You Fit the Pattern by Jane Haseldine

Author:Jane Haseldine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2019-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

Christy King chugged back a Red Bull and pulled on her ripped jeans under her size-two, perfectly conservative navy skirt she wore for her day job as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble on Warren Avenue downtown. She slunk down low in her old Volvo, trying to avoid being noticed by the few patrons she spotted heading into the Magic Stick on Woodward Avenue, where the indie/rock band she fronted, Raven’s Poe, was playing in just five minutes.

She ripped a fingernail down to the quick, snagging it on the zipper of her black jeans, ignored the pain, and started working the buttons on her white shirt.

At thirty-one, Christy realized changing in her car made her just one step up from homeless, but she figured a quick change in the front seat of her Volvo was a better bet than trying to score a stall in the always jam-packed women’s room.

The Magic Stick was a popular bar and live-music venue in the city, and she knew she was lucky as hell to have snagged the gig.

Christy scrambled with the straps of her red stiletto heels. She was cutting it close this time, but goddamn, it was worth it.

She could’ve come straight to the club after her shift at the bookstore, gotten a bite, and warmed up with the band, but instead drove the twenty minutes back home to see her six-year-old son, Clay. The five minutes she spent cuddling with him on the couch was the best part of her day. By far.

Right before she had hurried out of her house, Christy promised Clay they’d go to the movies after his soccer game tomorrow, but she secretly worried how she was going to fit it all in.

Juggling her life, and always feeling like she was coming up short, sucked big-time.

She looked over to the passenger seat and her duffel bag that was filled with what was left of her stage clothes, along with her notebook of lyrics and a lonely demo tape of her original songs. She always took the demo with her to her gigs in case some big producer might stumble into one of her shows.

As if.

Christy’s good friend, guilt, wrapped an uncomfortable arm around her with a reminder of how she had hurried out the door before Clay could see her cry. In small, seemingly inconsequential—but huge—moments like these, Christy often wondered if she was a selfish idiot, trading time she could be spending with her son for chasing a dream, something she wanted for them both. But most nights, when she was alone in bed, or with her little boy sleeping by her side, a voice inside her head gave her a scolding reality check: That shit was likely never going to happen.

The paycheck from the bookstore was manageable, but she didn’t want to live with her mom forever. And Clay’s biological father was long out of the picture, a guy Christy dated for a couple of months, who once called her “perfection,” until she broke the news that she was knocked up.

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