So when a knock came from my front door, I was a little confused. My parents rarely came over without calling first, and the Larsens never came unannounced. No one else of my friends would come over without double-checking. Hardly anyone had the new address.
Looking through the peephole, I was more than a little surprised to see a familiar face on the other side instead of a Girl Scout or a Jehovah’s Witness.
“Hey,” I said hesitantly and more than a little weakly once I’d opened the door.
When I’d peeked through the peephole, Dallas had had just about the most pleasant expression on his face I had ever witnessed coming from him, but the second his gaze landed on me, that expression went straight into a frown. “What’s wrong with you?”
Was it that bad that someone who was just shy of being a complete stranger could tell there was something wrong with me? “I don’t feel well.”
His frown deepened, his gaze raking all over me again in a way that made me feel like he was making sure I didn’t have some contagious disease. “You look like hell.” Was I supposed to look like a beauty queen when my eyeball felt like it was about to abandon ship from my skull? “Migraine?”
I started to nod before remembering that would only make it worse. “Uh-huh. I don’t get them that often, but when I do….” Why was I telling him this? And why was he here? “Do you need something?” I asked a little more harshly than I intended for it to come out.
He ignored my question and tone. “When did you last take something?”
I shrugged; at least I think I shrugged. “A few hours ago.”
“Did you make dinner already?”
“No.” Honestly, I’d been thinking about making Josh call something in. I didn’t even want to bother with preheating the oven to stick a frozen lasagna in there.
Dallas glanced over his shoulder, hesitating when he faced forward again. His jaw jutted out for a moment. He let out a long breath through his nose, and then nodded, more to himself than to me, that was for sure. He rolled those massive shoulders of his and met my gaze, straight on. “I’ll close the door. Go lay down. I’ll take care of dinner,” he stated in that no-nonsense bossy way of his, like he wasn’t someone I’d met and hung out with a handful of times.
Who was this man and why was he doing this? The tiny head shake I did was more than enough to send bile creeping up the back of my throat. I couldn’t try and hide my cheeks puffing out as I kept the acid down. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” he said, still not breaking eye contact.
Was he using my own tactic against me?
I swallowed. “I’m sorry. Thank you for the offer, but we’ll be fine. Is there something you needed or can we just e-mail later?” Plus, since when had he ever come over to talk Tornado in person? Never. What else would he be coming over for?
To give him credit, he didn’t do much more than tip his face toward the sky and blow out a breath before shifting his attention back down to me, his facial features smooth and not amused. “Are you always this stubborn?”
I would have narrowed my eyes if it didn’t make my pain worse. So I told him the truth, mirroring his expression. “Yes. Is your real name really Dallas?”
That thick, dark eyebrow of his rose a half inch. “Yes.”
“Why did your parents name you that?” I asked even as my head gave another nauseating throb.
That eyebrow of his rose a quarter of an inch more than it already had. “My dad lost a bet on a football game, and it was either naming me Dallas or Cowboy.” He didn’t miss a beat and went ahead with going back to the original subject. “Let me help you.”
I would have gone with Dallas, too. I let the name thing go and waved my hand weakly. “You’ve done enough. I’m not trying to take advantage of you or cross some line. We’ll be all right,” I whispered, closing one eye when the pounding became even more concentrated.
Dallas was staring me down, but I didn’t care. His voice was so low I had to strain to hear it. “I get that you’re not trying to come on to me, now or ever, all right? Can we never bring that up again? I’m here. You’re not feeling well. Let me help.”
I closed both my eyes and frowned, wanting this conversation over with.
He sighed. “I know what it’s like for a single mom to get a migraine every once in a while. If you want to call mine and make sure I’m not shitting you, you can.”
I didn’t have the energy or the willpower to contemplate his words. I opened my eyes. Who the hell used their mom as a reference anyway?
The way he was looking at me was like he was blowing out a breath of exasperation in his head. “Take a picture of my driver’s license and send it to somebody if it makes you feel better,” he suggested calmly.
