If Not for My Baby

by Kate Golden

“Devoting your entire life to the pursuit of another person, when human beings are all so inherently flawed, and expecting said flawed human to fix all the broken parts of you just so you can convince yourself that you’re whole is a recipe for disappointment.”

“I think striving for a relationship above all else is antiquated. It seems pretty hard to find one worth keeping. And even if you’re lucky enough to do so, you’re still going to suffer one way or another. There are just less painful pursuits in life, don’t you think?”

“I’d slice out my own tongue, offer it to my baby in hands cupped, just to taste the perfect crookedness of her smile when she swallows me up.”

“Jesus. Your voice.” He draws a hand over his jaw. “What a thing to behold.” “Stop.” “I won’t.” He shakes his head. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anyone make the music sound like you do.”

Does anyone call you Clem?” I shake my head. “No, actually.” His brows raise slightly and he nods to himself. “Good.”

“Don’t diminish your awe. The world’s a fine place; there’s plenty worth bein’ moved by.”

It’s my own fault—at some point I decided it was easier to be a dreamless person than a disappointed one. Except somewhere along the way, I became both.

Those are the sorts of things my mom still says about my dad—If he wasn’t at the party, it wasn’t a party worth being at—all these years later. I cannot fathom a fate worse than hers.

“I see.” But curiosity’s got me by the throat. “So what does ‘dating’ Tom Halloran look like, then?” He smirks down at his hands, wrapped softly around the epic poem. It’s like it was shrunk in the wash, so dwarfed by his grasp. “I could show you.”

“Because I think of you nonstop. You’re legging it through my mind daily, Clem. You were long before I kissed you.” “What?” I think I physically stumble backward. “You’re not interested in me.” “I’m not?” A slight smile twists at the corner of his mouth. “You should tell my dreams that.”

“Just because you don’t let yourself dream doesn’t mean you don’t have any.” When he speaks again, his voice has dropped an octave, and I know the creature’s lost. “And you’re as much a formidable, gossamer-draped, apocalyptic witch-goddess as any I’ve known. Your ferocious kindness, those devastating eyes…” He trails off with an exhale. “The songs will write themselves.”

Tom looks pained as he sings, tossing his head back and offering a sick smile to the heavens as he plays, eyes wound shut. As if he’s accepting the low-belly ache, the sorrow, the savage need coursing through him that he just cannot quell. And I know that I need him. Physically, religiously, unspeakably. A neutering couldn’t help me at this point—I need Tom Halloran.

Worse yet, I have no clue what it is he might’ve discovered. The realization of all that I don’t know about myself is almost as frightening as wondering if a man I’ve known less than two months has somehow gotten there first.

“Don’t worry,” I manage. “I’m not going to fall in love with you.” “Clem”—he sighs like I’ve pained him—“that’s just what I’m afraid of.”

“You, Clementine, have a bad habit of beating the pain before it can beat you.

One day avoiding everything that could hurt you might just leave you with nothing at all.”

And that’s why they call it falling in love, right? Because while I’d had my stupid head in the clouds, romanticizing a halo of sunlight around Thomas Patrick Halloran, I had forgotten that flying always leads to free fall—to plummeting down through reality until you’re mere rubble and wreckage.

“I can’t promise you a life free of sorrow. Nobody can. But I can swear to shelter the heart of ye with all I have.”