Page 15 of Feuds and Interludes
I started to type a response three times, but I worried that context and tone would get lost via text. So I hit the call button.
“Why are you calling me?”
“Hi, Shane. Sorry, I didn’t want to be misunderstood via text.”
He didn’t know me very well, and, well, I didn’t want to accidentally offend him.
“Oh.” He was quiet for several beats. I was trying to think of what to say when he said, “This is weird. I never talk on the phone.”
I laughed. “Me either. I just wanted to know if you knew, you know, about our grandparents.”
Shane sighed heavily into the phone, making that muffled sound as though his breath traveled over the microphone. I got goose bumps just thinking about it.
“Yeah.”
I smiled. I could hear the frustration in his voice too.
“It’s weird, right? I didn’t know, uh, about before. She and Grandpa conveniently left out the part about their little love triangle.”
“Convenient.”
“Yeah.”
Silence.
Man, he was always ready with the snide remark. Where was the comeback now?
“Did you know? The whole story?”
I heard rustling on his end. I wondered where he was. He lived in LA, I knew that, but I wondered where.
“I knew. I knew about the song. I knew he still carried a torch for her. Had no clue he was going to tell the world at the ceremony, though. I would have cautioned against it.”
“I had no clue,” I said, my voice just above a whisper.
“Yeah, well, why would you?”
“I don’t know. I thought I knew the whole story. That they were all friends, Gran and Grandpa got married, Bruce left the band?—”
“John decided to go solo. Pops didn’t leave.”
“Ah. Guess we got different versions of the story.”
Shane scoffed. “Yeah, you could say that.”
A siren blared to life and startled me so bad, I dropped the phone again. Why I was so jumpy, I had no clue. I picked it up and…heard the siren on the other end of the call?
“Where are you?” I asked him.
“Why?”
I looked around the parking lot but of course, I had no idea what kind of car he drove. “That siren. Are you here?”
He paused. “I dropped him off. Don’t want him to have to call a Lyft, so I stuck around.”
I laughed. “Guess we’re in the same boat. I’m parked in the lot.”
My heart jumped at the thought of seeing him. Would he be pissed? Could we have an actual conversation away from everyone else and maybe not fight? I could think of nothing I’d rather do than see him in person right that very minute.
