“Ouch! I am so brutally hurt by that brilliant zinger, Harls,” I say sarcastically and rub my arm.
“Don’t call me that,” she growls and fidgets on her feet. I glance down at her balled-up fists and wonder if she’d punch me—doubtful. If she ever does grow the balls to do it, I’ll have her ass flat on the ground and reciting ten Hail Marys.
“Then what do I call you? Rebel Barbie?” I mock her.
“I don’t know. But I think my nickname for you is better: crazy, vile, bit—”
“You Sylvettis are a wild bunch,” Noah pipes up, and I jump. I nearly forgot he was standing beside us. I flush. I was so wrapped up in my mess of a sister to realize he’s been listening to everything thrown back and forth. He’s the only other living witness besides my grandparents.
“Who the hell is this?” Harley eyes him like he’s scum, and I punch her shoulder. “Ouch, what the fuck?” She punches me back, and I give her a warning glare; Noah’s just having the time of his life laughing.
“Not nice, is it?” he says to me.
I roll my eyes and gesture to him. “This is Noah…my boyfriend.” I squirm. It feels odd saying that to her, mostly. Also because we haven’t really felt like a couple ever since a few days ago. We’ve been fighting and so tense, things have been weird for the most part.
Noah extends a hand, flashing her his charming, dimpled smile. “Noah Wells—nice to meet you.”
Harley rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. “Pleasure is all mine, preppy.”
He chuckles, and I bite back a smile; what she just called him is weirdly similar to what I used to call him, and still do, I think—prep.
Deciding we’ll get nowhere here, I call us a cab. She sits on the curb far from us, and I wonder what to do with her. I can snitch on her and have her ass thrown in a juvenile detention, but it’d only cause more problems, not force her to calm down. Trust me, I know. I spent a whole year in there and came out even more fucked up.
“Your sister’s pretty something,” Noah says.
“Isn’t she?” I sigh.
“Yeah.” He nods, smiling and nudging me. “She reminds me of you.”
I scoff at him incredulously. “You take that insult back this instant!”
“I can’t.” He throws up his hands. “It’s the truth and you know it.”
“No, it isn’t.” I look over at my sister scowling at her phone, most likely texting to all her friends about her drab-ass sister who’s busting her balls. I smile at her familiar glower. “Okay, maybe she is a little bit. I guess it runs in the family.” My mother was a hot-head. My stomach tightens at the mention of her, and I quickly wave the image of her sweet smile away.
“Do you think it’ll stop at you or will you…you know…pass it on?” he says, and I look up at him to see if he’s serious or not. He’s biting his lip, and his gaze is unwavering. He’s shit-serious.
I look away. Shrug. “Never really thought about having kids. What…um…what about you?” I glance at him in my peripheral vision.
He shrugs, but I know he has. “Once or twice…”
“Do you want them?” I ask him straight out.
A few moments of the trees rustling in the slight evening wind whips around in my ears before he finally says, “Yes.”
My stomach has liquified, and it’s suddenly very hard to breathe. Why are we talking about kids? Does he want one?
“What about you?” he asks. His voice sounds strange, hopeful.
I am saved from answering the personal and overwhelmingly heavy question when a car pulls up in front of us. I climb into the front, leaving him and Harley in the back. I need some space to think, and being five feet apart from him won’t help. Neither will him sitting right behind me, but it’s enough to calm the flutters in my chest.
I have never once thought about kids. Nor have I ever had the pure desire to have one. I don’t see the point. All they do is cry and eat and shit and steal your life away, and I do not want that in any way. I want my damn life for myself.
“Miss? Where to?” the cab driver asks. He sounds like he’s been trying to get my attention for a long while.
“Alex’s Diner on Pembroke Avenue,” Harley interrupts me, and I turn in my seat.
“Hell no. We’re going home,” I say and give the man the address. As he plugs it into his GPS, Harley really fucking tries it with me.
“Um, you can go home, but I am going out with my friends,” she says and bats her eyelashes.
