Chasing Kane

by Andrea Randall

  “No,” he answered.

  To my confusion, I felt a twinge of relief. I chalked that up to being a non-sociopathic human, rather than actually wanting him to live.

  “Then what?” I demanded for a second time, making my way back to the hotel to avoid the shady alleys that awaited me if I continued forward.

  He sighed and went quiet for a while. “I was hoping we could do this face-to-face. Maybe I could come to one of your show—”

  “No,” I cut him off. “Don’t come anywhere I am. Got it? Now, tell me what you tracked me down for or I’ll hang up and change my number and make damn sure you never find me again.” My anger was hot and loud, crashing into my brain like hurricane waves against the boardwalk at home.

  I reached the hotel before he spoke, so I continued walking. I was afraid if I stood in one place for too long I’d punch something.

  Finally, words came through the phone and stopped me in my tracks.

  “I’m sorry, CJ. For everything.”

  Dizzy with rage, I lit another cigarette.

  The fucking nerve of this guy.

  “Oh that’s rich,” I seethed. I didn’t even know what to say next. “What brought on this moment of bullshit clarity?”

  “My ten-year-old son,” he answered flatly.

  I’d known for years that he had kids. I never knew how many, their ages, or anything else. Rendered speechless, I grabbed a seat on the nearest bench and leaned forward, holding my head together.

  “I found out Miriam was having a boy a week before your high school graduation,” he started.

  “Shut up,” I growled, but left the phone to my ear.

  “I’d thought about you each time the girls were born, of course,” he continued, telling me I had half-sisters, too. “But when we found out there was a boy … I just … I couldn’t—”

  “Deal with what you’d done?”

  “Yeah,” he sighed his answer.

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

  “And now he’s turning into this young man and showing me all this stuff I missed with you, and he’s into music and I—”

  “Stop,” I growled, standing, needing to end this conversation as soon as possible. “I don’t care that some kid you had with your mistress suddenly implanted a conscience in that empty space you call a chest. I don’t care if he plays the drums or the fucking flute or a goddamn trombone. I don’t give a shit,” my voice cracked, “if you’ve got daughters who think the sun shines out of your ass. Because I know it doesn’t. And I’ll never forgive you. Leave me the fuck alone.”

  I ended the call, wishing there was a phone to hang up and throw against the wall that wouldn’t cost me six hundred dollars. I navigated my way back to the hotel with clouded vision and a pounding head from holding back tears I’d gone over twenty years without shedding.

  All I needed to do was feel my way to my hotel room, and try to sleep away these feelings before tomorrow’s show.

  Thirty

  CJ

  I slept hard. That much I knew when I woke to repeated knocking on my door. My head was pounding and my eyes were so heavy I thought I’d have to pry them open. To my dismay when looking at the clock, I realized I hadn’t slept the day away like I’d wanted. It was only eight in the morning. Sure, ten hours of sleep was exponentially greater than anything I was used to on the road, but it wasn’t enough to make up for last night.

  To make up for him blasting into my life in the same way he left—like a tornado. The seismic pressure of last night’s emotions set my muscles rigid and on edge, vibrating as if waiting for the next blow so they could react. My head felt like it had been slammed against a brick wall and left there. Walking to the door took extra effort. I scanned the itinerary in my head before reaching it, knowing for certain I had no responsibilities today. Glaring at the white wood, I was annoyed that the Do Not Disturb sign was currently in a state of flagrant uselessness on the inside door handle.

  “Who is it?” I forced out through a hoarse voice that only served to remind me how much I’d screamed last night—long after the phone call with Daddy Dearest ended, and into the pillow before collapsing into sleep.

  “It’s me,” she said in a cool, confident tone. Needing only her voice to identify herself.

  Frankie.

  I cleared my throat. “Just a sec.”

  I wanted to swing the door open, swoop her into my arms, and set her on the bed with the deepest kiss I could. That was reason enough to pause. What I needed to do was splash cold water on my face to regain my sense of appropriate behavior with my ex-girlfriend, and to try to wipe the war-torn look from my eyes.

