by Judy Corry
I checked the clock on the wall again. School would start in less than thirty minutes. My dad needed to go now, or Noah wouldn't have time to shower and eat, and I really wanted to be able to do this for him. He needed someone right now.
This must be part of why he said his life was complicated. He was practically homeless. How did he afford to eat out? I certainly didn't have that kind of money from what I made babysitting here and there. And Noah didn't have a job.
"I'll see you for dinner tonight," Dad said, interrupting my thoughts. "I'm thinking white bean chili might be good on this cold day."
Good, he was finally going to leave.
"Do you mind if Noah eats with us?" I asked, turning back to dishing up my food so he wouldn't see how anxious I was about his answer.
"You’re helping him with his English homework again tonight?"
"Yeah." At least I would be, now that my dad mentioned it.
"Just tell him dinner will be at six." Dad put his bag over his shoulder and kissed me lightly on the head. "Have a good day at school, Lexi."
And then he finally left.
I watched out the window as my dad backed out of the driveway and onto the icy road. Once he was out of sight, I saw Noah's car turn around and then pull into our driveway. Nervous energy coursed through me, and I didn't know why. Noah had been to my house tons of times. He'd eaten hundreds of meals with us. Why did I suddenly have to be all anxious about him coming over for breakfast?
I busied myself, grabbing a second plate from the cupboard and loading it up with food for him. I could do this. I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was just helping out a friend who had no one else to turn to.
"Expecting someone?" Easton's voice came from behind me.
I jumped and almost dropped Noah's plate.
Easton strolled into the room and eyed the two plates I'd made up. "Or is this like one of those National-Bribe-Your-Brother-into-Doing-Something-for-You days?"
"You wish." I set Noah's plate down on the counter with a shaking hand then tucked some hair behind my ear. "Noah's picking me up today as part of our fake relationship thing. I figured I'd make him up a plate of food since he always seems to be hungry."
Easton pursed his lips. Would he be able to figure out what was going on?
"You sure you aren't hoping for this plan of yours to be legit?" He grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with orange juice.
I wiped my hands on my pants. "Of course not. You know I like Harrison and not Noah."
He gave me a skeptical look. I didn't like that look. It made me remember all the reasons why I might have wanted this to be real in the past.
The doorbell rang, and I startled again. I really needed to get a grip on myself or my heart was going to be beating fast all day.
"I'll get that." My voice squeaked. Why was I acting like such a basket case?
I opened the door and found Noah standing there in his coat, with his backpack slung over one shoulder. His hair looked slightly less messy than it had been in his car a few minutes ago, like he had just run his fingers through it, pushing it to the side.
"Hi," I said.
He glanced around awkwardly. "Hey."
I stepped back to let him in. "You're still hungry, right?" I asked, hoping he'd play along and pretend like we hadn't just been talking ten minutes ago.
"Yep." He wiped his shoes on the rug before following me into the kitchen. "It smells good in here."
Easton was sitting at the bar with his plate piled high with food when we walked in.
"Hey, Noah," Easton said with his mouth full.
"Hey." Noah dropped his backpack on the floor by the pantry.
"So, sounds like you and my sister are getting serious if you're taking her to school." He elbowed Noah in the arm playfully when he took the stool next to him.
"Yeah." Noah eyed me anxiously before saying, “Raven's still not buying our fake relationship, so we thought it would be a good idea for me to give Lexi a ride to school today."
I brought our plates over then stood at the end of the counter. My hands were shaky as I tried to cut into my French toast. After attempting it twice, I set my fork down, hoping I'd be less shaky once I distracted Easton with some questions.
I urged my legs to stop feeling so wobbly. "H-how did things go with Mercedes?"
Easton swallowed his bite of eggs and took a sip from his glass. "Really good."
"So, are you official yet?" I asked to keep the small talk going since Noah was just shoveling his breakfast into his mouth, and was, therefore, no help during the conversation.
Easton stabbed a piece of toast onto his fork. "Not yet. But I think it might be headed there if I'm lucky."
I smiled. "Cool. She seems to like you. I noticed you two sitting pretty close at last night’s game."
"Yeah, we weren't the only two people sitting close." He raised an eyebrow at us.
Was he talking about Noah and me? I hadn't even thought that my brother might be paying attention to us.
Noah pushed his plate away and set his arm around my shoulders to pull me in for a brief squeeze. "Yes, Lexi and I just can't keep our hands off each other."
My skin immediately flushed, and I remembered just how much I had liked holding his hand after the game. But I couldn't let either of them know that, so I pushed him away. "You know we don't need to pretend in front of Easton."
Easton's gaze narrowed at us, and I could just see the cogs spinning in his head. He was catching the vibes that something else was going on here.
He confirmed my suspicions when he asked, "This is still fake, right?"
Noah laughed. "Of course. I just like to give Lexi a hard time."
I laughed awkwardly. "Could you ever see Noah and I together in real life? That would be about as likely as having a unicorn sitting at our kitchen table."
