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mastershakeme

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  1. mastershakeme
    The seahorses were on the wall above the card table. Ellie’s paintings. The seahorses and the two whales. I’d thumbtacked them next to the window where the afternoon light hit them and made the colors glow in a way that probably wasn’t intentional but felt like it was. They were the first things I’d unpacked when I moved in and they were still the best things in the apartment, which was saying something because the apartment also now contained two mismatched chairs from a thrift store on El
  2. mastershakeme
    You guys have all been so great! One more chapter!
  3. mastershakeme
    The drive home from the reception was the quietest eleven minutes of my life. Dad drove. Mom sat in the passenger seat. I sat in the back. The radio was off. The windows were up. The only sound was the engine and the tires on the road and the thick, pressurized silence of three people in a car who all knew that the conversation waiting at the other end of this drive was going to change everything. Nobody said a word. Not one. Eleven minutes of nothing. When we pulled into the driv
  4. mastershakeme
    Thank you 😇
  5. mastershakeme
    The morning of August ninth I put on the suit and stood in front of the mirror and looked at someone I was about to stop being. The suit was charcoal. Mom had picked it out. The tie was green, to match Margot’s dress, because Kathleen had coordinated the wedding party colors down to the accessories and god help anyone who deviated. My hair was doing the thing. The shaggy, messy, falls-in-the-eyes thing that Margot said made me look like someone worth looking at. I’d tried to comb it flat an
  6. mastershakeme
  7. mastershakeme
    Two weeks. That’s how long the leash held. After the cigarette night, my parents didn’t ground me officially. They didn’t use the word. Thomas Donnelly didn’t ground people. He restructured their schedules until freedom became a logistical impossibility and then called it “family time.” Suddenly there were things to do every weekend. Suddenly I was needed at the funeral home not just weekdays but Saturday mornings too, helping Eric with inventory, helping Dad reorganize the filing system th
  8. mastershakeme
    The week was a photocopy of the week before it. Monday through Thursday, same suit, same drive, same building, same smell. Every morning, Dad just drove. Quiet. Watching the road with the kind of attention he usually reserved for families who were about to overspend on a casket. Like the road might try to sell him something. He’d been like this since last Friday. Not angry. Not confrontational. Just present in a way that felt heavier than usual. Thomas Donnelly didn’t ask questions when he
  9. mastershakeme
    Haha cmon guys don't talk me down from the big show now 😂
  10. mastershakeme
    The Blue Plate was becoming our place. Not mine and Ryder’s. All of ours. The diner where things happened. Where lies were confronted and truths were negotiated and the trajectory of four lives kept getting recalculated over burgers and bad coffee. Margot drove. I sat in the passenger seat watching the highway and thinking about how different this drive felt from the first time, when I’d been alone and terrified and wearing the blue shirt Margot had picked and my hands had been shaking on t
  11. mastershakeme
    There will be 33 chapters! Almost done
  12. mastershakeme
    The weekend was exactly what I needed. Saturday in Youngstown with Ryder, a matinee at the Belmont theater, some action movie we both forgot the name of by the time we left because we’d spent most of it sharing an armrest and pretending our hands weren’t touching when they absolutely were. We got tacos after. Not Taco Bell this time. An actual taco place Ryder knew about on Market Street with a line out the door and a woman behind the counter who called everyone mijo and gave us extra chips with
  13. mastershakeme
    The week after the Fourth was supposed to be more of the same. Suit, car, funeral home, repeat. Dad driving, Eric teaching, Gerald approving, Owen performing. The machine humming along. Tuesday changed everything. And then Thursday finished the job. *** Tuesday morning, Eric sat me down. Not at the filing desk. Not in the hallway between tasks. In the conference room. The nice one, with the long table and the soft lighting and the painting of a landscape on the wall that was
  14. mastershakeme
    Taco bell would be so happy to hear 🌮
  15. mastershakeme
    I woke up Saturday morning and put on jeans and a t-shirt instead of a suit for the first time in six days. The difference was physical. My shoulders dropped. My chest opened. I stood in front of the mirror and saw someone who looked like a person instead of a prop. Mom was in the kitchen making coffee when I came downstairs. She was already in a red, white, and blue blouse because Suzanne Donnelly did not half-commit to a national holiday. “You’re up early,” she said. “Meeting Ma
  16. mastershakeme
