself closer. Her fingers caress my face and with gentle pressure, she edges my chin up. I lose myself in those green eyes.

  “What are you going to do?” she asks.

  I wind my arms around her waist and slide one hand down her spine. Echo’s my solid, my base, my foundation. She has no idea that the single fear that keeps me up at night is knowing one day she’ll discover she doesn’t need me like I need her.

  “Noah,” she whispers again. Echo’s always been a siren, calling me to her even when I don’t want to be captured. “Please talk to me.”

  Her lips brush the corner of my mouth, and my fingers fist into her hair. Echo’s warm and soft. I shouldn’t kiss her now. I shouldn’t crave to kiss her now, but damn, she owns me.

  “Talk to me,” she murmurs. “I can’t help if you don’t talk to me.”

  As she sweeps my hair away from my eyes, I hear myself say, “They’re in Vail.”

  Her head nods against mine in understanding. “We’ve got time before we have to be back.”

  “Mom ran from them.”

  “You don’t know that.” She pulls back to look at me, but my grip on her hips keeps her near. “There could be a million reasons why your mom left.”

  “Carrie and Joe said that Mom’s family is bad news.”

  “Carrie and Joe said that you shouldn’t have been around your brothers. They were wrong then. They can be wrong now.”

  The same thought has circled in my brain since Carrie broke the news. “What if they’re right?”

  “What if they’re wrong? And if they are right, what if your mom’s family did screw up? Maybe they deserve a second chance.”

  My eyes flash to hers, and my blood goes ice-cold. “Are we talking about my situation or yours?”

  She tilts her head. “They may not be so different.”

  “Fuck that. There’s no comparison.”

  “You’re drunk, Noah.”

  “I am.”

  Her foot taps against the ground, and she does that thing where she glares off in the distance. It’s not hard to read she’s silently tearing me a new ass, but has enough grace to leave the internals internal. One of these days, she’ll snap.

  She’s torn
into me before, and the last time she did, she left me. My stomach plummets as I wonder if she’ll walk again.

  Reaching behind me, Echo lifts the glass of champagne she brought with her from the gallery. “Well, there’s good news. It looks like we’ll be free tomorrow. The curator and I decided it would be best if we no longer share breathing space...or continents.”

  Echo presses the glass to her lips, but I lift it from her hand. I’ve had a few of those tonight. More than a few. Enough that walking a straight line could be a problem.

  My girl throws me a hardened expression that could send me six feet deep. “Damn, Echo. I’m not stealing your firstborn. I’m the drunk one, remember?”

  She releases a sigh that steals the oxygen from my lungs, and she moves so that her back rests against me. I mold myself around her and nuzzle my nose in her hair. Echo inclines her head to the glass now in my possession. “How many of those have you had?”

  * * *

  I drink half the champagne while eyeing the prairie dog again through the gallery window. Champagne’s not my style, but free alcohol is free alcohol. “Not enough to understand that.”

  “It’s a prairie dog,” she answers.

  “With headphones.”

  “It’s a commentary on how we are destroying nature.”

  “That’s wood, right?” I ask.

  Echo rolls her eyes, and I smirk. She hates it when I do this.

  “Yes, the artist cut down a tree, used a chainsaw that required gas, and the whole process defeats the purpose.”

  “Chainsaw?” These bastards are strange.

  “Yes.”

  I finish out the glass. “As I said, not enough.”

  A couple exits the gallery, and they’re way too loud and way too full of themselves to peer in our direction. While I could give a shit about everyone inside, Echo cares, and the longing in her eyes as she watches them hurts me.

  “Want to talk about the stuck-up bitch in there?” I ask.

  “Nope.”

  Good. Odds are I’d say things that would make Echo cry. “Then let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Echo

  Noah and I slept deeply, we slept long, and then we held each other for longer than we should have. Now, checkout is looming.

  Cross-legged on the middle of the bed, I cradle my cell and stare at three messages: one new voice mail, one missed call, one new text. Each one from my mom. There’s a pressure inside me—this overwhelming craving to please my mother, to gain her approval—that prevents me from deleting them. The memories don’t help...both the good and the bad.

  Mom said she’s on her meds. She said that she’s in control of her life. If that’s true, is she mimicking my father’s parenting style by attempting to dominate my life?

  Noah steps out of the bathroom fully dressed, and his hair, still wet from his earlier shower, hangs over his eyes, leaving me unable to read his mood.

  “Did you call her?” he asks.

  “No.” I pause. “But what if I did?”

  Noah shrugs then leans his back against the wall. “Then you did. I don’t claim to understand, but I promised you back in the spring that I’d stand by you. I’m a man of my word.”

  He is. He always has been. “But you don’t agree that I should call her.”

  “Not my decision to make.”

  I shift, uncomfortable that Noah’s not completely on my side. “I’d like to know you support me.”

  “I support you.”

  “But you don’t approve.”

  “You need to stop looking for people’s approval, Echo. That’s only going to lead to hurt.”

  My spine straightens. “I didn’t ask for a lecture.”

  “You asked me to be okay with you contacting the person that tried to kill you. Forgive me for not setting off fireworks. You want to call her, call her. You want to see her, then do it. I’ll hold your hand every step of the way, but I don’t have to like seeing her in your life.”