Easton stood and walked around the island to put his plate in the sink. "Just making sure. Because I really don't want to have to make good on my threat to beat you up if you start to get confused on what's real and what isn't."
I swallowed and looked nervously at Noah.
But Noah seemed unfazed by the threat, which meant that in his mind, everything was really just for show.
"We're just doing this for the mutual benefits. No need to bruise your knuckles on my face." Noah stood then turned to me. "Are you about ready to go, Lexi?" he asked.
Did he not want to take a shower then? Or was he just saying it so Easton wouldn't suspect anything?
My food was still mostly untouched, but my stomach was such a ball of nerves that I didn't think I could eat much more, anyway.
I picked up my plate. "Um, yeah. I just need to grab a few things from my room."
Easton grabbed his backpack and then turned back to me. "Well, I'm gonna head out if you don't need a ride."
I nodded, trying not to let him see how relieved I was that he was leaving early. "See you at school."
Easton looked at Noah. "Try not to break Raven's heart too bad, okay? She was in a bad mood after the game last night."
Noah ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I feel kind of bad about that, but she'll realize soon enough that she's better off without me."
12
Noah
Lexi and I both watched from the windows in the living room, waiting for Easton to pull away. Soon his beat-up Mustang was headed south on the road.
"You still want to get that shower in?" Lexi looked up at me.
"Yeah." I grabbed my backpack from the floor in the kitchen and then followed her down the hall to her room.
"You can just use my shower. There should be an extra towel in the cupboard above the toilet.
"Since when do you have a shower in your room and Easton doesn't?"
I'd never been in Lexi's room before, but it only seemed fair that the older sibling would have the nicer room.
She shrugged. "When Maddie and Grant moved out last summer, I got to move into their room. Easton likes it in
the basement."
Now that she mentioned it, I remembered her and Juliette moving her stuff across the hall and complaining to Easton about him not helping them push her heavy dresser.
Lexi pointed to a door in her room. "That's the bathroom. You can use whatever you need in there. I'll just wait for you downstairs."
I swallowed, glad she wouldn't be waiting for me in her bedroom. This was already awkward enough as it was.
When I got in the shower, I realized too late that I'd somehow missed packing my bar of soap into my backpack. I must have left it at the school in my gym locker. I looked around the steam-filled shower, hoping against hope that she had something that didn't smell like a floral shop or bakery. But even nerdy Lexi's taste in scents wasn't on my side. I really should have insisted on using Easton's bathroom.
I found the least girly-sounding container along the tub wall—pomegranate and mango body wash—and lathered up. I'd just use an extra spray of cologne to cover it up.
Two minutes later I was out and toweling off. I skipped my morning shave, since we were running late on time, then went down to find Lexi.
"So, since I know that you're not going home, what do you plan to do now?" Lexi asked me as we walked to my car after school.
"I don't know. I've been going to the library a lot lately."
Her eyebrows raised in shock. "You've been going to the library? That's surprising."
I laughed. Yeah, the library was probably the last place anyone would expect to find me. "People do crazy things when they have nowhere to go." Then I remembered that I was running low on clean clothes. "Actually, I'll probably head to the laundromat and wash my stinky clothes."
I'd never done laundry before, but it couldn't be that hard to figure out.
"How are you paying for all of this, anyway?" she asked. We stopped at the edge of the sidewalk and waited for a guy—who looked too young to have a license—pull his giant brown truck out of its parking spot.
"My dad puts money into an account for me every month." I looked down at her. "I had to use a lot of my money on a second sleeping bag, but I think I should have enough to do laundry."
"You think?" She frowned. "Are you going to have enough for food still?"
The traffic stalled, so we continued toward where I'd parked my car in the back of the parking lot. "I should be able to go back this weekend. I think I'll have enough money until then." Not that I actually wanted to go home that badly. If it had been summer instead of winter, I'd probably never go home. Not after the way my parents had treated me. Why would I want to go live with a bunch of people who didn't want me around—who actually got mad at me for being part of their family?
I flexed my jaw, hating the way those thoughts made me feel. I needed to change the subject. My life was more depressing when I thought about it. It was much better to just live moment by moment and not worry about what I'd be doing tonight. Or tomorrow. Or the next day.
We made it to my car, and instead of focusing on things I couldn't change, I focused on something I could control. And that was being the best fake boyfriend that I could be and keeping girls like Raven from getting caught up in my messy life.
So I opened Lexi's door for her and pretended like I was a gentleman. And since no good deed should go unnoticed, I checked the area for any onlookers.
Was it such a bad thing to want people to know that I did have redeeming qualities some of the time?
Sadly for my ego, no one was paying attention to us. But that was okay. It would be good for me to do nice things like this, anyway.
I tossed my backpack in the backseat then climbed in my side of the car and buckled in.
Lexi’s fingers fidgeted in her lap, as if she was trying to get the courage to say something.
She finally cleared her throat. "You could always just come over to my house right now. And, I don't know, I guess we could wash your laundry. I don't think anyone would notice since my dad will still be at work for the next couple of hours and Easton has work, too. It would save you money, at least."
