The Fable of Us

by Nicole Williams

  “I was just about to call you and wish you a Happy Wednesday as well, Han—” He must have been cut off, because Boone stopped talking with his mouth still open. His expression didn’t really change. Whatever the caller on the other end was saying, none of it must have come as a surprise. “Yeah, okay.” Another sigh. “I’ll be right there.”

  Boone didn’t say anything else before slipping the phone back into his pocket.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  “I don’t know about okay, but everything’s normal.” Boone rubbed the bridge of his nose a few times before setting his jaw and jogging down the front steps. “Having to pick up my mom from her favorite dive bar has pretty much been a weekly occurrence since I turned twelve and my feet could reach the pedals and I could see over the steering wheel.” Boone dug my dad’s Chrysler keys out of his pocket and tossed them at me. “I’ve got to go get her before Hank calls the cops and, in addition to picking her up, I have to post her bail. Do you think you can make it back to your dad’s car okay?” Boone was flying around the house, throwing his duffel into the bed of the truck before I’d made it all the way down the steps.

  “I’ll go with you,” I said, no room for negotiation in my voice.

  “You’ve gone on these excursions before. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve pretty much seen them all.” He threw open the driver’s side door and leapt inside the cab. “The only difference is that she’s added another seven years of liver spots to her skin.”

  I broke into a run when I heard him fire up the engine. Before I’d come to a complete stop, I’d thrown open the door and tossed myself inside the cab.

  He gave me a look that would have shriveled a lesser woman into nothing. “Get out.”

  “No.” I buckled the seatbelt around me and sat up straight.

  “Now, Clara.”

  “Stop bossing me around, you big jerk.” I crossed my arms.

  “Stop forcing me to boss you around. Listen, for once.” Boone reached across my lap, trying to shove open my door.

  At the last second, I jabbed my elbow into the lock and lowered it. “Drive.”

  Boone’s mouth snapped open, but nothing spewed out. I had enough experience with the two of us going at each other in the past that I could imagine what words were on the tip of his tongue, but they didn’t come. Somewhere along his seven-years’ journey, he’d picked up a little self-control.

  Something I was still struggling to grasp.

  “Why can’t you ever listen to me? Ever?” he said at last, peeling out of the driveway.

  “Because if I listened to you back then, we never would have gotten anywhere. Because if anyone listened to what you asked them to do, no one would ever get close to you.” I uncrossed my arms and relaxed, despite Boone barreling down the dirt road at close to fifty miles per hour. He’d always been a crazy driver. I’d gotten used to it. “That’s why.”

  “You’re the very reminder of why I don’t let people get close to me, so be careful how you’re lecturing me, got it?” Boone glanced at me. “Now is not the moment to be preaching to me about opening myself up to people because I’ve been burned, by you, and I’m not going to let anyone do that to me again.”

  “Me included?”

  “You especially.”

  I stared out the window at the trees blurring by, and I stayed quiet when the last thing I wanted to do was stay still and silent. Maybe Boone wasn’t the only one who’d picked up some self-restraint. The longer I stared out the window, concentrating on calming down, the more I found it actually worked.

  Boone hadn’t said where we were going, but I didn’t need two guesses to figure it out. Dolly Cavanaugh had been frequenting the same bar since the night Boone and Wren’s daddy left them when Boone was four and Wren was still a baby. I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I’d camped out inside Boone’s quiet cab while parked outside The Bar—yeah, the owner really was that creative—waiting for him to escort or carry his mother out. How they exited depended on the night and how many painful memories Dolly hadn’t been able to keep repressed.

  I mostly remembered Boone carrying her over one shoulder, his head held high but his eyes cast downward. He didn’t want anyone to see his shame, but to anyone who looked closely enough, it was unmistakable in those blue eyes of his.

  “Why are you being so quiet over there?” Boone asked a minute later, his voice back to normal.

  I continued to stare out the window. “I don’t have anything to say.”

