by Ruth Diaz
Annmarie knew this lecture. She’d started getting it in junior high when she went to her first slumber party, and when she still didn’t have powers by the time she started driving, she’d gotten it every time she went out with her girlfriend or borrowed the car. Not that her parents had the backing of anything as well-organized as the Superheroes and Metahuman Assistants Union—superheroes had only unionized about a dozen years ago. It took years before her parents were convinced they ought to join it, and Annmarie was old enough for them to leave her without a babysitter long before that. “Waiting is one of my specialties,” she said dryly.
Mr. Lowe handed her the watch. Fastening it around her wrist felt significant, somehow. Here she was, tying herself even more tightly to the kind of stuck-up people with misplaced priorities she’d always sworn to avoid, and yet…TJ wasn’t like that. She was all about the importance of her family, even when the world needed saving.
Somehow, the weight of metal around Annmarie’s wrist felt less like being locked down and more like being part of something. This was for the kids.
TJ took Mr. Lowe into her bedroom to have what she called a conversation and what Annmarie suspected was really a council of war. Annmarie got the kids—already on the verge of mayhem in the way unsettled kids often were—redirected to play a board game. The three of them were still playing Apples to Apples Junior when Mr. Lowe left an hour later. TJ didn’t come out of the bedroom.
Annmarie wondered if the other woman was really accomplishing anything, or just tying herself in knots, since there wasn’t much they could do until Singularity showed his face.
Two movies and a minor accident with some modeling clay later, still no TJ. The stomach flu was only a memory, so Annmarie made frozen pizza for dinner. When TJ didn’t so much as stick her head out, Annmarie knocked on the bedroom door, then opened it far enough to stick her head in. “The kids are having dinner. You want some?”
TJ glanced over her shoulder long enough to say, “That’s okay, you guys eat without me.” She turned back to her laptop.
Annmarie waited a minute. “You know, at some point, you need a break. A night off. Play a game with your kids. Take a bath. Go on a date.”
TJ leaned back in her battered office chair without actually looking at Annmarie. “I can’t just sit around and do nothing, knowing he’s coming. And I don’t date, anyway. I’m a mom, a superhero, and I have a full-time job. Who has time to date?”
She had a point, and it wasn’t like Annmarie had been planning to ask TJ out—she didn’t date superheroes. “That’s a shame. You could use some company that’s not seven years old now and then.”
TJ spun in her chair and glared. Suddenly her expression softened, going vaguely guilty.
Not quite what I was hoping for.
“I’m sorry, Annmarie, I totally lost track of time. You’re off at seven, right?”
Annmarie grunted. “It’s not about my shift ending. Lord preserve me from superheroes and their round-the-clock schedules. I’m just worried about you, okay?”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t.” She stepped inside, closing the door down to a crack that let her keep an eye on Esteban and Marisol and lowering her voice. “In fact, unless you object, I was thinking I might just run home and pack a bag. Tell my roommates I’m on 24/7 for a while and crash on your couch for the duration. If Singularity comes calling in the middle of the night, you can’t deal with him and keep watch over the kids at the same time.”
TJ opened her mouth, then closed it. “I can’t ask you to do that. You’ve been a godsend, Annmarie, but everybody needs some time off.”
“Everybody but you,” Annmarie countered. It won her a scowl, but she ignored it. “You’re not asking, I’m telling. Somebody needs to be with those kids, and you’re no good to them like this.” She waved her hand vaguely at TJ’s desk—a gesture meant to take in the laptop, the hunched posture and the dark circles under the other woman’s eyes.
TJ dropped her head into her hands. “I’m not supermom,” she said softly. “I know it. I do a pretty good job faking it most of the time, but how do I protect them from this? How do I save them from their father when I can’t even see him coming?”
Annmarie lifted her chin and tried to put absolute faith on her face. “You’ll figure something out. Look, I’m going back out to the kids. Do what you need to do, tie up loose ends. You said bedtime at eight o’clock—be ready to say good night to them and take some time for yourself. I’ll go home to pack then.”
