Shades of Blue (Part Two of The Loudest Silence)

by Olivia Janae

  Kate shuffled, trying to pop her neck, but she had just done that. She ignored the question and instead transferred the bag from one shoulder to the other.

  “I got it.” Her escort’s deep voice came from behind her, and though she hadn’t realized that he was so close, she couldn’t find it in herself to be surprised. She let him take the bag, pretending she didn’t see Charlie’s face grow all the more baffled.

  “Okay. I gotta go. Max!” she called to her son. “Charlie’s gonna bring you home later, okay?”

  “’Kay!” He nodded, staring at his feet as he tried to skate.

  “I gotta go.”

  “Kate!”

  She just shook her head and turned. Charlie would know what happened soon enough. She didn’t need to tell her.

  Kate couldn’t make eye contact with anyone as the guard waited with her for the ‘L’. She wished he would just leave her alone. This was humiliating.

  “So. You always do Vivian’s bidding?”

  He gave a pained sigh and leaned out into the tunnel to see if the train was coming. “I’m ex-military, ma’am. I suppose following orders comes naturally.”

  Kate scoffed. “And facilitating her breakups for her?”

  He coughed deep in his chest and craned his neck, looking for the train again.

  She was glad when the train pulled up, and she could escape. She stepped in blankly, freezing inside the door and unable to process where she needed to go now.

  He cleared his throat from behind her, muttered a soft “Merry Christmas, ma’am,” and handed her back her bag.

  A small sarcastic trill of laughter popped from between her lips; a bubble from a recent stab wound. The laughter died instantly as the doors on her life with Vivian closed with a ding.

  She tried Vivian’s phone constantly that evening, even tried Charlie’s once or twice with no luck. She supposed that meant that Vivian had finally told her best friend.

  She was getting frozen out all over a stupid mistake.

  Why had Kate trusted Jacqueline? What had made her think Jacqueline was trustworthy? Why was she always such an idiot?

  She paced back and forth in her living room for hours, tears never slowing. She was worried about her son. Soon she was going to leave a note on the front door and go out looking for them. There was no way they could still be skating. They could at least pick up their phones to tell her where her son was.

  She trusted Charlie with Max entirely, but now that she thought about it, she had also trusted Vivian not to do this again. Maybe she had been mistaken. Maybe she wasn’t a great judge of character.

  She wanted someone to talk to. She would have been happy with anyone.

  In one swoop, on one bright Christmas morning, she had lost everything she had gained since May.

  Everything was just... gone.

  Again.

  She picked up the phone and called the only person she could think of who didn’t hate her. Words hitching with every sob, she explained to John what had happened. “I don’t–I don’t know what to do. What do I do now? I thought you were right, I thought, well, she’s her mom! I don’t know what to do, John!”

  John was silent a long time, the sound of his TV in the background obnoxious as what sounded like Home Alone played.

  “I think,” he finally spoke, “I think you give her time, Kate. She’s mad, let her cool down.”

  Kate threw her cell phone across the room without bothering to end the call.

  She was at her wits’ end when a knock finally sounded at the door.

  Her mind had begun to play tricks on her, showing her scenes of Max alone and crying at the ice rink, unsure how to get home, of being put on the ‘L’ and getting off at the end of the line, only to wander through their neighborhood with the drug dealers and the scary and ferocious dogs.

  The knock slammed into her already frayed nerves. Kate wrenched it open, positive Vivian would be there with Max, making sure her son was safe. Vivian might have been showing her a new side, but she wasn’t a monster like everyone at WCCE said. She might have dumped Kate, but she wouldn’t forget about her son.

  Instead, she saw Jacqueline, hands resting lightly on Max’s shoulders.

  “You? Are you fucking kidding me? Max, go to your room!”

  Max, shocked by his mother’s yell, booked it, moving toward his room at double-time.

  Jacqueline was in her face in a moment. “Do not take that tone with me, young lady! Before you get mad, before we see parades of childish behavior, allow me to explain.”