  “You might not have anything to say, but God knows you’ve got something to argue.” There was enough doubt creeping into Boone’s voice that I could tell he was as surprised as I was that I’d chosen the more peaceful resolution to our spat.

  “I don’t.” I lifted my shoulders. “You’re right.”

  His head twisted in my direction. “I’m right about what?”

  “You did open up to me, and I did hurt you. You have no reason to want to do that with me or anyone else again.” The trees were becoming less of a blur, which meant we were slowing down. Which meant we were getting closer. I didn’t want to be battling Boone right before we threw Dolly into the mix. Back when we were kids, I knew I could rely on him to intervene if she decided to take a swing at me or wrap her hands around my throat and drain the life from me like I knew she’d been fantasizing about ever since an Abbott started dating her son.

  This time, after everything . . . I couldn’t be quite so sure Boone would be in the same kind of rush to intervene.

  “Are you being serious right now? Or ironic?” he asked, the truck making a sharp turn into the bar’s rudimentary parking lot. “Maybe a punchline on the horizon, or am I just failing to pick up on your sarcasm?”

  “Yes, no, no, and no,” I replied. “I get where you’re coming from, and I respect it.” I made myself look away from the window and focus on him.

  After he parked the truck out front of the bar, he stared inside, but didn’t seem in a hurry to go in.

  “But you did the same to me, Boone. I trusted you. I opened up to you. When there was no one else in the world I felt like I could talk to, there was you. And then everything fell apart, and you wrecked me too.” I kept looking at him, waiting for him to turn his attention my way. “So please stop pretending you were the only casualty in the game of you and me. Because I bled just like you did. I died a little that day too.”

  Boone’s fingers clenched the steering wheel, twisting up and down on it. “I guess we weren’t as alone as we thought.”

  I followed his gaze toward the bar. I’d be stalling too if I had to go into that packed place and drag my mom out kicking and screaming. “I guess not.”

  Giving a nod, Boone sucked in a deep breath then threw the door open. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  I’d heard that phrase so many times from him, it had become branded into my memory. “I’ll go with you. To help.”

  Boone gave me a look as he crawled out. “Thanks for the offer, but your presence while trying to haul my mom out of her favorite bar isn’t going to help.”

  “How do you know? I haven’t seen Dolly in years, and from the sounds of it, she’s probably five drinks past facial recognition.”

  Boone cracked his neck, holding his arms against the top of the truck and bracing himself. “My mom wasn’t exactly fond of you when we were together.”

  “Not exactly fond of me?” I twisted in my seat and peaked an eyebrow. “Boone, she would have flipped the switch on the electric chair if I was strapped into it. With a smile on her face.”

  His eyes reached me. “Yeah, well, along with that smile, now she’d dance a jig and throw an after party for the entire state. You should stay here.” He shoved away from the truck and lifted an outstretched palm in my direction. “She doesn’t know you’re back. She doesn’t know we’re together. ‘Together,’” he clarified, making air quotes. “With her so drunk Hank’s threatening to call the cops, I don’t want to add you into the
mix when I go in there. That’s like masterminding some perfect storm.”

  I reached for the door handle. “You used to be able to tell me what to do and I’d listen. Not so much anymore.”

  His hands settled onto his hips as he angled away from me. “I don’t want you to see this, Clara. I don’t want you to have to see this ever again. It’s humiliating. For my mom. For me. Please,” he said, still facing the bar more than he was facing me, “please stay.”

  My hand stayed on the handle, wanting to push it open. “Are you asking or telling?”

  He looked at me over his shoulder. “Asking. Always asking.”

  My hand fell from the handle to wave him on. “Go get her. I’ll stay here. Wishing I’d packed my full body armor, which I would have, had I known I’d be coming face-to-face with Dolly tonight.”

  Boone’s chuckle was barely detectable, but I didn’t miss it. “Don’t worry. I’ve got your back. Anyone takes a swing at you, my mom included, they’ll have to get through me first.”

  I lifted my fist and circled it a few times. “Who says I haven’t been taking kickboxing, jiu jitsu, and tae kwon do classes the past seven years?”