“Um…” I bat my eyelashes. “No the hell you’re not.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yes, I am!”
“No, you aren’t!” I scream, and the man begins driving.
“You can’t come back home and decide you can dictate my life!” she accuses, and I laugh humorlessly. She’s such a hilarious girl, she deserves her own comedy show.
“I came back home to bail your sorry ass out of jail. Grandpa couldn’t do it because he’s out enjoying himself, as he should be. He shouldn’t have to bail you out and deal with your spoiled ass!” I snap.
“Well, you can leave now.” She gestures to the door, and I gasp. The. Fucking. Nerve. This is the very reason I do not want kids: they’re spoiled and have heads too damn big for their bodies.
“I’m leaving tomorrow after I drop you off at school,” I say, and she shakes her head furiously.
“I’m going to the beach with friends,” she says like that’ll suddenly, magically, change my mind.
“Oh, no. They’re going to the beach, but you’re going to school,” I correct her as I would a student who’s in pre-K.
“Who do you think you are!” she snaps.
“Would you rather I drag your ass back to jail so you can spend the whole weekend there?” I threaten her and mean it. She can pick fights with bitches at school and get caught drinking here and there by teachers, but what she cannot do, what I forbid, is her turning out like me. It’s my worst fucking nightmare.
I’m trying to save her from becoming me. Why can’t she see that?
Instead of screaming back at me, she roughly sits back in her seat. Arms crossed, eyes rolling to the high heavens, she stares out the window for the rest of the drive, silently. Thank God.
When the car comes to a stop in front of the house I grew up in—my true home—she storms out of the cab without a word. I watch her run into the house, slamming the patio door behind her, creating a loud ring of metal against wood. I sigh heavily and shake my head. I look at Noah through the gap, and he looks at me with wide, curious eyes that were just surveying my childhood home.
“You’re right…I’m just like her.” I smile and close my eyes.
Definitely no kids, I don’t want to have them be like…that. Like me.
Chapter Forty-Two
Noah
Despite the circumstances, I’m stunned that I’m at Red Sylvetti’s childhood home. The house is not too big but not too tiny. Painted in rich sky-blue paint with white window shutters and impressively cut shrubs and grass, the scenery is quite adorable and very…homey. Definitely homier than the house I grew up in: it was large, immaculate, and painfully calculated and dull. I never felt like I was in a cherished home I’d reflect on when I lived in my own with a family I created.
My short, terse conversation with Red about kids crosses my mind as the cab drives off, and she stares up at her home with an unreadable expression. I stare at her, nibbling on my lip. Even though she didn’t straight up tell me, she clearly doesn’t want kids, and I really do. I’m not going to freak out because we want polar things; things change over time. Maybe I’ll end up not wanting any, and she does. We don’t know.
But having kids on our minds being at her childhood home, with her sister, is making me very anxious. I’ve only ever been in her old apartment back in Maryland once, and I’d known her for months. It truly feels like I’ve known her my whole life, but it feels like she knows me more than I know her. I want to know everything about her, and staying here might give me the
insight I crave.
“Where’s your grandpa?” I ask curiously as we walk up to the house. Harley slammed the door so hard, there’s a dent. Red growls impatiently but doesn’t comment on it as she holds it open, gesturing for me to enter the house. I do, frightfully so.
“On the lake fishing. He goes with his friends three times a week,” she says, and I hesitate in following her up a long set of stairs. I take my time looking around, my curiosity of this home she’s lived in her whole life settling in. “Third room on the left,” she mutters before disappearing upstairs.
I frown at the sour mood her sister threw her in but adjust my backpack and begin looking around. The living room couches and sofas are floral and covered in plastic. It smells like tea, and I smile because it’s obvious her grandmother decorated this room…but then I remember she passed away and how heartbroken Red was.
I back out of the room quietly.
