by Maggie Bloom
Somehow he looks unconvinced. “Who taught you?”
“Nobody, really,” I say with a light shrug. “But I’ve got my grandmother’s recipes.”
He nods, starts sawing through one of the meat-boulders. (They’re not overcooked, are they?) “My mother used to bake,” he says. “Chocolate chip cookies, apple pie, banana bread… She wasn’t big on regular meals, though. We ate a lot of takeout.”
I wish he’d say something—anything!—about that meatball, which is now rocking back and forth in his mouth. “Do you like Italian food?” it dawns on me to ask. Maybe that’ll drag a comment out of him.
He swallows, licks a trail of sauce from the corner of his mouth (a mouth I suddenly can’t stop fantasizing about; a mouth that could do very pleasurable things to me, if only I’d let it). “Oh, yeah,” he assures me. “I live on pasta.” He makes penetrating eye contact with me, sways his fork over the food. “This is good.”
Good? I was hoping for awesome, or astounding, or out-of-this-world. But as long as I’ve known Tom, he’s been a pretty cool customer, reacting to everything (except people who dare to insult me, apparently) with calm control and reserve.
Which makes me want to rile him. “You know,” I say, putting on my best flirtatious lilt, “I’ve got something delicious for dessert.”
He twirls a nest of linguine around his fork. “What is it?” he asks, not picking up on my sexy meaning.
Maybe I should pop a button on my blouse. “Cream puffs,” I tell him honestly. “From the Food Lion.”
“Mmm,” he gives me, “sounds good.”
Suddenly I hear Gramp’s voice chastising, Bobbi-Jo, you’d forget your head if it weren’t attached, because just now I realize I’ve neglected to set the ambience in motion.
“Excuse me,” I blurt, hopping up and dashing for the junk drawer, where Orv stores a disposable cigarette lighter. I flick the lighter’s little metal spinny wheel four or five times before I get it to spark. “There we go,” I say, dangling my curves in Tom’s face as I lean in and set the candles ablaze.
I kill the overhead light, leaving only the tiny bulb above the sink going. “Be right back,” I promise as I slip down the hall toward my bedroom, where I snatch my MP3 player and speakers and do an about-face.
I don’t bother asking Tom if he’d enjoy some dinner music (I’ve got two hours worth of songs I’ve hijacked from Orv’s CD collection, by way of Harvey’s computer at The Pit) before I set the MP3 player on the microwave cart and let the tunes rip.
When I steal a glance at Tom’s plate, I see that it’s half-empty (as opposed to mine, which is totally full).
But there’s still one more thing…
Jammed into the refrigerator sideways is a two-liter bottle of black cherry-flavored ginger ale that resembles pink champagne. I shimmy the bottle out and swaddle it in a hand towel as if it’s a pricey burgundy at a French café. “You’re going to love this,” I predict as I slosh the bubbly into those sapphire glasses (which sort of defeats the idea of the ginger ale being pink, but c’est la vie).
I resume my place opposite Tom and raise my glass in salute. “To best friends,” I say, feeling drunk on something (love?) even though I’m as pharmacologically chaste as your average newborn, “and more.”
“Definitely more,” he agrees as our glasses clink together and the glow of candlelight dances over the walls.
It’s the first time in a while I’ve had the urge to screw (because, honestly, the trouble Justin, Malcolm, Evan, Corey, and even twerpy Sydney Vale have been putting me through lately has been quite the sexual buzz kill).
And unless I’m mistaken (which I’m pretty sure I’m not by the musky cologne Tom has splashed on a little too liberally and the twitchy way his eyes keep darting about, as if we’re on the verge of being caught in the act), he’s in the mood too.
We finish dinner by seven thirty-ish, which leaves us scads of time for dessert (and even a little time for “dessert,” should the evening meander down that road), since Denise and Orv are at the drive-in for a double feature that doesn’t wrap up until nearly one a.m.
“Wanna watch some TV,” I offer, “before we, uh, have the cream puffs?”
Since Tom’s a virgin, he probably doesn’t know it’s not ideal to screw on a full stomach.
His shoulders kick up. “Yeah. Sure.”
I don’t bother clearing the plates or turning on any lights in the living room, an appropriate choice since Tom and I don’t get three minutes into watching Hoarders before his shirt is completely unbuttoned and poised to slip off, revealing the cutest patch of fine black chest hair. The base of my neck is tender with blossoming hickeys I’m already panicking over how to conceal.
