Page 434 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

‘I want to get help…

‘I can’t live like this anymore.

‘The abuser wins,

‘and the entire world’s on his side.’

‘Stay the hell away from me.

‘You’ve only made my life worse.’

‘Not all of us got it where we can hide behind a fuckin’ contract. Some of us gotta live with our monsters.’

‘They’ll always say what you want to hear if they think it’ll get them what they want. Doesn’t make them bad a bad person, just strategic.’

‘You think you’re the first girl to fall for him? You’re talkin’ to Andrew Harding, you do know that, right? Gives you the fantasy. Says and does just enough to make it real. Whatever you want, he’ll give it to you. Doesn’t mean he wants you…’

My spine hits the counter as I fall back.

“Okay,” I breathe, chest heaving, the truth bursting out of me. “I’m overwhelmed and scared.”

My hand comes over my mouth as I finally look at her, as if that would stop the tears pooling in my eyes.

Paola’s tough expression crumbles,

and she takes the sponge from my hand,

my hand from my mouth,

then she wraps both arms around me.

The second they do⁠—

the second I feel her warmth,

her comfort,

this starved instinct takes over,

and my body buckles into her.

And I break,

burying my face into her shoulder,

fingers fisting in her pajama top.

And I cry.

Tears that’ve been trapped for more than ten years. ‘Cause I’m hugging a mother in the way I needed.

Not my mother. My mother is gone.

But for three seconds, the ghost of the abandoned child in me lets me pretend.

I wake first to a piano playing from the TV, a version of “Last Christmas.”

I’m lying on the couch,