Page 17 of Lady Sings the Blues

“Give it up?” I scream at my once best friend, not giving two shits that the entirety of the place sits in engaged silence listening to my freak out. And here I am giving them the gossip. “I didn’t give it up. I lost it.The stress…The stress…” Anger finally ebbs replaced by the crushing sadness I’ve been avoiding for years. “I lost my baby.” And I fall back, not onto the stool but into Mark’s arms. I didn’t even hear him come over.

“Shh…” His consoling word feathers against my breaking heart. “Shh…” he says again.

“I wasn’t a whore, Mark. I wasn’t. The baby was his. He might not have wanted it, but what his mom said, what his aunt said—Lenore and Margo hated me. But I swear…I swear I’m not a whore.”

Some people have a higher tolerance before reaching their breaking point. Some have lower. I’d like to think since it’s been five years that I’m the former. Though, higher or lower, I’ve just about reached mine. He twists me in his arms to full-on hold me with his entire body, warming my soul with his care.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you,” he whispers against my neck. “I should’ve been there. I promise I will never let you down again.”

We keep holding on, tuning everyone else in the bar out, for who knows how long. The rest of the world building up and crumbling civilizations around us. Both of us content to remain so, at least in my mind.

“Did you know the toothbrush was invented in Kentucky?” He asks, out of the blue, and a ninety degree turn from the last words he’d spoken.

“What? No.” I shake my head, wiping away tears with the back of my hand.

“If it were invented anywhere else, it’d be called a teethbrush.”

Idiot. I laugh, loud and obtrusive, garnering head turns from people all around us. Mark chuckles around pulling a drink from his longneck. Tommy and Maryanne join in too, the laughingandthe drinking.

“Should’ve given you Whiskey Sours years ago,” Tommy says, then. “Glad to have the old Elise back.”

“Are you, Sgt. Tommy Doyle of the Thornbriar Police Department, condoning underage drinking?”

He shoves my shoulder. “Only when it keeps my wife and my best friend from hurtin’.”

***

With all the heaviness behind us and three more Whiskey Sours down, Maryanne and I pivot on our stools barely able to keep ourselves from slipping off, to watch the men deep in a game of pool again.

“I wish I’d been at your wedding.” I halfway slur.

“Wish you’d been there, too. I had to ask Tommy’s sister Beth to be my maid of horror.”

“Don’t you mean honor?”

“Not with Beth.”

“Oh man, I remember. She was a piece of work.”

“You have no idea. She wanted us to have a ceremony right outta the puritan handbook. Should’ve seen her, I mean her entire face turned purple when I told her I didn’t want to wear white because I wasn’t a virgin. I kid you not, she fell to her knees and prayed for mine and Tommy’s immortal souls.”

“How do I even respond?”

“Well I’ll tell ya, she went from purple to red when I told her I would not be agreein’ to obey Tommy, either.”

“Really? She got angry with you?”

“Yeah. Because I told her I’d stop the ceremony then and there if she tried to get the minister to slip it in. And I wouldn’t go any further until he retracted it.”

“That’s my girl.” We try to fist bump, totally missing. “Was Mark there? At your wedding?”

“Sure. He…he was the best man.”

“How? We never hung out with him in school, did we?”

Maryanne’s hand finds my shoulder. “Listen,” she says. “What you need to know—” But her words fade, the sound of her voice drowned out by another. This one low, husky and soulful.

We redirect our gazes to the small stage kitty-corner to the pool tables and the gorgeous black woman standing atop it.

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