“Maybe you two can talk it out.”
“Don’t y-you have anyone?” I ask her, because I want something from her for everything of mine I didn’t mean to give her.
“What do you mean?”
“P-parents?”
“Well, yeah.”
“You like th-them?”
“They’re fine.”
“Th-then why r-run away?”
“Because it was the right thing to do.”
“Why?”
“My dad’s an asshole.”
“Y-you j-just said they were fine.”
“Yeah, well.” She laughs. “I don’t owe everybody my life’s story … then again, what are you gonna do with it? My dad’s a corporate asshole and I got tired of being his punching bag, that’s all. It got ugly. My mom picked the wrong side. Blah, blah.”
“Th-that’s sad,” I say and she shrugs. “I d-don’t have a dad.”
“No?”
“My m-mom had a lot of sh-shitty boyfriends.”
“At least that way you get breaks in between ’em.”
“N-not the way she slept around.”
“Respect, Sadie’s mom. A woman’s got needs.” Cat cackles. I don’t. She searches my face. “How many boyfriends? Who was the worst?”
I shrug.
“Come on.”
“—” I don’t owe anybody my life’s story but like she said, what’s she going to do with it? I keep one hand on the wheel and lift my hair from the back of my neck with the other, trying to feel out the cigarette scar. Once I have it, I tell Cat to look. I say, “Th-that one.”
“Shit. He just put it on you?”
“S-something l-like that.”
She reaches over, running her fingertip on the raised, puckered skin and leaves it there a long time. I shiver at that pinprick of warmth. It’s the only time I’ll ever like the way that scar feels.
“What happened?”
Look at me when I’m talking to you.
It’s not a memory worth chasing, here in this car.
I push it away.
“I d-don’t want to t-talk about it.”
“Okay,” she says.
“W-what’s it like? D-doing th-this?”
She shrugs. “When I get in a car with most men, they just wanna fuck. When I get in a car with women, they just wanna talk. Not always, though. Sometimes it’s the opposite.”
“You’re p-pretty,” I say, like that’s a reason. I feel my face turn a deep, deep shade of red and try to redeem myself. “I mean, it’s easy t-to talk to a p-pretty f-face. I don’t know.”
She turns to me. “How long you had that stutter, anyway?”
“All my l-life.”
“It’s kinda cute.”
I look at the car ceiling because there’s something about it that’s vaguely insulting and weirdly flattering at the same time. My stutter is not cute unless I say it is, and I’ll never say it is. Mostly, it’s exhausting. Still, there’s something nice about being worth the effort of Cat’s lie. It’s nice enough it makes me feel everything that’s hurting a little less. Mattie once asked me … she’d just come home flush from a crush on Jonah Sweeten and asked me how you know when you like someone, and if I liked any boys like she did, and I didn’t know what to tell her. That I tried not to think about that kind of stuff, because it was painful, because I thought I could never have it, but when I did end up liking someone, it always made me ache right down to my core. I realized pretty early on that the who didn’t really matter so much.
That anybody who listens to me, I end up loving them just a little.
I turn my head to Cat and she stares at me and I stare back until I can’t take it anymore and look away. I turn the radio on and a song is playing. It’s the one that played at the bar yesterday night. That was only yesterday … my eyes drift closed and I don’t know how long they stay that way when I jerk back awake. Breathe in.
“S-sorry,” I say, embarrassed.
“You look beat,” she says. “Literally and figuratively.”
I look in the mirror, and the side of my nose, underneath my eye, is a little more swollen and bruised than it was before. The tired, dark circles I have are just enhancing the damage.
“Does it hurt?”
I shrug, but yes, it hurts. It hurts worse than it did before I got in the car and it’ll hurt worse than that tomorrow, but more than that I’m just—tired.
She reaches over, her hand skimming my face and I flinch back away from her and she says, “Sorry, I don’t know why I did that.” And I want to say, sorry, I don’t know how to let you. Why don’t I know how to let her? I think of Javi in the backseat of my car, and everything I didn’t let myself do in there with him, and for what? So maybe it’s not a love story, but why can’t I let myself be worth a moment’s tenderness?
Why?
“It’s o-okay,” I say and then, gathering all my courage: “Y-you could … it’s okay if y-you want t-to d-do that.”
She reaches over and cups my face softly in her hands and gives me a sad sort of smile that tells me I’ve given even more of myself away. I’ve put my weak, wanting heart into the universe. I close my eyes and let myself feel it, the heat of her palms against my cheeks. Then she kisses me. Her lips are soft and unexpected and right. I open my eyes.
“Thanks for picking me up,” she says.
“I d-didn’t d-do it for that.”
“I know. I just wanted to thank you.”
I lean my head against the steering wheel and wait for the rain to let up, and my eyes slip closed and I open them again. I’m fucked. I know if I close them one more time, that’ll be it. Every good thing her kiss made me feel is fading, my sad reality kicking back in. I pinch the bridge of my nose and hiss, and the pain doesn’t even sharpen the dullest parts of me.
“If you want to sleep you can.”
I lower my hand.
“I d-don’t,” I say stubbornly.
“Doesn’t seem like you got a choice,” she returns. Then, “It’s okay, Sadie.”
But it isn’t.
I stare out the window and think of my mother’s fingertips pressed lightly against my forehead. I made you. I wonder if she knows about Mattie, wherever she is.
I wonder if she knows I’m all that’s left.
THE GIRLS
S1E4
WEST McCRAY:
The day Mattie disappeared started like any other. May Beth remembers it vividly; she dreams of it every night.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
She came by that morning. I have a rule: it’s not decent to bother a person before nine. So Mattie’s favorite thing, if she was up and around before then, was to come pounding on my door at nine-oh-one, fling it open and shout, “Good morning!” into my trailer. Shout it right in my face, really, because the door opens up to my kitchen. [CHUCKLES]
So that’s what she did. She flung the door wide, I was at the table, having my coffee and she screamed, “Good morning, May Beth!” And I wanted to throttle her because I loved her that much, but I just smiled at her and I asked her, “Where’re you off to today, Mats?” like I always did and she said, “Everywhere,” like she always did.
I told her to figure things out with her sister and stay out of trouble in the meantime.
WEST McCRAY:
Mattie and Sadie had been fighting that week.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
It was about Claire, of course.
Mattie wanted to go to L.A. but she knew they didn’t have the money, so whenever she’d pick a fight about it, deep down she understood—or at least, I think she understood—that it was impossible. Mattie would have her moment, let it die a while, then have another.
But somehow, she’d found out Sadie had been squirrelling away cash in case of an emergency. If they didn’t end up needing it, Sadie told me Mattie would take it to college. Now that Mattie knew about this money, she decided that meant they could hop a plane to L.A. and look for Claire. Of course Sadie told her that wasn’t happening.
I had them over for an early dinner that afternoon and they weren’t talking. It was awful. Usually, Sadie would try to smooth things over, but not this time. When I asked her about it afterward, she said, and I’ll never forget it—she said, “I don’t think I’ll ever be enough for Mattie.”
Mattie was never content with just having her sister.
WEST McCRAY:
Sadie worked the gas station that night.