Oh, and Tom is rather—how should I put this?—rigid, the zipper of his Levi’s starting to creep down all on its own from the pressure.
I make a move for his jeans, but he sidetracks me with an epic tongue battle, my slippery butter knife no match for the sabre he’s unsheathed. (This can’t be true—it just can’t—but I read somewhere that the tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body. Personally, I think weirdo factoids like that are invented in dungeon-labs by sleep-deprived, crackpot research assistants with inferiority complexes.)
Tom pries his lips and that aggressive tongue away from me just long enough to ask, “So…um…do you have anything? Because, if you don’t, I do.” He reaches for his back pocket as if I’ve demanded proof.
By “have anything,” I assume he means birth control of some kind and, more specifically, condoms (which I am THE BIGGEST IDIOT ON EARTH for being without, given the scare I’ve recently survived). Even The Pill is history, due to its propensity to create birth defects in my imaginary fetus.
He pinches the condom with his thumb and forefinger and holds it at eye level between us, its shiny blue wrapper reminding me of Denise’s drinking glasses. “We’re good,” he tells me, bringing the condom (the existence of which somehow makes the prospect of screwing more titillating) to rest on his lap and his palm to rest on my boob.
All systems go, I think, getting into his pants without delay. Or disappointment.
He presses me against the arm of the couch, his eagerness rubbing on my hipbone. (I have a visible hipbone now, thanks to the Schwinn! And the beginnings of knees too!)
Slap! Crash! Bam! goes something in Gramp’s front yard.
It’s the jerkwads, I think, returning to inflict more damage.
Tom flinches. “What was that?”
I haven’t told him about the Royale, but now is definitely not the time. “Huh?” I say, hoping to sound dumb and unconcerned.
There’s some clattering on the porch, but so far nobody’s hurled anything through what’s left of the window, Orv’s cardboard patch-job still holding strong.
“Don’t you hear…?” Tom murmurs, his breath hot in my ear.
I want to say no, but an erupting screech of tires deters me. “It’s probably nothing,” I settle for remarking.
Tom is upright now, his ears pricked, his eyes fixed on Gramp’s front door. “Something’s scratching…” He gets on his feet and, before I can stop him, stalks over and cranks the doorknob.
When he finally manages to coax the swollen slab of wood from its casing and peer through the screen, an amused look crosses his face, convincing me that whatever is going on outside bears no relation to the jerkwads.
I slink up behind him, glance over his shoulder (or, well, around the side of it, since he’s at least six inches taller than me). “No way,” I say, awestruck by the sight of Duncan’s bird-machine (maybe I should start calling it the cheater-mobile, since my father designed it specifically to steal the Yo-Yo), which has been unceremoniously deposited on Gramp’s bristly lawn.
The wacky contraption doesn’t explain one thing, though: the ongoing high-pitched scraping sound that reminds me of nails on a chalkboard.
Or claws on metal.
I duck under Tom’s arm and pop the screen door
open, making way for—no surprise—Buttercup the cat (but also bumping up against something that, although I can’t see it from here, must be occupying a decent percentage of the porch).
“Can you hit the light?” I ask Tom with a wave at the wall switch, which is a few steps away. “I’m trying to see…”
I get up on my tiptoes and stare down, my gaze falling on the stoop just as the bare bulb illuminates the source of the obstruction (and it’s a doozy): peeking out innocently from his infant car seat is my baby brother, Roy.
chapter 21
THE ONLY good thing I can say about Duncan and Marie is that, this time, they left a note. And a check. The twenty-five-hundred dollars in prize money from the Yo-Yo, to be exact, signed over to Orv in my father’s schizophrenic chicken scratch. Money Orv and Denise used to pay off the car, replace the smashed window, and turn Gramp’s old room, which has been sort of a creepy shrine since he died, into a double nursery for Roy and the new bundle of joy, who’s set to arrive any day now.
The excuse Duncan and Marie gave for abandoning their second-born (God bless them for at least feeling the need to explain) was their calling to aid tornado victims, this spring being the most destructive cyclone season in nearly a century.
Too bad they’re immune to recognizing the damage they’ve spawned in their own lives.
Part of me says I should’ve seen this coming, should’ve known Duncan and Marie wouldn’t change. (I mean, people seldom do.)
Except for me, I think. Thanks to a nice old dude with a bike shop, a couple of abnormally grown-up cousins, a best friend who not only loves me but LOVES me, and, of course, a scraggly little puss-face called Buttercup the cat.
