by Meg Maguire
She sprang into action early, well before Maya would wake—the girl was as animated as a corpse before ten. Today Lindsey was thankful for it, and thankful when Brett left early for work. She could use a few hours to get her head wrapped around this latest development. Maya turning up had made one thing painfully obvious—this routine with her and Brett sticking it out until the situation was more ideal wasn’t going to cut it, not with this fresh load of chaos heaped on top of the existing pile. Enough with the waiting. Time for action.
And she had a lead on a place. Exactly one viable lead, and the only thing keeping her from pursuing it was her own stubbornness. That, plus it meant calling Rich.
“Suck it up, Tuttle.”
At nine she rang Jenna’s office number.
“Spark, Boston, Jenna Wilinski speaking.”
“Hey, it’s me.”
Jenna’s tone went instantly sympathetic. “How’s it going?”
“It’s...God, who knows,” she said with a laugh. “My sister’s still conked, so it’s quiet, at least. Could you do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“I need Rich’s number. Rich from downstairs.”
“Oh?” Tick, tick, tick. Jenna’s matchmaking gears were already clicking away.
“He told me about an apartment that’s free.”
“Ah. I don’t think I have his number, but I’ll have Mercer text it to you. You know you can always crash in our spare room if—”
“Um, no. Me, by myself? Maybe. But I’m not foisting a teenage girl on you guys.” She’d talk sense into Maya this weekend and get her on a bus back to western Mass by Monday.
“Right. Well, I hope you find someplace. And swing by if you have the chance. I’d love to meet your sister.”
“That’s what you think,” Lindsey said drily. “But we’ll see. Thanks. Any idea if Rich is working this morning?”
“I doubt it. Mercer was down there at six, opening.”
“I’ll catch him when I catch him, I guess.”
“Good luck.”
Lindsey had just gotten the coffeemaker working on a second pot when Mercer’s text chimed. She saved Rich’s number to her contacts, stomach gurgling as she did so. Why did everything involving that man have to seem so irrationally...substantial?
After a bracing caffeine infusion, she mustered her courage. Even just hitting Call got the butterflies swirling. Damn crush, making her stupid when she had absolutely zero space in her life for it. She held her breath, heart in her throat.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given how late they’d been at the gym, his deep voice was scratchy with sleep. “Whoozis?”
“It’s Lindsey. Mercer gave me your number.”
“Oh, hey.” A hiss of breath, a grunt as he hauled himself upright perhaps. “Everything okay?”
“Do you think you could put me in touch with your neighbor or her landlord about that apartment? I’m desperate.”
“God forbid I deny a desperate woman,” he said, suddenly sounding alert. “Gimme a few and I’ll get her info from my mom.”
She released her breath. “Awesome. Thank you.”
“Why the sudden hurry?”
“There’s been a...development. Anyway. I’ll talk to you later.”
“I’m sure you will. Later, neighbor.” With those ominous words, he hung up.
Great. Now she might have Rich Estrada underneath her at work and at home, in addition to that set of persistent fantasies. She drained her cup and did the only thing she could think of while she waited for Maya to wake. She began sorting her possessions from Brett’s.
* * *
RICH WASN’T DUE in the gym until the early afternoon, but after Lindsey’s call he couldn’t drop back to sleep. He found his mom in the kitchen in her robe and slippers, leaning so close to her old laptop her glasses were practically touching the screen.
“Mamá.” He leaned over her shoulder to kiss her cheek and take in that sweet rosewater smell, then dragged her chair back a few inches. “Don’t sit so close—you’ll burn your eyeballs out. We can’t afford to keep replacing your body parts.”
“Or that floor, if you keep scraping it up,” she shot back, but pulled him down by the sleeve and pecked his cheek. “You going to town?”
“In a while.” Ditching one crutch, he grabbed her mug and refreshed it from the pot, added that horrible vanilla creamer she loved and set it by her elbow. “I need Maria’s number, if you have it.”
Slow as a glacier, she slid the cursor across the screen to open an email. “Maria from upstairs? Why?”
“A woman who works in the office above Wilinski’s is looking for a place.”
“What kind of woman?”
He smiled at the question as he poured himself a cup and took a seat at the table. “A professional woman. Late twenties. She’s a matchmaker for that company Mercer’s fiancée owns.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh. Maybe this woman, she can find you a good wife.”
“Don’t hold your breath, Mamá.”
“A nice woman to come home to between all these fights, all these cities. So you won’t get distracted. By temptation.”
He smiled wanly. Lindsey was maddeningly tempting on her own. “What kind of novela do you think I live in? I got enough women to worry about between you and Diana.”
“Your sister is a good girl,” his mother intoned. She wasn’t wearing her cross at the moment but she pressed her fingertips to the spot where it would usually hang. “Up at four-thirty she was, off to the hospital.”
“I know, I know. She’s a saint. So you have Maria’s number or what?”
She got heavily to her feet, shuffling to the drawer where she kept her address book. Her recovery had gone smoothly, but the past couple of years’ surgeries had aged her a decade and stolen her old energy.
