In Your Dreams (Falling #4) (13 page)

“I said, I guess,” I say, now overcompensating as if he’s deaf. I copy his posture and look right at him.

My father grunts out a small laugh, his tongue pushed in his cheek.

My mom and two youngest sisters all stand and begin clearing the table, asking if anyone would like coffee. My father holds up a finger indicating he’d like a cup. We continue to stare at each other.

“So what do you do, Murphy?” he asks, his eyes still on me. The smirk is there. He’s treating this dinner as a process problem, weeding out the error. I should save him the trouble and just leave.

“I teach music,” she says.

“And how does that pay?” There’s almost a low grumble of a laugh in his chest. It’s barely audible, but I hear it. It’s that satisfying checkmate laugh he does so well.

Murphy stumbles in her answer, not really sure how to reply, so my father saves her. “Not well then, hmmm?”

“No, but it’s not what I ultimately want to do, so it’s okay,” she says. I squeeze her hand tighter for a second to let her know I’m proud.

“If that’s not your goal, then why are you wasting time on it?” he asks.

I open my mouth, ready to end his interrogation, but Murphy straightens up next to me and begins before I have a chance to speak.

“That’s a really good point, actually,” she says, glancing at me and wiggling our locked hands in reassurance along with her smile. “Your son has kind of helped me with that, you know.”

“Really?” my father chuckles.

“Yes,” she says without missing a beat. “I want to make a record, and Casey made my demo for me.”

I hear the short breaths she’s taking, and I feel badly, because I know my father isn’t going to be impressed. I run my hand over my face and prepare myself for the laughable response that comes the moment my fingers touch my skin.

“A…demo. That’s…what…like, a recording of your song?” He’s being patronizing.

Murphy nods and smiles. She’s proud of it, and I love that she is. He’s going to pick it apart now. I wish he’d listen. I could never get him to do that, though.

“And this demo, it means that you’ll have a job then? Do you get paid for it?” Here it comes.

“Well, no…” she says, her brow bunched and a small giggle mixed with her words. She thinks he’s not understanding. He is, though. He is making a point, working through the process, flagging the faults.

“So you made a recording with my son, and that’s your life goal. You’ve peaked, then, huh? And be damned paying bills,” he says, leaning back and letting out one huge belly laugh. “Boy, Casey. I don’t know how, but somehow you’ve found someone who is more lost than you.”

My mother walks in just as I’m about to stand and flip my father off. I grip the edge of the table instead and look over at my oldest two sisters, getting an ounce of satisfaction in the expression on their faces. For once, at least, they hear the judgment I get.

“Two months,” my father says, and everyone freezes. My mom falls to her seat and turns ghost white.

“I’m sorry,” I shake my head, looking from person to person, until it hits me. I look my father in the eyes, his hand rubbing along the stubble on his chin.

“First, my weight will drop. Then, my motor skills will fail. Soon after that will come the cognitive things, and the basic biological functions until there’s nothing left but a heartbeat waiting to fade into the sunset,” he says, floating his fist out over the table then opening it as if it’s turned to dust. His mouth is a hard line and his eyes stay on mine. “You can have all the time in the world. Or…”

He stands and pushes his chair in, his hands resting on the wood back.

“Or you could have two months,” he says. “If that happened to you, would you be at peace? Or would you think about your friend here, about how the only thing you’ve left behind to take care of her is some…some…recording on a computer that nobody really gives a damn about? Can she live off that? What if she was your wife? What if you had a child?”

“I give a damn about it,” Murphy says, her voice surprising us all. My father’s eyebrows lift as he turns his attention to her.

“Well, isn’t that wonderful,” he says.

The silence in the room is more than suffocating, it’s toxic. My mom’s shoulders quiver while her muscles try not to give in to the cry fighting to escape her chest. All the money saved in the world isn’t going to soothe this woman when he’s gone. What’s going to make her feel better is the goddamned painting she has to keep hidden in the attic. And that legacy dies there. The other legacy—the one of Coffield engineers—isn’t anything anyone cares about. It’s all just files and shredded pay stubs.

“Don’t you ever miss it?” I ask as I look at the top of my mother’s head. She works to steady her breathing before looking up at me, her eyes nervous. I chew at my bottom lip while nobody answers. The man the question was for won’t—he’s spent a lifetime refusing to answer that question of himself. No way will he bend from my asking of it. But I’m angry, and I want to storm out of here, never to come back, to make a scene.

