by Anne Hansen
“What did you say?” he asks, his hands gripping my shoulders.
I look right at him, determined not to be put off by the fury on his face. “I said ‘no,’” I repeat clearly. “I understand why you’re nervous about this—”
“And I don’t understand why you’re not,” he says between his teeth, shaking me gently back and forth. “This is serious, Keira. This is illegal. And it’s not safe for you to be around. Not in any capacity.”
I nod. “I get it. And I don’t like that you’re part of it. I’m not naive enough to think I can just ask you to stop. I know it isn’t that simple. And I get that you think we can’t be close, that I can’t be part of your life But,Vin, this isn’t you.” I point at the door where we can see sparks flying and hear machinery grinding, and he follows the line of my finger, his brows knit together.
“You don’t understand—” he begins, but I put my fingers over his lips and shake my head.
“I do. I understand who you are and what you’re capable of. Whether you believe in yourself of not, I believe in you. And I’m going to help you.” I stand, legs apart, hands on my hips, and stare up at him, determined. “You’re going to pass English and get your diploma, and I’m going to help you do it. And if you don’t let me help you at school, I’ll hunt you down at your house. Or here,” I say with a shrug.
Vin narrows his eyes. “Not even a funny joke, Keira,” he growls.
“Oh, I’m dead serious,” I say. “I promise. It’s just tutoring.” I hold my hand up like I’m taking a vow. “I swear I’ll be on my best behavior around you.”
“It isn’t your behavior I’m worried about,” he snaps.
I wait for him to say more, and when he doesn’t, I ask, “So? Will you let me help you?”
His mouth moves from side to side. I can tell he’s debating how to tell me ‘no,’ how to do it all his way, on his own terms like he’s been doing for weeks now.
So I’m shocked when he says, “Fine.”
“Fine?” I clap my hands together.
He leans close, and my mouth waters for him.
“Studying, Keira. I’ll pass English, get my diploma like you and my family want. But, trust me, it’s not that easy. You don’t just make one little change and fix something as broken as my life is.”
I stand on my toes and kiss him, just on one side of his mouth. I pull back and smile at the way he clenches his jaw so tight, I can see the bunch of muscle high up on his cheek.
“We’ll see.”
I lean back on my chair at the table across from Keira and think about how hot her mouth was when I kissed her at my uncle’s shop. How perfect her body felt under my hands, her curves so damn soft. How her moans turned me like nothing ever has before.
The memory of the sexy little noises she made when I was kissing her has kept me up for so many nights in a row, I think I’m going to start hallucinating soon…
“…and there’s Myrtle to consider, too. I think you might want to mention her here, in paragraph three—Vin?” She waves a pencil in front of my face.
I let my chair fall forward with a thump and give a frustrated growl as she turns the paper my way. “I still like my original thesis better.”
Keira sighs. “I don’t think, ‘The Great Gatsby is dumb, and I could have come up with a way better ending,’ is a thesis Mrs. Delani would have appreciated,” she says with a little smile.
Keira and I have been working together for two weeks now. I dropped her off the same night I took her to Gio’s shop without laying a single finger on her again.
I wanted to. No mistake. I wanted to badly. But I liked the way she looked at me.
With respect.
And I wasn’t about to ruin that by pulling her onto my lap and peeling that tight little sweater over her head—
“Vin!” She snaps her fingers.
“Sorry,” I mutter, getting back to work. “I’ve never really tried in school before. It’s harder than I thought,” I admit.
I see her smile out of the corner of my eye. “I’m proud of you. I know this is way out of your comfort zone. That diploma will be yours before you know it.”
“It would be way easier if Gatsby had manned up and swept Daisy off her feet,” I say, adding a few sentences about Myrtle as I gripe.
“But that wouldn’t have worked,” Keira argues quietly. “Daisy had her life. Jay had his. They couldn’t just ignore that.”
