New Winslow S8E29
Noah wasn’t feeling rested by any stretch when they got home, but he did have to admit that two hours of sleep on the floor of Iris’s shop did have him feeling a little better than he had that morning. So when he, Andrew, and Cleo got back, he was almost ready to have this conversation with Liv. She was puttering in the living room as they arrived, still wearing her apron, waiting as they came inside.
“How did it go?” she asked as soon as they were in the door.
“We contacted him. I, um, I talked to him.”
She watched Noah cautiously, waiting for him to continue. Which, fair enough. “He’ll do it. But he’ll only do it through me.”
Liv looked at him for another moment, then nodded, taking the dish towel off of her shoulder and beginning to wipe down the coffee table. “What does that mean?” she asked. “Through you.”
“He’ll talk to Samuel. He’ll try to connect with him and calm him down long enough to help us reach Rosalind and remove the curse. But he doesn’t want to work with an established medium.” She continued polishing the table and he swallowed around the lump in his throat. “He only wants to do it through me.”
Liv paused and took a long breath while Noah waited, cringing. He didn’t want to have this fight. He really, really didn’t want to have this fight. Not just because he was going to do this with or without her support, but because he knew what being a medium had done to her. And now here he was just inviting that trouble in.
“How?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how are you going to do that?”
“Iris says if I can’t do it on my own, there’s a way.”
“Can you do it on your own?”
“No.”
Sure, he hadn’t tried again, but he didn’t need to in order to know that. Not after everything that had happened already. Liv snapped the towel back over her shoulder.
“But we didn’t talk about how to yet. I don’t know exactly, but it wouldn’t be like it’s been. It’d be more like-”
“More like me,” Liv finished.
“Yeah.”
“How dangerous is it?”
“I don’t know.”
She just continued to look at him for a long time and he couldn’t look away. Without breaking eye contact, she reached up and cupped his face with one hand. This was oddly intimate, even for the two of them. Noah was aware that the other two were still there, but nobody said a word.
“Is she going to change anything in your brain? Or your soul?”
“I… I don’t know.”
He finally looked away and she dropped her hand. “I don’t know, she just said it was possible,” Noah said. “I’d rather not change anything in my head, but I’ll do whatever it takes and he insisted he would only work with me. And I don’t want that, I’m not trying to be a fucking hero. I just want him to work with us and get Andrew out.”
Andrew started to say something behind him, but Noah ignored him. “I’d rather he worked with a professional now that we actually reached him,” he said. “But if he’s only going to work with me, I mean, shit, Liv. He’s a scared kid and he’s in pain and he’s only got a little time left before he loses himself, I can feel it. And if we don’t do this now, then he’s going to lose himself. And they’ll all be fucked and we’ll all be fucked. So I need to take this risk.”
“I’m scared,” Olivia admitted. “Noah, are you scared?”
“I’m so fucking scared. I don’t want to do this, Liv.”
There were tears in her eyes. “You don’t have to.”
“I do. If he’s not going to talk to anybody else, then I do. But it’s not even that, it’s having more fingers, more tinkering…”
Noah took a breath. “No, I’m going to try one more time on my own,” he said, aware of the surprise on everyone else’s faces. “I’m going to try and talk to him again. It worked in the shop, I can make it work at home now that I know how. Maybe he can talk through me without changing anything again. You communicated with him before, maybe he could actually talk to you if I ask him to. Would you do that?”
“Of course. Do what? What do you need from me?”
Noah thought for a moment. “I’ll see if he’ll talk to you through me. If he’ll do that, even just once, then we won’t have to do anything to my head. We’ll just… do that.”
“Great, sleep down here with me tonight.”
“No, that hasn’t been working. I’m going to stay up tonight. You sleep, you need to sleep. But tomorrow I’ll try and if you could just be there in the room, then maybe I can get him to talk through me. If he physically can. Yeah? And if he doesn’t, then we’ll change whatever we need to change in my head to do it.”
She didn’t look extremely thrilled about this plan, none of them did. But the alternative was admitting that he was yet again too afraid to do what he needed to do. And Noah wasn’t going to do that.
Finally, Liv nodded, playing nervously with the towel on her shoulder. “Yeah, I can do that.”