  Kate didn’t back down. She wasn’t scared of Jacqueline, she never had been. “Oh, now you want to explain? Not in the moment when you said you would, not when Vivian was taking things so badly, but now!” Fury and hurt beat against Kate’s temples. It was silly to feel betrayed, she knew it was pointless and yet she did. She couldn’t listen right now, she just couldn’t. She pressed her fingertips to her temples and began to rub circles into them. “How can you explain? You treacherous bitch, you played me! She dumped me. Because of you.”

  Surprise flickered across Jacqueline’s face. “She ended your relationship?”

  “Yes, Jacqueline. She did. Of course she did. Just like you wanted. You know, I couldn’t figure out why it made you mad that I love her, but I guess I get it now. You didn’t want us together.”

  “I assure you, Kate, that I –”

  And Kate slammed the door in Jacqueline’s face.

  Max cried when he saw all of his things in the living room, his little feet stomping until he threw himself into his room, slamming the door.

  Kate let him go, crumbling onto the couch in a heap.

  Had she really been so foolishly happy that morning? It felt so fake now lying here in the cold breeze of her apartment. She could hear Max crying into his pillow, and as much as she wanted to go to him, to apologize for snapping when he had come home, apologize for forgetting to put his things away before he saw them, she didn’t think she could, not right now. She needed a few minutes to pull herself together so that she could be there for him.

  She stood and caught the glitter of something in the mirror’s reflection. She frowned and then nausea ripped through her as she saw the diamonds; the drops so like those wonderful tears were still nestled in her ears.

  She had forgotten about them.

  She had forgotten all about them.

  She wished, with a frightening intensity, that she had left them behind. She didn’t want them! She didn’t want to see them.

  With an anguished cry, she ripped at them, scratching, pulling until they sat in her palm, one earlobe bleeding slightly. Her arm wrenched back, ready to throw them across the room, but she stopped herself at the last moment. Tiffany and Company... they were expensive. Very. She would return them, somehow.

  Kate walked shakily to her dresser and set the earrings down. She stared at them for a moment, wondering if it was her imagination that they seemed darker now, less bright. She covered them with a framed picture of Max so she didn’t have to see them.

  She started in the kitchen then and scrubbed and sweat her way across each room, the progress doing nothing to wipe away the ache she felt.

  Each moment Vivian did not call her back seemed to settle on her like a weight pressing her deeper into the ground.

  Her mind kept circling the same thoughts. Vivian didn’t really mean this. It was like last time. It wasn’t a real breakup. Besides, Kate was not this person. She didn’t get so upset over a breakup. It was only a breakup. This was ridiculous. The two sides were tearing her in half.

  Finally, close to bedtime, Max emerged from his room, face swollen. Kate jumped up, quickly wiping away her own tears. “Hey, kid. Come here. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

  He crawled into her lap, still shaking slightly as he cried. “Viv’n doesn’t like us anymore?”

  “No, no, Max.”

  She felt like the scum of the universe. She should have put his things away, that way he wouldn’t h
ave noticed. That was what a good mother would have done.

  “Vivian loves you. She does, but sometimes – well, sometimes when people are dating, it doesn’t work. They don’t make one another happy.”

  “Nu-uh! You was happy!” he wailed.

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry, buddy. It’s complicated.”

  Everything in Kate’s life changed over the next few days. It was like she was a teenager again. Old wounds she thought had long healed were suddenly open and bleeding. No matter how she held herself, wrapping tightly against the gashes, she could not stop the bloodshed.

  She had been thrown out, kicked to the curb yet again in her life, passed over in favor of better things and she didn’t understand how she had gotten there.

  She and Max simply sulked around the house, not saying much but surviving together until the ache of the loss waned.

  Neither Vivian nor Charlie would answer her phone calls, and Kate was given a sharp prod of a reminder that before her ex, Ash, before Vivian, Kate had been entirely alone in this city.

