His text was still sitting in my phone.That's my girl. You're going to be incredible.
I had not been incredible.
I had been the opposite of incredible. And now, I’d walked in the wrong direction to stand at a seawall and look at a container ship and feel sorry for myself, which was arguably the most on-brand thing I'd done since arriving in Charleston.
I pressed my forehead to the cold stone of the seawall.
Maybe Clayton was right.
I thought it again now, against the cold stone, which was maybe the thing about bad nights—they made room for the worst thoughts, the ones you'd worked hardest to evict, because the eviction notices only held when things were going well.
Clayton wasn't right.
I knew that. I knew it with the part of me that was rational and had evidence and could cite specific instances and testimonies—the choir teacher's yearbook inscription, the woman's real smile at The Piazza, Luis's face when he'd handed me the business card.
I knew Clayton wasn't right.
I just couldn't feel the knowing tonight.
I don't know how long I stood there before I did the thing.
It wasn't a decision, exactly. It was more like a resolution—the kind that arrived quietly, without fanfare, the way the best resolutions did. Not the dramatic kind that required an audience. The private kind. The kind you made against a seawallin the dark with the harbor wind in your face and no one watching.
I took my phone out.
I opened my contacts.
I found Clayton.
I stood there with his name on the screen for a long moment. Looking at it. At the twelve letters of him, sitting in my phone between two other contacts I never called.
Then, I called him.
It rang four times. I was almost to voicemail when he picked up.
"Rebecca?" His voice was groggy. I'd woken him up. "What the—it's almost midnight. What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong," I said. "I just needed to call you."
A pause. The sound of him sitting up, blankets moving. "You sure you're okay?"
"I'm standing at the Battery in Charleston. By the harbor."
"The—okay." Another pause. More awake now, the way Clayton got alert fast when he was worried, which was something I'd forgotten about him. He'd always been the first one up when something happened at home in the night—he had that reflex, the snap-to-alertness of someone who'd decided early that being ready was his job. "What are you doing at a harbor at midnight?"
"I had a bad gig tonight," I said. "A real venue. Three hundred people. I froze and walked off after one song."
Silence.
"Oh," he said.
"Yeah."
Another silence. I could hear him breathing. Thinking.
"That's rough," he said. Finally. Simply.
"It is."
