Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(89)

“You do.”

“Really? Really? No. Sorry. That’s like accusing anyone who wants to write a book or record an album of just wanting to be famous. Maybe they want to connect with people. So unfair.”

I roll my eyes.

It pisses her off. I can hear it. “The only reason we’re even friends in the first place is because of my dream. It brought us together. You’ve known what I wanted in life for as long as you’ve known me.”

“What about me, huh?” I ask. “Do I get dreams too?”

“Of course. And I support you in them however I can.”

“Well, here’s my dream: to keep working at and improving our show together, until it was something we both did for a living. Like we talked about.”

“I tried to make that happen. I did. I tried to support you.”

“You tried a little bit.”

“DeeDee, I genuinely understand how bummed out you are, and you can’t believe how bummed out I am.”

“Oh, really? You understand growing up without a dad and all the rollicking fun that entails and having one good thing and then having that thing snatched away? That’s something you genuinely understand?”

“DeeDee.”

“No. Do you? Do you understand that? Is that your life?”

“No,” Josie says softly after a long pause.

“You’re so bummed out to be leaving me behind so you can go on to bigger and better things?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever.”

“DeeDee, you came up with the idea for the show. How we would do it. You made all the calls to arrange for the studio and get Arliss on board. You handled the merch sales. You had all the movies. Replace me. It’s your show.”

“It’s our show.”

“The show can exist without me. It could never exist without you.”

“That’s flattering, but…”

“I could come home on breaks, and we could record a bunch of episodes in a row,” Josie says.

“No. First off, Arliss won’t go for that. Second, we need to be producing new material more regularly than that or we’ll lose our slot and maybe our syndicates.” And third, this is what I look forward to every week. It’s all I look forward to.

“Get another person to help you or do the show by yourself like SkeleTonya used to. Maybe I can be a guest.”

“No way. If you leave, you’re gone. You’re not being a guest on my show. I’m sick of people who half-ass being in my life.” Saying this is anguish, like running myself through with a fireplace poker. My brain is such a maelstrom of hurt, anger, sadness, exhaustion, and something I might call disappointment (but a million times deeper), my mouth is sorta doing its own thing.

“Okay, then,” Josie murmurs, barely audible.

I feel like a sack of wet skunk feces. Maybe this is why everyone leaves me.

I would give anything to be too good for people to discard. Why am I not better? Why am I never enough? If I can’t keep you, Josie, then who? In fact, maybe it would save me a lot of heartache in the future to not give anyone the chance to abandon me in the first place. That’ll be my new plan. I’m done loving people.

I watch Josie out of the corner of my eye as she gazes at the road. She quickly wipes away a tear. And another with the other hand. And another. She finally gives up and lets them flow. One hangs on her jawline for an improbably long time, catching the radiant Florida sunshine like a prism.

I guess everything dies eventually, even the sun someday. My life feels like a star collapsing into itself. And it was never that bright to begin with.





It randomly occurs to me while I’m crying how grateful I am that tears don’t smell like pee, and I almost want to tell Delia, because I know she’d laugh under normal circumstances, but she has her eyes closed and is leaning her head on the window, away from me. She doesn’t even appear to be sleeping; she seems to have just shut down, circuits overwhelmed. Honestly, if I were in her position, I would.

I feel something at my left hip. Lawson’s snuck his hand between the door and my seat. I reach down and hold the ends of his fingers with the ends of mine. It brings me a little comfort. Right until I remember that I’m leaving him—this—behind too, and I continue weeping.

I keep trying to stop, but the sheer weight of exhaustion, guilt, and grief for the life I’m outgrowing keeps squeezing tears out of me like stepping on a sponge.

I put on the Dearly mix that Jesmyn made us. She said she got super into him after her boyfriend died, and I can see why. He sings like a fellow traveler in sorrow. The hurt and longing in his voice are all I can stand to listen to for the next few hours. Lawson’s hand checks in on me periodically.

We stop a lot less on the way home than we did on the way there. We’re not driving in the middle of the night, so we don’t need to wake ourselves up as much. Plus, we all want to be done.

We pull in at a little gas station outside Ringgold, Georgia. One of those Mom’s Country Cookin’/tchotchke-shop places. While I’m inside buying a Coke, I see something I need. I shouldn’t be spending even a penny more than absolutely necessary after the way Divine shook me down, but this is absolutely necessary. I pay for it and take it outside, wrapped in white butcher paper for safekeeping.