Page 14 of First-Time Caller
The Cinnamon Toast Crunch shifts to the side. “I didn’t think you’d want to talk about dating,” she says quietly.
I frown. “What gave you that idea?”
“The one time I asked if you had plans to date and you said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’” Her lips twist. Another cereal box shifts. “I thought if I signed you up for the show and told Aiden Valentine about your situation, then you could talk to him. He’s supposed to be an expert. The ladies in the front office at school are always talking about his sexy voice.”
It’s good to know my daughter thinks mysituationcan be helped by a sexy voice. I reach for another handful of cereal.
She blinks at me, a hopeful smile on her young face. “And it helped, didn’t it? Talking to him?”
I shrug. It didn’tnothelp. There was something vaguely cathartic about sharing some of my deepest secrets to a stranger on the phone in the middle of the night. I think sometimes I get so caught up in the roles assigned to me—mother, employee, daughter—that it’s easier to shrink down the things that hurt and set them to the side. I never want anyone to worry.
The morning after my talk with Aiden, I drifted through the day in a haze. I felt scrubbed raw, the softest parts of me exposed. Like I stood on my front stoop with a megaphone and yelled out the secrets I’ve carved on the inside of my heart. I kept waiting for people to look at me with pity in their eyes.I heard what you said. I know you’re a disaster. You said you’re waiting for the right thing, but maybe that thing doesn’t exist. Maybe you’re the problem.I expected whispers. Pointing. Laughter. Maybe a coffee tossed in my general direction.
I did not expect the world to spin on, oblivious to my radio debut. Not a single person in my life has said a word, including the shop full of busybodies I’ve dutifully reported to every day this week. Working as a mechanic isn’t an inherently dramatic job, but the three men I work with are worse than a pack of old biddies. I was ready to disappear into the tow truck and never come out again.
Thankfully, I think Aiden Valentine is the only one who bore witness to my heartfelt diatribe on romance. I’m ready to categorize the whole thing as an emotional blip and move on.
If Maya ever stops building her cereal fortresses.
I drag the Cinnamon Toast Crunch to my side of the table and stack it behind Tony the Tiger. “I understand what you were trying to do and I’m . . . I’m thankful for it, I think, but it’s something I need to figure out for myself. No more calling radio stations. And no more . . . fabricating grand plans. If you want to talk to me about something, come talk to me. Okay?”
Maya nods, reluctant, still keeping her eyes away from me. She draws a figure eight across the tabletop. “I just don’t want you to be lonely, Mom.”
The bruise over my heart throbs. I reach across the table and grab her hand, squeezing the same way I did when she was three and I was twenty-one and I didn’t have a fucking clue how to do any of it. I still don’t know how to do any of it, but I’m trying.
“How can I be lonely when I’ve got you?” I shake her arm. “And your dad and Mateo. Everyone at the shop. Patty across the street and our not-so-secret wine. I’m not lonely, honey. There’s way too many people in our lives for me to be lonely.”
Maya squeezes my hand back. “You don’t have to be alone to be lonely.”
I open my mouth, then shut it again. I squint at her. “Have you been watchingOprahreruns with Mateo again?” My ex, Grayson, and his husband, Mateo, have a fascination with early nineties talk shows. Most of the advice I get from them comes in the form of an Oprah proverb.
“No,” Maya grumbles.
“When did you get so smart, then?”
“The year was 2022,” she says with a sigh, making her voice sound like one of those nature documentaries. “And a young girl discovered something called theinternet.”
I roll my eyes. “All right, smart-ass. Clean up this mess and find your shoes. Your dad is supposed to take you to school today.”
Maya rushes to get her stuff together and I stay sitting at the kitchen table, eating directly from the box of Frosted Flakes while having an existential crisis.You don’t have to be alone to be lonely.I’ve got all sorts of love in my life, but I’m still yearning for something more. I’ve done a really good job of convincing myself I haven’t been, but Aiden Valentine andHeartstringsripped that little delusion away.
How do I fill that crack? How do I mend it? Dating has never done much for me, but maybe I’ve been doing it wrong. Maybe I’ve been looking in all the wrong places. Maybe I’m tripping over my own insecurities on the way there. Maybe I should try again.
I stopped because it wasn’t working, but what I’ve been doing isn’t working either.
I wish there was a guidebook for this. An instruction manual that could tell me how to take myself apart and put everything back together so I’m good as new. I wish I knew how to make sense of my pieces.
My phone rings and I silence it again, frowning at the number. It’s the same one as before, a contact I don’t recognize with a Baltimore area code. Sometimes if my boss, Dan, is working on a car at the shop and forgot where he put the good wrenches, he’ll call me from the old landline that hangs in the back. But he’s only used it twice, so I’ve never bothered to put the number in my phone.
Maya slides back into the kitchen in her socked feet, a pair of shoes dangling from her fingers. She tosses them against the back door and then starts deconstructing her cereal tower, a lime green pen caught between her teeth.
“Do you have newspaper after school today?”
She nods. “Dad is in the middle of an art piece, so Mateo is picking me up. We’re going to go shopping. I need to start working on my Indiana Jones cosplay.”
“That’s nice. Where are you—”
The rest of my question is interrupted by my back door bursting open. It slams against the wall with a crack, Maya’s shoes flying with it. A tall figure stands in silhouette against the porch.
