Pop barely registers that two people have fled the room. His eyes are, for once, locked on mine, not on his desk or his phone.
“As I said, Nan and I talked. I’ve heard about your latest—”
Ah, Nano. Always so forthcoming with my sins.
“Escapade?”
Long sigh from Pop. “Issue. I know about this girl, and this child. I’m not happy, but that’s beside the point.”
So used to having my hands full of the kid. Pull on my ear, weave them through my hair, thrust ’em in my pockets. Look down the long back hall to the open office door. Alice has her legs propped up on Mr. Garrett’s desk. Tour my gaze slowly from her crossed ankles to the fall of her skirt above her knees, the long line of her body, her face, with those crazy glasses on. With luck not overhearing any of this crap. The back door slammed a minute or two ago, so Andy’s gone, at least.
“This is the last thing you should be tangled up in,” Pop continues, pointing his cell at me like he can Tase me with it.
“Obviously too late for that, Pop.”
“I’d appreciate it if you could try not to automatically make a smart-ass response so we can have a reasonable conversation.”
“I’m not expecting you to fix this for me.” Alice crosses and recrosses her ankles, fidgeting. Listening?
“I won’t. But that’s also beside the point.” He drops the phone back into his pocket. “You have enough going on without this added complication.”
“And yet it exists. Whoops.”
“Goddamnit, Timothy.” My head snaps up. Not a cusser, Pop. Not with me, anyway.
“What I’m saying is that this is not something you should waste time on.”
“He’s my son. What happened to manning up?”
Again with the cell phone. He should get a holster.
“You need to focus on getting yourself and your own life together. That’s the bottom line. Unless your plan is to marry the girl, which—”
Jesus. He doesn’t want me to do that, does he? Talk about the ultimate ultimatum.
“No. We’re—he’s going to be adopted as soon as Hester and I figure that out.”
“That’s the first smart plan you’ve had in years. The girl is on board?”
Hate that corporate-speak shit. “Yeah, the girl and I are looking at the big picture, thinking outside the box, we’re going to do some team-building, deliverable by leveraging—” But he’s talking over me.
“. . . extricate yourself,” he finishes, annoyed.
“It’s all on me. My problem to solve. Understood. Anything else I need to know?”
My hands in my pockets, jingling my keys.
Pop digs in his jacket pocket, pulls out his wallet, where the bills are crisp and tidy, no doubt lined up correctly. He edges out a fifty. “Get out of this mess. Here.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. Buy Ma a milkshake.”
He studies me for a sec, then turns to go. Stops at the door.
“Tim.”
Christ. Enough already.
“This changes nothing about December.”
ALICE
“Hey,” I say quietly, coming up behind Tim.
He’s pouring himself another cup of coffee, doesn’t turn around. The only way I know he’s heard me is the slight stiffening of his shoulders. He’s looking down, and something about the back of his neck, slumped, a little defeated-looking, makes me almost reach out to hug him. But we’re barely even on speaking terms. I wrap my arms tight around my own ribs instead.
His father. This is the man he grew up knowing best. At the bank, he came off sort of awkward and bureaucratic. But this?
“Tim.”
“If you’ve come to point out that you were right about my chances of fixing the cash register—”
“‘This changes nothing about December’? What the hell, Tim?”
“Yeah, I know.” He finally turns around with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’m shocked too. I was sure this would totally wipe me off the naughty list.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t,” he cuts in. “I don’t want—that. The pity thing. Which I—” He runs his hand through the hair at the nape of his neck. When he speaks again, it’s in an embarrassed voice. “Which I’ve been known to go for, I think. I mean, I see how my sister kinda makes a play for it. Hester too. It’s . . . I don’t know. I just don’t—want that. Okay? So if that’s all you’ve got? Don’t bother.” He turns his back again, gathers up the guts of the cash register and dumps them into the trash can.
There is some perfect thing to say or do here, and I can’t get a hold of it.
“Where’s the extra garage apartment key again, Mom?” I ask, wiping my feet and pulling off my raincoat.
