We chat for a few more minutes, and then I decide to group text all of this to JD when we hang up. He’s a busy dad these days, so I’m not surprised when he doesn’t answer. For all we know, he could be out of the country.
From my office, I have a great view of downtown. I can see the park, Josie’s café and shop, and the other businesses. There are workers in the park, replacing the summer flowers with mums. Someone sweeps the path, picks up garbage, and cuts the grass. We paid for the park revitalization because it’s the center point of our downtown space and I wanted kids to have a clean, safe place to play.
Seeing the sidewalk full of people brings a smile to my face. Watching Bex enter the café puts a shit eating grin there because lunch, made by my wife, makes for the best kind of day.
Paige has a map now,pinned over her clip station, push-pins stuck in every town a caller’s phoned from, and lately the pins have started crossing state lines. Two from across the river. One four hundred miles south. I stare at the board, spotting Beaumont. No one from here or the surrounding area.
No Sterling.
Tonight every slot on the board is lit before I’ve got the cans on.
Bex screens on the fly, holding the heavy calls for the back half and feeding me the light ones to open. I don’t see half of what she catches before it reaches me, and whatever doesn’t make air, she’s got her reasons. I’ve learned not to ask.
A couple of clips cleared a million views this week, both of them of me getting choked up on the air. Paige says the algorithm rewards a man crying. “Nobody shares the advice, Dad. They share you losing it. Cry more.” She’s built me a second career out of my own raw nerves.
The light goes red.
“Evening. This is The Love Line with Liam. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
First voice is a woman, exasperated and fond at the same time. “My husband retired in the spring and he has not left my side since. He follows me from room to room. He reorganized my spice rack, the laundry room, every cabinet in the kitchen. This morning he asked me where I was going. I was going to the bathroom. The bathroom! I can’t even pee in peace. Oh crap, can I say that on the radio?”
I’m laughing before she finishes. “How long were you married before he retired?”
“Thirty-one years.”
“And you got thirty-one good years out of the man partly because he had somewhere else to be all day. You marriedhim, ma’am. Not his schedule. He needs a hobby, and he needs it yesterday. Get that man a workshop or a fishing boat or a part-time anything before one of you ends up on the news.”
A man whose mother-in-law moved in “temporarily” back in the spring. A bride three weeks out, two families at war over the seating chart. A woman whose teenage son won’t come out of hisroom. I move through each of them with Bex feeding me the next light before I’ve closed the last.
A young guy, nervous, the words coming fast. “I’ve got a girlfriend. Six months. Except we’ve never actually met. She’s long distance. We talk every night, hours sometimes, but every time we plan to meet up, something comes up on her end.”
“Something always comes up.”
“…Yeah.”
“Six months of every single night and you’ve never seen her?” I keep it easy. “I’m not saying she isn’t real. But at some point a thing has to become real, or you owe it to yourself to be honest about what it actually is. Make a plan to meet. A real one, a date and a place you book and pay for. Then watch what she does with it. If she shows, you’ve got something worth the wait. If she finds a reason she can’t, then you’ve got your answer, son, and it’s the one you’ve been ducking for six months. Whatever you do, don’t send her money because if she’s not willing to get on videochat at least, you’ve got more to lose than you think.”
Bex puts the next one through.
“It’s me again, Liam.” A pause. “Harley. You probably don’t remember me?—”
“I remember.”
“I took your advice. About getting out. Meeting people.” Her voice climbs, eager now. “And I’ve been trying, I really have. But it’s the strangest thing. I’ll be sitting right across from somebody and the whole time I’m thinking, they don’t get it. They don’t get me. Not the way you do. You just say the thing I’m already feeling before I’ve even found the words for it. Every night. Like you’re right there in the room with me. Nobody out here does that. You know what I mean?”
Behind the glass the room’s gone still. Bex is looking at me.
I don't have an answer ready. It's the way she ended it, making it seem like this show is just between the two of us, and it sits wrong. I take a second too long picking the call back up.
“Here’s the thing, Harley.” I clear my throat. “I’m not in the room with you. That’s the trick of the whole format. I’m a voice and a microphone, and I get to sound like I understand you because you can’t watch me fumble for the right way to answer you. But the people sitting across from you? They’ve got a real shot at knowing you. The actual you, the one that doesn’t sit on the other end of a call. That takes longer than a couple of weeks. It takes a lot longer than a call to a radio station. Give those people the time you’ve been giving me.”
A silence on the line. Then, “I know. You’re right. Thank you, Liam.”
I’m about to disconnect when she sighs. I keep the line open. “I’ll keep trying. For you.”
“Not for me,” I say, as gentle as I can. “For you, Harley. Do it for you.”
“Right.” A breath. “For me.” She doesn’t sound like she believes it. “Same time tomorrow, Liam.”