———
When Cleo’s phone rang in Liv’s living room that evening, her first instinct was stress. Because nearly everyone in the world who might call her was here. She picked up her phone, but didn’t recognize the number. It was a Boston area code though, so she picked up. Maybe it was somewhere she’d applied to and forgotten about. “Hello?”
Andrew looked over curiously from where he had been picking away at his novel for about twenty minutes or so. There was a beat of silence, then a cheerful man’s voice. “Hey! Is this Cleo?”
“Yeah.” The voice was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “May I ask who’s calling?”
“Hey, listen, it’s Benny Ravesi.”
She nearly dropped her phone. “What? Why?”
“Yeah, listen, Cleo, you know I was joking, right? Like, on my site?”
It was shock that was keeping her on the line right now, it had to be. She glanced over at Andrew, who looked concerned as he put his laptop down on the coffee table. “You were joking,” she repeated, her voice flat.
“Yeah, I was just poking fun, you know?”
“By posting video after video of men making fun of my music and my body.”
“Hey, you’re a big name. You gotta expect that kind of stuff.”
“Benny,” At this, Andrew’s head swiveled back over to her, his eyes wide. “What was the joke?”
“You know,” Benny said. “Just a joke. Just being funny, poking fun at a friend.”
“Since when are you my friend?”
Andrew was apparently over his shock and had now settled in a little too comfortably to drink his tea and listen to her end of this conversation. And maybe having him here was part of where she was getting this courage from.
“Oh come on,” Benny said. “Don’t be like that. Listen, though, I need a favor.”
He needs a favor, she mouthed mockingly at Andrew, who nodded solemnly and took another sip of his tea.
“I think some people didn’t get that I was joking,” Benny continued, either unaware or not caring that she hadn’t agreed to anything or asked him to continue. “And like, they’re being pretty shitty to me online. The Blossom Step pulled out of an interview with a site I’m not even the owner of, I just work for them sometimes. And they’re not bad guys, so it isn’t fair to them to lose a decently big name band. And then I had a few chicks canceling review requests or talking shit on social media. This isn’t good for the site, at least right now while I’m trying to monetize it, you know?”
“And why’s that my problem?”
“Because we’re all in this together. And you know I was just joking, I think it’s awesome what you’re doing.”
“Right.”
“So I was thinking maybe you could put out a video. You know, tell people you know I was joking and that we’re cool. Maybe do an interview on the site too.”
Cleo was being quiet enough as he spoke that Andrew could apparently hear Ravesi’s end of the conversation now too. He looked at her, holding back a grin.
“You want an interview,” Cleo said. “Benny, why do you possibly want an interview with me? You’ve made it clear that my music is shit. Every single one of your reviews for my work has been negative.”
“You know I have to be harsh, but fair,” Ravesi said. “I can’t just blow smoke up artists’ asses, I need to give constructive criticism.”
“And how is ‘Local Sellout Gets What She Deserves’ constructive criticism?”
“It was a fucking joke!” Ravesi snapped, all fake cheer gone. “Listen, you want to be all fucking that, fine. But tell people you know I’m joking.”
“You aren’t joking though,” Cleo said. “You weren’t joking, none of those men were joking, and you know what? They were making some fucked up comments about my body in some of those videos you collected. And if it was such a joke and we’re such good friends, then maybe you’d realize how messed up those jokes were.”
“God, they’re right,” Ravesi muttered.
“And how the fuck did you get my number?”
Andrew was laughing silently with a hand over his eyes, his tea in danger of spilling on his laptop as he tried to set it down on the coffee table.
“Just leave me alone,” Cleo said. “Write whatever weird shit you want about me, twist this conversation however, but I’m done dealing with you. So no, I won’t make a video. And I’m not going to do an interview for you. I’m sorry people realized what a prick you are, but that’s not my problem anymore.”
She hung up the phone before Ravesi could say anything else. It immediately started ringing again and, seeing the same phone number, she blocked it, dropped the phone onto the coffee table, then sagged back into the recliner.
“Goddamn,” Andrew said.
“I cannot believe I just-”
“You killed him. You massacred him.”
“Don’t do your Marlon Brando, I cannot handle your Marlon Brando right now. It is the world’s worst Marlon Brando impression.”
He had his hands up, clearly about to do the world’s worst Marlon Brando impression. But before he could start, he dropped his hands and smiled at Cleo. “You stood up to him. I’m so proud of you.”
She was still shaky, which was probably why she was about to cry.
———-
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