by Jamie Blair
He lifts his eyebrows and laughs. “What? The little hellion who lives in the Tudor?” He points to Gail’s house.
“Yeah. He doesn’t quite have the hang of using the brakes on his bike.”
Chris carries the stroller inside. “Heroics always make me hungry. How about you?” He sets the stroller at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m craving pizza. Want some?”
Pizza sounds amazing. “Definitely.”
“Cool, I’ll order. What do you like on it?”
“Anything’s fine with me. Just no anchovies.” I curl my lip at the thought of salty, crispy fish mingling with my cheese and pepperoni. I used to despise touching them at Giovanni’s.
Chris laughs and puts a cell phone to his ear. I head toward the stairs while he’s ordering.
“Don’t touch that stroller,” he says, cupping the phone. “I’ll get it.”
My leg throbs with each step I take, and I’m relieved when I’m finally sitting on my blue couch.
With Addy on my lap, sucking on her pacifier, I try to talk myself into getting up now to make a bottle, instead of waiting until my leg is black and purple and twice the size it should be. I slide to the edge of the couch cushion and am just up on my feet again when I hear a siren blaring down the street.
A cop cruiser.
chapter
nine
I forget about my leg. Addy’s left lying on the couch. My hands grab everything they can reach—bottles, formula, diapers—and shove it all into the diaper bag.
I’m desperately trying to collapse Addy’s Pack ’n Play, but one side is stuck. Shoving and kicking it isn’t helping. “Come on!” I kick it again.
“Making a quick getaway?”
I spin. My heart feels like it’s just been kicked instead of the stupid Pack ’n Play. Chris sets the stroller on the floor by the door, and a confused expression crosses his face.
What am I going to tell him?
It’s quiet.
There’s no siren.
I dart to the window and look out, expecting the cop car to be parked in his driveway or out front on the street. But it’s nowhere in sight.
I bite my lip and feel my shoulders shrink in on themselves as I turn to face him. “No, just . . . um . . .”
He shakes his head. “It’s cool. You can ask me for help, you know. We’ll move it into your bedroom after I shower. Pizza will be here in forty.”
He turns and is gone, back down the stairs, and I’m standing at the window feeling like a total idiot. Judging from the bewildered look on his face, he knew I wasn’t having trouble trying to move the Pack ’n Play a whole ten feet into my bedroom. But whatever he really thought, he covered for me so I wouldn’t be embarrassed.
Addy’s voice starts out low, then reaches much higher decibels. At least she’s a distraction. I rush to make her bottle and settle back on the couch to feed her, grabbing a dirty T-shirt back out from the diaper bag, where I’d just stuffed it. With the puke-stained shirt over my shoulder, I give her the bottle and let her drink.
She’s so warm and relaxing, the weight of her in my arm, her steady breathing, the squeaky sucksucksuck sound of the nipple while she’s eating. I rest my head against the cushions on the back of the sofa. My eyelids feel heavy, like they’re weighed down. I can hardly keep them open.
The doorbell startles me. My eyelids fly open. Addy jolts, and her eyes pop open too. I lift her, and she pukes. Big shock. I sigh and pat her back, making sure she’s okay.
I stand, and her bottle rolls off my lap and onto the floor. Back behind the wall, in my bedroom, I lay Addy on my bed and change her diaper before changing my shirt. By the time I’m cleaned up, she’s asleep, and I put her down in her Pack ’n Play.
There’s a knock on my door. It’s Chris. Who else would it be? He smells like soap, and he’s changed out of his dirty work clothes into basketball shorts and a T-shirt.
He has a pizza box in one hand, and a six-pack of Coke in the other. “Want to eat up here or downstairs?” He glances down at the box. “Or you can just take your half if you want. I shouldn’t assume—”
“No. I’ll eat with you.” I push my hair back behind my ear. “Downstairs, I guess. Addy’s asleep.” I nod toward the Pack ’n Play. “I don’t want to wake her. I’ll just leave the door up here open in case she wakes up.”