  His words sting, but they’re honest. The phone slides in my clammy hands. “I won’t call her today.”

  “Because that’s your decision,” Noah says. “Not because you’re trying to please me.”

  We’re silent for a bit before he continues, “I called the Malt and Burger in Vail. They can fit me into the schedule this week. If I want in, they can give me the walk-through of the restaurant this evening.”

  A sickening ache causes me to drop a hand to my stomach. A week. We were supposed to travel back to Kentucky today. We were going to take another route so that I could try new galleries. But Noah has this need to find his mom’s family. He desires a place to belong.

  Just like me.

  If he wants to search for them, I can’t be the person standing in the way. “You should ask them to schedule you.”

  “What if my mom’s family is bad news? Why would I want them in my life?”

  “I don’t know.” It’s a great question. One I deal with daily. Maybe if we go, Noah will finally understand my struggle with my mother. “Let’s do this. Let’s go to Vail.”

  Noah cuts his gaze from the floor to me. “This means you’ll be giving up visiting galleries on the way back.”

  It will. Granting him this can cost me my dreams, but I’ve had enough time, and I guess I’ve failed. “There are probably galleries in Vail.” Hopefully.

  “We’ll stay in a hotel the whole time. I’ll pay.”

  “Noah...” My voice cracks. “No. I’m fine with the tent or I can help pay—”

  “Let me do this,” he says, and the sadness in his tone causes me to nod.

  “So we’re still heading west,” I say.

  “West,” he responds.

  Noah

  My head pulses with the same speed as the cursor on the computer at the Vail Malt and Burger. Champagne hangovers suck.

  “Clock in as soon as you walk in, and clock out the moment your shift is done and this is where you put your orders, you hear me?” The manager of the Malt and Burger is in the process of explaining to me the way “his” restaurant runs. He’s a six-two, two-hundred-and fifty-pound black man who, like the other managers throughout the summer, thinks he’s the only one that uses the system of sticking the paper orders over the grill. Two words: corporate policy.

  “Got it,” I answer.

  “You hear me?” he asks with a wide white grin. “It doesn’t leave the grill until it hits one hundred and sixty degrees.”

  “Yeah, I hear you.” Food poisoning’s a bitch.

  He slaps my back and if I wasn’t solid, the hit might have crushed me. “Good. Called around about you. Hear you’re a good man. We get a lot of travel employees through here, and you aren’t the only fresh face working this week. I expect you to pull your weight and not miss a beat, hear me? Otherwise, I’ll put you out.”

  Loud and clear, and it’s going to be a long week if he says that phrase as much as he has in the past thirty minutes.

  “So we’ll see you tomorrow?” He uses a red bandanna to wipe the sweat off his brow.

  “Tomorrow.”

  We shake hands, and I let myself out the back when the drive-through worker yells that the headset shorted. Vail’s cooler than Denver, but not by much and because of that, I walk in the shadows of the alley.

  “You were too serious-looking in there, you know? Surely a year can’t change someone that much.”

  I glance behind me and notice a girl with short black hair and wearing a Malt and Burger waitress T-shirt leaning against the brick wall next to the Dumpster. A cigarette dangles from her hand and as she lifts it to her mouth, the ton of bracelets on her wrist clanks together.

  “Do you know me?” I ask.

  She releases smoke into the air. The sweet scen
t catches up and for the first time in months, the impulse for a hit becomes an itch under my skin. The chick’s smoking pot.

  “I know you, Noah Hutchins. I know you very well.”

  I scratch my chin as a dim memory forces its way to the surface: pot, beer, her naked body and the backseat of my car. Shit.

  “Mia,” I mumble. She introduced me to the employee travel program. Last fall, she trekked across the country working for different stores, and for two weeks while she had stopped in Kentucky, we traveled down each other’s pants.

  “You remember my name. I’m touched.” She extends the joint to me. “Our last encounter started this way, too, which works for me. I just got off shift and if I remember correctly you had a killer backseat.”

  I shove my hands in my pockets. “I don’t have my car.”

  “You don’t?”

  “We took my girlfriend’s.”

  She chuckles then takes another hit. Mia’s silent as she holds the smoke, then studies me while she blows it out. “Never thought of you as boyfriend material. Pegged you to be like me.”

  “Guess you pegged me wrong.”

  “Guess I did.” Mia smashes the small remains of the joint between her fingers, and it disintegrates as it falls to the ground. “Did you move here or are you visiting?”

  “Visiting for the week.”

  “What a coincidence—so am I.” She releases the same sly grin she gave me moments before going down on me last year. Twenty bucks the girl knows what she’s doing now just like she knew exactly what she was doing then. “Tell me about your girl.”

  Standing here and reminiscing with someone I spent hours exploring in a haze isn’t the best way to be true to Echo. “I’ve gotta go.”

  “You were badass, Noah, but you were never a dick. This is just a conversation between two old friends.”

  She’s wrong about me, and sometimes Echo is, too. I am a dick, and I especially was when I was doing her. “We’re not friends.”

  There’s a pessimistic tilt to her lips. “Touché, but we did enjoy the hell out of each other’s bodies. We will be working together, and as I said about the whole dick thing—it meant you had a slight conscience. So let me guess, you found the good girl who redeemed you.”