“If he really wanted to, he could have been with her. He could have found a way to make it work, to figure it all out,” I say, then notice that her smile is growing. Because she’s baiting me. I put my pencil down and look right at her. Damn, she’s gorgeous. I pick up my falling-apart copy of the book. “You know why people like this book? Because this is how it is.”
“I thought you said books were nothing like real life,” she points out, her mouth shaping into this cute little frown.
It’s exactly the shape that makes the temptation to kiss her hard as hell to resist.
“I guess I should have waited til I finished one before I ran my mouth,” I grumble.
I keep working and she pulls her own book out. Pre-calc. I know she mentioned she had another big quiz a few days ago. I get ready to pass my rough draft back to her so she can check my shitty grammar when I catch a glimpse of her grade on the quiz paper.
She tries to clamp her hands over the red number with a circle around it when she notices me looking.
“Keira, let me see it,” I say.
She shakes her head and bites her lip, her cheeks pink. “It’s embarrassing. I’m usually at least decent at math. I don’t know what happened…” She trails off and I crook my finger. She sighs, stares at the table, and slides the test over with the tip of her pinky.
I glance over it. Unlike crazy English, math has rules. Order. Logic. I get it, usually without having to give it too much thought.
“Ah. You have Steinberg? He breezes through the Algebra II and jumps right to trig. Did you do okay with trig before?”
“I thought so,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ears. It’s this tic she has when she’s nervous or frustrated. I love it. “My trig teacher at Mallory took a mid-year sabbatical to study in Tibet, and we wound up with a replacement fresh out of college. I guess she wasn’t as thorough as I thought?”
I toss my essay aside. “I see where you’re getting off track. Pull your chair over and I’ll—”
“No.” She puts her hand up and shakes her head. “I so appreciate it, Vin, but I can’t take time away from your tutoring. Your paper is getting better everyday, and I don’t want to lose time. It’s due in two days, and we need to make sure it’s really good.”
I tap my finger on her test, wondering if I should bother to argue. One look at her stubborn little chin, and I realize it’s a lost cause. I go back to my paper, but it bugs me how she looks at the test like she’s lost.
Damn, I know that feeling.
Before I realize it, the bell rings and she starts to gather our things up.
“Keira?” I say, and I feel that random punch to the heart that hits every now and then when she looks my way with those beautiful, innocent eyes. It’s surreal that this girl used to be mine. She smiles like she’s encouraging me to speak.
Right. Speak. Funny the simple things I find so hard to concentrate on when she’s around.
“Thank you. For your help,” I say.
She hugs her binder to her chest and chews on her bottom lip. “You’re welcome, Vin,” she whispers before she races out the door and into the hall.
By the time I get to the parking lot, her truck is gone, and I feel a sharp disappointment I can’t ignore.
***
“Night off?” Uncle Gio fumes. “Am I hearing right? You need a freaking night off?” He goes back to counting the stack of bills on the desk, then pushes them to the side and points at me. “What the hell’s been up with you lately, Vin? You’re the one who begged me to let you in on this, right? You’r
e the one who wanted to help your father out. I appreciate that, you’re a good kid. But this is business. Playtime is over.”
“I get that,” I say, then bite back all the arguments I was going to bring up. Gio works in results. “I can bring three in by seven.”
“Are you doing something risky?” he asks, squinting at me.
“Nah. Next time I get caught, I’m looking a long term visit to the big house. I don’t need that shit.” I stand in front of him and wait.
He shrugs. “Don’t take any risks that will come back on my head. But if you get three by seven, you’re done. Go, I got work to do,” he says, waving me out. “Vin!” he shouts as I’m about to leave the office. When I turn, he points at me and snarls, “Don’t. Fuck. Up.”
“Right.” I stride out and hope I can take his advice seriously.