We tread lightly down the stairs and into the living room. He sits on the couch, and I sit on the floor, the coffee table between us. He pulls a Coke free and hands it to me. “Guess I should get some plates.”
I jump up, and my leg stings. I cringe. “Paper towels will work. I’ll grab them.” As I’m retrieving the paper towels from the kitchen, I hear the TV come on. I set the roll on the coffee table and lower myself back down to the carpet, pushing my hair behind both ears, careful with my leg.
He hasn’t looked at me since we came downstairs. His eyes are glued to the TV. The awkwardness is growing with each passing second. I can’t let him think he has some freak living upstairs. “Look, about earlier—”
“Really,” he says, cutting me off, “I don’t need to know. It’s cool.” He takes a bite of pizza.
“It’s just—”
He holds up a hand and shakes his head, chewing.
“I don’t want you to think I’m weird.”
His eyes finally meet mine and he’s laughing. “Why would I think that? Because you were fighting with a Pack ’n Play?”
“Well . . . yeah.” I shrug. My hair falls into my face, and I tuck it behind my ear again.
He shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “Just eat your pizza.” He pulls the box open and gestures for me to grab a piece.
I take one and pull it out. Long strings of cheese hold on to the other pieces, and I swipe them with my finger, tearing them apart. I take a bite. It’s the best pizza I’ve ever tasted. I’m used to my pizza at home, and this makes Giovanni’s taste like crap.
Everything back home was crap.
After a few minutes of Chris flipping through the channels with the remote while we eat, I have to break the silence again. “How was work? Where do you work, anyway?”
“I have a glamorous job roofing houses for RJ Roofing.” He leans back and rubs his stomach. “I’ve been there a couple of years. It’s not bad. They’re good people to work for.”
“That sounds horrible to me.”
He lifts one eyebrow.
“I’m terrified of heights. I couldn’t ever go up on a roof. Plus, it has to be about a hundred and fifty degrees up there.”
He chuckles. “It is. And you come home covered in tar and dirt. But the pay’s good.”
We both eat another piece of pizza and stare at the TV.
“How long have you played the guitar?”
I hate that he won’t ask me his own questions even if I won’t answer them anyway.
He stretches both arms over his head and yawns. “About five years.”
I nod and tuck my hair back again.
“Here.” He reaches into his pocket and shoots me with a rubber band. “For your hair. It’s not going to stay behind your ears.” His smile’s easy.
Tonight, his eyes match his dark blue shirt. I like his chin-length hair down. It makes the angles of his face softer. Faint stubble has grown on his chin. No wonder I’m obsessed with him. He’s hot.
My eyes make their way back to his, and I can tell he knows what I’m thinking. I shift to peer at the TV, feeling my pulse race. I ball my hair on top of my head and wrap the band around it.
“Faith,” he mumbles.
I jerk around. “What did you say?”
“The tattoo on the back of your neck, it says ‘hope and faith.’ ”
I reach around with my hand, covering my tattoo. It’s a banner inside angel wings with our names on it. Hope and Faith. My sister and I got them last summer. It took me forever and five days to talk her into it. She got hers as a tramp stamp, thinking she could hide it. More people have seen hers than mine, though, si
nce her track pants sit low on her hips.
“Yeah.” I swallow my fight-or-flight instinct. “Do you have any tattoos?”
In one swift movement, he whips off his T-shirt. There, in the middle of his tan chest, beside a smear of paint, is a cross with two dates inscribed on it. One across, one down. Its intricate design has my fingers itching to touch. Instead, I crawl on my knees around the table to get a closer look.
I want to ask the significance of the dates, but it feels way too personal to ask.
When I’m finished ogling, he pulls his T-shirt back on. “You’re not the only one with secrets.” Before I can say anything, he’s standing and collecting the pizza box, paper towels, and Coke cans.
“Here, let me help.” I take the cans and sauce-stained paper towels and follow him out to the kitchen. He opens the patio door and takes the pizza box outside.
Figuring there’s a trash can out there that he’s headed to, I go with him. After we toss our trash, he plops down at the patio table. There’s a small in-ground pool in the back yard that I can’t keep my eyes off of.