Mom, who’s sitting at the kitchen table with Duff, Harry, and a large assortment of balls of various sizes, barely looks up. “Should be right on the hook.”
“It’s not there. Are there any others?”
“Duff, I don’t think you can sew the fishing line on the foam. Andy tried that and it broke off really easily.”
“God, Mom, not the solar system project again. Duffy, try wrapping Saran Wrap around the ball. Then you can sew through that. Where could the key be? Do you think Jase has it?”
“Try Patsy’s purse.”
“The old crib is still in the basement, right?”
“Yes, over against the far wall. Duff, tie the fishing line to the hanger after you put the planet on it. Harry, you have three more spelling-word sentences to write. Then you can help make the rings for Saturn.”
“I hate this stupid project,” Duff says savagely. “Why can’t we decide what we want to make a scale model of? Why does our project have to be just exactly like everyone else’s in the class?”
“And the class the year before and the class the year before that, and on and on into the distant mists of history. We should have just saved Joel’s,” Mom says wearily.
The missing keys are indeed in Patsy’s Elmo purse. Opening it is like cutting open the stomach of a great white shark, except instead of seal bones and partially digested life rafts, Patsy’s purse has Matchbox cars, LEGOs, credit cards, spoons, crumbled graham crackers, etc.
Mom watches, bemused, as I clunk up from the basement with the various crib parts, the bag full of nuts and bolts, sheets under my arm.
“I’m assuming that’s for Calvin. Tim going to help you put it together?”
“This one’s on me,” I grunt, moving one of the crib’s unassembled sides out the door. Move them across to the garage apartment. Looking back through the screen, I can see Duff hold up the biggest planet. It all looks near normal, the typical chaos. The little things that once were a big deal. For the first time in a while, we’re maybe, finally, putting the shipwreck behind us.
Except that I’m totally ignoring a looming iceberg.
The bills.
It takes me forty-five minutes to put together the crib . . . a job that still defeats Dad, in spite of all his experience. After snapping the fitted bottom sheet into place, I go to the kitchen to wash my hands, passing the refrigerator. The list on the door—
The Boy Most Likely To . . . self-destruct in various ways.
I used that against him. Those very words. Tin Alice.
I pick up a pen. Stare at the paper. Not quite brave enough to cross it all out, I scrawl on the bottom:
. . . have more formula than food in his fridge
. . . keep trying to fix things
I chew my lip, then scribble the last.
. . . deserve a . . . My pen wavers. Second chance? As many chances as it takes? Different dad? Apology?
TIM
I let myself in just as the dark clouds overhead break and the rain comes sheeting down.
The garage apartment has a tin roof and the sound is pure music. Which I’m too wiped out to appreciate. I kick off my pants, toss ’em with my T-shirt to the side of the room.
In serious need of oblivion. Too beat to shower, my le
gs nearly boneless as I tug off my boxers and dive onto the bed.
Crash right into a warm, soft, very female form.
“What the hell?” she snaps, rocketing upright so fast and hard that her forehead smacks into mine and I see flashes of light even in the darkness just as her knee comes in hard right where it counts.
Feel no pain.
No pain.
But I know this freaking pause and then . . .
“Ow.” I hunch to my side on the end of the bed, eyes watering.
“What are you doing here?” Alice asks, bewildered but feisty-sounding.
“Nothing for a long, long time, that’s for sure. Where’s a pillow? Gimme a pillow.”
“Oh. God. I’m sorry. Let me turn on the light.” Alice is evidently swinging her arm at the bedside table, because I hear a pile of books cascade to the floor.
“No! Just get me a pillow. And an ice pack. And . . . last rites or something.”
She shoves several pillows in my direction, then starts giggling.
“Yeah, yeah. Hilarious,” I mutter, trying not to whimper. Or puke. “Maybe now you can take my appendix out with a fork or something.”
“Ice pack?” she asks. “Does that actually help?”
I groan. “Let me die in peace. After you tell me what you were doing between my sheets. And maybe if you’re wearing anything, ’cause that might give me something to live for.”