  No luck on the second endeavor—my eyes were swollen like I’d smoked all the weed in Chicago last night by myself.

  Shit. Oh well …

  I’d slept in my jeans, apparently, but no shirt. Grabbing the plain white T-shirt from the floor, I threw it over my head before setting my hand on the door handle with the deepest breath I’d taken in weeks.

  “You’re here,” I said with the best smile I could produce when I finally got around to opening the door.

  Frankie stood grinning softly in the doorway, all five foot eight and sexy size twelve of her. A brown messenger bag hung over her shoulder while a small purple suitcase was perched on the floor next to her sandaled feet and bright yellow-painted toenails. “And one hell of a sight for sore eyes.”

  Her smile faded slightly as her eyebrows pulled in a little. “Sore eyes—I guess,” she said, reaching for my face. Her soft, lilac-scented skin cupped my cheek as she grazed her thumb under my eye.

  I swallowed hard, frozen in the doorway unsure what to do. Seeming to catch her breath in ex-boyfriend boundaries—boundaries she’d set—she dropped her hand, tilting her head to the side. “What happened?”

  Stepping back, I pulled the door open, gesturing for her to walk in. She wore a teal sundress that swayed like petals just below her knees. Spaghetti straps criss-crossed in the back, showing off pink skin from what was probably only a short sunscreen-free stint in the sun. Her long, deep-brown hair was in a French braid that tapered off a few inches below her broad shoulder blades. My eyes fell to her slim, tight waist and curvy, God-help-me hips. I breathed in the floral scent of her wake, closing my eyes and demanding my brain commit it to memory if today didn’t go the way I wanted it to.

  Truth be told, I wished that once she was in, I could barricade both of us in that hotel room until we were ready to reemerge as a couple. I chuckled at the budding romantic in the back of my brain, closing the door behind her. All the evidence from the last couple of weeks suggested she would fly all the way here only to finalize our break and set the ultimate no-contact boundaries my behavior deserved. Not to reconcile.

  “Let me take that for you.” I slid the handle of her suitcase from her hand and wheeled it to the corner of the room by the window—far away from the door. “I wish I’d known you were coming. I’d have tried to not look so—”

  “Run over?” Her eyes worked me over with such tender concern that I had to look down out of fear I’d forget the reason for this visit and act like a desperate puppy, only pushing her further away. “It was a last minute decision. I wasn’t sure if I could … you know … go through with it. Once I landed I called you, but it just rang and rang until it hit your voicemail. Long night last night?”

  Looking at the bedside table where my phone lay, I noticed a few missed calls. Giving a quick scroll, I saw two from Frankie, and one from my mom—complete with a voicemail I’d listen to later. Somehow, I’d never gotten around to calling my mother after last night. She rarely left voicemails, so I had a good guess as to what was contained in that forty-five second message, regardless of how she found out. To my knowledge, she hadn’t spoken to my dad in about as long as I had.

  Setting the phone down, I slouched onto the bed, hunching my shoulders and rubbing my hands over my face. “Yeah … a long night.”

  The conversation with my dad only lasted t
en minutes, tops. But in reality it had been going on for more than ten tense, silent years. Looking up at Frankie, who situated herself on the queen bed across from me, crossing her ankles in front of her, I realized I could keep pushing her away, scorching any hope of her seeing the reformation I’d been working on or—more terrifyingly—I could be honest.

  Leaving my hand perched over my mouth as if to filter the words as they poured out, I spoke. “I called my dad.”

  “You did?” she gasped. The pale blush of her cheeks deepened as her eyes took me in, wide and concerned. She swallowed hard, taking a deep breath.

  I nodded, removing the hand from my face and lacing my fingers together in front of me as I sat with my elbows on my knees, still hunched over. I didn’t know how long it would take for me to bounce back physically from the toll last night had taken.

  “Wh—what’d you say?” She fidgeted, working the hem of her skirt between her thumb and forefinger.

  “To leave you alone,” I started with the easy stuff. Honest, but easy, and far away from the hole in my chest he’d carved out long ago.

