Oh. Of all the things I expected her to say, somehow that wasn't one of them. Which is stupid. Of course she's married. She's twenty-five. Beautiful. Kind. Funny. Stable. The surprise isn't that she got married. The surprise is that some part of me apparently never imagined it.
She must see something on my face because she immediately starts talking again. "Yeah. I've been married five years."
Five years. Holy Cobain. Five years.
"I'm married to Chris Thompson."
That takes a second to land. "Chris Thompson?"
She nods. "The lawyer's son."
Yeah. I remember his family. Everybody remembered his family.
His younger brother Carson was in our class. Duchebag of a kid. Out of our graduating class of thirty-two kids, the Thompsons were probably the wealthiest people in town. The kind of family that had vacations and college funds and matching Christmas cards. The kind of family that didn't live in trailers. The kind of family that definitely didn't spend half their childhood eating ramen with the Rhodes brothers.
I blink. Once. Twice.
Apparently not enough because Lauren sighs. "Yeah. I know." She points at me. "That's the exact face everybody makes."
"I didn't—"
"You did." A reluctant smile tugs at her mouth. "You're wondering how that happened."
Honestly? Yeah. A little. A lot. The girl who used to steal cigarettes from my jacket and the golden boy lawyer's son wasn't exactly a combination I'd ever predicted.
"It's a long story," she says quickly. Something shutters behind her eyes. "Complicated." The contractor bag crackles loudly as she ties a knot in it. "I don't really want to explain it right this second." She looks away. "We can talk about it eventually." A pause. "Or never." Another pause. "It doesn't really matter."
She's rambling. Lauren only rambles when she's nervous. I know that. I hate that I still know that. My mouth moves before my brain catches up. "Are you happy?"
The question hangs there. The second it leaves my mouth I want to grab it and shove it back in. Too personal. Too soon. Too much.
Lauren freezes, just for a second. "Yes."
Too fast. Way too fast. But she said yes. I don't have any right to challenge it. So I nod. "Oh." I force a smile. "I'm glad."
For some reason, saying those two words feels a little like swallowing glass. The silence stretches.
Three seconds. Five. Maybe twenty. I can practically see her debating whether to say something. She shoves another handful of newspapers into the trash bag. "So the real reason we got married isn't some crazy love story."
I blink. "What?"
She immediately winces. "Okay. That came out wrong."
"Yeah. Maybe a little."
She laughs nervously. "I got pregnant."
Oh. Well. That certainly explains some things.
"We got married after Chris graduated with his bachelor's. He was already planning on law school. We knew he was going." She shrugs. "He wanted to do the right thing."
I stare at her. None of that sounds like the Lauren I remember. The Lauren I knew was going to marry her soulmate. The love of her life. Somebody she couldn't imagine living without. Not because he wanted to do the right thing.
I clear my throat. The dust suddenly feels very thick. "So you have a kid?"
She smiles. The first completely genuine smile since we started talking about Chris. "Two."
That surprises me. "Two?"
She nods. "My son, Topher, is four and a half."
"Topher?" I smirk. "You mean like gopher?"
She groans. "That's a terrible name."
"It really is."
"No. Topher as in Christopher David Thompson the Third."
I immediately start laughing. "Oh no."
"Exactly."
"I would've rebelled too."
"I did rebel." She's laughing now. "I refused to call him Christopher or Chris or Junior or The Third. Those are all terrible."
"So you landed on Topher."
"We landed on Topher."
"Still terrible."
"You're the worst." I grin. She points at me. "Most of the time I call him Tofu anyway."
That gets me. "Tofu?"
"He answers to it now."
"Oh, you've ruined that kid."
"He was doomed from the start." The smile softens. "He loves sports. He started t-ball this year and he's actually pretty good." She pauses. Just briefly. "He plays with..." Something flashes across her face. Gone before I can identify it. "...his best friend." I make a note of it anyway. Then let it go. Not my place. "I also have a daughter."