  The only person who refused to leave her alone was Jacqueline. She called once a day and was ignored as thoroughly as Vivian was ignoring her; until the morning of New Year’s Eve when, finally exasperated, Kate picked up the phone.

  “Is your daughter such a stranger to you that you had no idea that she didn’t want the implant, or were you just using me as a new ploy?”

  “Excuse me?” It was clear that Jacqueline Kensington was not used to being spoken to in such a way.

  “You told me you wanted to make her life better, but you used me to push your agenda, didn’t you? You knew she would attack you if you brought the implant up so you had me do it. I was disposable to you. How many times did you try to get her to do it before? Hmm? How many?”

  “Contrary to your childish and fictitious beliefs, Kate, I thought she would listen to you. I thought you could make her see reason.”

  “Well, she didn’t. She didn’t listen to me. She kicked me out of her life, which means you are now out of my life. So stop calling me.”

  “Kate. You left Max’s gifts. I have them for you.”

  Kate considered telling Jacqueline where exactly she could shove those gifts but decided against it. “Keep them.”

  “I will not, Ms. Flynn. You will pick them up tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “At the benefit, of course.”

  “What?”

  “Kate, have you forgotten about the Black and White Ball I am hosting this evening? You are supposed to be playing. I would advise that you do not miss it.”

  She had. Kate had forgotten entirely in the wake of the destruction of her life. Her sitter Teresa had been expensively booked for that evening and would be at the loft within hours. She had forgotten, and she wished she hadn’t been reminded. “You can’t really expect me to go.”

  “I most certainly do. Mr. Altman has information for you. You will be there, Ms. Flynn.”

  Anger bubbled. “What the hell gives you the right to tell me what I will or will not do, Jacqueline?”

  There was an exasperated huff on the other end of the line. “Because, Katelyn, we both know it will be to your benefit to attend tonight.”

  7

  This is a stupid idea.

  Why am I doing this to myself?

  This is stupid, Kate.

  I’m going to crash and burn.

  Kate’s closet door swung open as she stared at the beautiful black dress that had sat crumpled in the back of her closet since Christmas day. It had been wrinkled and obviously uncared for, but she knew that all she had to do was hang the silk in the bathroom with her while she showered and that would be remedied. Vivian had taught her that.

  And so it was hanging there while Kate’s mind ridiculed her, insisting that going was a dumb thing to do.

  She stared harder, putting all of her hate into it.

  “It’s a good dress,” John said.

  She had called him after the phone call with Jacqueline, and John had hightailed it to her apartment the moment he heard she was in tears - again. He was sitting behind her now while she glared.

  “It was a good dress,” she said as if the dress had died.

  “And what did she say again exactly?”

  “‘We both know it would be to your benefit to attend tonight.’ She clearly doesn’t give a shit about Vivian, so I think she’s threatening to give away my spot in the Lyric audition.”

  “You think she would?”

  Kate gave a one-shouldered shrug, her eyes still on the dress. “If I don’t do what she wants, yeah. She called herself my benefactor. Vivian called her my benefactor, too, so I think I have a benefactor. Whatever the fuck that means in this situation.”

  “Well, she did get you the Lyric audition.”

  Kate turned. “Is that what a benefactor does?”

  “Dunno, Flynn. Never had one. I think so. Gets you gigs, gets your name out there, sets up auditions. Kind of like an agent.”

  “Great.” She glared a few more daggers into the dress. “Don’t you usually have to agree to those types of relationships?”

  He nodded, not so much as a yes, but because he was deep in thought, chewing his lip. “You know Danny?”

  “Substitute cellist, right?”

  “Said he tried to get a spot in the audition, said they laughed at him.”

  “Assholes,” she muttered, but she understood his point – and resented it. If she wanted the audition, she needed to continue to kiss Jacqueline Kensington’s ass until the very last moment because the spot she had was not to be taken lightly. She knew it. She just hated it. “I don’t know if I want it anymore.”