The airport is twenty minutes away. Leo drops me off with a blazer from his cousin’s dry cleaning service. Airport valet. One of the benefits of paying attention in school is hearing about things like ski trips. We wished our two ski team members well during announcements this morning. They were able to get spots for a big trip to Vermont organized by a bronze-medalist skier who grew up in Eastside. Most of the kids going on this swanky trip are from Hadley Prep, though. Swiping the keys to a brand new Audi—probably a sweet sixteen present, and still in mint condition—is child’s play and no one gives me a second glance.
I’m back at the garage in time to hitch a ride with Paulie to a local dealership that just got a few new Caddies in. They’re about to close down for the day. Paulie’s delivering a few rush order parts to them, and I stand nearby with my cap pulled low and a dolly full of boxes as a decoy. While Paulie chats up the secretary, I flip out my master key, which fits into their generic lockboxes and makes swiping the key to a shiny new Cadillac a cake walk.
Paulie gets the secretary’s number, and I buy a burger at the shop next door where the waitress never looks up from her pad. They close up the dealership and I head to the back lot where they were too cheap to install security cameras. The rest is almost too boring to mention.
My last boost of the night is outside a concert in the seedy part of town. Some hip hop artist all the richies want to see is doing a show, and they leave their cars piled on the side streets or in lots some bozo charged them five bucks to park in, then left deserted once he pocketed the dough.
Suckers.
I pick a few sweet rides parked on the outskirts and check for lockboxes. It takes until the third, a nice Mustang Cobra whose owner should have known better. I take my time, double check to make sure I’m alone. The show just started. By the time I’m done winding down backroads to avoid the coppers and pull into Gio’s, it’s quarter to seven.
I over-delivered, since every one of those cars was on the higher end of Gio’s collection list. Based on his conversation with the guys at the port, I have a feeling he’s trying to ship the cars overseas to sell whole for a bigger cut than he’s making selling more common models piecemeal right now. In any case, I can take a well-deserved break. I hate running boosts in the daylight, and I’m not big on hitting up places we frequent for legitimate business, like the car dealership, so this afternoon was pushing it for me in a lot of ways.
But Keira and her needs will always come before my shady morals.
I pull up at her house and see the light is on in the room I think is hers. Walking up to that door and ringing the bell is one of the scariest things I’ve done in a while.
And I just stole three cars.
I’m about to turn around and walk back to my car when the door swings open and Keira stands in the doorway. “Vin?”
“Hey.” I stick my hands in my pockets, suddenly unsure about whether I should have come over or not. “I was thinking about that pre-calc.”
She raises her eyebrows and gives me a tiny smile. “You were thinking about my test?”
“It was stupid. I’m sure you don’t need me showing up here, butting in where I don’t—”
“Wait!” She looks over her shoulder, tucks her hair behind her ears, and waves me in. “I just made dinner. Are you hungry?”
“I should go,” I say, taking a step backward.
She looks down at her bare feet, wiggling her toes on the cold cement. “My father hasn’t made it home before eleven in two weeks. It kind of sucks eating alone.”
“Your dad isn’t around?” I glance up at the lit windows in her apartment, feeling sick over the idea that she’s been alone all these weeks. Plus, this is definitely a pretty quiet neighborhood, but that doesn’t make it safe for her to be by herself so late every night.
“Don’t get any ideas,” she says, biting her lip to stop her smile. “The invitation is only for dinner and pre-calc.”
I grin at her and jog up to the door. She holds it open and I follow her up a decrepit flight of stairs and into her apartment.
Which is a dump.
I admire the work she’s done to make it look nice. It’s obvious she’s painted and hung pictures, put up nice curtains and threw a fancy tablecloth over the dining table to try to make the place a little more homey. But there are two windows covered with cardboard and half a roll of tape. The baseboard covers are rusted and falling off the wall. I wonder if they even work. I notice there’s a sponge placed strategically in the bottom of the sink to catch the water that drips out of the faucet nonstop.
I get her dad’s been working, but it’s bullshit he didn’t fix these basic things to make this shithole a little more inhabitable.