  “Please, with those skinny little arms?” Boone shook his head. “No way.”

  “Little arms?” I lifted my arm and inspected it. “You might be the only person in Charleston who would call these arms little. My mom will have you chained to a stake and burned for heresy if you repeat that in her presence.”

  Boone rolled his eyes. “Just because your mom says your arms aren’t little doesn’t mean they’re not. And just because your family tries to make you feel little doesn’t mean you are. People will always want to tell us what we are and who we are, but no one can tell you who you are. That’s your job.”

  I watched him for a moment. I stared at him for a few more moments. “When did you go and get so smart, Boone Cavanaugh?”

  He held out his arms, backing away. “When I stopped being a dumbass.”

  Giving a wave, he lunged up to the bar’s entrance and paused just outside the door, looking like he was working up his courage, before shoving inside.

  He’d left the truck running, and after a minute, I thought about turning it off. That was when he came out, Dolly hanging over his shoulder and looking so limp I guessed she was passed out. That solved the problem of facial recognition and explaining why I was here with Boone.

  As Boone moved through the door, a chorus of cheers and shouts followed him. Clapping exploded through the bar. They were applauding. The patrons of the bar were glad she was gone. Or they were goading him. Or they were being their typical brand of prick and sticking it to someone else instead of focusing on their own pathetic little lives.

  Boone left the bar the same way I remembered him leaving it when we’d been teenagers: head high, eyes cast down. My eyes burned as I watched the man before me shift into the boy I’d once loved. He’d changed some, I’d changed some, but some things never would.

  Dragging Dolly out of a bar late on a weeknight never would change. The way doing so made him feel probably never would either. The way I felt watching him do it apparently never would as well. It was a strange mix, a potent blend of sympathy and intense pride as I watched him carry his mom, time and time again, out of the place she’d chosen to work out her issues. Some chose therapy, others elected for repression—Dolly Cavanaugh turned to a cheap bottle of whiskey.

  When he was halfway to the truck, I shoved open the door and held it open while he came around the front bumper. Before, I’d just sat sandwiched between Boone and Dolly on the bench, sometimes with her drooling into my hair and sometimes with her trying to rip out my hair. This time though, I didn’t want to be pressed so tightly against Boone. Not with the swirl of confusion I felt around him when it came to certain feelings trying to resurrect themselves.

  I was just stepping aside, about to climb into the bed of the truck, when the very passed out Dolly came to life. No kidding, it was like she’d just been struck by lightning and zapped to life Frankenstein-style. Her head jerked up, her eyes latched onto me, and if I’d seen hate before, it was redefined right in that moment.

  “What in the hell is that uppity hussy bitch doing standing in front of me, Boone?” Dolly shouted, her words more slurred than said. “I might be buzzed, but I’m not so buzzed to be imagining things.”

  “You were buzzed ten shots ago, Ma,” Boone said, keeping his tone even and calm. I remembered that too, his steadfastness in the face of a storm. The louder she got, the calmer he became. “Right now you’re drunk enough I’m worried if we don’t get some fluid down you other than the eighty-proof kind, you’re going to get alcohol poisoning.”

  Without him asking or even glancing my way, I snagged one of the plastic bottles of water from the case he had stuffed in the bed. When I twisted the bottle open and held it out for Dolly, she took it.

  And she threw it in my face. “You better not try to give me anything again with that judgmental look on your face. I didn’t tolerate it when you were a bratty teenager, and I sure ain’t going to tolerate it now with you being a bitch of a woman.”

  I wiped my face, sweeping the water away.

  “Shit, Ma, you’re just begging for the cops to come haul you away tonight aren’t you?” Boone backed up from me a few strides before lowering her from his shoulder. “I told you the last time I bailed you out that was the very last time. You go in again, and you’re going to be sitting in that cell for a while.”

