~~~
Erica could still taste Brennan's high-fat cookies more than a week after she and Liam had polished them off. Nobody had ever made cookies just for her. Not even her mother. The gesture had been...warm. Not exactly romantic, but not distantly polite, either.
It had made her feel happy.
The taste of them was particularly sharp in her memory this afternoon, given the route she'd chosen for driving Liam to another student's house in order to finish a school project.
They were going to pass by Brennan's second store.
Why she had chosen this route over the others available was a question she did not care to ponder.
"Thanks for the ride." It was the second or third time Liam had said this. He gazed out the side window and seemed subdued. "I don't think it'll take more than a few hours for us to finish this world history project. I'll see if Nelson's mom can give me a ride back home when we're done."
"Whatever you think will work out best." It wasn't as if Erica would be too busy to come pick Liam up. She didn't even have to worry any more about moving her things out of the LA apartment. Last weekend Clint and Liam had helped her take care of that. Then, while Liam had been at school this week, Erica had designed and printed flyers for the list of potential customers Brennan had given her.
She had yet to work up the courage to distribute them, however. What if nobody wanted her services? What if they thought her fees were laughable? What if everybody already had trainers who were better than she was? She'd decided to wait until the weekend.
"Hey, you see Dobber's Home Improvement over there?" Liam suddenly straightened in his seat and pointed toward a store coming up on the right. A small smile graced his face. "Dad used to love that place. He could wander the aisles for hours."
Blinking, Erica wondered how to respond to this information. It was difficult for her to imagine her father happily wandering a home improvement store. Okay, he'd obviously worked on the house during the time she'd been gone. There was, for example, the rose-printed wallpaper in her bedroom. The chandelier over the front stairs. Oh, and the roses in the front yard. "Uh...cool," Erica tried.
"He was happy going by himself," Liam continued. "But he liked it even better when I came along."
Now Erica had to shift in her seat. She could not picture her father ever wanting her to come along—anywhere. In fact, one of her clearer memories of her father was when he'd growled for her to get lost. At the time, she'd been attempting to approach him with a card she'd made at school for Father's Day. "Ah," she told Liam.
Liam's smile faded as he looked at her. He slouched back into his seat and didn't add any further happy memories.
Damn. Now Erica felt inadequate as a surrogate parent. But what could she add to a conversation reminiscing about her father? The best she could do was avoid the whole subject.
"Oh, hey!" she exclaimed, doing her own pointing now. "Isn't that Brennan's store over there on the left?" She didn't really need to ask as it was obvious that was the store, at the address she'd looked up before they left home. Not only did it flaunt a large Diehard Sports Equipment sign, but it also wore the same exterior paint scheme of sea-green and silver as the other store she'd earlier visited.
"What? Oh, yeah." Liam spared the store a tepid glance.
Apparently, avoiding the subject of their father hadn't been the ideal choice as far as cheering up Liam. Erica's sensation of parental inadequacy deepened.
Meanwhile, she stole a better look at the store as they drove by. Whatever monsters lurked in Brennan's past, it was clear he had his present in good order. The place looked sleek, classy, and top-notch. Her sense of inadequacy expanded to include her professional side, which overlapped with her character in general. What, really, did she have to offer Brennan?
The happiness she'd earlier felt in remembering his cookies faded the same way Liam's brief animation had.
"You want to turn right at the next corner," Liam advised.
"Right, right."
Brennan's store disappeared as Erica turned the corner. Even if she were ready to trust Brennan regarding his past with alcohol, the two of them had no future. She was a nobody, a rank amateur in life compared to Brennan. She hadn't a single client while he owned two successful retail outlets.
But it was good they were friends again. Yes, friends was definitely okay. Safe. Good.
Maybe when Liam came home later, he and she could become friends again, too.