    Sunday was church. Sunday was always church. Father Mitchell and the hymns and the pews and the lobby afterward where people shook my hand and called me the engaged Donnelly boy. I stood next to Margot and smiled and held her hand and the ring caught the light and everything was exactly the same as last week except I was more tired and more hollow and more aware of the distance between who I was standing here and who I’d been forty-eight hours ago in a studio apartment in Youngstown. Family
  17. mastershakeme
    Saturday morning came too fast. I woke up at seven to the sound of my mom already moving downstairs. Cabinets opening. Dishes being stacked. The industrious hum of Suzanne Donnelly preparing for an event, which was Suzanne Donnelly at her most focused and her most terrifying. The engagement party was in nine hours. The cake was baked. The banner was hung. The tablecloths were pressed. Today was the day. I lay in bed for a minute staring at the ceiling. Yesterday I’d said goodbye to the
  18. mastershakeme
    The ride to Youngstown took an hour and twenty minutes and felt like ten. We took the highway east, past Cambridge, past the rolling fields and the small towns and the exit signs I’d never had a reason to follow. The June sun was high and hot and the wind pulled at my hoodie and Ryder drove fast, the way he did everything, like slowing down was a waste of time he couldn’t afford. I held on. Arms around his waist. Face against his back. Feeling his body shift with the curves and the lan
  19. mastershakeme
    The last day of VBS started the way the first day had. With me sitting in my car in the St. Michael’s parking lot, hands on the steering wheel, trying to figure out how to walk inside. Three weeks ago I’d been terrified. Terrified of kids, terrified of being responsible, terrified of being seen. Now I was terrified of something completely different. I was terrified of it being over. I went in. Theo ran at me. Same sprint, same arms, same collision at knee level. But this time he held o
  20. mastershakeme
    The week passed the way weeks pass when you’re waiting for something you can’t see coming. Slowly. Loudly. With too much happening on the surface and everything that actually mattered running underneath it like a current nobody could feel but me. Sunday was church. Same pew, same hymns, same Father Mitchell, same lobby afterward where people I’d known my entire life shook my hand and congratulated me on the engagement like I’d accomplished something. Mrs. Daley asked if we’d set a date yet.
  21. mastershakeme
    I woke up Saturday morning at ten with my phone buzzing on the nightstand. Ryder: breakfast was an hour ago. lunch then? I smiled into my pillow. My lips still felt different. Like they remembered. I lay there for a minute just feeling it, the leftover proof that last night had been real. The hill. The stars. The kiss. Owen: lunch where Ryder: the diner. blue plate. i know that’s where we crashed and burned the first time but i think we can do better now. hell of a redemption
  22. mastershakeme
    Owen: i’m home Ryder: i know. i’m parked at the end of your street I stared at the screen. Owen: you’re WHAT Ryder: end of the street. past the stop sign. under the big tree. you coming or not My heart was going so fast I could feel it in my teeth. I stood up from my bed. Sat back down. Stood up again. Looked at the door. Looked at the phone. Looked at the crucifix on the wall like it might have advice. It did not. I put on my shoes. I pulled on a hoodie becaus
  23. mastershakeme
    “What are you doing here?” Ryder looked at me like I’d asked the most boring question in the world. He took a drag of his cigarette, exhaled slowly, and said, “Standing.” “You know what I mean.” “I’m at a county fair, Owen. It’s a public damn event. They let anyone in. Paid six bucks at the gate like everybody else.” “You drove an hour and a half.” “Hour twenty. I took the highway.” He was leaning against the fence post like he owned it. Like he’d been leaning again
  24. mastershakeme
    Friday morning Ryder texted me before I was out of bed. Ryder: so i’ve been thinking Owen: that’s dangerous Ryder: shut up. i’ve been thinking about the fact that i’ve heard your voice and seen your face on a screen but the only time i actually sat across from you in person i spent the whole time being pissed. that doesn’t count. i want a do-over Owen: a do-over? Ryder: friday night. tonight. i’ll drive out. we’ll go somewhere. not a diner this time. somewhere with actua
  25. mastershakeme
    Tuesday was worse than Monday. Monday I’d had the Ellie crisis to distract me. Something to focus on, something to care about, something that required me to be present instead of constantly checking a phone that wasn’t going to ring. Tuesday had no crisis. Tuesday was just a regular VBS day with regular kids doing regular activities and me standing in the middle of it with a hole in my chest the exact shape of a boy from Youngstown. The kids could tell something was off. Theo held my h
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