“Hey, Rhea!” she calls, and I give her a whispered, “Hey,” as I sneak in the back door and up the stairs to the apartment.
“They practice Thursday to Sunday, four days, isn’t that insane. I don’t know when those big fancy players even have time to win hockey games!” Mom says.
“Real superheroes,” I say, completely disconnected from the conversation. Reid had told me all of this already, but Mom would be damned if she didn’t believe it was her story to tell. “Hey Mom, I’m beat and have practice in the morning, so I’m going to let you go.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Rhea, I didn’t even realize what time it was. We’ll see you on Friday for dinner?” she asks quickly.
“Yeah, Mom, I have a game, but I’ll be overafter,” I say.
“Oh, maybe we’ll come to the game! Make a whole day of it.” She claps on the other end, says her goodbyes, and hangs up.
I stare at the phone and sigh. She’s been saying that for three years.
They’d made time for two games in total over that time. It’s not Mom’s fault; she tries her hardest, there’s just a lot going on in their house with four smaller kids and no spare time. I settle myself against the wall, promising myself that tomorrow I’ll put everything together and away, but for now, I just want to crawl into bed and forget about today.
Morning comes faster than I expect, the light shining through the heavy navy curtains Brighton hung over the windows. I look up at the clock and am grateful my body got me up in time for a shower and some toast before school. I crawl from bed and decide on food first, going to the fridge for something I could steal until I get my own groceries after work today. On the top shelf sits a paper bag beside Daisy’s lunch kit, labelled in scratchy dark marker with my name. I smile at it softly, my fingers gripping the door of the fridge a little tighter. Brighton had made me lunch. It seems so silly and trivial to feel fuzzy over something as simple as a bag of food, but it’s more than that to a girl who’s never had her lunch made for her.
He’s just being polite, Rhea, you whined about it yesterday. It means nothing.
I’d spend the rest of the day trying to convince myself of that.
“The new binder is slick.” Boone drops it on the table next to my head as I kneel with my sleeves rolled up, trying to reconnect the karaoke machine to the projector. There are about fifty too many people all yelling at me at once, and the bar is already packed with rowdy, drunk first responders coming off shift.
Boone’s been up my ass all week about getting the karaoke binder finalized, and because he has the musical knowledge of a nine-year-old, I had to put a new one together while juggling everything else. What I didn’t tell Boone was that Rhea helped. Well, she took it over, if I’m being honest. I left the binder on the island one morning, and she begged and begged for an hour until I gave in. All week I’ve been cursing him for even asking, because it meant fighting with her over songs, but the look on his face makes it worth it, and suddenly I’m not so pissed off.
“Move this,” I grunt and tap the speaker with my shoulder.
Boone listens, shifting the weight to the left, and gives me more space to get my shoulder between it and the wall. I pop the wires together, and the projector flickers back to life.
“Fuck, I hate this thing, and I hate karaoke night,” I say, pushing off the ground to clean my hands free of the dirt.
Boone claps his hand over my shoulder, “For a man that loves his bar, you surehaterunning it.”
“Screw you.” I shake free and make my way over to the bar as some of the waitresses working the outer ring of the bar hand out the sign-up sheet for the turn order. The unfortunate part of tonight is that it neverfails to bring in a massive crowd of people wanting to spend a shit ton on drinks and singing all of my favorite songs terribly.
Tonight of all nights is a necessary Hollow event, and my least favorite of them all. I serve the people that Judd is running behind on and throw Sunday out of the bar to help with tables before she gets into the shots, but the entire time I'm working, my eyes are scanning the bar for Rhea.
It’s not like she’s hard to lose; everyone gives her a wide berth as she floats around, making sure people are behaving, stopping to chat with faces she knows before moving on. Her hair is loose around her face and hides all the tiny tattoos that I know exist on the back of her throat.
I swallow hard.
“Bri!” Sunday’s voice cuts through the noise, “grab me three pitchers, Pilsner.”
I get them ready for her, prepared to help her carry them, but am only left impressed as she balances all three in her small hands and disappears into the crowd. When the karaoke begins, I try to sink into my own head and far away from the sound of people singing out of tune.
Sometimes I think Boone is right; running a bar is quite possibly the stupidest decision I’ve ever made, but arriving home, fresh off that plane… discharged with nothing to my name but Daisy. For the first three weeks, all I did was walk up and down Main Street, Harbor, just trying to find a reason to be around. I tried with Riona, but she couldn’t do it and I don’t blame her. So I didn’t have an apartment, staying with Boone was killing me, and Sunday hovered like I would kill myself at any second. And damn did I consider it—almost every single night for two months. I sat with the option staring me in the face from the kitchen table, always picking nights when Boone and Sunday worked…
But like the miracle she was, Daisy knew somehow. The phone would vibrate on the table, and her sweet little face would appear to remind me that she was the purpose for all of this pain. That I’d survived the worst of it.
The walks grew longer and turned into runs that led me to new parts of the city. Sunday introduced me to Cosy, and I started taking dogs outwith me, giving me even more reason to keep moving. After two years of circling and knocking on death’s door, I sold the gun. That was the biggest step I took. My skin itches even thinking about it now. But it had to go.
One morning, a few years after being home and completely out of routine, I ran in the opposite direction, toward the sunrise, and found a building, barely standing, and it was like it vibrated. I stood out on that sidewalk staring at the emptiness of it, every broken window, graffiti-covered wall, and tarnished floor. Something had called to me, cut through the noise, and given purpose to the aimless wandering.
Boone didn’t question it.
He threw in half the money and spent every free hour he had helping me rip it apart and build it from the ground up. Seven months later, about two hundred grand of money neither of us had, and a stupid idea that we could do it with no experience,the Hollow was born—a reason to keep working, a reason to keep breathing. If I were moving and providing for Daisy, I would have purpose. That had been enough when I was overseas; it had to be enough now.
It’s been seven years.
