Page 64 of For a Goode Time Call…
“I messed up, Mom.”
“How?”
“Ink.” I swallowed.
“You messed up with Ink?” She stilled. “You’re not—”
“NO!” A little too loudly, because thathadalmost happened. “No, Mom. I’m not pregnant.”
“Thank god for that,” she breathed.
I pulled away to eye her. “What does that mean?”
She shrugged, unapologetic. “It means you are in absolutely no shape, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, or financially, to be having a baby.” A pause. “For that matter, neither am I, if you must know.”
I laughed. “Yeah, you know what—you’re right about that.”
“So, then, what?”
I shrugged. “It’s just…a lot, Mom.”
“I can’t decipher that, Cass. You’re going to have to elaborate.”
I groaned. “I need a shower.”
She moved aside so I could climb off the bed—still dressed in the red yoga pants and tank top.
Mom sat on my bed while I got in the shower, and then she sat on the toilet lid. “So.”
I sighed. I shampooed, washed, lathered in conditioner.
Finally, I spoke over the shower noise. “I don’tknow, Mom. I don’t know. He’s a lot. He and I…we had…we have…it’s…” I groaned again, rinsing conditioner out of my hair. “It’s just a lot. And I don’t know what to do. And I ran away because he scares me shitless, but not because of the way he thinks. I ran, and now he’s going to be hurt and angry because he has serious abandonment and rejection issues, and I played right into them in the worst possible way. But I’m scared. Emotionally. Of him. Of…possibility. Of—of everything being around him means for me. Mostly, that he knows I’m not—that I haven’t…”
“That you’re a train wreck of unresolved issues?” Mom suggested.
I laughed. “Wow, Mom. Thanks.” I laughed again, wryly. “But…yeah, I guess that’s accurate.”
She was silent as I rinsed off one more time, and then shut the water off. Mom handed me a towel from around the back of the shower curtain, and I toweled off and wrapped it around me. Tucked it in place, and stepped out, around Mom. Brushed my teeth. Brushed my hair.
Mom watched, thoughtful.
Heedless of Mom still being in the room, I dropped the towel to get dressed—the six of us, Mom, my sisters, and I were not concerned with family modesty around each other, and we frequently changed in front of each other as the situation required. So this wasn’t an unusual or weird thing, for us.
When I turned to fish underwear out of my drawer, though, she gasped. “Cassandra! You…you’re bruised like crazy.”
I blinked, turning to glance at her, baffled. “I…what?”
She made a face, one I, for one, couldn’t quite read. “On your fanny.”
I laughed. “Fanny? Mom, come on. Join the twenty-first century, geez.”
I turned in circles, trying to see my butt, but of course I couldn’t, so I went back into the bathroom and craned my head to see my buttocks in the mirror.
Fingerprints.
Where Ink had gripped me, held me in place.
Where he’d held on to me for dear life, while desperately, with every ounce of his strength, holding back. I’d felt that restraint, as if that fine line of control had been all that separated me from being run over by a runaway freight train.