  She nodded, her eyes—brown like mine—darting around the room like she was grasping for the right thing to say. She wouldn’t find it here, and through no fault of her own. There was no right thing to say.

  “It was this whole thing,” I continued, shaky as the disorganized flashes of last night forced their way into order in my brain. “He wanted to see me … knew I’d avoid his phone calls … there was a lot of yelling.” I pointed to my throat as an explanation of the persistent crackle in my voice.

  Frankie shook her head slowly, fixing her eyes on me. I couldn’t make eye contact, but from my periphery I saw her sit on her hands before speaking. “What was it about? Why did he want to track you down after all this time?” She shrugged, searching for an answer.

  I wished I could tell her he was dying. That the doctors had given up hope and he had three months to live before the tumors strangled his insides. But, I couldn’t. This was worse. Lingering. Permanent.

  Bowing my head, I thought of the boy at the root of the phone call. Not just me—the one he’d left—but the one probably sitting in blissful ignorance in the spacious Long Island home Callum Kane had built for the family he chose. The boy who maybe had dirty blond hair like his mother. The boy I’d never seen, and never met, who haunted my dreams last night. The innocent kid, with a prick of a father, that I threw out with the bathwater of last night’s conversation. The kid I disregarded.

  “CJ?” Frankie’s voice rose in panic before I realized I’d been lost in thought and had tears running over my cheeks. In a second she was by my side, her hand breaking mine free from each other as she laced her fingers between mine. “What?” she whispered, giving my hand a squeeze. “What happened?”

  “I’ve got a ten-year-old brother,” I forced out before my voice cracked into a sob I couldn’t restrain.

  It was all I could say for a long while. Minutes flowed one into another as I left my head in one hand, crying, as if it was something I’d always done. Frankie gripped the living daylights out of the other hand. She was silent, taking her free hand to rub the tense space between my shoulder blades.

  In the middle of the agony, a thought swirled into my head. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t remember the last person I’d cried in front of—I’d never done it in front of Frankie, for sure—but I couldn’t remember, no matter how long I searched my memory, the last time I’d cried at all.

  The only thing that came to mind was a package that came via UPS a million years ago. A brand new baseball and glove that smelled of fresh leather. There was a small, square notecard that completed the deal. Have fun, slugger. I miss you. Dad. My mom watched helplessly as I rearranged the glove with a pair of kitchen shears, and said nothing when I hurled the ball over the neighbor’s fence to let their Yellow Lab eat it for lunch.

  It was my tenth birthday.

  “I fucking hate baseball!” I growled, pulling my hand away from Frankie and scraping both hands through my hair, trying to hold my brains in. “I’ve always hated it!”

  “Um … I …” Frankie whispered, pressing her hand firm against my back. “I know,” she said, unaware of the memory in my head.

  But she knew I hated baseball. She learned that the day she excitedly waved Red Sox tickets in my face like they were unicorn eggs. I had to gently reveal my loathing for the game—an atrocity worthy of excommunication from the State of Massachusetts, but one I rarely hid.

  Still, she knew. And he didn’t.

  I yelled garbled combinations of consonants and vowels, cursing my father and the bullshit move of dumping a brother in my lap. A brother I couldn’t ignore. Information I couldn’t un-hear. A kid with a heap of shit for a father who was “into music,” whatever that meant.

  “Shh …” I heard her gentle whisper through my unrelenting noise as her hand stroked back and forth across my back like the soothing needle of a metronome.

  “I don’t know what to do …” I managed a full sentence, lifting my head to find her in the same position she’d been for several minutes—next to me, stroking my back, with one leg tucked underneath her as she pored over me with empathetic eyes.

  This wasn’t how I’d planned my first face-to-face with Frankie since our breakup. I figured there’d be a few tears one way or another, but this wasn’t quite the scene I’d pictured. With a long, shuddering breath, I forced the tears dry—which took more effort than expected, and wiped my hands across my face.

