I stop.
“Now put her down,” he says.
“Put down the gun and I’ll put her down.” I bargain with him. Sher stops struggling on my shoulder.
“You’ve got that stupid gun again, Trent? If you shoot anybody with that thing, so help me…”
“All you have to do, Trent, is put down your gun and I’ll put her down too. Deal?” My shoulder is starting to ache anyway, but Trent’s facial fishhooks wiggle as he shakes his head, rejecting the deal. He doesn’t drop the gun either.
“Nuh uh,” he says.
“Alright. Then I say nuh uh to putting her down too.”
“Look, I’ll shoot you in the leg, asshole. I mean it.”
Sher goes off like a siren in my ear. “MOM! MA!! TRENT’S GOT HIS GUN OUT AGAIN!”
I’m about to ask Sher what she’s doing, when I suddenly hear Lisa overhead.
“Trent!” Lisa barks. “I told you what would happen if you waved that gun around my daughter again, didn’t I?” I swivel my head to see Lisa hanging over the balcony. She’s got her own pellet gun. A better one, in fact, and I hear her cock it. She repeats in a growl to Trent, “Didn’t I?”
Trent’s gun clangs as it hits the pavement. Luckily, it doesn’t go off. He springs away, like a terrified gazelle, dodging between parked cars, toward the exit of the complex.
“What’d I tell you about running away, Trent?” Lisa shouts after him, as she levels her gun. He serpentines. Lisa fires. The sound is a sharp crack and it only takes half a second for Trent to grab his calf and drop, howling, to the pavement.
I’m not sure what to say to Lisa. Thanks? Good shot? Holy crap, who gave you all guns?
“Go on now,” Lisa says, waving her gun toward my car. Then she yells to Trent, “You ain’t gonna bother them anymore, are you, Trent?”
“Screw you,” he says, pulling himself to his feet. Lisa aims her gun again, and as he starts limp-hopping across the parking lot, he shouts at her, “I’m not even near ‘em, Lisa! Quit shooting me!”
Lisa doesn’t lower her gun, but she doesn’t fire it either. I get to my car and put Sher on her feet. I assume she’s not going to run, with her mom armed and watching. And I’m right. Sher slides into the passenger seat without a fight. I close her door and go around to the other side.
“Nice meeting you, Lisa,” I say, giving her a short wave. Sher’s mom snorts, but I think that’s as close as she gets to friendliness. She stays at the upstairs rail, Annie Oakley in a worn-out tee shirt, her gun still trained on Trent, as we drive away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“SO WHO’S TRENT AND WHAT’S HIS PROBLEM?” I ask after we’re a few miles down the road. It hadn’t occurred to me that this girl would come along with a load of baggage, but now I know. Her baggage is Emo-colored, with a load of metal embedded in his face.
“He’s just an idiot.”
“I got that part. How do you know him?”
There’s a pause. “From the apartments. He lives downstairs, behind the office. His mom’s the manager.”
“The manager? Is your mom going to get evicted for shooting his kid?”
“No,” Sher giggles. It’s nice to hear the sound of it again. Like ribbons. “Mrs. Daughtry knows Trent’s an idiot. She kicks him out all the time.”
“Nice.”
The giggle melts away and she looks out the window.
“Trent’s part of the reason I don’t want to have a kid,” she says.
“What does he have to do with it?”
Another long pause. “I don’t ever want to have a kid like him. I don’t ever want to kick my kid out of my house.”
“Why would you expect that? That’s that guy. It doesn’t mean it would happen to you.”
“Hello? Weren’t you the guy that just lumber-jacked me down the stairs? It just happened to me. That was me, being kicked out.”
“Oh, that’s what that was?” I quirk an amused eyebrow at her, since she’s scowling at me. Sher’s a spitting kitten next to her mother. “I thought your mom’s was giving me her blessing.”
She giggles softly and something between my shoulder blades relaxes.
“You want to grab something to eat?” I ask. “I’m starving.”
“Yeah, I kind am too,” she says, and since she’s not talking about having me drop her off at any clinics, I steer us toward one of my favorite restaurants instead.
