“Now he’s going to think I’m inexperienced,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
Aaron stared at me. “You are inexperienced.”
I picked up a clod of dirt and threw it at his head. “I didn’t want him to know that!”
“Well, when he kisses you, he’s going to find out anyway.”
“I could have faked it,” I muttered, more to myself than to him.
“We can always tell, dummy,” he said, and he laid his hand on top of my head and gave it a good scrub, which he knew I hated.
“Would you stop?” I said loudly, but I was already laughing. Aaron had a way of making me like the head scrubs even though I pretended to hate them. I batted at his hands.
“Anyway,” he said, letting out a heavy breath, “he’s going to come see you in a little bit.” He winked at me. “Uh, you’re welcome,” he said, his eyes going big as a prompt for me to reply.
“If you think I’m thanking you for that, you’re dumber than you look.”
“Speak of the devil,” Aaron said as he looked over my left shoulder. I refused to look. Aaron got up and walked away without saying another single word.
I felt Eli there before I saw him. The hair on my arms stood up, and then he settled onto the ground next to me. “I thought you went fishing,” I said as I plucked a blade of grass and started to thread it through my fingers. My voice didn’t even wobble, and I was pretty proud of that.
“They weren’t biting,” he said. He reached behind him and picked one of the weedy little flowers that grew in everyone’s yards. Then he leaned over and picked another one. And another. And when he had a whole handful, he placed them in front of him and started to separate the stems, making little holes with his fingernails. He took another flower, threaded its stem into the hole of the first one, and continued until he’d made a wreath of flowers. He held it out to me. “Here,” he said.
“It’s for me?”
It wasn’t long enough to be a necklace.
“Lean over,” he said. He smiled at me and my heart started to race. He very gently placed the wreath of flowers on top of my hair like a crown. “There,” he said.
“How does it look?” I batted my eyelashes at him like I’d seen my mom do when she wanted to joke around with my dad.
“You’re really pretty,” Eli said softly, and his cheeks turned a dusky rose color. He looked everywhere but at me.
“Thanks,” I whispered. It was like my voice didn’t want to work, like sound was getting trapped in my throat.
He coughed into his closed fist. “Do you need some help cleaning up?”
I looked around. The carnival was over, and I was still sitting on the grass. “I can handle it,” I said.
I reached around and started to toss the ducks into a bucket I’d brought. Eli picked one up, looked at the bottom, and said, “Did I win?” He grinned at me.
I dug into my pocket and pulled out a small red ball. I was going to keep it for myself, but I’d much rather give it to him. “I just happen to have one more prize.” I handed it to him. He tossed it into the air, caught it in his palm, grinned at me, and then he shoved it in his pocket.
He helped me gather up the ducks, dump the water from the pool, and we carried it all out to the shed behind our cabin. I leaned the pool against the outside of the cabin and put the bucket of ducks inside the building.
“Thanks for the help,” I told him, not sure what to do now.
“Do you have plans tonight?” He shoved his hands into his shorts pockets and leaned on the side of the building.
“I don’t know. Why?”
He kicked at a rock with his shoe for a second, and then he looked into my eyes and said, “I thought you might want to take a walk or something.” He nodded toward the lake. “We could walk down to the dock.” He left the question hanging in the air between us.
“I’d like that,” I replied, mortified when my voice squeaked a little.
Then I remembered what Aaron had shared with him. The traitor. “So, I know that Aaron talked to you.” I wrung my hands together nervously.
He grinned at me. “Yep.”
“And I know he told you that I’ve never been kissed.” My face was probably flaming by that point.
“Yep.” He grinned some more.
“And I don’t know if that makes you not like me…” I let my voice trail off.
He stood up tall, pulled his hand out of his pocket, and held it out to me. “I like you just fine,” he said. He waited, his palm extended. I was afraid to reach out. I didn’t know what to do, so I did nothing. I stared at his hand until he let it fall down by his side again.
He started to walk, and I fell into pace next to him. “I like you too,” I said quietly. It wasn’t much more than a whisper, but I might as well have shouted it.
He reached over and took my hand in his. “Is this okay?” he asked.
My palms were probably going to get sweaty, but I didn’t even care. “It’s okay.”
He smiled down at me. And we went for a walk. And it was the best walk ever.
16
Aaron
I watch as Bess reacts to the retelling of her own story. Her cheeks are rosy, and the corners of her lips are tilted in a smile. It’s so at odds with the her she is now that it seems strange. Bess used to be happy-go-lucky. Now she never smiles. She just gives you that tight-lipped almost-grin that means nothing. But at this moment, she’s soft, and I don’t want to ruin it by telling her that Eli is standing behind her, that he heard her story, so I keep it to myself.
“That was the night we met up with you guys, and we went walking around the campground in the dark together for what seemed like hours.” She bumps my knee with hers. “Do you remember doing that?”
“I remember that crown of weeds on your head. I gave you a hard time about it, but you refused to take it off.”
“Oh!” she says, her voice animated at another memory. “When I got home that night, I hung that crown over the bedpost and it stayed there until it got dry and brittle. I’m not sure what happened to it because one day it was just gone. My mom must have thrown it away.”
