Sweet Talk Me

by Kieran Kramer

  Hell and damnation. He felt so bad for her. “I’m really sorry. I know how much it meant to you to go.”

  She shook her head and smiled at him over her shoulder. “It’s okay. I survived. I never thought I would, but I did. I thought life would be incomplete without having the quote unquote college experience right after high school. Another Maybank truism that isn’t true.” Her sadness was coupled with a steely bravery. “Although I’d like to go back to school someday. I’m thinking about the College of Charleston.”

  “Good,” he said, probably too fast. He didn’t want her to think he pitied her for her lack of diploma. Hell, he didn’t have one, either.

  “How about you?” She pulled the plug in the sink and dried her hands off on a dish towel. “Was there a big bend in your road anytime during the last ten years? Apart from the abrupt fame? Your rise was pretty meteoric.”

  “Wow, that sound good. Meteoric.” He grinned, but he was embarrassed. Sometimes he still couldn’t believe all the crazy things that had happened to him.

  “It’s the truth.”

  He had to look away for a second because it was the first time someone he’d truly cared about before he was famous said something so … supportive. And it felt good. Why had he stayed away so long? What had he been so afraid of?

  “It was a case of be careful what you ask for,” he said. “Fame and fortune came at a steep price. I’d always heard they would. But I thought I’d be the one who didn’t have to pay it.”

  “What kind of price?”

  He didn’t want to tell her. And he didn’t even have to make something up because Weezie came flying through the back door with a basket of eggs.

  “Phred almost got me this time.” She put the eggs on the table and took a couple of deep breaths.

  “He’s our rooster,” True said. “P-h-r-e-d. And he’s as crazy as his name. He likes to chase us with his spurs out and send us on our way, preferably screaming.”

  The dogs started barking, which meant that Gage was back from his run.

  Sure enough, he showed up in the kitchen, a sheen of sweat on his face. “True, I didn’t see the paper outside.”

  She winced. “I had to cancel our subscription a long time ago. We get our news on the Internet. Did you have a good run?”

  “Yes.”

  But Harrison could tell Gage was a little uncomfortable with the lack of paper. “Don’t you read The Wall Street Journal online anyway?”

  “Yes, but I always read The Post and Courier first.”

  “You get by without it when you come to see me, or when we meet in Cocoa Beach.”

  “I read it online when I do that.”

  “Well, read it online today,” Harrison said, getting mighty annoyed.

  “When I know it’s available as a paper, I’d rather read it that way.” Gage’s face, still red from his run, was lined with tension.

  “Geez, buddy—” Harrison couldn’t believe his ears.

  “We’ll bring you one back when we go on our errands,” True said. “Problem solved.”

  “But I don’t read the paper in the afternoon.” Gage made an attempt at a smile. “Don’t worry about it, True.”

  “Damned right, we’re not going to worry about it,” Harrison snapped. “Ever heard of something called flexibility? You need it.”

  “He’s trying!” Weezie cried out. “Don’t be so mean to him, Harrison. I read once that you got pepperoni pizza in the green room instead of sausage, and so you threw the pizza out the window like a Frisbee.”

  “That’s not true,” Harrison said. “The tabloids make that stuff up to sell papers.”

  But he could see the wheels in Weezie’s head still spinning. “Oprah asked you if you ever wrote songs on the road,” she said in a smart-alecky manner, “and you said no, absolutely not, that you had to be alone in your hotel room. Not on a bus with all your roadies.”

  “Well, that is true.”

  There was a beat of taut silence.

  “See?” Weezie’s tone was righteous. “You’re not flexible, either.”

  “Yeah.” He paused, hating to admit he was a big, fat hypocrite. “I see, all right.”

  Weezie glowered in his general direction, but he could tell she was also secretly pleased she’d wrangled a confession out of him. Maybe she would make a good talk show host.

  True opened the cupboard. “You want some coffee, Gage?”

  “Sure. Thanks.” Gage stood awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen, the worst houseguest ever.