Rich swiveled her computer to see what the email was about. Follow-up appointment with a specialist. His stomach soured. He’d banked plenty of savings these past ten months, but without insurance, the bills stacked up fast and thick. Their cushion wouldn’t last forever. His body went cold as he wondered what might happen once his foot healed. If he’d ever get his momentum back as a name to watch. Or if his manager would drop him like a lame horse the second he lost his so-called fluke title.
“Here it is.” His mom turned with her open address book in hand. She passed it to him, and Rich put the woman’s name and number in a text to Lindsey. As he hit Send, he frowned. A wasted chance to call her. Oh, well. She was probably busy at work. And he could swing by her office when he was in later, ask her in person if she’d gotten in touch. Hell, ask her over lunch, if she’d finally say yes to grabbing a sandwich with him.
It was beyond clear that his head wasn’t going to get screwed on straight until he and Lindsey finished what they’d started in the back of that taxi. She could plead chaos for a while, but eventually he’d win her over. Then maybe, once they scratched this persistent, mutual itch, he could put her out of his mind as anything more than the cute girl upstairs.
Upstairs, he thought with a smile. At work and maybe here, too. She’d be hard-pressed to avoid him, then. He’d be the one who’d have to do the avoiding, anyhow—avoid letting her stare inside his brain the way she had after his Boston win, turning him into some soul-bearing, sentimental blabbermouth.
He stood and drained his mug. “I may as well head in. Grab a workout before my sessions start.”
“You take it easy, Richard. You baby that foot.”
Yeah, the way my father babied himself through twenty years’ worth of crippling depression and wound up with a pistol in his mouth.
“Idle hands,” he countered, knowing that one would resonate with her. “And these idle hands are all I got to work with for the next two months. And all they wanna do
is punch stuff.”
He hopped behind her chair and leaned in, putting her in the gentlest headlock, ignored her whapping hands and planted a noisy smooch on her temple. “I’ll see you tonight.”
As always, when he let her go she fussed with her perm, pretending to be annoyed. “You home for dinner?”
“Nah, I’m not done till seven, and I’ll probably stick around for the grappling session.” He didn’t have a dedicated jujitsu coach hounding him here as he had in California, and all the skills he’d picked up would go to shit in a blink if he let them. Plus whatever kept his body busy. Whatever kept the darker thoughts at bay.
“You pick up butter on your way home, okay?” she called as he went to grab his gym bag from the laundry room. He shoved a clean shirt and shorts inside and slung it around his chest, checked his wallet for his T pass and swung himself back through the kitchen.
“Butter. Got it. Save me leftovers.”
“Love you, Richard. You be good.”
“Love you, too, Mamá.”
Hopping down the front steps to the street, he eyed with longing the car he wasn’t allowed to drive until late September. He made his way to the bus stop, leaving one set of obligations behind and en route to the next.
* * *
BY ELEVEN, MAYA was up, and Lindsey’s day was suddenly moving in fast-forward. She’d reached that Maria woman and been invited to meet her at one to see the apartment. The rent was at the upper end of what she could afford, but considering she’d budgeted for a one-bedroom and this place had two, it sounded like a great deal. She could always get a roommate.
Maya flounced into the kitchen, wet curls swinging, and plopped into a chair. “What’s for breakfast?”
“I need you dressed and ready to go in fifteen minutes.”
Her blue eyes narrowed. “I’m not going home.”
Not today, Lindsey thought. She’d save that fight for the weekend, once she got Maya on her side, let her feel like an adult for a day or two. Surely that’s what she was craving if she’d run away from their parents’ house. Again. “Not home. I need to look at an apartment and you’ll have to come with me.”
“Good—it’s way awkward around here. What happened to Brett, anyway? He used to be fun.”
“Being a lawyer happened to him. Now get dressed. I’ll pack you a bagel for the train.”
“O-oh, the train.” She bobbed her eyebrows as she stood. “And apartment hunting. Cool.”
Yes, how very grown-up. No wonder Lindsey felt about eighty this morning.
They took the subway to North Station and a commuter train to Lynn, following her phone’s directions.
“I like your neighborhood better,” Maya said, taking in the small city.
Sure, Lynn wasn’t glamorous, but after a three-block walk, the Estradas’ street proved quiet and clean, and the house looked well-maintained. A three-story family setup, connected to an identical one, with sagging decks on each floor but a fresh coat of sage-green paint.
She recognized Rich’s beat-up old BMW parked along the curb, but that didn’t mean he was home. Please, please, please don’t let him be home. She had to avoid him until everything calmed down. However long that might take.
Maria was waiting on the front porch, and by the time they climbed the stairs to the third story, Maya was huffing and puffing. “Oh, my...God...too many...stairs.”
“You are so out of shape,” Lindsey teased. To be seventeen again, eating junk food and sleeping till noon and never breaking a sweat, yet still being thin as a rake.
“Don’t give me...body image...issues.”
Maria or the landlord had left the place in great shape, the walls freshly painted in neutral tones. The kitchen was super-dated, with matching avocado everything, but the apartment was sunny with big rooms. The walk to the train had been barely ten minutes, the bus even closer, and Rich had vouched for the landlord.