The smile comes back immediately. A bigger one. Uh oh. "Her name is Madeline." I nod. "Maddie."
"Maddie."
Then she points at herself. "I call her Maddie Pie."
I laugh. Of course she does.
"She loves princesses. Every Disney movie ever made. Tiaras. Bows. Dresses." Lauren keeps talking. And talking. And talking. But now I don't mind. Because this isn't nervous rambling. This is a mom talking about her kids. Every sentence adds another tiny detail. A favorite movie. A funny habit. A tantrum over mismatched shoes. A collection of plastic jewelry. Slowly it hits me. Not that Lauren has children. I already knew that. It's how much she loves them. Damn, she loves being their mom.
By the time Lauren finishes talking about her kids, we've migrated into the kitchen. She's cleaning out the refrigerator. I've been handed a pair of giant yellow rubber gloves and the job of dealing with whatever ecosystem has formed in the sink. Neither of us is winning. I dump another handful of black sludge-covered dishes into a trash bag and immediately regret every life decision that led me here. "Oh, that's alive."
"It is not alive."
"It moved."
"It did not move."
"It absolutely moved."
Lauren glances over from the refrigerator just in time to see something slide off a plate. We both gag. Then start laughing. Then gag again. The cycle repeats for a solid minute. Eventually we calm down enough to function like adults. Mostly.
Lauren ties off another contractor bag and looks over at me. "So how long are you going to be in town?"
I shrug. "I don't know." It's the honest answer. "Until I get everything settled, I guess. However long that takes."
She nods. "Yeah." Something in her expression softens. "Dealing with all this is a lot." She gestures around the trailer. The nicotine. The mold. The garbage. The memories. All of it. "I've got quite a bit of free time right now. I can help you get everything cleaned up and ready to sell if you want." The offer comes so naturally it's almost alarming. Like helping me clean out my dead mother's trailer is a perfectly reasonable way to spend a Monday.
"Where are you staying?" Her eyes drift around the room. I can practically hear the question she doesn't ask. Please tell me you're not sleeping here.
"I'm not staying here." The relief on her face is immediate. "I'm driving in from the city."
"Thirty minutes every day?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
I gesture vaguely. "Because I'd rather stay in an actual hotel than the local motel."
She starts grinning. "You mean the motel where the doors open directly outside?"
"Exactly that motel."
"Oh, very fancy." The grin gets wider. "Can't have the giant superstar rock musician staying in a roadside motel in the middle of nowhere Kansas."
I point at her with a mold-covered spatula. "First of all, rude."
She laughs. "Second of all, it's basically the Ritz-Carlton of south-central Kansas."
"Oh, is it?"
"It has an indoor pool."
She puts a hand dramatically over her heart. "My apologies."
"I know."
"I'm clearly speaking to royalty."
"Finally somebody gets it."
She's still laughing. I'm still laughing. Which is weird. I haven't laughed this much in...
Honestly, I don't know. Years.
She tosses another bag toward the door. Then casually says, "Would you like to come over for dinner tonight?"
I blink. "What?"
"I made pot roast in the Crock-Pot." She shrugs. "It's not a Michelin-star restaurant, but it is food." A pause. "And if I say so myself, I make pretty good food."
I say yes before she's even finished the sentence. No hesitation.
Her smile widens. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." I don't tell her I haven't had a real home-cooked meal in months. Maybe longer. Not counting holidays. Not counting when Mama Monroe practically threatened to hunt me down if I skipped Mother's Day dinner. Nobody misses Mama Roe's food and lives to tell the story.
Lauren laughs softly. "Okay then."
Just like that, somehow, I have dinner plans. With Lauren. Like that's a normal thing that happens. Lauren wanders over to the radio and turns it on. One of the two stations in Kansas that isn't country or Christian. The song currently playing ends. Then I hear the opening notes.
Oh no. No. Absolutely not. The universe cannot possibly hate me this much. Before I can get across the kitchen to change it, my own voice fills the trailer.
Sweetness on My Tongue.