  “Sorry,” I said in a sigh. “I didn’t plan for … this.” I ground my teeth together, pushing back a fresh wave of despair.

  Reaching for my phone, I pressed the home button, grimacing that it had only been a half hour since Frankie arrived at the hotel. By the same token, it had been the longest I’d cried in well over a decade—combined. My head was pounding and I felt emptier than I did the night I was on the phone with Frankie when she found out about Clara. With tired eyes, I forced my gaze to Frankie’s face. Her eyes were glassy, and she seemed to be holding her breath as if exhaling would break the dam in her eyes.

  “Don’t be sorry,” she finally forced out, running a hand across the top of my shoulder and down my arm. She set her hand on my forearm, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Don’t be sorry at all.”

  I glanced out the window, running the heel of my hands under my ever-swelling eyes. I figured it would be a miracle if I could see at all by sundown. “I’m a real fucking mess right now, Frankie. I didn’t mean for you to fly all this way just for … this.”

  Her hand moved to my face as she nudged my attention back to her. “For you. Not the you you want me to see, or pretend to be. I came all this way to see you, and … You’re giving me you. All of it.” So help me God, her thumb ran across my bottom lip and I stopped breathing.

  Reaching up, I grabbed hold of her wrist, turning my face with eyes closed to inhale the garden scent she always sprayed there. I let my lips rest against the silky skin of her arm while I breathed her in. She was as still as could be. Finally, I opened my eyes, and caught her staring directly at me with her lips parted.

  “Frankie,” I started, setting her hand down between us, but keeping mine in place on hers, “I had this whole speech prepared … all the things I regretted, and was and wasn’t sorry for, and ways I have changed or am going to change. But … I can’t … I’m kind of beat up right now. I’m empty, and I can’t—”

  My macho show didn’t last long as a few more tears announced their presence, betraying my speech. I cleared my throat, determined to at least get through this.

  “Just bear with me?” I begged in the form of a question. “I just need a couple days to—”

  Frankie grinned, cutting me off. “This is going to take more than a few days.”

  “I don’t want to waste your trip out here. I don’t want to blow this, Frankie.”

  Shifting her leg out from underneath her, Frankie sat cross-legged in front of me, movin
g the folds of fabric from her dress around her. She looked kind of like a cupcake in that moment—bright teal with yellow sprinkles from her painted fingernails, which matched her toes. In that instant, I not only missed everything about her that had been gone from my life for the last couple of months, but I missed Georgia and Regan, too. I felt desperately raw and alone and, for the first time in my life, I needed someone. And acknowledged it.

  “CJ you haven’t wasted anything. I meant what I said. I only ever wanted you—not the bizarro you from the stage. We had a lot of good times together—a lot. But, I’ve never felt—” A choked sob cut her off. She cleared her throat before continuing, seeming to ignore the delicate tears trickling down her cheeks. “I’ve never felt more connected to you than right now.”

  I managed a grin. “All I had to do was bawl like a baby?”

  She chuckled. A light sound that warmed my chest. Shrugging, she grinned back. “Guess so.”

  “So what are you saying?” I hesitated to ask, not wanting to push this in a direction she wasn’t willing to go. My heart raced, despite my eyelids protesting being awake. Being so open is exhausting.

  Frankie took a deep breath, gently wiping under her eyes with her pinkies, assessing the damage to her makeup by the amount of black mascara on her fingertips. I reached for the box of tissues behind me, handing them to her while she seemed to mull over her answer.

  “You’re killin’ me here,” I admitted after what seemed like forever.

  She smiled, staring at her black-streaked tissue as if it held the answer. “I’m saying …” she trailed off.

  I puffed out my cheeks, exhaling heavy.

  “I’m saying,” she continued with renewed resolve in her voice, “that I want to start over.”

  The words seemed too much for both of us as she broke into a full sob and I couldn’t help the silent tears escaping my eyes. This was totally off the charts for me, and I didn’t know what to do. I lurched forward, pulling her toward me and holding the back of her head as she sobbed into my shoulder. I let my tears stream off my chin and drip on her back.