Good Neighbors (Book 1 of the Home Again Series)

  ~~~

  Nobody understood. They never did.

  Trying to distract himself from this depressing situation, Liam sat at his desk and ran a hand over the textbook he'd ordered from Amazon. His desk lamp lit the title: Differential Equations. It was a step past what he was studying in school, but he was getting bored with the pace of that class, and his father had always encouraged him to challenge himself.

  Hence the fact he was taking a community college math class when he was only a sophomore in high school.

  Liam opened the book. He wanted to forget the crowd down below. They wanted him to feel better. He didn't want to feel better. His father had just died. He was allowed to feel like hell.

  Which begged the question why he was turning to the table of contents of his new book in an attempt to ease the dull ache in his chest. But that was different. Reading the book would be his choice.

  Liam scanned the topics listed in the contents and felt a familiar excitement that did, indeed, ease the tight weight in his chest. Starting this book would be good. Better yet, it was something Dad would have approved of.

  A knock on his door interrupted him in the act of turning to the first chapter. Liam looked up hopefully. Brennan? He was the only one who made Liam believe maybe someone could understand.

  "Come in," he called.

  The door cracked open slowly. His sister, Erica, poked her head around the door, her face posed beneath the poster above it of Albert Einstein with his crazy hair.

  Liam felt a guilty disappointment. Erica was nice. She was obviously trying to help out. But she wasn't Brennan.

  "Can I come in?"

  Liam forced himself to smile. "I just said so, didn't I?" He leaned back in his desk chair, trying to disguise by his apparent ease that he was closing the textbook and hiding it behind some spiral notebooks.

  He didn't want to be a snob, but he got the impression she wasn't much into academics herself. She might freak out or think he was a weirdo if she saw he was starting college mathematics.

  "I just wanted to come up and make sure you're okay." Erica entered the room tentatively. "Do you need anything?"

  "Nah, I'm fine. Especially since you let me bag on the stuff downstairs."

  Erica let out an expressive breath. "You're telling me. Thankfully, the last of them just left."

  So, she'd been having trouble, too. Interesting. But her trouble stemmed from a different cause than his, Liam supposed. She hadn't even liked Dad. Clint had once explained to Liam why Erica found it too difficult to ever come home. How for her it had been a scary, unhappy place with a father who was often drunk and in a bad temper. Given that, Liam kind of got where she was coming from, but...it seemed rather inflexible. Dad hadn't ever been that way that Liam remembered. On the other hand, Liam wasn't standing in Erica's shoes. He didn't know how she felt.

  Now she came further into the room, and her gaze went around the walls. "This place sure looks different from when I last saw it." With a smile, her gaze shot to him. "Then it was all baby books and cute plush toys."

  Liam felt his face warm. He still had a lot of toys on the numerous shelves lining the room, mostly Transformers from when he was in grade school. But, hey, grown men collected those.

  He felt increasingly tense as she paced around and regarded his plastic robot toys and the posters of Nikola Tesla and the periodic table. He liked her and all. She always remembered his birthday and would post funny photos for him on Instagram. But she was like a stranger. She almost certainly didn't get who he was.

  "What do you think you'll want to do on Monday?" Erica was regarding a model Space X rocket next to his figure of Galvatron, the main Transformers villain. "Think you'll be ready for school, or do you want to take a few more days off? As far as I'm concerned, it's up to you."

  Liam lifted his shoulders. "Might as well go back to school. It'll be good. Distracting."

  Nodding, she turned her attention to a silly Jar Jar Binks figure from Star Wars.

  "That one's a joke," Liam said.

  She turned to look at him questioningly.

  Liam pointed to the figurine with its duck beak and floppy ears. "Everybody despises Jar Jar. I put him on my shelf as a joke."

  "Oh." It was obvious she hadn't even noticed what she was looking at. With a shake of her head, she smiled. "Sorry. It just occurred to me that you're the youngest person I know."

  Liam chuckled. "No teenagers hiring personal trainers?"

  "I'm sure some are, fancy Beverly Hills types. Unfortunately, I'm not yet moving in those circles."

  Liam's smile faded. "I hope I—this situation—I hope it's not making your life a big mess." He really did. It was stupid he couldn't simply take care of himself. He was perfectly capable of taking public transportation, shopping for food, wearing clean clothes. Although he supposed there were more complicated aspects to adult life: taxes, insurance, and that sort of thing. He admitted ignorance of those topics.

  Plus he doubted his school would look kindly on important papers not having an adult's signature. Unfortunately, kids his age were supposed to have parents or guardians.

  "My life is fine," Erica claimed. "Since I'm self-employed, it's easy to reschedule clients." She turned to look directly at him and her voice took on a serious tone that made him want to squirm. "I'm not leaving here until I'm sure you're completely settled, everything squared away."

  The dull ache in Liam's chest became a solid, heavy weight. No matter what she said, he was screwing up her life.

  He was screwing up everybody's life. Clint claimed he would take care of Liam, but everybody could see that Clint was in over his head with his crazy wife, Judy. And even Brennan, with whom Liam would prefer to stay, probably had something going on in his life that Liam would screw up if he stayed with him.

  "I want you to feel sure of that," Erica said.

  The weight in Liam's chest made it hard to talk, but he managed a husky, "Okay."

  It wasn't actually okay. In fact, a guilty voice began chanting in his head, reminding Liam of the task his father had asked him to do, the secret promise he'd made. The hard one.

  Fortunately, nobody but Liam knew about the promise now. Nobody could know whether or not he was trying to fulfill it.

  Erica frowned at him. "Okay, but...?"

  Her query made the guilt surge upward. Anger was Liam's response. Dad shouldn't have eked that promise out of him. Liam didn't want to do it. He didn't intend to do it.

  And he didn't have to. Erica had just promised to make sure Liam's situation was settled. Liam didn't have to go searching for another possible guardian, the one his father had wanted him to find.

  "But nothing," he told Erica. To convince her, he managed a limp smile. "Thanks for coming, for staying. I really appreciate it." He paused and released a breath. "I don't have anything to say except that."