***
Sher orders steak and almost barfs across the table the second she cuts into it.
“What’s the matter?” I ask. She sways against the back of the booth cushion, eyes closed.
“It’s all…pink…inside.” She takes a fast sip of her ice water.
“You want to swap?”
She doesn’t hesitate.
“Just the fries,” she says, quickly shoving her plate across the table as if it’s Filet of Dead Mouse. I dump my burger onto her steak plate and slide her my entire pile of fries. She still doesn’t look right.
“Are you going to be sick?”
She just shakes her head, although her expression isn’t very reassuring, as she asks me to wait by holding up her index finger. I move the burger and steak as close to my side as I can.
“Can we just go?” she asks. I give my burger, only a bite missing, a sad glance.
“Sure.” I stand up from the booth.
“What are you doing?” she says. Her lips are still pursed, like she’s holding back a vomit-tsunami, but she motions for me to sit down again.
“I thought you wanted to go?”
“I do,” she says. “But you’re not just going to leave all that food here, are you?”
“Well, yeah. If you’re going to be sick…”
She groans, waving over a waitress. The server comes over immediately, takes one look at Sher, and asks, “Are you okay, honey?”
“We need carryout boxes,” Sher chokes the words and grabs for her water.
“And a to-go cup with more ice water, please,” I add. The waitress scurries off and returns in seconds. She even dumps all the food in the boxes for us. Sher gets up before she does it, but still has to turn her back on the carnage of the dirty plates. She sips her water, staring at the floor. I leave cash with the waitress and carry the Styrofoam boxes as I follow Sher outside.
She stops beside my car and takes a deep breath. Her color returns a little.
“I’m starving,” she says.
“Seriously? You want to go back in?”
“Not unless you really want me to puke,” she says.
“Back to my place, then.”
We drive to my house with both windows down and Sher leaning out of hers like a sad, golden retriever. She eats some of the fries while hanging over the moving pavement and every time she ducks her head back inside for too long, the smell of the meat gets her again and she gags. I wonder if this will be the way it goes. I wonder if she will consider sticking with it.
Back at my place, Sher hasn’t mentioned the clinic once, until we get in the door. She sighs, dropping her gym bag on the floor, beside my couch.
“I can sleep here tonight,” she says, slapping the cushion. “But tomorrow, Landon, please…I’ve got to make an appointment and I’ve got to get to the clinic.”
I can’t help but sigh. I put the boxes in the fridge. I’m not even hungry anymore.
“I’m sorry,” she says when I walk back into the living room. But it’s not like I can just say it’s okay and move on. My kid is in her stomach and, while I get that it’s her body and that she’s the one making the biggest sacrifice here, it still isn’t fair that I don’t have any say about it. I’d be willing to do almost anything she wants.
But as I stare at the dark rings around her eyes, I know that the only thing I can do now is fight her—with exhaustion, with food, and with hijacking all her shit so it makes it harder for her to leave. I’ll do anything, besides driving her to the clinic.
“I wish I’d gotten to know you better, before all this h
appened,” she says, collapsing on one end of the couch. A whiff of an unconquered battleground rises out of her tone of regret. I jump on it.
“Would that have changed things?”
“Probably.” Her smile is weak. I take advantage of that too, dropping onto the opposite end of the couch.
“What did you want to know?” I ask. Her weak smile surfaces again.
“Oh no, I’m not falling for this again. You did this to me last night.”
“Did what?” I ask, trying my best to look shocked. “We just let each other know where we stood last night. We didn’t really get to talk.”
“I’m tired.” Elbows on her knees, she slumps into her own hands, her face hidden and her ponytail dangling toward the floor. I get this crazy urge to reach out and touch it. Seeing her hair fall over her fingers triggers some muscle memory in me, how her hair spilled over my hands the night we created the reason that we’re here now. I remember how the locks of her hair felt cool across my fingers and my fingertips itch for it again, but I keep them in my lap. I can see how grabbing her ponytail might send her screaming from my apartment.