  John let out a scoff at that. “Oh, don’t be stupid, K. Of course you do. Everyone wants that job. Or at least everyone wants a job like that. You would be salaried... as in steady paycheck... a steady good paycheck, whether you play or not. And, I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but if you’re full-time then you can say you play for Lyric! You want the job, I promise. A breakup doesn’t change your dreams, kid.”

  A breakup.

  Those words still sliced at her skin.

  “Unless, you’re just planning on going to Louisville now, I guess,” he added; his voice so low it was a sad whisper.

  The thought of Louisville made her shoulders tense and ache. She chewed her lip. “I’m thinking about it,” she admitted. “I’m not going to win Lyric. I mean, you just said it, didn’t you? Everyone wants this job. There’s no way I’m landing it, and I need something stable, Hart.” They both fell silent, knowing neither wanted to talk about it, knowing that Kate wanted to run and John didn’t want her to. “Max needs something stable. He deserves that.”

  Tears fell down Kate’s cheeks, and she brushed them angrily away.

  “Look.” He stood and began to massage her shoulders. “She’ll be there tonight. Go looking all hot and sexy… and emotionally stable. She will want to talk to you. It worked last time, right? If you got it, then you flaunt it and show off what she’s stupidly giving up. So.”

  He turned her toward the door and gave her a smack on the rear, laughing when she hissed and turned to punch him in the arm. “Abuse! Abuse!” John cried, swatting her hands away for a moment. “Just get in the shower, Kate. Get in the shower and do your hair and makeup. That’s all you’re doing right now. Then we will see what happens next.”

  She gulped and turned back to the dress.

  He was right, it had worked last time. She had gone and made herself available... and hot... and Vivian had caved. Maybe she really would talk to her.

  It wasn’t as though she had any other ideas about getting Vivian to speak to her.

  Kate took extra care as she showered, washing and shaving everything twice. When she blow-dried her hair she curved the brush, painting it into her best lion’s mane. She spent a long time listening to Max and John play in the living room as she painted her face, coloring her eyes with dark gray shadow,
drawing her lids out in thick black cat eyes in honor of the evening’s black and white theme. She shadowed her cheeks with a soft black blush and finished the look with perfectly shaped black lipstick. When she was done she took a step back.

  It wasn’t perfect.

  Amy, the makeup artist from Halloween, had previously been booked to do her makeup again tonight, and this had nothing on what she could have done.

  But this would have to do. Kate was jarring on the eyes, stark and angled.

  It was beautiful body armor, and her game face said she was ready.

  She wasn’t, though. She wasn’t ready to play for the Chicago elite. She wasn’t ready to deal with Jacqueline and her questions, and she really wasn’t ready to see Vivian or to be refused again.

  She let her features twist until she found her own regal mask and studied it. She knew she was being dumb. Vivian was done with her, of course she was, but if she was going to go to this stupid event, then she had to try at least once.

  She pulled on the sleek black dress and heels then stepped out in front of her men.

  “Whoa, mama,” John whistled.

  “Wow, Mommy. It’s not Halloween!”

  For the first time in five days, her lip almost twitched into a smile. “No, it’s not, kid.”

  John whistled again. “If she turns that down, Flynn, then you need to find yourself a better woman.”

  Kate knew that parts of her life had been harder than average. She knew that had shaped her and made it so she could face most things head on. When you had been rejected at every turn, unwanted, unloved, and alone, it made it easy to face. It made your skin thick. Still, there had been little in her life that was as hard as stepping out of the car Jacqueline sent for her.

  She could see the line of paparazzi waiting for their victims to walk through their trap, and she wasn’t sure she had that in her. She had felt like a stone-cold statue throughout the ride, letting her makeup hide the eyes that had been bleary, the cheeks that had lost their warmth; but now, she wasn’t sure she could be who she needed to be in order to pull this off. Did she want to? Maybe she should just go home. For an obscene moment she even wished that she had brought a date, even someone like Ash. She didn’t care who, just so long as they would keep her company, keep her from being alone in there.