I didn’t think he was some kind of crazy pervert. Not at all. Mostly, I was worried about making things weird between us. He claimed to have accepted that I wasn’t trying to put the moves on him, which was good because it was the truth. He was nice to look at, his body even more so, but so were plenty of men.
“I can call in a few pizzas and sit with your boys for a while.” He raised those thick, brown eyebrows when I didn’t immediately scream my gratitude.
“It’s—” I started to say before Dallas cut me off.
“Look, I came over to tell you face-to-face that we’re scaling back the tournaments we’re doing and the practices. I tried calling you, but you didn’t answer or call back.”
Tournaments. Fuck. I didn’t even care about baseball or even continuing to live right then. All I heard was “pizzas” and “sit with the boys.” A wave of nausea and pain suddenly hit me right behind the eyeballs.
“Fine.” I felt so crappy I backed up, eyed him again, then went inside like an obedient puppy and headed straight into the living room. Dallas followed after me. I headed over to the couch, fully aware that this semi-strange man was in my house, about to figure out dinner for the boys.
Was this a mistake?
I watched from the couch as my neighbor disappeared out the back door of the kitchen and faintly heard the deepest reaches of his voice in the air, even though I couldn’t actually process what exactly he was saying.
When he didn’t come back in after twenty minutes, I sat up and peeked through the opened door from the kitchen into the backyard. Josh and Louie were about fifteen feet away from him, forming a triangle. Mac was lying on the grass, watching the three of them lazily. When a baseball flew from Dallas’s side to Josh’s, I couldn’t help but smile before plopping back down on the couch, letting out a silent prayer that this migraine would go away soon.
The clock on the wall kept me informed as twenty more minutes passed, and then ten more on top of that.
The sound of the door being opened warned me that someone was coming in before Josh and Louie’s arguing confirmed it was them. Dallas followed after the two, the door creaking shut right before a knock sounded at the front door.
“I got it,” my neighbor said, touching one hand to the top of Louie’s head as he passed him up and headed in the direction of the knock, crossing in front of the turned off television.
“He got pizza,” Josh offered up before plopping down on the recliner perpendicular to the big couch I was on. “Meat supreme.”
I didn’t even have the energy to stick my tongue out at him. Hell, all I wanted was to disappear into my room, but I wasn’t about to leave Josh and Lou alone with a man I didn’t know that well. My parents were definitely never finding out about this. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you not liking pineapple.”
“On a pizza?”
He and his brother said it at the same time just like they did every other time we argued about pizza toppings—which was every time. “Gross.”
“Your faces are gross.” Maybe I wasn’t feeling bad enough not to argue with them.
“No, just Josh’s,” Louie chimed in, making me snort. He was too young to have the kind of comebacks he did, but from time to time, he surpri
sed me with them and I loved it.
Sure enough, Josh elbowed Lou and the younger one elbowed him right back. Dallas closed the door and appeared with three boxes, stacked from the biggest at the bottom to the smallest at the top. He set them on the coffee table and gestured toward the boys.
“Little man, can you get some plates and napkins?”
Lou nodded and got up, heading toward the kitchen. By the time he came back with a stack of paper plates and a roll of paper towels, Dallas had spread the pizza boxes out, opening one box after the other, showing that he had ordered an extra-extra-large pizza… and that one of the boys had tattled and told him how much I loved Hawaiian pizzas because the medium sized box had one inside. The last box was filled with chicken wings.
Passing out the plates, our neighbor didn’t even ask as he went straight for the pineapple and ham pizza, using his fingers to pull up two small slices and setting them on the plate Louie handed him, then passing it over. “Ladies first.”
“Thank you,” I said in a weak voice I hated.
“Lou, what do you wanna eat?” he asked my littlest.
He pointed at the meat pizza and then jabbed a finger at the hot wings. “One.” I held up a finger at him, squinting with one eye, and he added, “Please.”