  Or maybe Harrison was the worst houseguest ever. He ran a hand through his hair and let it drop. “All right. Ready to go?” He looked at True.

  “As soon as I get Gage settled,” she said, all prim with him now. She clearly disapproved of his behavior.

  Well, shit. A guy couldn’t win around here.

  Weezie came up and hugged him tight around the waist. “I still like you,” she said into his armpit.

  “Do you now,” he said, striving to hold on to his bad mood.

  She looked up at him. “Yes. You always talked to me when you were watering Mama’s flowers.” She turned to Gage. “Harrison loves you, even though you’re a pain in the ass sometimes. We all are. Even True.”

  Dang, this was getting awkward. And funny. But Harrison didn’t dare laugh.

  Gage stood there like a wooden post. Harrison had to admit he felt like one, too. That was rare for him. True’s mouth was half open. She definitely wanted to say something. Or laugh. But maybe she felt mentally Tasered by Weezie’s unfettered truth telling, too.

  “Shall we go?” she asked him in a voice pitched a tad higher than usual.

  Harrison pulled his keys out of his pocket. “I’m ready if you are.”

  Yes, her eyes told him. She grabbed her purse off a hook on the wall.

  Weezie blithely ladled herself out some oatmeal. “I’m starved,” she said as if she were Oliver Twist. “Gage, you want some?”

  “Uh, sure,” he said, “although I usually have eggs—”

  “I can make those,” Weezie offered.

  “No.” He moved toward the stove carefully, as if he were approaching a sleeping lion. “Oatmeal’s all right.”

  True sent Harrison a sideways glance, and this time it was openly amused. And hopeful.

  “Shall we, Miss Maybank?” He grinned and held out his arm.

  She took it with alacrity, and he tried not to be too flattered. It was high time to get out of the kitchen.

  Off they went: a guy and a girl in a Maserati on a sunny day. Life didn’t get no better’n that.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Back in high school, when True was at the height of her own popularity, Harrison had been on the fringe, not quite a loner, but not someone who sought out friends, either. He wore his hair much longer than the average southern boy, down past his shoulders in a golden-brown wave, and he favored jeans and graphic T-shirts from Goodwill.

  At lunch, he was always on the far edge of the courtyard strumming a guitar.

  People came to him, and he’d stop playing and talk. Occasionally, True heard him laugh, and whoever was with him would laugh, too. But he was generally above the fray, not interested in who was dating whom or whether the football team was winning—which irritated the boys in True’s crowd.

  “He’s a redneck,” Dubose always used to say whenever he saw Harrison not giving a damn. Dubose was the ultimate prepster, high school quarterback, and True’s boyfriend. “His daddy died in a riot a month after he got to jail. The apple won’t fall far from the tree, I can promise you that.”

  “Stop it,” True would say. “That’s so mean.” And she’d fight with Dubose and not talk to him for the rest of the day.

  But after school, he’d always come back and say he was sorry. She’d forgive him because he’d admit he was jealous. He knew Harrison and True had been friends as kids, and he didn’t like that. She always convinced herself that Dubose’s confession was romantic.

  E
ven so, she wished she could talk to Harrison again, the way they used to when they were friends together at Sand Dollar Heaven.

  Hey, she wanted to say softly whenever he walked by. Don’t you remember all those days I’d sneak over to play at the trailer park? How about the lazy afternoons on the dock—and our secret marriage ceremony in the honeysuckle bower? You were the Sewee warrior. I was your princess.

  But she never did.

  He didn’t even look at her anymore.

  But there was that one lunchtime he wasn’t at his usual hangout spot. He was cutting class, someone said, for the rest of the day. He’d been doing that a lot lately, and no one knew why.

  True was worried. And so she forged her mother’s name on a fake note about a doctor’s appointment and left school. They all knew her so well in the office, no one questioned her.

  She found him on the dock at Sand Dollar Heaven and sat down next to him.