“It’s a nice night,” he says. “You should go for a swim.”
I motion toward the house. “Addy. I should probably go back in so I can hear her.”
He pulls at the skin under his chin and stands. “I’ll go check on her, if it’s okay?” he asks.
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll go too.”
He leads the way back inside, up the steps, and through my door. I peer into the Pack ’n Play. “She’s still asleep.”
Chris creeps over and studies her. He watches for a few minutes, then turns back and stops, catching my confused expression.
Then he smiles and continues past me, out into the living area.
He might be as weird as me.
Before he sits on the couch, he picks up Addy’s bottle that fell onto the floor earlier, then tosses it to me. “Good catch,” he says when I grab it out of the air.
As I’m rinsing the bottle in the sink, he starts humming and tapping his fingers on the arm of the couch.
“What song is that?” I ask. “I don’t recognize it.”
“It’s mine. My band’s rehearsing it tonight. I think we’ll debut it on Saturday. We’ve got a gig in Jacksonville.”
I’ve always been a sucker for musicians, not that I’ve ever dated one. I’ve only dated Jason, the delivery guy, and he couldn’t sing his way out of a pizza box, let alone play an instrument. “Can I hear it?”
His face lights up like a kid at Christmas. This was a setup—he wanted me to ask. That’s why he started humming. I wonder what else he could get me to fall for.
He nods toward the stairs. “Come down and I’ll play it.” He leads me out the door. “Don’t forget to leave that open.”
“You’re a better parent than me,” I mutter. He doesn’t hear me. He’s halfway down the stairs, too excited about showing off his guitar playing.
I follow him down the hall to where I already know his bedroom is because I’m a snoop. I stand in the doorway while he piles clothes into his drawers and attempts to shove them closed. Then he yanks his blanket up over his pillow, hiding Spidey.
He runs his palms down his shorts and picks up his guitar. I slide in and sit on the edge of his bed. He sits next to me.
“Nice bobbleheads,” I say, my lips twitching.
“Are you making fun of my vintage Spiderman and Superman?” He gets up on his knees and taps their heads like I did earlier. I panic, wondering if I left fingerprints. If so, he doesn’t seem to notice. “I’ve had them since I was little.”
“Oh, you don’t still collect superhero stuff, though?”
He turns to me, smiling a crooked smile. A dimple dents his right cheek. “Okay. Maybe I still have a thing for superheroes.” He holds up his hand with his finger and thumb so close together, there’s barely any space between them. “This much.”
The mattress bounces as he plops back down beside me. My eyes slip over his room as he picks up his guitar. He follows my gaze. Then he gets up and snags the houndstooth cap off of the corner of his monitor and puts it on his head backward. “This was my grandpa Buckridge’s cap. I wear it mostly when I play. He was the one who taught me.”
He sits back down, and I feel like I’m breathing way too loud, like I’m gasping to get enough air and my chest is heaving. He’s so . . . normal, with his grandpa’s cap and superhero collection. I’ve never had a collection of anything. There was no money for food, let alone ceramic ponies or sparkly unicorns. Hell, our electric got shut off at least three times a year.
I remember once when Hope and I were little and we dug all the beer-bottle caps out of the trash and colored them with markers. We pretended they were magic coins for a pretend land, and if we found the entrance and deposited the coins, we could get in. Sometimes I still want to search for our pretend land.
I watch Chris’s fingers work the strings, and when he starts singing, the room, my mind, my entire being, are filled with his voice. He’s so close, I can almost feel his breath on my ear. Thinking of the sensation that would bring sends chills down the back of my neck.
He shifts, and our legs touch. Mine scraped and bruised from the kid down the street, his strong and tan.
When he stops playing, Addy’s cries echo through the house. We both look at each other. We couldn’t hear her over his guitar.
I spring up. “Thanks for playing for me. I love it. Seriously, it’s great.” I dart out of his room, down the hallway, and up the stairs to Addy. I pick her up out of the Pack ’n Play and bounce her a little bit. “Shh . . . it’s okay, sweet pea.” I turn around, rocking her in my arms, and bump right into Chris.