Two months, though. And then that’s all that would be left—the last taste on the tongue.

I stand, and Murphy turns to sit sideways, her legs are facing me.

“Have you ever been to the museum at McConnell? Anyone?” I ask, looking around the room. Two of my sisters studied there, and the campus is close to our home. Nobody nods
yes
, though. But my mother knows where I’m going with this. She takes a sharp breath, probably an attempt to stop me. “It’s a shame. You really should make time to go there. The art…” I bend my head toward my father, my eyes narrowing. “It’s an impressive collection. The works span maybe a hundred years.”

“Wasted resources,” my father says, his gaze lowered and his jaw hard.

I lock onto his face and search his eyes, but nothing behind the pale green looking back at me says he believes otherwise. Whatever passion ever existed inside Luke Coffield was struck down and murdered by his father. I’ll be damned if that legacy continues with me.

I nod and bow my head, my eyes drifting to Murphy’s as she looks up at me with pity. I don’t want her to feel sorry. I’m not. And I’m not angry, either. I don’t feel anything anymore. I’m letting go of it—right here, right now. Because there was never any convincing that could be done. This wasn’t an argument to win. It was a diverging of paths—the place in the family tree where a branch simply falls to the ground.

I’m the black sheep. When I walk into the McConnell museum, I see stories in the strokes and colors hung on the walls. And when I plug into my music and manipulate voices and words and rhythm to make it tell a story, I feel alive.

Two months.

Sixty-seven years.

What’s the difference?

“We have to go,” I say, my response surprising everyone but my father. Murphy stands quickly next to me, her hand curling around my arm. I lead her around the table, and we stop in front of my mother. I bend down so she doesn’t have to stand, my hand cupping her face as I kiss her opposite cheek. “Thank you for having us. I’m okay, and I love you,” I say in her ear. She nods, a short jerky motion.

I embrace each of my sisters as well, but I don’t give them the explanation. That’s for a later time, and I can tell there’s an understanding among us by the way they don’t berate me. My sisters have never been quick to take my side, and they may not now. But they are okay with my quiet and respectful exit.

For once, I’m being a little
less Casey.

I stop finally at my father, his hands now in his pockets. I take him in, knowing that this will probably be my last memory. I reach out my hand and hold my breath, not sure if he’ll reciprocate or not. After a few seconds, he brings his right hand to mine, and I grasp it, covering the other side and embracing him with two hands. We stopped hugging years ago, he and I.

There are a dozen things I could say now, all thoughts that I’ve whispered in the car during rides home from their house, things I’ve muttered to myself after phone calls from him or after long talks at this very table about my future. None of it means anything, though. And none of it will magically snap him back to the man he was at eighteen. Enlightenment to the things that really matter when facing death is all relative, and to Luke Coffield, those things are the same as they always were. No grand speech from his son wearing a borrowed suit is going to change that.

So I say nothing.

I look into his eyes and do my best to make him let go too. I won’t bend. He won’t bend. And it’s fine. This parting is of no fault of our own. It’s cancer’s fault. It’s my long-dead grandfather’s fault. It’s brain chemistry and abuse swept under a rug.

I suck in a full breath, and my father does the same.

Okay.

“Ready?” I ask, releasing my hold of his hand and turning to Murphy, whose eyes are glossy and red. She nods lightly, and I hold out my hand for her to take.

I pass through the kitchen and front room to the main door, knowing nobody will follow. I close the heavy door behind us and walk with Murphy to my car parked in front of the neighbor’s house, and then I unlock her door and pull it open. She steps in front of me to get inside, her eyes meeting mine by chance, the gray like lightning, like a sign that for once, I did something right, and my heart surges.

My hands act fast, catching her face in my palms as her body turns and I step in so I’m flush against her. My hands slide quickly into her hair, her lip quivers as I stare at it, and my gaze flits to her eyes and back to her waiting mouth. The soft pink like fruit. I hunger to taste it, and my tongue passes over my lips as my eyes roam over her delicate features, so fragile in my hands. My eyelids grow heavy, and my chest seizes—breathing becoming harder by the millisecond, and finally I close my eyes and rest my forehead on hers, our lips almost touching, but not quite.