Of course. The stupid summer hit. The song the label insisted would be huge. The song currently playing on every radio station in America twenty-four hours a day. The song everybody thinks is about sex. Which, to be fair, isn't entirely wrong. But it also isn't entirely right. The intro starts. Safe. Totally safe.
Then Lauren starts singing along. Word for word. My entire body freezes. Holy Hendrix. She knows it. Not just the chorus. Every word. The first verse starts and I immediately want the floor to open up and swallow me whole. Lauren keeps cleaning while she sings. Completely unaware that I am experiencing a medical emergency. The worst part? She sounds good. Really good. I'm hearing the lyrics through her voice instead of mine. That should be illegal. By the time she gets to the line about cherries, I can physically feel myself dying.
Because the beginning of the song is absolutely about her. Not obviously. Not enough for normal people. But enough for me. Enough that I know. Enough that if she ever looked closely she'd know too. I grab a bottle of water from the refrigerator and twist the cap off, like a man trying to survive.
The chorus starts. Lauren is still singing. Still smiling. Still cleaning.
"Holy Cobain," I mutter.
"What?"
"Nothing." I dump half the bottle down my throat. The song keeps going. Of course it does. Four and a half minutes of hell. This is every terrible decision I've ever made as a songwriter. The lyrics sounded clever in the studio. They sounded clever when the label was throwing money at them. They sounded clever when thousands of people screamed them back at me every night. They do not sound clever coming out of Lauren Carter's mouth while she cleans my dead mother's refrigerator. They sound like evidence. I pour the rest of the water over my face.
Lauren finally turns around. "Are you okay?"
"No."
She laughs. "That bad?"
I point at the radio. "Do you know how embarrassing it is listening to your own music?"
"You wrote it."
"Exactly."
She shakes her head. "I like this one."
Of course she does. I think I would rather fight another swarm of roaches. At least the roaches weren't singing my lyrics back to me. Lauren still can't dance. Not even a little. Every song that comes on the radio gets the exact same choreography. Her hands go up. Her hands go down. Her hands wiggle around like they're attempting to communicate with aliens. The rest of her body remains completely uninvolved. It's less dancing and more her hands having their own separate emotional experience. "You know," I say as she hand-shimmies across the kitchen to some pop song, "for somebody who loves music this much, you are shockingly bad at dancing."
She gasps. Offended. "I'll have you know I am an excellent dancer."
"No."
"I am."
"Lauren."
"I am."
I point at her hands. "Your body isn't even participating."
She laughs so hard she nearly drops a bottle of cleaner. Hours pass like that. Cleaning. Talking. Music. More contractor bags. By the time we're done, most of the kitchen is visible again. Which honestly feels like a miracle. We carry the last bags outside. The afternoon sun is lower now. Twenty-something contractor bags line the driveway. An entire childhood reduced to garbage bags. Lauren stands beside me while I smoke. She doesn't say anything. Just watches the smoke drift away. The silence isn't awkward. It probably should be. But somehow it isn't. Finally she glances at her watch.
"Well." The word hangs there. "I should head home."
I nod. "Probably."
She brushes dust off her jeans. Then wrinkles her nose. "I need a shower."
"You definitely need a shower."
"Rude."
"Accurate."
She laughs. Then starts gathering her supplies. "Dinner's at six."
She rattles off her address. It's about ten minutes away. Not in our town. The next town over. The nicer one. And by nicer, I mean ten thousand people instead of four thousand. Kansas has a very flexible definition of city. I repeat the address back to her.
She nods. "See you tonight."
Then she waves. Gets into a minivan.
A minivan. Lauren Carter drove away from me in a minivan. Somehow that's the thing my brain gets stuck on. Not the husband. Not the kids. Not the dinner invitation. The minivan. I watch it disappear around the corner. Then I look down at the cigarette in my hand. It's burned all the way to the filter. I don't remember smoking it.
"Holy Cobain."
The driveway suddenly feels a lot emptier than it did this morning.