Dallas’s eyebrow went up at the please, but he scooped up a slice and set it on the plate. His hand hovered over the container of hot wings before he asked, “These are spicy. Can you handle it?”
I could only blame myself for the shit that came out of Louie’s mouth next. I really could. Because I said the same thing in front of him a dozen times in the past. “I’m Mexican. Yeah.”
Those hazel eyes swung in my direction, wide and completely fucking amused. “All right, buddy. If you say so.” And just like that, he picked up the leg of what was probably the smallest wing in the box and set it on the plate with the slice.
“Josh, you?” he asked.
Three minutes later, the four of us were sitting around the table, stuffing our faces. I swore the cheese had some kind of magical healing ingredient that made my head stop hurting at least while I was eating. Josh chowed down three slices total and two more wings before throwing himself back on the floor and groaning. Lou wasn’t a big eater, but he picked at enough of his food. I wasn’t sure how much Dallas ate, but it seemed like a lot; I had no idea where all that food went. There wasn’t a hint of bloating or a pooch anywhere.
Some people had all the luck.
“Your head hurting any less?” he asked from his spot on the floor in front of the television, alongside the coffee table. He’d thrown a hand back to hold his weight up, his facial expression lazy and pleased like only pizza was capable of giving someone.
With my clean, pizza grease-free hand, I flipped the palm up and down. “Better than before eating.” I smiled at him. “Thank you. Let me know how much I owe you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” was the no-nonsense answer that came out of his mouth.
I knew when my battles were pointless and when I had a chance, and in this case, there was no use in wasting my energy. Plus, I just didn’t feel like arguing. I could pay him back later. “Thank you again then.”
Before I had a chance to remind the boys what manners were, they piped up, one after the other, filling me with a stupid amount of pride. “Thank you, Mr. Dallas.”
The older man gave them a look too. “I told you, you can call me Dallas.”
* * *
“Mr. Dallas is nice,” Louie commented hours later as he climbed into bed.
“He is, isn’t he?” I asked, plopping down on the corner of the mattress. My headache had eased enough to at least be able to do this one thing for my boy.
“Yeah.” He pulled his sheets up to his neck as he settled in. “Josh hit the ball over the fence and he didn’t even get mad. He told him not to say he was sorry because he didn’t do nothing wrong.”
“‘Anything’ wrong, Lou. But that was pretty nice of him to say that.” As I got older, I realized more and more the things I found attractive. Like patience and kindness. When I was younger—and a hell of a lot dumber—I’d always gravitated toward hot guys with nice cars. Now, there were things like credit scores to worry about, employment histories, and personality traits that couldn’t be picked up over dinner and drinks.
“He said our fence was messed up and we needed to fix it.”
I winced and nodded, adding the fence to the dozen other things that I needed to repair around the house at some point. “I know.”
“You gonna tell Abuelito?”
I winked at him. “I don’t want to, but maybe you, me, and Josh can fix it. What do you think?”
Those baby-soft features fell instantly. “Maybe Abuelito can help.”
“Why? You don’t think we can do it?” To be honest, I wasn’t positive we could either, but what example would I be setting if I constantly asked my dad to do things?
From the words that came out of Louie’s mouth next, I had already set a bad example. He looked me right in the eye and said, very seriously, “Remember my bed?”
I shut my mouth and changed the subject. “All right, what do you want to hear tonight?” I asked, using my hands to tuck the sheets in, starting at around his feet, close to my hip.
He made a thoughtful “hmm” sound. “A new one.” Thank God he let the bed thing go.
“You want to hear a new one?” I asked, still tucking him in, glancing back and forth between what I was doing and his face above the covers.
“Yes.” I drew out the look I gave him until he added. “Please. I’m sorry, I forget.”
“It’s okay.” I drew my finger up the sole of his foot through the sheet, knowing it was going to make him flail and mess up the cocoon I’d been working on. “A new story, then. Hmm.” Despite having a lifetime of memories of Rodrigo, some days it was hard to remember things about him that Lou hadn’t heard a million times before.