  Dolly patted Boone’s cheek, staggering enough he had to reach out to keep her from falling. “You’ve been saying that for years, sweetheart. You’re too good of a boy to leave your mama to rot. I raised you right. Unlike the other folks in this town I’m not going to name.”

  “Can I do anything to help?” I asked Boone, Dolly’s back to me as she continued to sway in place.

  “You can turn around, put one foot in front of the other, and don’t stop until you fall off into the face of the ocean,” Dolly snapped at me, looking ready to spit in my face. “That’s what you can do to help this family out.”

  I took another step back. “Hi, Dolly. How’s it going? Nice to see you too.”

  I waved at her before stepping up onto the back wheel of the truck and climbing into the bed. I didn’t want to be so close to Boone, but I didn’t want to be anywhere close to Dolly. With the way she was wound up, she might turn her murderous dreams into reality.

  “You can just fuck off now, Clara Belle Abbott, and fuck off tomorrow, and fuck yourself off into eternity. That’s how it’s going.”

  “Ma, enough,” Boone said, checking to make sure I was in the bed before clamping his hands on Dolly’s shoulders and guiding her toward the cab. Apparently he was of a like mind when it came to keeping us as far apart as possible.

  “Don’t expect me to pretend to be civil, Boone. Don’t ask me to play nice with the girl who took a sledgehammer to your heart.” Dolly stumbled forward, guided by Boone’s steady grip. “You’re a good boy, the best kind out there, and you didn’t deserve to be treated like trash. Not with everything you did for her.”

  I should have bit my tongue. I should have tried to bite it harder. “And treating him like trash doesn’t include having him haul your ass out of the same dive bar every week while the crowd jeers at you both like you’re a couple of clowns?”

  Boone’s face pulled into a wince, but he was anticipating Dolly hurling herself my direction. His hold tightened on her shoulders right as she threw herself toward the bed, looking ready to leap inside headfirst if that was the fastest way to get to me.

  “Goddammit, enough!” Boone shouted, pulling her back and twisting her body around until she was facing the cab again. “Get in now, or I’m leaving and the cops can deal with you.”

  Dolly looked at her son, her eyes unable to focus on him thanks to the alcohol, and she patted his cheek gently. Almost affectionately, though Dolly was about as affectionate as a rabid wolverine. Over her shou
lder, she said to me, “You better not compare what you did to my son to what I’ve done to him. We all have our faults, but at the end of the day, I love my son.”

  My fingers curled into my palms. Dolly Cavanaugh had always had a way of getting under my skin. Not just because she was the mother of my once-upon-a-time boyfriend, but because she used love as an excuse for everything she did.

  “I loved him too!” I shouted as Boone lifted her into the cab. “But at least I didn’t keep making the same mistake over and over, excusing it with love. The same mistake every other happy hour.”

  From the looks of it, Dolly put up a bit of a fight to get out of the truck to come at me, but her strength was waning. She’d likely gotten a punch of adrenaline after seeing me, and now that that had tapered off, she was probably only a few seconds away from passing out into a whiskey coma.

  Boone shot me a look as he held his mom, keeping her where she was. His look was more pleading than stern, one that said he already had to deal with one person he could barely handle and he really didn’t need another one. I sealed my lips for him, then I turned around and threw my back against the back window of the truck. It was a little easier to ignore Dolly when I wasn’t looking at her and she was more snoring than spewing.

  Dolly Cavanaugh had been a five-foot-two tornado with fiery red hair for most of her life. From the sounds of it, she’d come into life making a ruckus, and I knew from experience she was likely to leave the world the same way. A person couldn’t miss her walking around town. She might have been petite, but she had a way of holding herself that made her seem half a foot taller. Plus she was top heavy and all legs, and she knew how to dress to further showcase her genetic advantages. She’d never been shy with her affections for men, just as they’d never been shy in return.

  That was probably why there’d been a long-standing rumor circling the community that Boone and Wren came from different dads. To look at them, a person could easily be convinced, but the rumors had never gotten to Boone. Wren was his sister, and no one could try to tell him otherwise.