TJ straightened up, rolling her eyes. But she had a smile on her face. “Yes, Mom.”
* * *
TJ smelled garlic. The clock on her laptop screen read 7:55 and she still didn’t have a solid lead on Singularity, though Vincy had offered to help stand watches at her apartment. TJ wasn’t prepared to invoke that kind of protection yet. She had a level of anonymity she really liked with this condo, and she wasn’t quite ready to give it up.
She shed her jacket before opening her door, but she didn’t bother changing back into a T-shirt at this hour of the day. When she opened the bedroom door and saw the dining table, it dawned on her that the kids had eaten hours ago. Annmarie had cooked dinner.
TJ’s face heated.
Not dinner for the kids. Dinner for—the two of them, judging by the place settings. Her single set of cloth napkins had been employed, the good dishes were out, and there were candles. Real, honest-to-God white tapers, slightly dusty, in her little brass candlesticks.
That jarred her out of her shock. Her eyes searched automatically for Marisol, who was just reaching for a slice of bread from the dish in the middle of the table. TJ started toward her daughter, but Annmarie stepped out of the kitchen and said, “Marisol, you had supper already.”
“But it smells good.”
“But it’s for your mama, because she forgot to eat.”
It wasn’t like TJ could even complain about that—it was true. Marisol drew her hand back.
“It’s bedtime anyway, Mari,” TJ said. “Let’s tuck you in.”
When the kids were safely in bed, TJ shut the door behind her, ready to tell Annmarie that this was ridiculous and she certainly didn’t need looking after. Annmarie had dished up spaghetti and was spooning red sauce onto the plates at their places across the table from each other. Worse, the sauce smelled really good.
TJ opened her mouth, but Annmarie cut her off. “I thought it was really sad that you didn’t even date. So I thought I’d bring the date to you.” She gestured at the carefully staged table. “Except I couldn’t think who might be safe to call to keep you company, so you’re stuck with me.”
TJ couldn’t find a single thing to say that didn’t sound ungrateful. She closed her mouth and hoped she didn’t come off as too big an idiot. “Um. Thanks? I expected to be eating cheese and crackers tonight.”
“If you remembered to eat at all?”
She shrugged and tried not to look too sheepish.
Annmarie took the sauce back into the kitchen, setting the little saucepan on a back burner and putting the lid on it to keep it warm.
TJ walked around the table into the kitchen, heading for the cupboard where she kept the wine. She had just opened the door when Annmarie backed away from the stove, her hip bumping softly into TJ’s. TJ glanced quickly at the other woman and found her staring awkwardly back and blushing faintly. “Sorry,” they said in the same breath, and then laughed.
TJ hiked herself up on the counter, kneeling on the black granite surface so she could reach her small wine rack. She wasn’t anywhere near as interested in wines as in single malts, but she knew reds were supposed to go with red sauces. She picked one at random—a Zinfandel that had probably been a housewarming gift from Todd—and set it on the counter beside her before hopping down.
She fou
nd Annmarie watching her, a bemused smile touching soft pink lips. “You can levitate things, but you still climb up on the counters to reach what’s on the top shelf?”
TJ turned away, opening the silverware drawer to search for her seldom-used corkscrew. There she went, still too short and too much a tomboy after all these years.
A gentle touch on her shoulder almost made her jump.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Annmarie said quietly.
A glance over her shoulder showed two faint lines of concern creasing the skin between the other woman’s eyebrows. TJ managed a faint grin for her. “Hey, I was climbing on counters to reach things long before I could levitate stuff. Besides, I really try not to levitate stuff at home most of the time—the kids need to see that that’s not generally appropriate behavior. If floating things becomes ‘normal,’ the next thing I know, Marisol will be fighting at school when she says Mama made things float and somebody else says ‘She did not!’”
Annmarie’s touch slipped away, and TJ found herself missing the human contact. She blinked and went back to inspecting the drawer, spotting the corkscrew. “You cooked, why don’t you sit down while I pour?”