Not like this.

I feel the gentle tickle of her lashes against my cheek as I roll my head to the side and search for my will not to ruin this, too.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I…”

I release her and back away a full step, no longer able to look at her, but unable not to hear the rapid breath escaping her lips.

“I’ll take you to your car,” I say, turning away and forcing one foot in front of the other.

She falls into her seat and closes her own door, and we drive home in silence. When she leaves, I finish the whiskey and beg Eli to pick up more. Like a good friend, he does.

I
’m not a prude
. I’ve been kissed before. I’ve had sex. I’ve had boyfriends. What I’ve never been is
almost
kissed. I think maybe I like the almost kiss even better. Or maybe I hate the almost kiss. It’s ruined my week, because I can’t stop thinking about it. I even pulled out my notebook at one point and started to write a song about it. I haven’t written anything new in months, and suddenly I’m inspired.

I’d call the song
I hate you, Casey Coffield.

But I don’t hate him.

I don’t hate him at all.

It’s Friday night, and my parents just called out for the pizza. This marks the sixteenth straight Friday night I’ve spent at home with my parents and Lane. I enjoy spending time with my family. But I’m also twenty-two, and this is supposed to be the time of my life. Instead, I’ve seen every classic hit from the eighties that my father can find on Netflix.

“Murph? We have a request in for
Ghostbusters,
” my dad says, scratching at his graying beard and looking at me over the top of wire-rimmed glasses. One day, my father is going to look just like Santa. He’s giving me a signal, because we just watched that movie last Friday…and the Friday before that. It’s quickly become Lane’s favorite, and because of that, we will probably be watching it a lot. My brother takes disappointment all right, but it makes all of us so happy to make him happy; we usually cave to the easy things, because why not?

“What’s one more,” I say, raising my shoulders in sync with my eyebrows.

“What’s one more, she says,” my dad smiles, raising his finger in the air and leaning in to kiss my cheek. “You’re a good sport.”

My smile grows a minute later when I hear my dad tell my brother that his movie choice wins and that we’re watching his favorite again. What we watch doesn’t really matter to me, because if this week is any indication, I’m going to be spending the next two hours dissecting every frame of my
almost
kiss along with the five days of complete silence from Casey that followed.

I suppose I didn’t call him either, but I kinda feel like that ball’s in his court now. The last thing he said when he dropped me off after the most-uncomfortable-family-dinner ever was that he’d call me as soon as he got time with John Maxwell. My inner voice was screaming “or when I’m ready to talk about whatever the hell that…
almost
was.” My outer voice simply said, “okay.”

He didn’t even wait for me to walk all the way up to my car. My foot hit the pavement, and his right one hit the gas.

“Murphy, I get the recliner!” Lane yells.

“I call beanbag!” I scream from the inside of the fridge where my head is stuffed looking for a caffeine-free soda. My dad buys them for me, because nobody else really likes them, but somehow everyone else drinks them and I can never find one when I want it.

“Dad’s already in the beanbag!” Lane yells.

Damn, you mean I can’t even win the beanbag battle? “Some Friday night,” I chuckle to myself. I spot a gold can in the far corner and clutch it in my hand. The doorbell buzzes loudly around the corner, and as I back out, I smack the top of my head on the freezer door.

“Shit!” I hum.

“Murphy! Language,” my mother scolds, breezing by me toward the front room.

She swears worse than I do, but she says a parent always wants better for their kids, and when it comes to me, she’s focusing on the potty mouth.

I rub my head with one hand and pull the tab on my golden soda with the other. I’m bringing the can to my lips when my mom rounds the corner, her eyebrows waggling and her lips full smirk. I know instantly, thanks to that face, and am grateful for at least this small half-second warning to run my fingers through my hair one time before Casey follows her into the kitchen.

“Hey,” he says, all cool and suave. It’s a cool-guy word…
hey.
He’s wearing an old baseball T-shirt, black jeans, and one of those snap-front hats my father wears out on the golf course. If I saw that outfit in a clothing bin and a thrift shop, I wouldn’t even glance twice. On Casey, I’m making mental snapshots.

“Hey,” I say back, leaning my hand on the counter next to me, but missing by about half an inch. I stumble to the side and lose my balance, smacking my right temple on the Formica on my way down. I’m determined to give myself a concussion.