The rest of the house is quaint, and there are newspaper clippings on the table, and a toolbox and golf clubs leaning on a wall in the kitchen, and a rag doll against the side of the stairs. I pick up the rag doll, and my heart tugs at the image of Red playing with this. Was she a selfish kid and kept it to herself when her sister got older and wanted to play with it? A part of me just imagines her cursing at her little sister, then caving in when her grandmother scolded her.
Yeah, that definitely sounds like Red.
And so does the rebellious girl running along the windows to my right. I watch Harley sprint past the house and disappear. I frown and glance up the stairs. Should I snitch, or does Red have that sibling telepathy thing I’ve heard of? They may not be actual twins, but something tells me they’re more connected than they want to believe.
And the questions and curiosity and made-up situations fill my head.
What age exactly did Red lose her mother? Where was she when it happened, her mother’s murder? Did she see it? Who killed her? Did she have a happy childhood despite it, or did she just completely lose herself the day or night her mother left her and her sister?
I gently put the doll where I found it and walk along the wall next to the stairs. There are countless pictures of their family or Red and Harley and her grandparents, to be specific. She’s smiling in all of them the farther up I go, the stairs creaking under the pressure of my feet.
Here—she’s wearing a swimsuit in a kiddie pool, grinning at the camera. And here—she’s dressed in a plaid dress and holding her grandmother’s hand as she rides a bike, blonde ponytails flopping in the wind. And here—and there—and everywhere is a radiant little Red that didn’t get hit with the harshness of death…until I get higher and higher, and her smile is non-existent, and she’s barely in them. They’re mostly of Harley now, and she looks just as miserable as the rare Red.
Her mother’s death completely wrecked her, and she’s even a little wrecked to this day. But she has a lot more control on it than she did when she was growing up without her mother. I can see the pillow she has smothered over the suppressed emotions, the pain. Their screams are muffled under the pillow, and she keeps pressing and pressing, tears falling down her face…
“Red.” I knock on the third door on the left.
One…
Two…
Three…
The door creaks open, and I’m greeted with a blur of gold as she walks by me. Suddenly forlorn and so infinitely sorry she grew up the way she did, I grab her hand and pull her into my chest. Her body instinctively stiffens, confused by my sudden hug-attack. But she softens in my chest soon enough.
I pull away after a few moments wordlessly. She looks up at me with furrowed brows and open lips, confused words hanging off her tongue.
“What was that?” she asks slowly, and her eyes roam my face.
“I just thought you needed it,” I say. There’s more to it, but I don’t want to scare her away. She’s always scared, and I wish I could kiss it away, but there’s more to pain than a simple kiss could possibly change. She doesn’t say anything, just stares up at me with a contorted expression, more words chilling on the tip of her tongue.
“I have to go,” she says finally.
“Where?” I’m guessing she saw her fleeing sister.
“To the laundry room.” She eyes me with clear turmoil and hints of a smile. But a blank sheet of nothingness covers her face as she walks by me and heads down the steps. Her tongue clicks with every knowing creak. She knows her childhood home. I smile and follow after her.
“Does a neighbor help sometimes? With stuff like this?” I ask her, knowing I would help him if he ever needed it and even when he didn’t, to be honest. I don’t think I’m capable of sitting by and watching someone incapable struggling when I could do a nice thing and just help.
She shakes her head but stops and nods. “Ms. Wilson next door, but that’s only on Sundays. She cooks him dinner then. Other times he’s by himself.” I clearly hear the sadness behind her voice, but she quickly covers it by clearing her throat.
The laundry room is overrun by fishing poles and golf clubs and bucket hats and heaps of clothes. But Red expels an expectant sigh and pops open the washer. I help her toss some in, and she grabs my wrist, stopping me. Her eyes are looking at me deeply, appreciatively, but also very prideful.
“You don’t have to help me; he’s my grandpa,” she declares, but I just decline her.
“I don’t mind,” I tell her, and she lifts a questioning brow. “Seriously. I love doing old men’s laundry.” Her eyes drop down to the item in my hand and smirks, looking back at me. I look down and flush. I’m holding his boxers. And they’re wet for some reason. I quickly throw them in the machine. “Just bursting with joy on the inside.”