She brought the wine to the table, pouring first for Annmarie and then for herself before setting the bottle down in easy reach. Taking her own place, TJ shook her head at the candles and good dishes and garnishes, more amused and less embarrassed this time. “It smells wonderful, but you know you didn’t have to go to the trouble of making everything fancy.”
“I went looking for the napkins because I figured red sauce was an invitation to spill something on our shirts, and after that, it seemed silly not to set everything nicely.” Annmarie unfolded her napkin, tucking a corner into the top of her shirt by way of demonstration.
TJ giggled. “A woman after my own heart,” she said, unfolding her own and putting it in place to protect her blouse. She picked up her fork, awkwardly wondering if there was some protocol about who had to start eating first when one of you had cooked—she was starved. Fortunately, Annmarie twirled a fork full of spaghetti, taking the decision out of TJ’s hands.
She wasn’t sure what alchemy made the sauce from the cupboard taste like it had actual herbs and spices and—were those mushrooms?—in it, but she definitely appreciated the effort. After several bites, she took a moment to ask, “Where did you learn to cook? This is amazing.”
A small, pleased expression spread across Annmarie’s face while she swallowed her spaghetti. “Um, I don’t know. Here and there, I guess. Mostly, I spent a lot of time on my own growing up. I started looking up recipes just to try them, and after a while you start…tinkering with things.”
TJ just shook her head. “Wow.” Which was about 3000 words fewer than she needed for a conversation. God, she hadn’t been on a date since Jon—well, unless you counted that fiasco when Todd’s wife had set TJ up with her brother while the twins were at summer camp last year. And that had gone so badly, TJ’d spent the rest of the week at home watching old Mel Gibson movies and drinking strawberry daiquiris. Hell, she hadn’t had a date with another woman since her freshman year of college, and women were always just a little different than men, the ebb and flow of the conversation changing based on different assumptions and shared experiences. How did people do this? What did she and Annmarie have in common, besides taking care of her kids? “So you grew up in the bad old days before unionization, huh?”
Annmarie’s eyes went distant for a moment. Then she smiled. “Yeah. No childcare, no healthcare, no survivors’ benefits. But I have a really good relationship with my grandparents and a long line of interesting babysitter stories to tell.”
“Oh really?” That gave TJ something to work with. “I think my best babysitter story was the time my sisters and I decided to cut our hair while our parents were on vacation. Or maybe when Jo hit me with the phone book.”
“What did you do that she hit you with the phone book?”
“Um.” TJ snagged a slice of garlic bread and took a bite. It tasted every bit as good as it smelled. “I may have borrowed her favorite shirt and gotten chocolate ice cream on it. I was thirteen. She was twelve. It made sense at the time.”
“Sometimes I wonder what I missed out on, not having any brothers or sisters. Then I hear stories like this and think I didn’t miss anything at all.” Annmarie smirked. “Not that I didn’t get into plenty of trouble on my own. I decided I was going to build a fort in my room once.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Marisol and Esteban still built forts out of blankets and chairs sometimes. TJ swirled spaghetti up on her fork, digging in while Annmarie talked.
“I got the tools and scrap lumber from Dad’s workshop and started to build the fort.”
TJ almost choked on her spaghetti.
Judging by the twinkle in Annmarie’s eye, that was the point. “By the time the sitter heard something over the television, I’d nailed up a nice frame to the foot of my bed and the wall next to it, and I think I had half of the first wall put up. She was so mad, I spent the rest of the night hiding under the bed.”
The worst damage TJ and her sisters had ever done to the house was when they accidentally melted the bottom out of a plastic bowl trying to make popcorn. And they hadn’t thought they needed to hide under the bed afterward. She took a couple of sips of wine to make sure her throat was clear. “What did your parents have to say to her?”
Annmarie chuckled. “They apologized for me, but they never used her again. I think the fact that I made at least four trips down the hall with wood and tools and she never noticed made her a little suspect. Me, I got the lecture about being a responsible girl, and they expected better of me.”
What did you say to something like that? “How old were you?”
Annmarie shrugged. “I don’t know. Five? Six?”