“Maybe she wants this,” he says, holding up her pacifier. “It was on your couch.”
“Thanks.” I take it from him, wondering if I have a second shadow now, and rinse it in the sink.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. I like him. I think I like him a lot. I wouldn’t stop him if he ever tried to kiss me, that’s for damn sure.
“Well, I’ll leave you two alone.” He runs his fingers through the back of his hair. He’s waiting for me to ask him to stay. Maybe I should.
Before I decide, he’s out the door.
“Good night!” I call after him.
It hits me that I didn’t pay him for my half of the pizza. Back in my bedroom, in my top dresser drawer, I pull a ten-dollar bill loose from a stack of money I stashed with my underwear.
As I bound down the stairs, Addy’s pacifier pops out of her mouth and bounces down to the last step. She starts to whimper.
“Hey, Leah? You need me?” Chris’s feet pad down the hallway toward us.
“Just . . .” I juggle Addy to my other shoulder, stepping to the bottom of the stairs as he rounds the corner. I dig in my pocket for the ten. “I have money. . . .” Her whine escalates into a full-out screech. I yank my hand out of my pocket before finding the ten and kneel to pick up the pacifier at the same time Chris bends to retrieve it.
Our heads bash together. “Shit,” I hiss, rubbing my forehead.
Chris’s face twists into a grimace. He rubs his forehead too, with the pacifier hooked around one finger. “Got it.”
He hands me the pacifier, and we both bust out laughing. Soon we’re in hysterics, rubbing our heads. I sit back on the bottom step and push the pacifier in Addy’s mouth to stop her howling. “I’m sorry!” My stomach aches from laughing so hard.
“It wasn’t your fault.” He’s on his knees in front of me. “I think I have a concussion. Your head’s like a freakin’ bowling ball.” His laugh’s deep and contagious.
I double over, cracking up. Even though I’m still holding Addy tight, she’s squirming and doing the scared thing with her arms shooting out, but I can’t help it. The look on his face—his lip cocked up in a lopsided grin, his brows raised above teasing blue eyes—is so funny, I can’t stop laughing.
“I need some ice,” he says, and eases up off the floor. “I�
�m already getting a big knot on my head.”
After a couple of deep, steadying breaths, I stand too. “I’ll get it for you. It was my bowling-ball head that caused this, after all.” I hold Addy out for him to take. “Can you hold her?”
He takes Addy in his arms. “It’s not your fault, and your head’s not any harder than mine. I was just kidding.” He’s still smiling, and I feel warm all over.
The back door swings open, and a man comes bustling in with two plastic grocery bags. His hair is black, but his angular profile is identical to Chris’s. “Chris, I’m—” He freezes.
Chris tucks Addy into my arms. “Hey, Dad. This is Leah. The girl upstairs.”
Chris’s dad’s eyes shift from his son to me. He nods and sets the grocery bags on the counter. “Nice to meet you, Leah, I’m Ken Buckridge.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Buckridge. Thank you for renting your upstairs to me and Addy.” I hold her a little tighter and rest my chin on top of her head.
“I didn’t realize you had an infant yesterday. I’m sorry for the . . . uh . . . miscommunication.” The muscles in his jaw work as he takes in the baby. “How old?”
“Two months.” I try to think back, hoping that’s the age I told Ivy. “Is it okay? The baby being here?”
Chris grabs my arm, claiming my attention. “Of course it’s okay. Why wouldn’t it be?” He snorts, like this is the dumbest thought a person could have, and shakes his head. “I’ll bring you some ice upstairs.”
When he drops his hand, I turn back to the steps. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mr. Buckridge watching Chris and me, concern smudged across his face. I make my way, rapidly, up the stairs. The easy comfort I found with Chris has been replaced by the taunting feeling that Addy and I aren’t welcome. It’s clear Mr. Buckridge doesn’t want us here.
chapter
ten
Chris and I sit on my couch, plastic bags of melted ice in our laps. He’s slouched down with his head resting on the back of the cushions and his long legs stretched out in front of him. I’m curled up with my legs underneath me.