  “What are you doing here?” He wouldn’t even look at her.

  She said a little prayer and focused on an old life ring hanging on a piling at the end of the dock. “I’m so sorry about your dad. I tried to tell you, but you never let me.”

  “That was three years ago. I’m over it.”

  “He was a bootlegger,” she said. “He didn’t deserve to die.”

  “I know that. He wasn’t rich like your dad. He did what he had to do to help the family. Crewing on the Miss Mary wasn’t enough.”

  Miss Mary was a shrimping trawler, and those people worked long, hard hours. Sometimes they didn’t come back for a week. And still they were poor.

  True swallowed, her face flaming with shame at how easy her life was compared with his. “It might seem like a cop-out to you after all the fun we used to have … my being a well-dressed, prissy girl who doesn’t speak out or do anything different or get all A’s when I know I can. But if I don’t want to be ostracized by my friends, punished by my parents, and made to feel guilty by the townsfolk who expect Maybanks to be a certain way, I have to act the way I act. And it gets even more twisted. That’s in public. At home in private, I have to carry a lot of the weight around the house. Mama gets easily overwhelmed by Weezie. Daddy retreats. Honey’s old. I’m not really different. Not deep inside. I’m still the bossy, smart girl you knew. The brave one you climbed trees with.”

  “That’s such bullshit.” He lay back on the dock, slung his arm over his eyes, and sighed.

  And when he did that, her heart felt as if it literally broke into a million pieces. Where was he, the boy who used to care for her?

  Pinpricks of tears sprung up. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you on drugs or something?”

  “No,” he snapped.

  “Why are you cutting school?”

  “None of your goddamned business.”

  He hated her. She didn’t blame him. Really, she didn’t.

  He thought she was a weakling. And acted stupid. She was fifteen. Most of the time she felt grown up, but part of her was still scared about how to handle the world. Part of her wanted to run to her bed and get under the covers and let Mama take over. In her daydreams, Mama would bring her chicken soup and a candy bar and a good magazine … in real life, that had never happened. But True liked to imagine it that way.

  “I feel sorry for Weezie,” she said, even though Harrison was ignoring her. “But I feel guilty, too, because I’m glad I’m not her, always getting into trouble. How many kids get sent home from kindergarten for three days for acting out? I have to be the good girl—to help Mama and Daddy. I’m doing the best I know how.”

  Harrison lifted his arm and stared at her. “So you came looking for me to talk about yourself? Get some sympathy?”

  Her pulse raced. “No, that’s not it at all. I-I only told you all that so you’d understand, so you wouldn’t think I didn’t like you. Because I do. And … I’m worried. I hope you’re all right.”

  He got up and walked to the end of the dock, stared out over the water. “Are you finished?”

  “No.”

  He gave a short laugh. “You’re a piece of work.”

  She heard the scorn. But she’d tell him anyway. “Hanging out with you for three years changed me. Opened up my eyes. I know we were young, but it did.”

  Those were halcyon years, between nine and twelve. They played on the dock and in the woods, or rowed around in a borrowed johnboat. She’d collect leaves and moss and flakes of oyster shells with Harrison and hide them in a cigar box in their honeysuckle bower. Her own special treasure in their own special place. He’d bring her things, too: Pieces of a broken bowl from his mama’s kitchen. A swatch of purple silk he’d found outside the Lutheran church, just lying on a bench. Coke-bottle caps. She’d throw these into her box, too, and all jumbled up, they spelled her hopes and her dreams and her happiness.

  “After I stopped coming over,” she told him, “I still collected things. And now I put them together. I make collages in my bedroom using cardboard as the backing—or sometimes scrap wood from the storage shed—and a hot-glue gun.”

  She hid the resulting artwork in her closet. It wasn’t pretty and neat. Or predictable. It was odd, almost ugly in a way, reflecting the way she felt inside sometimes: guilty, disloyal, angry.

  “Am I supposed to be impressed?” Harrison turned to face her.