She flips over on her stomach, I guess, because her face is suddenly right against mine. “Fully clothed. Sorry. I was just closing my eyes for a sec. I didn’t mean to sleep.”
I try to answer, but it’s sort of a moan. The bed shakes with her suppressed laughter. I swat at her feebly, jam the pillow more firmly in front of me.
Ow.
“I’m truly, truly sorry,” Alice says. “It was instinct. Well, that and self-defense classes.”
“Can you get me a—” I’m buck-naked here, but I can’t stand the thought of any cloth brushing over me. Not that I have a robe or anything. I shift the other pillow over my bare ass. Just that movement makes me grit my teeth.
“Be right back.”
I hear the door outside open, the louder whoosh of rain and wind, and then it slams shut. Commando-crawl slowly up to the top of my bed, lie down on my stomach, swear. Try my back, which is no better. Roll over. Rest my weight on my knees and elbows, head on pillow. No improvement. Collapse. Pull up the sheets, which feel like roof tiles weighed down with lead. Everything is throbbing, honestly.
Since I’m alone, I can swear out loud, and I do, but then time passes and there’s nothing but the sound of the wind and the too-quiet of the apartment.
Would she leave me like this?
Door slamming again. Alice, carrying the rain smell with her. “I have ice,” she whispers. “And Motrin. Still alive? Can I turn on the light now?”
The dark, her figure-eight shadow against the dim light from the living room, the sense of Alice bringing all the outside world, its damp-leaf smells and its whooshing-wind and river sounds, with her into this stuffy silent bedroom.
“No. Let’s just . . . keep it like this.”
The mattress dips as she settles down next to me. I suppress any sound of agony by grabbing the pillow and biting it.
“Here,” she says, reaching out for my hand, flipping it palm up and dropping tablets into it, then placing a cool bottle of water next to me. I swallow and chug, let my head fall back again.
“Can I—” I bite down on my lip. The pain seems to be moving off. Sort of.
She leans closer. Nope, still hurts like a mother.
“Am I allowed to ask what you were doing in my apartment, much less my bed, Goldilocks?”
Silence. A sigh. Then:
“I was . . . wrong. You were right to call me on it, Tim. I don’t—apologize often. Or well. So . . . So . . . I thought . . . deeds speak louder than words and all that.” Hers are coming out in a rush and she’s so close I can feel her breath on my cheek. “I put together a crib. For Cal. It took forever. You’d think I could do it in the dark with my eyes closed, but no. I had class tonight and—it was a long, emotional day at the store—and I thought I’d take a power nap.”
“You definitely regained your power. No worries there.”
“No, listen. Don’t joke. Listen. Really. I’m sorry.”
“You’re forgiven. Don’t do it again. Either thing.”
“I promise,” she says, her voice solemn and serious in the darkness, so near that if I turned, I’d be brushing right up against the length of her.
Except that rolling to my side might kill me.
“This is so not how I imagined getting you into my bed.”
“So not how I imagined being in it.”
“You’ve—” I start to sit up. Ow.
“Shh,” Alice says, and lies down next to me, on her back, on top of the sheet I’m under. Wrapping her fingers around mine, she edges my hand over to the ice pack.
“Hush,” she says again, but somehow it’s not like she’s calming down some fussy kid. It’s more like the dark makes things clearer. Cleaner. Sharper. No blurry lines.
She turns her nose to my shoulder, breathes in. Her hair’s wet. She shivers a little. The rain is pinging against the roof, and suddenly the wind gusts loud, spattering drops hard against the window, like someone throwing pebbles to get attention. I start to sidle my arm around Alice, but that simple movement jars me and aches like holy hell. So I don’t move, Alice doesn’t either, except to burrow closer, as her shivers die down.
Her fingers are still laced in mine, warm against the melting ice. The tension in my muscles—everywhere—is slowly easing too, undone by her small, solid weight against me.
“Tim?”
“Mmmm.”