“Oh dang! Are you all right?” he says, rounding the kitchen island quickly and coming to my rescue. He grabs a hold of my arm and rights me. I wish I was seeing stars, anything to make what just happened seem anything other than god-awful embarrassing.

“I’m good, yeah. Thanks,” I say, tugging my over-sized
I’m a Camper
T-shirt straight again. Cool guy…meet loser girl.

“You’re downright clumsy,” he teases.

I smile and turn my cheeks into cherries as I shrug.

“Strange, she’s never been clumsy before,” my mom adds behind him. He doesn’t see the eyebrow waggle, but I do. And I die. Well, no…I don’t die—I squeeze my eyes closed tightly and wish that when I open them everybody is gone.

“Still here,” Casey whispers, apparently knowing this move.

I crack an eyelid open and am relieved that at least my mother has moved on. There’s no way my cheeks aren’t red, but I know there’s also no way to cover it up, so I purse my lips in a guilty half smile and breathe in slow and deep to try to stave off an anxiety attack.

A full breath clears my head, and I start to realize that Casey’s here—which means he’s either ready to deal with the WTF moment we shared, or he has news. I’m almost equally anxious for either reason.

“Did my brother invite you to film night at the Sullivans?” I ask, quirking a brow. It’s easier to be clever than honest after you bop your head on a counter in front of the cute guy who almost kissed you and whom you used to kinda loathe.

Casey’s forehead crinkles as his mouth curves into one of his dimple smiles, glancing over my shoulder to the living room where Lane is still king of the recliner.

“No, I’m sorta bummed that I didn’t get the invite,” he chuckles, scratching at his chin with one hand. It makes the best sound—like rough sandpaper.

“Well, maybe next time,” I shake my head.

“Yeah, maybe…” Casey says, pausing when our eyes meet. It’s awkward for a second—a second too long—and he takes a step back, putting the kitchen island between us again.

“So, why the Friday-night visit?” I ask. Mental high-fives are happening in my head for having the balls to just come out and ask.

“I’ve gotta gig in the city, and just got off from work so I thought maybe I’d see if you wanted to…I don’t know…come see what I do?” His hand comes back to his chin, and I wait to hear the scratching sound before I answer. Really cheesy eighties music drowns it out though, because my dad’s started the movie in the other room. It catches both of our attention, and we can’t help but look into the living room.

“
Ghostbusters
…nice!” Casey says. I snap my eyes to him as he’s watching the screen in the distance. He’s smiling, looking on at my family, and the sight of that makes me smile. It also makes me a little sad, because after last weekend’s dinner, I understand the difference between Friday nights in my house growing up and Friday nights in his.

“You want me to watch you work?” I ask, not sure what I would do hanging out at a club in some corner, probably sipping on sodas and water for six hours.

“Yeah,” he says, his eyes finally coming back to me. “The club I’m at is this new joint on top of the bank building downtown. It’s a pretty big gig, and I don’t know…I thought maybe if you didn’t have anything to do. But you’ve got family plans…I probably should have called…”

“No, it’s okay. I can go. I mean…I’d like to go. It’s just movie night, and we do this…well, we do this a lot,” I say, leaning forward and cupping my mouth to whisper “we watched this movie last Friday.”

“And the one before that,” my dad adds in a monotone voice as he rounds the corner, a golden soda in his hand. I eye it and he swings it behind his back. I scowl at him as he shrugs. “I buy them, so I figure that means I can drink them when I want.”

My scowl is fake, and I laugh and lean into his arm.

“So this is the famous Casey Coffield,” my father says. The red creeps back into its familiar place on my skin.

“In the flesh, I guess,” Casey says. There’s the charm. I recognize it. He reaches out a hand and my father takes it, shaking firmly.

“I hear you two are working on a recording project together with some big studio?” My dad doesn’t really follow today’s music, but he has a decent business mind, so I caught him up on the plan before I met Casey to record. He’s playing coy, but he’s fully aware of my arrangement with Casey. He may not know John Maxwell, but he knows contracts. He worked as a district attorney before he and my mom both decided to get their real-estate licenses when my grandmother left them three properties. They wanted a way to spend more time at home for Lane. Their business grew quickly, and my father ends up traveling around the state a lot. My mom’s usually near home, though. And I help when I can.