“Sorry it’s not fancier.” She gets out a plate and puts a grilled cheese, a pickle, and a handful of potato chips on it, sets it on the table with a glass of ice water, and slides into her seat.
How many times have I imagined taking her somewhere amazing where they had candles flickering on every table and real flowers—romantic. I’d get her steak, see if I could cajole a little wine out of one of the waitresses, we’d get two desserts, talk all night, forget everything bad that had happened since this summer.
I had big plans to show her a life that has nothing to do with my real life.
I guess it’s some kind of irony that, instead of me treating her to a fancy meal out, I’m at her kitchen table eating grilled cheese after a triple boost run.
“It’s perfect,” I say, biting into a damn good grilled cheese. “I didn’t realize you were eating on your own.”
She picks up her sandwich half by the edge and nibbles on it. “My dad was pretty much a workaholic before Mom died, but his schedule’s been kind of out of control lately. The only time he’s home is to sleep and change clothes. He’s even been packing an overnight bag and crashing on the couch in his office.” She shrugs, but I can tell it’s a bigger deal than she wants to admit.
“Hey.” I reach out and tilt her chin up. Her eyes are shiny with tears. “I get that he has to do what he has to do. But you’re not alone here. You have…friends.”
She pulls away from me and swipes her eyes with the sleeve of her cotton shirt. “Right. I do. I could ask them over.”
She glances around the apartment, and I realize she sees it exactly the way I did when I walked in, and we both know no amount of paint in the world can make it better.
“David and Lily would never care about where you live. This place is great,” I say, half truth, half lie.
She gives a short laugh. “It’s not that I think they’d look down at me or judge me at all. It’s…me.”
“You?” I sit back in my chair. “Keira, you’re perfect.”
“Stop.” She puts her hands up to her cheeks, flaming pink.
“I’m serious.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, because it’s screwed up to tell her how I feel when I have to stop short of making her mine.
But that’s just how it is.
“I guess I try to keep people thinking that.” She takes another small bite and chews slowly, like she’s deep in thought. “Not that I’m perfect, but that things in my life are. Or at l
east that I’m okay, that there’s nothing for anyone to worry about. This is the one place where I can fall apart a little, you know?”
I sit forward and look into her eyes, seeing how tired and scared she is. Damn do I get that.
“I know it, Keira. You know I do.” She gives me a soft smile, and we eat in silence for a few more minutes. Finally, I point out the obvious. “You let me in, though.”
“I didn’t invite you over, but it would have been rude to leave you on the doorstep like some abandoned puppy,” she says, but the way her eyes light up lets me know she’s teasing me. “Anyway, you know you don’t count.” She pops the last bite of sandwich in her mouth and jumps up, taking her plate to the kitchen.
“I don’t? Why not?” I ask.
“Because you’re you.” She says it with a laugh. Like it’s so obvious.
I follow her into the tiny galley space, too cramped for one person, let alone two.
“I’m me, huh?” I come up close behind her. She’s putting soap on a sponge and rubbing it over the plate as the hot water makes steam rise up from the sink.
The window in front of her fogs up, and I see her reflection in it. She’s smiling.
“Yes,” she says, reaching for my plate. I stand right behind her, so I can see the two of us clearly in the window’s reflection. I watch that bottom lip get sucked in between her teeth. She bites down and closes her eyes before she starts to wash my dish. “You’re not like anyone else in my life.”
“How’s that?” I ask, leaning closer over her.
The plate she was washing clatters into the sink. She tries to catch it, but she winds up grabbing onto the sharp edge of a broken shard and slices her finger open.
“Ow.” She sucks a breath in and holds her finger out. She stares as it gushes blood like she has no clue what to do.
I reach around and take her hand in mine, run it under the water to make sure there aren’t any ceramic splinters in it, then grab a paper towel off the roll, and wrap it tight around her finger.
“There you go,” I say, putting pressure on the paper towel. “Do you have bandaids in the bathroom?”
