Emily and Floyd were solid. Emily and Floyd were strong. Emily and Floyd were everything. This was impossible.
“Not recently, seventeen years ago,” Floyd went on and I felt the trembling world under my feet grow steady again.
Floyd kept talking, “She left me, took the girls, moved in with her parents back in Michigan and was gone for ten with her parents back in Michigan and was gone for ten months.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, thankful y breathing again.
“Don’t know why, even to this day, even though she explained it. Whatever it was, we weren’t working. Not for her. It didn’t matter. Only thing I cared about was she came back.”
I staggered back and sat on the arm of my mauve chair, feeling the weight of this news settling on me like a boulder.
I’d always thought that Emily and Floyd were the end al , be al of relationships. I couldn’t wrap my mind around this information.
Juno trundled over to me and butted my hand with her nose until I started scratching behind her ears.
Floyd crouched in front of me.
“What I’m sayin’ is, shit happens to couples. In any relationship there’s ebbs and there’s flows. You want that relationship to work you put on your life jacket and ride it out.”
I shook my head, not feeling much like going in the conversational direction he felt like taking me but Floyd kept talking.
“You gotta learn to give, Stel a. I’m not sayin’ this to be ugly but you’re bound up tight. That boy walked into your life and you didn’t give him a f**kin’ thing, ‘cept your music. I watched, hel , we al watched and we knew he was ready to lay the world at your feet, al you had to do was let him in.
You never let him in.”
I felt a queer sensation, like someone had reached a hand in and started squeezing my heart.
hand in and started squeezing my heart.
“I let him in,” I said softly but I knew that wasn’t altogether true either.
Floyd put his hand on my knee and looked into my eyes.
“You got more to give than your music, girl.” Direct shot, right to the gut.
But he was wrong.
“I don’t.”
“You do,” Floyd said firmly.
Okay, wait just one damned minute.
I wasn’t going to take the fal for Mace giving up on me.
That was not going to happen.
“He wanted it, he should have asked,” I said to Floyd.
“He never talked to me. Looking back, we didn’t know each other at al .”
“You ever ask him? Did you ever talk to him? Did you ever try to unlock whatever demons that boy has trapped in his mind?” Floyd asked.
This threw me. It threw me so much, to hide it I gave a sharp laugh, a laugh that didn’t even sound like it came from me and I shot up from the chair. Floyd came up from his crouch.
“Mace? Demons?” I asked.
Hardly.