She was looking at me carefully, like she was worried she might offend me with her offer. A big part of me wanted to tell her not to worry, that I was a big boy and could take care of myself. But then there was also a warmth growing in my chest, softening the hard shell I'd put up around my heart.
It would be nice to save more of my dwindling stash of money. So I nodded. "Okay, I'll take you up on that."
She smiled at me, a truly happy smile that made me feel like I'd just helped her instead of the opposite. "Great. And I already talked to my dad today, and he said that you can eat dinner with us if you wanted."
The warm feeling went away. "Did you tell him that I'm sleeping in my car?" If she had told her dad... I shook my head. I didn't even want to think about what would happen if she was telling people. I thought I could trust her!
"Of course not! I just said we were gonna be working on your school project for English today. He has no idea what's really going on."
I exhaled. "Okay, good."
We parked in front of the Stevens’ house ten minutes later. I grabbed my duffel bag from where I stored it in the trunk with my other homeless-teenager stuff. Lexi led me inside. Our first stop was the laundry room which was just adjacent from their small kitchen.
"The detergent is in that cupboard." She pointed at the cupboard above the washing machine. "I usually have to use a stool to reach and fill the cup, but you should be fine."
Lexi discreetly ran her gaze up and down my body. And for the first time, I wondered what she thought of me. We'd known each other for years, but I'd never given much thought to how Lexi would see me. Did she like what she saw when she looked at me? Because I was starting to think that maybe glasses weren't nearly as nerdy-looking as I'd originally thought.
"I guess being a giant does have some perks." I shrugged, hoping she couldn't read my thoughts on my face.
"Yeah, don't rub it in."
"Being vertically challenged isn't the worst thing in the world," I said as I set my duffel bag on top of the washing machine.
She rolled her eyes. "It is, when your dad and brother are tall, and you have to take a stool everywhere just to reach the things they like to store up high."
"Better than hitting your head on ceiling fans everywhere you go."
She opened the door to the washing machine. "I guess we all have our problems."
I stared ahead at the duffel bag and the washer, wondering what I was supposed to do next. "Um, so I've actually never done laundry by myself before. Is there a certain way I should be doing this?"
Her mouth dropped. "You're eighteen years old and you’ve never washed a load of laundry?"
It wasn't that weird, was it? "I thought it magically appeared in my drawers every week." I grinned so she knew that I was joking. Of course, I knew that my mom washed my laundry. And I liked to think I was a good enough of a son to appreciate it.
She folded her arms across her chest. "Well, since not all of us have these magical laundry fairies at our house, I guess I can teach you. I've been doing my own since I was in elementary."
"Since elementary?" Really?
She shrugged. "Well, I kind of had to learn if I wanted to have clean clothes to wear every day, instead of just when my dad had time to get to it."
That made sense. I hadn't known her family then, but from what Easton had told me, it sounded like things were pretty crazy at their house when her mom first left them. Things had definitely been hard on my mom after she got divorced, but she'd only had one kid then. Mr. Stevens had three kids, and if I remembered right, I was pretty sure they'd all been under the age of eight at the time.
Being a single parent was hard. Which was probably one of the reasons why my mom wasn't willing to leave Paul. She'd been a single mom before. She didn't want to do it again.
"Let's teach you a new life skill, okay?" Lexi said. She taught me how much detergent to use, and then showed me the little compartment to p
ut it in.
"It's probably a good thing I didn't try going to the laundromat today. I probably would've broken all the machines."
She smiled and pushed the detergent compartment shut, her shoulder brushing against my chest with the movement.
I stilled, not used to my body having a reaction to her. I wasn't supposed to feel actual sparks with Lexi. She seemed to notice something too, because when she moved back she was careful not to touch me again.
She laughed awkwardly. "I don't think even you could mess it up that bad."
I chuckled uncomfortably, suddenly aware of how small their laundry room was and how close we were standing to each other because of it. Was she wearing that pomegranate and mango bodywash I'd used earlier?
I shook my head—I couldn’t be thinking about this right now. "You'd be surprised at how good I am at messing up things." I was about the last person who would ever have the Midas Touch. Pretty much everything I touched turned to mud instead of gold.
"Now you just separate your clothes into different loads and shut the door. It's not too difficult."
"Separate them?" How? Like all my pants in one pile and t-shirts in another? Or was it more like all the blue-colored shirts went with my green ones because they were kind of close to the same color? Did it matter if I put stripes in with the solids?
When I just stood there paralyzed by the task, she put her hands on her hips. "Just put all your colored clothes in one pile and any whites you have in another."
I dug through my duffel bag. Everything in there was pretty dang colorful, so I just shoved them into one load and wiped my hands together. "Well, that was easy."
Lexi chuckled and pushed a couple of buttons on the machine. Before I knew it, I had washed my first load of laundry.
I followed her back into the kitchen. "Is that really all there is to doing laundry? Am I, like, a pro now?" I sat on the barstool in the center of their kitchen. I loved the feel in their home. Even though it was run by a former drill sergeant, it was still a homey place. I felt welcomed there.