“Me too. You want me to rub your feet? I’ve been told I’m excellent.”
“Oh yeah? By who, Man Whore?” she mumbles into her hands.
Oh screw this. I reach down and grab her ankle, the tips of her hair brushing my arm. It feels better than I remember. Cool and heavy. I instantly picture it spilling over my chest, but I gently pull her legs up, so her feet land in my lap. She doesn’t resist much.
“Every chick in my family,” I tell her. She giggles. It’s like ribbons of oil sliding down a waterfall. The sound is almost holy. I can’t figure out why it bothered me so much before. I pull off her shoes and let them drop on the floor. Before she can tell me not to, I’m doing my magic, pushing my thumbs into the tender pads of her feet with precise pressure. Gentle enough that she doesn’t pull away, firm enough that she doesn’t laugh. But she still giggles. I’m not sure that can ever be stopped and I think I’m being conditioned like a dog. She giggles, I relax.
“You’ve got sisters?” she asks.
“Sure do. Five.”
“You’re the oldest?”
I shake my head. “Nope. The youngest.”
“Really? I wouldn’t have guessed that, by how bossy you are,” she giggles. I massage her heel and a tiny, tired moan breaks from her lips.
“Told you I was good.”
“You are,” she agrees and in a couple seconds, her eyes drift shut. The second her lashes hit her cheek, she pops her lids back open and tries to sit up, to stay awake, but I elevate her foot a little to keep her down.
“You can go to sleep, if you want. It’s fine,” I soothe her with my most gentle tone, but I can see how scenarios might be popping through her head, of all the things I might do to her while she’s sleeping. I would bet the worst one she can think of is how I could steal her pants again, because she shoves her fists into her pockets. I ignore it and keep rubbing—slow and steady pressure, methodical patterns.
She’s out in less than ten minutes.
Her pants are off in less than twenty. And since she sleeps like a brick, most of what she’s brought from home is stowed in the locked trunk of my car in less than thirty. When I come back inside and close the door, she hasn’t even stirred from where I left her on the couch.
I drag a blanket from my bed and tuck it around her, before I grab a pad of paper, a pen, and my laptop.
When I slow down and think about what’s happening here, how I’m trying to convince this stranger to have our baby, my palms start to sweat. I get past the idea of I’m going to have a kid and turn down the dark path of I’ve got to be involved with this snoring girl and if she has the baby, we will be tied together the rest of our lives. What the hell am I thinking? We don’t know each other. She’s gorgeous, but what if she’s actually a monster? What if she stinks at being a mother? What if the kid has problems? What if she moves away with it? What if she finds her pants?
I decide that I can’t go to sleep until this baby is born.
I send my boss an email, saying I need the next week off. I never take time off, so I’m grateful when he pings me right back with permission to do it. But I don’t know how I’m going to be able to keep an eye on Sher after that. When a bead of sweat gathers on my forehead, I stop thinking.
Sher begins to snore a little. I listen to the whizzle of her nasal passages for a while, before I pick up the pen.
I uncap the pen and balance the pad of paper on my knee. I’m not sure how to do this, but my mother did it for all of my sisters and me, and it seems like the only thing I can do right now.
Dear Baby,
Your mom and I met at our best friends’ wedding. Yesterday, I found out your mom was pregnant with you. I want you to know how happy I am…
CHAPTER NINE
I FALL ASLEEP IN THE CHAIR and Sher wakes me early, by pummeling me with her shoe.
“What…did…you…do…with…my…pants…” Every word is a slap on my arms or legs, until I grab the shoe and toss it toward the door. She stands there, stunned, in the same electric blue panties that I admired last night. Her hair’s matted up in a fuzzy knot on the side of her head.
“Where are my pants?” Her eyes condense down to slits. It gives me another amusing glimpse of her harmless little version of her mother.
“I gave them away,” I tell her with a shrug. “They looked uncomfortable.”
“Give them back, Landon!” She stomps one foot.
“Uh…nope.”
“What do you mean, nope? I’m calling…somebody.” She rifles her gym bag, but her phone, just like her pants, is missing, and mine is tucked away too. She finally gives up the hunt and drops back onto my couch, clutching her disbelieving face with one hand, while peering at me through her fingers.
