Page 219 of Filthy Beautiful
This time, though, I wasn’t backing off so easily.
“So she’s not old enough to make her own choices? If someone told you who you could date when you were eighteen, what would you have said?”
“It’s different. I’m not her.”
“What, because she’s female? That makes it different?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“You can’t tell me not to see her.”
He turned back to me, looked me in the eye. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I did.”
“Yeah. I heard you. And like I said, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this sooner.”
He shook his head a little. “You just couldn’t leave her alone,” he said flatly. “Even when I told you to.”
“Maybe you had no right to say that shit in the first place,” I said. Then I shut my mouth. Irritation broiled in my gut. Frustration. But I tamped it all down.
As usual.
He could see it, maybe.
The index finger on his left hand, on the arm of his chair, started tapping. Then they all started tapping… like he was tapping out some crazy-fast rhythm in his head that only he could hear. Cary played piano, he played guitar. It was one of his tells, when he was upset; that fucking finger tapping.
Christ, I hadn’t seen him do that in a long time.
Was there a song in his head right now? Was he tuning me out?
Was he resisting the urge to knock my head in?
I kinda wished he would hit me. Or start yelling at me. For once, just fucking say whatever it was he was thinking.
But he just stared at me.
“Look,” I said, trying another approach. Maybe if I tried to come at this with more sympathy… “I know things have been hard since Gabe—”
And just like that, I’d lost him. He got up and walked right out of the room.
I followed him up the hall.
“Cary. Come on. Hear me out on this.” He walked right out the studio door, and I followed. “I get that it’s been hard. It’s been hard for all of us. But you don’t have to do this anymore.” I followed him out into the foyer. “It wasn’t your fault, okay?” I followed him right up the stairs, taking them two-by-two, just like he did. “It was a fucking crazy fan…”
He stalked up the hall and shut his bedroom door in my face.
“Cary.” I tried the door but it was locked, of course. “It was a freak accident.” I knocked on the door. “It was sleeping pills, for fuck’s sake!” I banged on the door. “It wasn’t your fault!”
Total silence.
I knocked on the door again. “Cary! Open up.”
He didn’t open up.
So, fuck it.
Looked like I was doing this through a door.
Because one way or another, it had to be done.