  She wished she could confide in him that she’d been born into a world that had defined her before she could ever define herself. She was only trying to survive, to figure it out, to understand why she only received love when she behaved the way other people wanted her to.

  She couldn’t win.

  She’d had to choose.

  Yet she’d had no choice.

  She was trapped.

  She was a Maybank.

  “No, I guess not,” she said. “My artwork isn’t very good. But I like doing it. It reminds me of us.”

  “Go away, True.” His voice was cold. But beneath his stoic gaze, she recognized hurt.

  “We were only kids,” she pleaded with him. “Why are you taking this so hard? Friends come and go, especially when you’re young.”

  “Everyone comes and goes,” Harrison said. “I know that. I don’t need you apologizing about that fact. Now get back to school before you get in trouble.”

  “I’m sorry.” She started to cry. “Do you need money? Because Daddy’s looking for a new boy to mow and trim the hedges. If you call him ‘sir’ a lot, and tell him you admire how well he did in last year’s Rockville Regatta, he’ll hire you. I know it. You can find him on Saturday afternoons at the hardware store.”

  Harrison walked past her, and she reached out her hand to touch his arm. But he yanked it away before she could. And then he walked off the dock, never once turning around.

  She found out the next day at school that Mrs. Gamble had been recently diagnosed with breast cancer. She died four months later.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sand Dollar Heaven. Good Lord, did this take True back! She really had thought it was heaven when she was young. She’d never cared about the run-down state of some of the lots. She came for adventure, for freedom. She wasn’t a Maybank here. She was a Native American princess from the Sewee tribe. And sometimes she was a mermaid.

  Today she was only a boring grown-up. One with responsibilities and worries. She stood among trees that had become bigger, taller—like herself—and mobile homes that had acquired the patina of age. She had, too. Her dewy-eyed days were long over.

  Yet the waterway hadn’t changed at all. Neither had the dock.

  “It’s the same one,” she told Harrison when she got out of the car. He was there, holding the door, which made her feel a little self-conscious. It was such a chivalrous thing to do. Dubose hadn’t done it in a long time.

  He stared at the dock through his designer sunglasses. “It needs an update, that’s for sure.”

  But he didn’t offer to walk out on it with her.

  So many mixed feelings surged. She’d been
happy on that dock, and, at one time, despairing. She’d also been in love. Sure, it had been puppy love. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t special.

  “Maybe some other time.” She felt super awkward for some reason and adjusted her purse on her shoulder. “I really have to get to Charleston as soon as you’re done here.” She most definitely didn’t need to be reliving any old emotions she’d felt over him.

  While they walked the hundred yards to the construction site, she checked her phone for a text from Dubose. None yet. He wasn’t always very accessible when he was in New York. She tended to let him call her. She didn’t want to interrupt a meeting.

  “These loose ends you have to tie up giving you fits?” Harrison said.

  She put away her phone. “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “What do you have going on?”

  She was embarrassed to tell him. But there was no way to pussyfoot around it. “I need to find a new caterer. And a new reception site.”

  He stopped in his tracks and turned to stare at her. “Less than two weeks before the wedding?”

  She nodded. “I know.” The emotion of it hit her hard again. “We have two hundred fifty people coming. How will I ever figure this out?” Her knees began to feel shaky.

  “Come on.” He took her by the elbow. “Sit over here. We can take ten minutes to talk, and we’ll both still get done what we need to get done.”

  There was a swing beneath a massive old oak tree nearby. It hadn’t been there when they were kids. She looked up into the oak’s branches and wondered who had climbed up there to attach the swing’s ropes.

  “You aren’t tying up loose ends,” he said. “It sounds like you’re trying to save your wedding from being a total disaster. How did it happen?”

  She told him the story. “And Penn’s overseas. So I’m handling it myself.”

  “Do you want her to be your mother-in-law?”

  “She’s kind of scary,” True said.

  “But you obviously want Dubose.”