I want this moment with her to last, so I stay until she’s fallen asleep. Maybe even a little while after that. I stare in awe at her perfectly pink cheeks and her dark dancing eyelashes as she dreams. I miss her, and I haven’t even left her room yet.Is this how it feels to love a child so completely?
Thoughts of Everett are the only things that finally pull me from her room. I pace the hallway for a while, but it’s not suppressing the ball of nerves wound up in my stomach. I told him the other night that he’s doing better than he thinks. After finding that list, I’m not sure he believes me. I need to see him.
I snag the baby monitor from the kitchen and check the screen. Quinn’s still fast asleep, but I should make this quick.
A soft melody floats down the garage steps as I ascend them. The closer I get to the door the more I recognize the song. It’s my favorite one he’s ever written—words of love and devotion painted in sounds.
The door is cracked. As if he kicked it and it rebounded off the frame. Not open enough to see more than his boot through the slit, so I press on it, and it expands. Acreakfollows and the music stops.
I see him now. The voice was coming from his phone. It’s clutched tightly in his hand, and he’s crying on the sofa.
“What are you doing out here?” He stuffs his phone in his pocket.
His eyes are stormy and guarded. He looks broken. A bottle of bourbon is clutched in his hands. Shattered fragments of records litter the ground. At one point, he must have launched off the couch and kicked the leg of the coffee table because it’s snapped off and the whole thing is collapsed on one side.
“I came to see if you’re okay.” I step across the threshold, glass crunching beneath my shoes. He hasn’t moved from the place he’s reclining on the couch. I get close enough to sit beside him, to reach my hand out, and he jerks back like my touch stings.
“Do I look like I’m okay?” he spits. His nostrils flare and his ribs expand with every new puff of air they take in.
No. In fact, he looks terrible. The place reeks of alcohol and sweat. I won’t touch him if he doesn’t want me to, but I’m staying. I’ll sit across the room. That’s the most space I’m giving him. I’m not leaving him out here alone. I can tell he needs someone right now, and he’s going to have to get used to my being around.
I flick open the kickstand on the back of the baby monitor and rest it on the cracked desk. The chair with the broken wheel beside it tips to the right when I sit down.
Everett is a good listener. I’ve seen him study my lips. Watched the corners of his eyes squint as he takes in what I’m saying. That’s the kind of personheneeds right now.
“It looks like you could use someone to listen,” I offer.
“Is that what you do, Summer? Listen to the men in your life who tell you what they want from you?”
I know he’s referencing Brian without saying his name. I can spot jealousy when I see it. I just don’t know why he’s actingthat way when he’s made it clear our relationship is strictly Quinn-related. I’m the only other person in this room. An easy target. He’s choosing to throw a less-than-subtle jab at me instead of facing whatever it is that’s got him worked up.
Based on that video he was watching, he’s been out here thinking about Eliza. He wrote that song for her. He’s hurting, and hurt people hurt people. But I won’t let Everett hurt me.
“No,” I say back.
“That’s what I thought. So why did you let that prick drag you into the hall?” He has this dangerous smirk on his face now, and I’m getting whiplash from the different versions of Everett that are existing in this room. He’s using a cavalier sneer as a weapon to shock me. I won’t let it. Another thing I choose to ignore.
“How’d Quinn’s evaluation go?”
His head twists to the side. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not?” I press.
“Because it doesn’t fucking matter, okay? It’s too late.”
“Too late for what?”
I watch Everett’s brick wall crack right in front of me. It starts with his head, tipping forward in his hands. His fingertips grip his hair and pull until his shoulders are shaking. His entire body shudders when the devastation leaves his mouth. A wail swallows the silence in the room until his pain is all I hear. My body is begging for me to cross the space and comfort him.
Normally I’d fill the silence, but not this time. He needs me to wait and listen. To stay put and respect his space. He confirms that was the right decision when he finally whispers, “It’s too late to save her from me. I gave her my disability. I gave her APD.”
“What does that mean?” I ask. All this time, I sensed that Everett was hiding something. I think this might be it.
He lifts his head, defeat blanketing his features. “It means that when I’m on a stage with thousands of fans screaming my name or I’m stuck in a room with a shrieking toddler, everything I hear sounds butchered and messed up in my head. Nothing makes sense. And no matter what I do to fix it, it’s never enough.”
I don’t think I’ll ever be enough.
I haven’t said anything at all. Haven’t moved in the several minutes he’s been talking. Because he hasn’t stopped. It’s as if this dam has broken and everything it’s ever held back is pouring out of him. He tells me how music saved his life. Made him something when he was nothing but a struggling student barely passing high school. He tells me he plays because he’s good at it. That the harder he works, the more he forgets. But the part that breaks him the most, what has him crumpled against my chest when I finally give in to the pull of being closer to him, is when he says he’s living out his worst fear. That he thinks he’s a terrible parent because he gave his daughter the one thing he hates most about himself.