And they’d expected better from her? Why hadn’t they expected her to be a kid, for God’s sake?
“Dad had showed me how he used the handsaw and let me pound nails for him sometimes. I didn’t see why I shouldn’t do it on my own. I was going to be his good little carpenter for a while there.” One side of her mouth drew upward wryly. “I don’t know if they didn’t know it was completely acceptable reasoning for a kid, or if they’d just hoped they could train me better.”
TJ shuddered. “At least you learned differently somewhere along the way.”
“Why do you think I decided to work with children?” The smile spread across her whole face. “Everybody thinks it’s easy, like it was a gimme degree and anybody could take care of kids. They’re wrong. Some people are really bad at it, and some people just don’t care enough. A lot of supers just have too much on their minds. They get lost in the crisis and forget about what’s really important. So yeah, I may be twenty-seven and still living with my roommates from when we were all undergrads, but I love what I do.”
“Good for you,” TJ said softly. She cleared her throat, trying not to go all awkward in the face of that confession. “Me too. I was the kid that was always a crusader in search of a crusade, and I went into the Foreign Service. Probably do more saving the world in my day job than I ever will as a superhero.”
Annmarie shrugged and toyed with the stem of her wine glass. “The world needs both.” TJ could almost see the mental shake she gave herself. “So…how many sisters, and why did you all cut your hair?”
By the time they’d finished telling babysitter stories, they’d gone on to music, and by the time they’d talked that to death, it was almost eleven o’clock. TJ felt stuffed with spaghetti and garlic bread. She’d had two glasses of wine—or was it three?—by the time she stood up and began collecting the empty dishes.
Annmarie gave her a puzzled stare, then glanced at the clock, her eyes going comically wide. “Oops. Well I guess it’s a good date when I lose track of three hours.” She stood, blowing out th
e candles and reaching for the empty bread dish.
“Don’t you dare,” TJ said cheerfully. “You cooked, I’ll clean.”
Annmarie ignored her, bringing the dish and the wine glasses over to the kitchen counter while TJ began rinsing bowls. “Just that much, I promise. I’ve got to run home and pack, and tell my roommates not to report me as a missing person. But…I had a really good time.”
TJ’s laugh slipped away from her breathlessly as she looked up from the sink and right into Annmarie’s eyes. She scrambled for a flippant answer, but it wouldn’t come. “Me too.” They were only inches apart, and TJ wondered, since it had been a “fake” date, if that meant she couldn’t kiss the other woman.
Because she really wanted to.
After several moments where the potential hung in the air, Annmarie pulled away, blushing again. “Okay, I’ll let you do the rest of the cleanup, but only because I have to pack that bag. Should I bring a sleeping bag with me?”
TJ tried to make sure Annmarie wouldn’t see her regret. “No, the couch folds out. I’ll put sheets on the sofa bed while you’re gone.” Annmarie moved away, but TJ caught her hand, squeezing gently. “Annmarie?”
Annmarie turned back toward her, still blushing. “Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
* * *
TJ was always too cold at night. Theoretically, every condo in the building had the most up-to-date climate control available, but in practice, if it was the right temperature in the twins’ room, it was always too cold in TJ’s. She’d rather have been in some hundred-and-twenty-year-old loft with a tin ceiling, a clawfoot tub and plumbing that never did quite what you expected. But the modern condo kept the kids safer, and it wasn’t like she didn’t have the money at this point. She could put up with the air conditioning. So she used the comforter even in the middle of summer. So what?
She struggled with the weight of the bedclothes as she fumbled toward her nightstand in the dark. That loud, annoying sound had to be her phone. One of her phones. She managed to pry one eyelid open and grabbed the one that was all lit up. It was her red phone. Why was her red phone ringing? She’d just had a call a couple days ago, and anyway…she’d had her name taken off the on-call list, she remembered slowly. She’d talked with Malika about it. She stabbed the call button and held the phone to her ear. “Hello?” Her voice was thick and sleep-muzzy in her own ears. “Hello?”