“Why do you keep stealing my pants?” she asks.
“If I stole your pants, it might have been because you mentioned last night that it might’ve made a difference if we’d gotten to know each other,” I say. “I didn’t want you to run off before we had a chance to do it.”
“It might’ve made the difference before,” she says. “Not now.”
“Why not now? Now seems as good a time as any. You’re still pregnant. You should know how awesome I am, before you make any decisions. I’m a catch.”
She groans. “You don’t get it.”
“Okay. Help me to get it, then.”
Another groan, accompanied by an eye-roll. “This isn’t like speed-dating. Having a kid is our whole lives. Why are you so bent on this? You don’t know me either.”
“I don’t, but I think things happen for a reason. And I think everybody deserves a chance.”
She busts out in tears. It’s not just a few cute, little trickling tears either. No, she goes right for the big guns, bawling until her nose runs. I grab her a roll of toilet paper from the bathroom.
“Thanks.” She sniffles and forces out a limp giggle after she blows her nose.
“Sure.”
“Landon, there’s something I want to tell you.”
“I’m listening.” I scoot to the edge of the chair. She works over her nostrils with a gob of TP. Her slow giggle dissolves as soon as I hear it.
“Um,” she says, glancing up at me with a shaky smile. Then the smile crumbles and she dives back into the TP again. I wait. Her face finally reappears, and she catches the corner of her lip in her teeth. She’s really a beautiful girl. It would be easy to stare at her all day, even though her face is swollen and snotty from crying. “Uh, I just wanted to tell you that you seem like a really nice guy.”
“Thanks.” She’s still staring at me, her lips still stuck in her teeth. “Anything else?”
She re-wads her fist full of toilet paper, glancing at her feet. “That’s it. You’re just…really nice. What if you end up not wanting this?”
“It’s my kid. It’s not an option.”
Her tone is
hollow as she says, “See? Nice.”
My phone, on vibrate, rattles against the forks in the kitchen silverware drawer. “Now that you know I’m nice…”
My phone rumbles again and Sher fidgets with her wad of TP. “Aren’t you going to get that?”
“Not important. I’m talking to you right now.”
“You should get it,” she insists. I get up and get the phone on the fourth ring. The second I hit talk, Hale explodes on the other end.
“Where’s my friend?” she demands.
“Slow down, Killer, she’s right here,” I say. I crank up the volume before I hand my phone over to Sher. “It’s Hale.”
I can hear Hale’s voice like she’s on a bullhorn, even when Sher holds the phone tight to her ear.
“What’s going on? I’ve been worried about you!”
“I’m fine,” Sher’s eyes flick to me. “My mom kicked me out, so I’m at Landon’s place for now.”
“She kicked you out?”
“Totally.” Sher giggles.
“I didn’t think she’d really do it.”
“Oh, but she did.” Sher stands up and walks away then, without looking at me. She goes into my bedroom. With my phone. But I can still hear most of her end of the conversation, at least. “She told Landon I’m his responsibility. Like I can’t do anything on my own. She’s the one who always wanted a man around, and look how her life turned out…”
With Sher in my room and Hale’s responses lost, I try to glue the rest of the conversation together from the bits I can hear. It’s frustrating every time Sher’s voice dips too low for me to make out the words. But I get the giggles. The giggling is as constant as breathing air for this girl, until about five minutes into the conversation.
The door to my room wafts shut and I know it’s not a mistake. I go into the bathroom and press my ear to the wall. The reception isn’t perfect, but it’s better than nothing.
“He came and got me. Like, carried me out of my mom’s because I wasn’t going to go with him…Frickin’ Trent was there too…uh huh…he had his stupid gun out and my mom had to shoot him again…no, I didn’t say anything…yeah, I know…I know…I wanted to go this morning, but he keeps stealing my pants…No, I’m totally not fooling. He took them off me while I was sleeping, so I couldn’t leave... I don’t know if I can do it, Haley Berry…”
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