All in all, things aren’t so bad, I figure. And I’m determined to make them even better for Roy, who has settled in like a champ around here, Denise being ten times the mother Marie could ever hope to be.
“I sterilized his bottles,” I tell Denise, who’s just rolled in from the night shift (almost literally, since she’s about as wide as she is tall now) about Roy. “If you make the formula, I’ll feed him when we get back.” I’ve already got my brother buckled into his stroller for our morning walk, his chubby hand clenched around that flea market rattle I’d intended to gift to Denise and Orv’s bambino.
Denise beams with love, and I imagine her heart swelling, like mine sometimes does when I think of Roy. “Good girl,” she says, patting me gently on the head.
I grab the stroller and make a beeline for the door, before Denise notices the tears that are ready to spurt from my eyes. Even though the waterworks are joyful, I don’t want to worry her.
It’s one of those gorgeous early fall days with a cloudless blue sky and a light, crisp breeze that makes me think of apple cider and jack-o-lanterns, haunted houses and pillow cases full of candy. (But not Milky Ways. I’ve quit those sneaky things for the long haul.)
“Hang on!” shouts Tom out of nowhere (he’s five minutes early for our jaunt), speeding over to help me with Roy’s stroller, which is bouncing sideways down the steps, practically tipping over. “Let me get that.” He leans his bike against the garage and muscles Roy (and his conveyance) to the ground. “There we go,” he says with a satisfied grin.
“I love you,” I tell him, because it’s true. And I can’t help myself.
He doesn’t look surprised. “It’s about time,” he says with mock frustration (and a twinkle in his eye).
“And…?” I prod. I mean, it’s only fair…
“What?” he says, putting on a ridiculously confused face that makes me laugh.
“You know very well what,” I say as we turn out of Gramp’s driveway and into the street.
“Would I do all of this if I didn’t love you?” he asks, gesturing from me to Roy and even behind us at lame old Buttercup, who has suddenly become our furry caboose.
He’s right. I know he is. But I still wish he’d come out and say it, because somehow those three simple words seem as if they’ll fill the hole Duncan and Marie have left in my heart. “Suit yourself,” I say with a shrug. “But that just means I’ll have to say it twice as much, for the both of us.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad,” Tom admits, first stroking my hand (which is glued to the stroller), then slipping an arm around my waist, my hip now bumping his thigh with every step.
“Care for a mint?” I offer, struggling to wiggle the Yo-Yo prize out of my pocket.
Tom cups his hand, and I flip one of the powerful little things from my palm to his. Then I pop one of my own.
We bop along quietly for a block or so, Buttercup weaving around our legs and the stroller, threatening to get flattened at any moment. Roy, on the other hand, is no trouble at all, having drifted off to sleep under his fuzzy blue blankie about ten feet from the house.
As we turn onto Marigold, I ask Tom, “So what are you going to be for Halloween?”
He scrunches his nose. “That’s like six weeks away.”
“I know.”
“Frankenstein?” he says after thinking a while. “Or Batman. They’re both classic, right?”
Please let it be Batman, I think. Frankenstein is too close a match. “Yeah,” I say. “Either one.”
He asks, “How about you?”
Except for the year I went mummy crazy, I’ve been a witch or a ghost every October thirty-first of my life. “I don’t know,” I say, my mind starting to wander.
“No idea?”
I shake my head. “Uh-uh.”
There is one thing I’m certain about, though: I’m not going to let Tom Cantwell screw me (for a very long time, anyway), because I respect him too much. He’s not some quickie in the bushes or a backseat, back alley bang-job. He’s Tom Cantwell, my best friend since second grade. The boy who saved me from drowning when no one else would. The boy who bought me a pregnancy test, even though he wasn’t in the running as a potential daddy. The boy who, when the time is right, deserves to be the first one to make love with me.
But for now I’m not ready.
And I know he’ll wait.
“You’d make a good Julie Madison,” he tells me, scooping Buttercup off the ground for a nuzzle.
Thank you, Gramp, for plying me with comics just to get me to read. “Is she Batman’s girlfriend?” I say.
Tom tilts his head, shoots me a mischievous grin I recognize from the schoolyard, years ago. “She might be.”
I stop the stroller, lean in and, nearly squashing Buttercup, murmur, “It’s a deal.”
And we seal it with a kiss.
Also by Maggie Bloom:
Any Red-Blooded Girl
Film at Eleven
(available where e-books are sold)