And this place was at the top of Lindsey’s list of exactly one affordable, available apartment.
“I’ll take it.”
“Yeah, you will,” Maya said, clearly wowed by the concept of having an entire apartment to oneself.
Maria was thrilled, as well. She’d clear it with the landlord, and once Lindsey forked over the security deposit and August rent, the place was hers.
Crazy. And if for some reason it didn’t work out, she had to stay only through November, when the existing lease was up. She beamed a thank-you to Rich, wondering if he was at work or somewhere beneath her feet.
They said goodbye to Maria out front and headed back to the station.
“Now all you have to do is, like, pack everything and move,” Maya said.
“How handy that I have my little sister here to help,” she said, shooting Maya a look to say she was dead serious.
Maya stared at the ground as they walked, uncharacteristically pensive for a block.
Lindsey nudged her. “What?”
“How long are you actually going to let me stay with you?”
“I don’t know. I have to talk to Mom and Dad.”
“Mom and Dad suck right now.”
“Everyone thinks that when they’re in high school.”
“No, like, they really suck. Like, the way they sucked two years ago.”
Lindsey’s heart dropped. Her parents had been through a rough patch a couple of winters back—gone as far as separating for a few weeks. But they’d ended up in counseling and eventually renewed their vows. Lindsey thought they’d seemed tense the last time she’d been home, but she hadn’t guessed it might be serious.
“Are you sure you’re not just being dramatic?”
Immune to her own irony, Maya sighed grandly and rolled her eyes. “I’m so sure. I have to live with them. The only one who does.”
Lindsey tried to imagine how things would be if she let Maya stay for the rest of the summer. The girl was almost eighteen. She wasn’t a baby, and she could handle herself on public transportation while Lindsey was at work. Drama aside, she wasn’t a trouble-magnet—no major partying Lindsey had ever gotten wind of, nothing with boys that sent up any red flags. Maybe a month’s taste of freedom was exactly what the girl could use to make going back to face her senior year bearable.
“I’ll talk to them. But you can stay with me for as long as they’re okay with it.”
Maya’s blue eyes widened. “Oh, my God, you are the coolest. Seriously?”
“Until the school year starts. You may as well get a feel for independence before you go off to college. I don’t want my baby sister turning into some girl gone wild, after all.”
Maya shoved her fists into the air and hooted, “Spring break!” She’d always thought frat guys and sorority girls were ridiculous. “There’s no way I’m going to college, anyhow. Why even waste nine months suffering though senior year when I can get a GED in like, a few hours? It’s a blow-off year anyway. Everyone says so.”
They reached the station and climbed the stairs to the platform, and Lindsey realized she might just have some leverage on her hands.
“I’m going to make you a deal,” she said as they waited for the next train to Boston. “Provided Mom and Dad agree.”
“A deal? What deal?”
“You can stay with me for the rest of the summer, if you promise to go back and finish your senior year.”
Every trace of excitement left Maya’s freckled face, annoyance dropping over her like a storm cloud. “No way. You just said I could stay, with no strings or anything!”
“I changed my mind.”
Maya stamped her foot and Lindsey had to laugh.
“Oh, my God, girl—you’re almost legally an adult. If you throw a tantrum with me, you’re not staying at all.”
“I’ll run away. To someplace else.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You’re not going to get a better offer. At least with me, you won’t have to babysit.” Aside from Lindsey and Maya and their twin brothers, who were in college, all five of the other Tuttle siblings were married and had kids. Though if Maya agreed, it would be Lindsey who was stuck babysitting for the next month.
But c’mon. How bad could it be?
* * *
BY LATE THURSDAY afternoon, Lindsey had secured the apartment, as well as her parents’ blessing for Maya to stay in the city through August. Her mother had sounded grudging, but Lindsey didn’t think it was because she disapproved. If their folks were fighting again, Maya had probably been their smokescreen, and without her to direct their criticisms at, they’d have to take a long, hard look at themselves. Maybe this was best for everyone.
On Friday, Lindsey gave Maya a choice—stay home or come in to work with her. Unlike her parents, she wasn’t giving her sister any spending money, and if Maya couldn’t afford anything fun, she might as well tag along with Lindsey. Who knew—maybe Jenna would take pity and give everyone early release once their appointments were over.
Jenna took the whole bring-your-sister-to-work thing in stride.
“If you get sick of watching us return emails,” she told Maya as she scoured the office for stray magazines, “feel free to watch TV in my apartment. It’s just upstairs.”
“Do you have a computer?”
Jenna frowned an apology. “Only the one I work on, sorry.”
Maya had managed to lose her phone somewhere between Springfield and Boston, and was entering social networking withdrawal. Let this experiment in temporary adulthood begin.
The magazines kept her occupied for the start of the morning, then the chatty, antsy boredom kicked in. Jenna had a client coming shortly and told Maya, “If you’re sporty at all, there’s a kickboxing gym downstairs. My fiancé manages it. They’re going to be opening it up to women soon. I’m sure he’d welcome female opinions about the space.”