She snorts but doesn’t stop me from helping. In a few minutes, the entire floor that was once just dirty underwear and plaid button-up shorts is clean, and she mumbles about mopping. There’s a lot of cat hair, but I don’t remember finding any cat toys or anything that showed he owns a cat.
“He doesn’t, but the one from next door likes to come through the back door. He keeps it unlocked all the time, even though I tell him to shut it every damn time,” she grumbles, and I somehow smile, despite her annoyance at her grandfather. I’ve just never seen this side of her, this maternal and worried side.
“Will you take care of me when I’m senile?” I ask her. I’m sitting on top of the rumbling washing machine, and she’s putting away the golf clubs and fishing poles in a tall cabinet. She faces me, smirking with glinting eyes.
“What do you think I’m doing now?” she says.
I flush and playfully kick my feet. “I’m not old.”
“Yes, you are.” Her arms cross, and her smirk is wider now, playful.
“By a few months.” I roll my eyes.
“Doesn’t matter.” She shrugs dismissively. “You’re an old, senile man who needs help crossing the street in my eyes.”
I scoff but end up laughing. “And what do you want in return for taking care of my old age?” I croak and lift a shaky hand, imagining I’m waving around a cane. She bursts into the laughter that pulls at the skin by her eyes, crinkles her nose.
“I’d go with cash. All up front. No takebacksies when you kick the bucket,” she says through her laugh. I keep waving my hand around, back hunched, and dismiss her with my other shaky hand.
“I’d rather have biscuits. Would you like wheat or graham cracker?” I squawk loudly. I like moments like this, where we’re joking around and the air is light, not tense and dramatic because of secrets or lies, which are very much present, but we’re smothering those bitches down with the help of her mastered skill of suppression.
“You are too much, Noah Wells,” she says as she calms down, never losing that light in her eyes.
I smile widely, straightening up. “And you are more than enough, Red Sylvetti.”
The air in this small room grows smaller, sucks away our breaths, mine at least, but not because it’s rigid or awkward, because in here,
in another galaxy, this is our every day. Our happy every day. We regularly joke and imitate old people and smile at each other and randomly hug each other. We find rag dolls by the door and watch a little girl laughing as she skips beside the house.
We’re happy.
We’re calm.
And we’re without any drama…but then I suddenly figure she doesn’t know about her sister running away. She wouldn’t be so joyful and light right now; she’d be absolutely pissed. And a small, selfish part of me contemplates not telling her…but I am not selfish, and I care about her sister. It’s obvious she’s going through a lot, and although her sister has found some sort of peace in the form of me, she still needs help being guided out of her dark place.
Red needs her sister by her side.
“Harley ran away,” I blurt out. I didn’t know how to word it so that she wouldn’t freak out.
She freaks out anyway.
“What?” I watch her snap out of her happy place and fall into her dark one. Her eyes widen frantically, and I can practically see her heart racing against her chest. “When did—how—what? Where is she?”
“I have no idea,” I say earnestly. “I saw her running past the house and came up to you, and—”
“And you hugged me instead of telling me my sister left?” she shouts, but I know she’s angrier at her rule-breaker sister.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly and let my head hang in shame. I was so wrapped up in her smile and the peaceful sigh of her shoulders in this room to focus on anything else. I am the most selfish person ever.
I hear her sigh and mutter, “It’s okay,” as she rushes out of the room, toward her other half, her sister, the poor little girl lost in the abyss of pain. I don’t know what else to do but sit here on this rumbling machine. I guess I can try to rectify in delaying what I saw by finishing up the laundry for her; I didn’t lie when I said I didn’t mind. Not one bit.
I don’t want to say it, I shouldn’t because it’d make things even more intimate and lot more confusing, but her family is my family. I wouldn’t ever dare say vice versa—I wouldn’t be that cruel to stick someone with my snooty family.
Red: Fiery Finale (Spectrum Series Book 8) Page 30
