Page 382 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

Got 20 min if you wnat it

If you don't show up offer expired

9:14 PM

You still mine?

Fri, Dec 13 at 2:58 AM

Yeah

// DEC 22, 9:16 AM //

According to the Fuckin’-A Agreement,

Andrew has custody of me on Sundays.

Joint custody, technically, shared with my terrible decision-making.

It’s why I’m trapped in the passenger seat of his red Civic, crossing into Jersey for an indoor baseball event.

Outside, the sky’s colored milk-gray and gloom. Inside, the heat’s coughing through the vents, breathing lukewarm air on one of my ankles.

Even though I’m layered to death in a cami, heat-tech long sleeve, sweatshirt, and a trench coat, my messy, day-after-hair-do stuffed under a St. John’s cap, the to-go cup clutched in my palms still shakes so hard from my shivering that coffee’s spitting through the mouth-hole and splashing my gloves.

The Teskey Brothers play through blown speakers, making the dashboard rattle.

So do my teeth.

So does whatever’s left between us after last night.

Everything’s rattling.

Andrew’s not rattling, though. His attitude’s clocking at fuck-you Fahrenheit.

Has to be ‘cause all the man’s wearing is a thermal over an old grey tee, joggers, and a navy zip, his hair still damp from his shower beneath his cap.

But there’s a sleepless curl near his temple, contradicting his pissed-off persona, making him look sweeter than the betrayal in his text messages, and the words he said to me in the alley last night:

Fuck you.

Two words still sitting in my chest,

sharing a cigarette.

He returned to the penthouse, sure, but his presence has yet to snatch the cigarette from their hands and put it out.

Shit still burns. And haunts.

Like the texts,

they’re all embered ghosts.

We’ve barely said a full sentence to each other since. This morning he told me to get dressed. So I got dressed.

He opened the passenger door. I got in.

He shut it. We started driving.