“He carried that stupid red ball around all summer.” I see Eli smile at the memory as he stands silently a few steps behind Bess. “He used to take it up to the bathhouse and bounce it against the wall, catching it over and over. I wanted to shove it up his nose so many times.”
“It’s in the drawer in the kitchen. My mom found it a few years ago. She stuck it in there. I saw it just last night. Wow, the memories…”
“You should tell him that,” I prompt.
The smile drops from her face. “He wouldn’t care.”
“I think he’d care more than you think.”
She shakes her head. “He wouldn’t. He’s not like that anymore.”
“Like what?” I ask her.
“He just wouldn’t look at the past fondly,” she says. She shrugs. “That’s all.”
“Oh, I dunno… He might surprise you.”
I watch as Eli walks backward slowly, stepping away from us. He walks around the corner and out of sight.
“I used to love him so much.” Her voice is rough, like sandpaper scratchy.
“I think you still do.”
She shakes her head. “We’ve been through too much. There are too many bad memories.”
I lean forward and put my hand on her leg so I can get her attention. “There are good memories too, Bess. You’re just choosing not to remember them.”
“There are a lot more bad memories than good memories,” she insists, and she gets up, dusts off the butt of her jeans, and walks away from me. At the last minute she walks back, plucks the pink glasses from my face, and puts them on. “These are mine,” she says.
She walks away from me again, and she leaves me sitting in the dirt with the box, wondering what it’s going to take to make her see all that she’s giving up. What am I going to have to do?
17
Eli
Bess storms around the corner of the house with a pair of pink sunglasses resting on her nose. They look vaguely familiar from long ago. What’s not familiar is the amount of sass that’s oozing off her in waves. For years, Bess has been living in a fog, almost devoid of emotion. She hasn’t smiled, and she didn’t even care enough to get angry about anything, or at least that’s what I thought. But right now, she’s definitely angry.
“Everything okay?” I ask as she stalks past me.
She says nothing and just stomps past me and up the steps. She goes inside the house and slams the door behind her.
I look down at Sam and she grins at me. “Somebody seriously peed in her cornflakes,” she says. She holds her kitten in one hand while she pets it with the other.
I can’t hold back a loud laugh. It bursts from my throat, and then more want to follow but I hold them back. Bess never liked for people to laugh at her, much less when she was angry.
“You sound just like your mother when you say things like that,” I tell Sam. She beams up at me from beneath the brim of her pink fishing cap. I can’t see her eyes, but her grin says it all. I sit down on the top step of the cabin and adjust Miles so that he’s sitting more on my legs. Babies get heavy after a little while. I never knew that. “Your mom always called it like she saw it.”
Her face scrunches up. “What does that mean?”
“Some people like to beat around the bush.”
“Huh?” She stares at me, still petting her kitten.
“Your mom didn’t pull any punches.”
Her brow furrows. “I wish grownups would just say what they mean.”
I think about it. She’s right. I’m using euphemisms that she doesn’t understand. I say my next words very slowly and clearly. “Some people, when they want to call someone out about something, say something nice to ease some of the offense or unpleasantness. Your mother never did that. If it was in her head, it was coming out of her mouth. I never had to worry about what your mother was thinking.” I chuckle at the memory. “One time, your mom and I were walking down to the game room so we could meet up with Bess and your dad, and this other kid rode by us on his bike and got so close to Bess that she had to step out of the road to get out of the way.
She scratches her knee. “What did my mom do?”
“Your mom marched over to his parents and told them what he’d done. And when they acted like they didn’t really care how he acted, she waited until after dark, snuck over to his house, and let the air out of his bike tires to teach him a lesson.” I look at her and see that she is staring at me, absolutely fascinated by the story. “I told you that your mom was fierce.”
“I wish she hadn’t died,” she says quietly.
“Me too, kiddo. Me too.” Miles starts to fidget, which either means he’s hungry, sleepy, or he needs a diaper change. Now I just have to figure out which one. I lift him up so his butt is next to my nose and give it a sniff. He smells like shit. “I’ll give you a dollar if you’ll change his diaper,” I say to Sam.
“Not a chance, dude,” she replies.
I chuckle. “It was worth a shot.”
“No, it really wasn’t,” she shoots back at me.
“See?” I tell her. “You’re more like your mother than I ever thought.”
“I’m going to go set up the cat’s litter box and his food bowls.” She grabs the bags we left on the porch when we sat down, and she goes into the house, taking her kitten with her.
“She’s so much like Lynda that sometimes it hurts to look at her,” Aaron says as he approaches from around the corner. He slowly trudges up the steps and sits down next to me. “She got all the sass, and Kerry-Anne got all the sweetness.”
“And Miles got the smelly butt.” I hold him out in Aaron’s direction, and he takes him from me.
“So I get you back when you’re poopy, huh?” Aaron buries his face against Miles’s stomach and blows a raspberry, which makes the little arms and legs flail as he tries to grab handfuls of Aaron’s hair.
“He’s probably ready for a nap. He’s been up since around six thirty.”
