I pull Frank's pint and set it on a dry napkin and move to the next ticket.
Rex hasn't been in since Monday.He told me Bloodstone scouts had a camera on the Anchor. Told me to stay close to Sal and Griz. Then he walked out, because Rex Flynn's answer to every problem is a highway and a head start.I nodded and turned back to the taps. What was I supposed to say? Stay? Don't go? He'd already decided, and I don't beg.
That's the last time I saw him.
I knew the arrangement when I agreed to it. Him at my door after midnight, boots on my floor, hands that mapped every inchof me in the dark. Cold sheets at dawn and the deadbolt locked from the outside. I told my heart to stay out of it and it didn't listen, and now Rex is gone and I'm pulling pints, pretending the ache under my ribs is just hunger because I skipped lunch.
I pour two Rainiers for the dock workers, restock the garnish trays and wipe down Carl's section. The work keeps my hands steady. The rest of me is not steady. The rest of me is furious and hurt and humiliated, I hate all of it because I chose this. I walked into this arrangement with both eyes open but I fell in love anyway.And the worst part isn't that he left. The worst part is that he thinks he had a reason and I still can't make it hurt less.
Sal moves behind me reaching for the top shelf, her grey-green arm stretching past my head. She doesn't mention Rex. Four hundred years of tending bar and Sal knows when to pour a drink and when to keep her mouth shut.
At seven fifteen I untie my apron and tell Sal I'm taking my break.
The alley behind the Anchor smells like dumpster, wet asphalt and sea salt from the harbor. I lean against the brick between the fire escape and the recycling bins and pull out my phone.
I don't know why I call her. My thumb scrolls past the contact I saved under Patricia instead of Mom the year I dropped out of Wellesley, and then it scrolls back, then I'm pressing the green button before the rational part of my brain catches up with the homesick part.
Four years since I've heard her voice. Four years since the conversation about cousin Adelaide's wedding, appropriate attire and dates without visible tattoos, both of us hanging up and neither of us trying again.
It rings four times. Five. Six. I'm about to hang up when the line connects and I hear her breathe, that quick inhale of a woman who checked the screen and couldn't believe what she read.
"Holly?"
She says it like a question.
"Hey, Mom."
Silence. A car passes on the street. The dumpster lid clatters in the wind. I press my shoulder blades into the brick and stare at the strip of sky above the hardware store and I don't have a single prepared word for this call.
"I'm—" My voice cracks. I bite down on the inside of my cheek and breathe through it. "There's this guy. And he just left. And I'm so angry at him, Mom, I'm so angry I can't see straight, and I'm angry at myself because I knew. I knew he'd leave. I knew what he was when I started this and I did it anyway and now he's gone and I—"
I stop. I'm in a dumpster alley on a Wednesday night telling my estranged mother about a man who left and I don't even know why I called except that I did and now it's too late to hang up.
"I did this to you, Mom. I left. And now he did it to me and I don't know what to do with that."
The silence on the other end stretches so long I pull the phone from my ear to check the screen. The call timer counts. She's still there.
"I'll be there tomorrow."
"What?"
"Holly, I have been a terrible mother." She doesn't cry. My mother has never cried in front of me. But her voice drops and that's the closest Patricia Summers gets. "I've been waiting forthis call for four years and I am not going to waste it. Give me the address."
"Mom, you don't have to—"
"I know I don't. Give me the address."
I give her the address. She reads it back in that clipped voice that used to chair school boards and organize every hour of my childhood, and for the first time in four years I don't want to hang up on her.
"I'll text you when I land."
"Okay."
"Holly."
"Yeah?"
"It's good to hear your voice. Even when it's angry. I love you, honey."