She props herself up on an elbow, barely visible except the glimmer of her wide eyes, the slight sheen of her hair in the distant light from the streetlamp.
“When I was twelve . . .” She stops.
“Go on,” I whisper.
“I came back after the summer and I had”—she looks down at her chest, then sweeps her hands across—“this.” She moves the hand that’s holding mine, presses it against her chest, so her breast . . . God . . . fills my palm, no doubt freezing cold from the ice pack. My fingers tighten. Then I pull my hand away—sheer force of will.
“I was basically the first girl in my class with boobs. It was like—overnight—and suddenly all these people—these kids I’d known forever were calling me names. Some of these girls hated me—again, overnight. Guys were always asking stuff about whether I’d gotten implants, and whether Dad had to take a loan out to pay for them.” She looks up at me again. “Joel had just moved on to high school, so he didn’t know about the teasing. Jase was still in elementary. I didn’t want to tell my parents, because Mom was pregnant with Harry, and Dad’s dad was really sick. I have no idea why I’m telling you this,” she says.
Alice’s eyes meet mine, searching for something. Even in the dim light, she must find whatever it is, because she continues. “So I just decided to flip it. If people were going to take how I looked and figure out how I was, I was going to . . . I don’t know . . . take charge of it. So I wore things that showed off my body, and I picked boys I was stronger than, and . . . that’s the way I handled it.”
I have to admit I’ve never thought of Alice as “managing her image,” as the politicians would call it. I’ve always thought she knew she had a great body and felt fine about showing it off. I pull her even tighter against me, bury my lips near the pale gleam of the part in her hair. Her body goes rigid, then relaxes against me. She mutters something, too soft for me to hear.
“That’s what you do. With your father. You flip it. Just sort of own whatever it is. Not just with him. You do it a lot. ‘Everything’s funny if you look at it the right way.’”
“Um.” I squint against the prickle of dampness in my eyes. “Right? It is.”
Her only answer is to press closer
. “You can get under the covers, you know,” I whisper.
“Better not.” Her voice is low.
I smile. “You’ve never been safer with me than you are now.”
Her quiet laugh shakes the bed, but not painfully anymore. Alice shifts, her wavy hair tickling my cheek. Warm skin, soap, damp hair that smells like rain and leaves.
The branch of the tree outside scratches against the window, moving with the wind. All the rain sheeting down . . . it’s like we’re in a cocoon, wrapped up, falling into sleep.
ALICE
“Mmmm,” Tim murmurs, then yawns into the pillow, stretches his arms over his head, then yawns again.
“I’ve got to go. Will you be able to crash again?”
“Incredibly.”
I tug the sheet and the blanket up to his neck. Pat him quickly on the back, bend to put my lips there, just where his hair curls down, before I even think, then pull back before I make contact.
“I’ll lock the door.”
I scribble one more note. The Boy Most Likely To . . . need a little recovery time. Call “Sweet dreams.” But there’s no answer.
He’s already asleep.
I could have kissed him after all.
TIM
I’d have said there was no way in hell I could sleep with Alice sitting there beside me, one hand on my back and the other brushing my hair away from my forehead. But when I wake up, it’s morning—the rain long gone and the sun slanting through the window, so I must have done just exactly that.
ALICE
It’s only later, when I’m in the kitchen, slurping coffee, unknotting George’s shoelaces, Krazy Gluing the broken nose pad back onto Duff’s glasses, quizzing Harry on his spelling words, and I stand up to stretch, sore from Tim’s hard mattress, that I know what happened here.
Lying next to him, breathing in the rhythm of his breaths. Watching dreams chase across his no-defenses face. Having him tuck me closer, head under his chin, anchored against his heart and heat . . .
Out the kitchen window, I watch Tim plunge down the garage steps, long legs, hands shoved in pockets. He hits the grass, headed for his car, washed clean and sparkling by last night’s rain, windshield plastered with stuck-on leaves, then shields his eyes and looks toward our house. His face blazes, happiness purer and more unfiltered than I’ve ever seen from him.