“We are. In fact,” Casey says, glancing at me and raising his brow. My tummy grows excited. “I was able to get in with John today. He’s the guy who runs the company.” He says that part to my father, but this next part is just for me. “He had me transfer the file to his iPod so he could spend some time with it this weekend. He said he’d get me his feedback Monday.”

I’m frozen for a second, but the knowledge that this is really happening starts to hit me, and my mouth curves slowly at first, until it has nowhere to go but up. My fingertips find my lips, and I’m stuck between wanting to chew away my nails and cover my mouth in amazement. “Really?” I ask, opting instead to lay my palm flat against my cheek.

“Really,” Casey repeats, brown eyes and dimple there to top it off like warm fudge and whipped cream.

“I have a good feeling,” he says, and his eyes stick on mine while I remain in my pose. I don’t know what to say. My father gets me going again.

“You should. Murphy is gifted. Always has been. She’s overcome so much, too. Makes for one hell of an inspiring story. I mean, I’m inspired by her.” My dad delivers what is known in some circles as diarrhea of the mouth, and I lean to the side and slowly—but firmly—push my elbow into his ribs. He gets the hint, and stops before he makes me wish I could just fall and hit my head on something again.

Casey’s confused look means I didn’t stop him quickly enough, so I make a rash decision to change the subject.

“Dad, if you guys don’t mind, I’d like to spend the night at the club watching Casey work, so I can see what goes into everything he does—maybe learn something,” I say, making excuses. They’re thin, and both my father and Casey see right through them. My dad’s assuming I’m going because I want to spend the night with the guy who inspired this song they’ve teased me about endlessly…since finding out the guy in the lyrics was real. Casey is assuming I’m going to change the subject from all of my
overcoming.

They’re both right.

“You’re an adult, Murph. You can go out with a cute boy on a Friday night if you want to; you don’t need to ask permission,” my dad says, getting one last tease in. The red flares up, and my eyes close.

“Excellent,” I say, feeling my way around the counter with my eyes still shut. “Casey, I’ll be out in a few minutes. Just let me change. And die.”

I whisper that last part.

Maybe he said
okay.
Maybe he said
fine.
It doesn’t matter what his response was, because I made my way into my room without having to crack an eyelid until I flung myself face first into my mattress and screamed into my pillow with a mixture of frustration, humiliation, and call-your-best-friend euphoria.

Appears my song was slightly prophetic, only I had a few things wrong. We’re not in his dreams. My dreams, however, and Casey Coffield, seem to have collided.

If she only knew how many times I drove by her house this week. Monday’s excuse was that I had a dinner meeting in Archfield and was just stopping by. There was no dinner, and my car never stopped, because I’m a chicken shit.

On Tuesday, I drove by earlier in the day, because I didn’t have work at the studio. I was up late at the coffee house with Eli playing chess the night before, and that always makes me feel mature and quixotic. I thought I’d just drive right to her house and talk about what happened, like grown adults. I never made it past the stop sign on her corner.

Wednesday was another concocted excuse, something about needing to rerecord that night to fix something on her demo. I only made it halfway to her town from the city before talking myself out of that bad idea; it would have plagued her self-esteem.

I was ready to try again yesterday, but then John told me he’d take my samples home Friday, so instead, I rushed home and spent all night making sure everything was perfect on her song.

I really have a gig tonight. And the thought of having her see me in my element gives me this mental edge that, for some reason, I need around her. I didn’t hesitate once on my way to her house, and ringing the doorbell even came easy. Her mom seems to like me, so I felt like a rock star all the way to the point when Murphy’s piercing grays hit my system. If she hadn’t fallen first, I’m pretty sure I would have found a way to make a fool of myself. Instead, she was just as rattled by me as I had feared I’d be by her.

None of that means I have the advantage though. I don’t, and I know it the second she walks out of the hallway bathroom wearing this dark gray, skin-tight dress and flat sandals with ribbons that wrap up her legs; I’m not quite sure where the ribbon ends. Normally, her look is a little bohemian. And there’s still some of that right now, her hair loose and draped over one shoulder—a
bare
shoulder. This look is sexy though—and it’s taken everything about tonight out of my hands. Hell, I might even just hand my board over to her and sit back and watch. She could play complete crap and the dance floor would devour her just because of those legs.