Page 102 of Charm City Rocks
She takes a roll, tears it in half. “If you say so.”
Robyn asks him why they’re here, exactly—the three of them. Billy called Robyn last night to see if they could all have dinner.
“I wanna talk,” he says. “Need to talk, actually. To Caleb mostly, but you should be part of this, too. We’re a team, right?”
She bites into some bread. “Should I be worried?”
“Not at all,” he says. “You should be happy. Because you were right about something. And I finally realized it. Oh good, here he comes.”
Chapter57
Caleb is eighteen years old, which, mathematically speaking, means he’s got a long way to go. He’s never had a girlfriend, technically, but he knows that someday he will. That’s just how it works, and besides, girls seem to like tall guys, right? That’s what he’s heard, anyway—hashtags and such.
He’ll probably haveseveralgirlfriends, in fact. Again, mathematically speaking. They’ll come and go, and each will affect his life differently. Some dramatically, some hardly at all. Some may hurt him, but he may just as easily hurt a few of them. He hopes not too badly, though. But then someday he’ll meet someone who will start out as just another girlfriend, but then she’ll become way, way more than that. He’ll love that girl—that woman—more than he’s ever loved anyone.
For the time being, though, the two people Caleb loves most in the world are sitting at a table together in the sunshine at Phillips Seafood, and they’re laughing. Like,reallylaughing. They’re laughing in a way he’s never seen them laugh together before. He has no idea what they’re talking about—probably whatever boring shit people in their forties talk about—but seeing them now, like this, warms his heart, because good for them.
Caleb is finished going to the bathroom. He washed his hands a few minutes ago, checked himself in the mirror. Now he’s leaning against a sign for the National Aquarium next door and spying on his parents from about a hundred feet away. His dad keeps turning around and looking for him. Caleb isn’t entirely sure why he took this detour on the way back from the restroom, but here he is. Maybe he just needed a minute to himself.
From where Caleb stands, Baltimore looks genuinely cool. A pirate ship full of smiling kids drifts out in the harbor among more smiling people peddling dragon boats. The Orioles and Yankees are on one of the outdoor TVs above the bar. Dogs are on leashes—a freaking ton of them, like, every dog in town is here. A bus lumbers by on Lombard Street. There’s an ad for pink Google phones stuck to its side. Caleb laughs, because someone’s already tagged it with graffiti.
Caleb has gone back and forth about whether he’s happy with his decision to stay here. Right now, he is. Because it’s the right thing to do. A little safe? Yeah, maybe. But it makes sense. Not going to Stanford isn’t the end of the world. Poppy was right on FaceTime. Californiaisincredible. But it’s not going anywhere, right? Maybe he’ll make it there someday.
His mom is single now, and Caleb likes that he’ll be here to hang out with her. Maybe he’ll go on mom dates with her—arty movies at the Charles Theatre, so she doesn’t have to go alone. His dad is sad about Margot leaving, obviously. It’s complicated, because he told her to go, even though he didn’t want her to go. His dad keeps saying he’s fine, but Caleb knows he isn’t, so he’s glad he’ll be here for him, too.
The breadbasket has arrived at their table. Caleb can see it from where he’s standing, and his stomach reacts, because he’s so hungry he could pass out. Their salads should be arriving soon, then their bibs and crabs and little bowls of butter sauce. Caleb will eatall his food, then he’ll eat whatever food his mom and dad can’t eat.
Enough lurking. He should really get back. The two people he loves most in the world are waiting for him. They both need him. And Caleb is happy that he’s here to help.
Chapter58
The four members of Burnt Flowers are playing together. They’re seven minutes into a jam session, trying to get a potential new song to take flight. Jenny and Anna are at the foot of Margot’s kit, the three of them huddled tight, willing artistry through proximity. Nikki is on the other side of the room at her mic. The song is going nowhere.
“Step off!” she sing-shouts. “Go away! It’s you! Not me!”
Wave has come out of the control room, and he’s dancing. He pumps his fists with each line—Nikki’s personal in-studio hype man. The tape is rolling, because it’s always rolling, but this is just a band searching, the musical equivalent of casting a giant net into a dark, swirling ocean.
“It’s you! Not me! It’s you! Not me!”
Chuck, one of the engineers, sits in the control room, head bobbing, staring down at their levels. Over Chuck’s shoulder, Margot notices a baseball game on a monitor. It’s the Yankees, because they’re in New York, but she catches stray bits of orange and black.
She hits the high-hat, but her angle is bad, and the wobbly clamor in the middle of her drum loop causes everyone to look up.Bands play through all kinds of imperfections when they’re jamming, but they’ve been here all day and into the evening, so the misfire is enough to bring them to a slow-moving car crash of a stop.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Margot Hammer,” says Anna, laughing.
“Sorry. Yeah, that was me.”
“It’s cool, rock star,” says Nikki. “I was feeling that, though. We’re close with that one, right?”
“Fuck yeah we are!” says Wave. “Hot!”
Jenny, Anna, and Margot look at one another. That song, if you can even call it a song, is far from close, and as much as Margot would like to give Axl the middle finger, he’s not wrong about the distinct lack of a single so far.
“That’s the chorus, right?” says Nikki. “It’s you, not me. You, not me. A breakup anthem. Breakup anthems are huge right now. Women’ll turn that shit up.”
Wave punches himself gently in the chest. “I’m feeling it.”
Margot rubs her calluses together. “Hey, Chuck,” she says.
