Page 64 of Caught in a Storm
Welcome to Baltimore!
Chapter 37
The adults are hitting it pretty hard.
Caleb’s dad usually just drinks a beer or two here and there, maybe at an O’s game or when he and Caleb watch movies on Saturday nights. Caleb can tell he’s buzzed now, though, because he’s laughing, and his face is flushed. A moment ago, he looked into the wine bottle at the center of the table like it was a telescope and asked, “Did someone spike this thing?”
Margot has had as much to drink as Caleb’s dad, but she’s tougher to read. She looks cool tonight, pretty. She keeps drumming her fingers on the table to the music that’s playing over the Sonos. Caleb wonders if it’s a drummer thing—if she even knows she’s doing it. He also wonders if his dad knows that he keeps looking at her and smiling.
Dinner started a little rough, with everyone just staring at one another. The low point was when Margot said, out of nowhere, “Your windows are really nice,” then everyone looked at the window and nodded for, like, forty-five seconds.
But then Aaron swooped in with the save. “Well, here we are,” he said. “Just a totally normal collection of people in a perfectly ordinary situation, right?” Everyone laughed. “Should I get more wine?” he asked, and the group agreed wholeheartedly that he should.
“Co-dad for the win!” Caleb’s dad said.
“Oh, you’re embracing the terminology, Billy,” said Aaron. “That’s fantastic.”
Caleb doesn’t spend a ton of time with grownups, but it seems like alcohol is a pretty big part of adulthood. He gets this, he supposes. Alcohol is like a smoothing device—it takes rough things and turns them into softer things. For example, Aaron gave Caleb a glass from one of the red wines he opened half an hour ago, and Caleb feels warm and light now, like he could do pushups or have a conversation with Poppy without humiliating himself. He wonders if she has a boyfriend, but he can’t think of a casual way to ask Margot. Since meeting her on FaceTime the other day, Caleb has started following Poppy on Instagram. He’s also googled her about twenty times.
“So, you two need to take me through all this,” his mom says. “The Billy-Margot journey.”
The adults are done eating. Caleb is finishing his mom’s chicken.
She swirls her glass of wine. She looks pretty, too, and Caleb can tell that it’s on purpose. Her hair is done—curled at the ends—and she’s wearing new distressed jeans with small tears in the thighs. She never wears jeans like that.
“What do you mean?” asks his dad.
“I worked back through YouTube and social media,” she says. “My assistant loves you two, by the way.”
Caleb watches a series of events. His dad puts his hand on top of Margot’s hand, his mom sees it, and then Aaron sees his mom see it. His mom shifts in her seat, takes a sip. “But the thing I haven’t figured out. You live in New York, Margot, right? What were you doing in Baltimore? At the Horse You Came In On?”
Caleb and his dad look at each other. His mom sees this, too. His mom sees everything; it’s her most devastating power as a mom, like she’s an X-Man. X-Person? X-Mom? “What was that look?” she asks. “I see you two.”
“Well, it’s convoluted,” his dad says. “Right? She was…”
“I was invited,” Margot says. “It was a thing for a fan, through my label. But it didn’t work out. So there I was, outside the record store.”
His mom leans onto her elbows. “Wow, you two would not be good FBI agents. You’re hiding something.”
“It was because of me,” Caleb says, surprising himself. He swallows.
“What? You? How?”
His dad shoots him a cautious look.
“Dad, I mean, I feel like we can tell her, right?”
“Can we, though?”
“I’m eighteen. You’re letting me drink wine at dinner.”
His dad turns to Aaron. “Yeah, Aaron, let’s maybe cut the minor off.”
“Come on. Are we just never gonna tell her?”
“Well, now you have to tell me,” his mom says. She fills his dad’s and Margot’s glasses, does a little chair shimmy. “This is exciting.”
“I think Robyn can handle it,” Margot says.