“I heard you’ve been up even longer than that,” Aaron says, but he’s really not paying attention to me. He has it all on Miles. “Thanks for watching him during the night.”
I laugh out loud. “Mr. Jacobson came over all freaking out and saying, ‘It woke up!’ I figured I was obligated to help.” I reach over and touch the top of the baby ‘s soft head. “Me and this little guy have a deal. As long as he doesn’t cry, I won’t either. It seems to be working so far.”
“He agreed to this arrangement?”
“He did. And so far, he’s held up his end of the bargain.”
“Well, thank you for spending so much time with him. I know you’re not used to having babies around.”
“We had one once,” I admit. I almost want to take the words back because they hang there in the air between us, tangible and real. “But only for a few days.”
Aaron finally looks at me. “What?”
“We signed up to be foster parents. Our first placement was a three-month-old baby.”
His surprised gaze turns into a mock glare. “How did I not know this?”
I give him a shrug. “Bess didn’t want to say anything in case it didn’t work out. And the goal with foster parenting is reunification with the parental figure. We knew that going into it. It still stung a little when they took him back, I’m not going to lie about it.” It was harder on me than on Bess. Bess had kept her distance, only holding him when she had to. I, on the other hand, had fallen head over heels for the little guy right away. I’d even tried to check on him after he went back to his home, and we’re not really supposed to do that.
“Did you foster again?”
I shake my head. Bess had refused to do it again. “No, we never did.”
“Do you think it would have fixed you two…if you’d had a baby?”
“I sincerely doubt that having a baby with her would have made her like me any more than she already did.”
“Babies have a way of making life harder and yet sweeter all at the same time.” He grimaces. “Speaking of sweet, this one needs a diaper.”
“Better get on that.”
“I’ll give you a dollar if you’ll do it,” he says, which makes me laugh.
“Not a chance, dude,” I say, repeating what Sam had just said to me.
He leaves and goes to his own cabin. Our door opens and Bess steps out onto the porch. “Did you agree to keep a cat for a month?” she asks.
I nod my head slowly. “I did.”
Her brow furrows. “Just to be clear, you know you have to keep it when the divorce is final.”
“Okay, Bess, sure,” I reply. I’ll keep the cat. But I’d really rather figure out a way to keep her.
18
Bess
The next morning, I wake up when there’s a knock at the front door. My neck hurts because I slept on the couch again since Eli was in the bed. I rub my neck and walk to the door, open it, and find Aaron standing there with Sam. Sam walks past me and into the house and starts looking for her cat.
“Try the kitchen,” I tell her. “The cat was up around five this morning playing with a bread tie on the linoleum floor.” I shudder and scrub my eyes with my hands.
“You ready to go?” Aaron asks me.
“Go where?” I say, still sleepy.
He pulls his shirt open a little to expose his port.
“Oh!” I say, awake now. “I forgot that we’re doing that every other day.” I hold up one finger. “Give me just a minute to get dressed.”
I open the door to the bedroom and stop short when I see Eli standing there in nothing but a towel. He’s in front of the mirror in the bathroom, shaving.
“Sorry,” I say and I turn away quickly. “I just need to get my clothes.”
“It’s fine, Bess,” Eli says. “Get what you need.”
He walks out of the bathroom and goe
s to the closet, and then he starts to take his clothes out for the day.
“It’s not like you’ve never seen me naked,” he says with a chuckle.
“It’s been a while,” I mutter.
He says nothing because there is no adequate response. Eli and I stopped sleeping in the same room more than a year ago, and we’d stopped sharing those tiny intimacies long before that.
He sits down on the edge of the bed so he can put his socks on. “Are you going with Aaron?”
“Yes.” I get my clothes out of the drawers and go into the bathroom to change.
“Will you be gone all day?” he calls through the gap in the door.
“Probably a few hours, just like last time. Why do you ask?” I freeze and wait for his answer because if I’m moving around, I might not hear him.
“Just curious,” he calls back.
I brush my teeth, and then I pull my hair into a ponytail. Aaron certainly doesn’t care what I look like. I’ve never had to pay too much attention to my appearance for Aaron. And we all know that Eli isn’t going to look in my direction long enough to even notice what I look like.
I walk out into the bedroom and find him pulling his shirt on. “What are you doing today?” I ask him.
He pauses. “You haven’t asked me a question like that in a really long time,” he says, his voice quiet, almost reverent.
“What?” I sit down on the edge of the bed so I can pull on my socks and shoes. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You haven’t cared enough to ask me about my plans in a long time, Bess, that’s all. It just shocked me.”
“Oh.” I dab a dash of perfume to my wrists and turn to leave the room. “Well, never mind—”
Eli grabs my hand, stopping my exit. He lifts my wrist up to his nose and takes a deep breath. The hairs on my arms stand up, and I stiffen my back, preparing to flee. “I love the smell of that perfume,” he says. “I’ve missed it.”
I jerk my arm back out of his grasp and take a step away from him. Then another. Because it feels safer the farther I get from him.
Feels like Home (Lake Fisher Book 2) Page 8