When I had first found out my brother died, the minutes that ticked by after my dad broke the news seemed to have lasted a million years. The memory of sitting on my bed afterward, my soul a dimension away, was one I could never forget. We had all fallen apart. Every single one of us. I hadn’t slept in bed with my parents since I’d been a little kid, but I could remember physically forcing myself to go back to my room after I’d stood at their closed door for who knows how long, wanting comfort that they weren’t ready to provide.
It wasn’t until I saw the boys a day or so later, when I realized that Mandy was in no place to do anything for them, that I had made myself shed and bury as much of my grief as I could—at least in front of them. Just thinking about her and all the signs she’d given us about how she was dealing, made guilt flood every nook inside of my soul. But it was done. We had all been to blame, and I didn’t want Josh or Lou to ever forget her.
“You want to hear a funny one or… maybe one with your mom?”
I almost missed Lou’s wince—it happened every time I brought up his mom, but it only made me do it more.
“A funny one,” he said, not surprisingly.
I raised my eyebrows and smiled, letting it go. “One time, your dad and I were driving back to El Paso to visit Abuelita and Abuelito, right? Josh hadn’t been born yet. We had stopped to eat somewhere and the food was really crappy, Lou. I mean, both of us had stomachaches about halfway through eating, but we made ourselves finish it. Anyway, we left the restaurant and kept driving because we didn’t want to spend the night somewhere… and your dad starts telling me how he’s going to poop himself. He kept saying how much his stomach was hurting, how bad it was, and how he thought he was going to have a baby.”
Lou’s little-boy laugh egged me on.
“Once he started threatening me that he was going to poop in the car, I finally pulled the car into the first gas station I could find and he ran inside.” I could picture the memory so clearly in my head, I started laughing. “He had his hands behind his butt like he was trying to ho
ld it in.” By that point, there were tears in both of our eyes, and it was really hard to get the rest of the story out. “My stomach was still hurting but not that much. It had to be thirty minutes later, your dad comes back out of the gas station, sweating. He’s soaked in it, Lou. No lie. He was covered in sweat. He gets into the car and I’m looking at him, and realize he didn’t have any socks on. So I asked him, what happened to your socks? And he says ‘There wasn’t any toilet paper in the restroom.’”
Lou was laughing so hard he’d rolled onto his side, clutching his stomach.
“You like that one, huh?” I was smiling huge at him busting a gut.
He just kept huffing out, “Oh my gosh” over and over again, a true testament of my mom’s influence on him.
“His birthday was a month later, and I got him a roll of toilet paper and a bunch of socks.”
“Grandpa showed me a movie of Christmas, and you gave Daddy socks and he threw them at you,” he said between these great big chuffs.
I nodded. “He made me promise never to say anything about it again, so I didn’t. I just kept giving him socks.”
“You’re good, Tia.”
“I know, huh?”
He nodded, his face flushed pink and happy. Even happy, he said, “I miss him.”
“Me too, Lou. Very, very much,” I said softly, feeling a bitter ball in my throat as I smiled. Tears stung the back of my eyes, but by some miracle I kept them in. I wanted this to be a happy thing between us. I could cry later.
The little boy blinked sleepily up at the ceiling with a dreamy sigh. “I wanna be a policeman like him when I’m old like you.”
His comment made my heart ache so bad I couldn’t even focus on how he’d referred to me as being old. “You can be whatever you want to be,” I told him. “Your dad wouldn’t care as long as you always did a good job.”
“Because he loved me?”
He was going to be the death of me, this little kid. “Because he loved you,” I promised. I gulped and hoped and prayed that he couldn’t see the struggle written all over my face. Tucking the covers in around him faster than ever, I leaned over my favorite five-year-old on the planet and kissed his forehead, earning a kiss on my cheek in return. “I love you, poo-poo face. Sleep good.”
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