“Thank you for the invitation, but you’re not quite my type.”
His gaze hardens. “I was your type a few hours ago.”
“I was drunk.”
He nods and pushes himself into the other room. He turns on the sports station on the TV. I follow him, because now I feel bad, taking my cup of coffee with me.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He looks up for no more than a second. “For what?”
“For inconveniencing you.”
“I got to hold a beautiful woman for hours. I consider it a fair trade.”
“It wasn’t fair,” I complain. “It was rude and inconsiderate.”
He shakes his head. “No, rude and inconsiderate is telling me I’m not your type. You don’t even know me.”
“You think you’re my type?”
He shakes his head again. “I don’t think you are my type.”
Well, that’s irritating. “Why not?”
His eyes roam up and down my body slowly. “You’re a little high maintenance.”
“I am not high maintenance!”
“Yes, you are.”
I set my coffee mug on the end table. “Take that back.”
He snorts. “What are you? Twelve?”
“I am not high maintenance,” I grumble. “I just like to look nice.”
Like he can judge my appearance when he has tattoos on his face.
“Stop looking at my teardrops,” he says.
“Well, they’re right there on your face.” He has a cluster of teardrops tattooed right below the outside corner of his eye. “What possessed you to get a tattoo on your face?” I blurt out.
His gaze drops to my boobs and he stares at them.
“Stop looking at my boobs!”
He smirks at me. “Well, they’re right there on your chest.”
“Nature gave me these.” I look down and realize I’m holding them. I drop my hands and heat creeps up my cheeks. “I didn’t put them there.”
He fingers his cheek. “Nature gave me these too.” He looks away from me and suddenly he’s way too serious for comfort.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that sometimes you can’t get away from your past, no matter how fast you run.” He swipes a finger across his teardrops again. “They’re a reminder of things I can’t change.” His eyes meet mine and I feel it deep in the center of me. His gaze narrows. “So, what set you off last night?” he asks. He looks all jovial and shit. But I get the impression he’s setting me up. “Boyfriend dump you?”
I shake my head.
“Did your new single get a bad review?”
I shake my head again.
“Your past catch up with you?”
I nod.
He shifts and moves to the couch. He pats the space beside him. “Come here and tell me everything.”
“No, thank you.”
“You licked my neck earlier. I think you owe me.” He tugs at the collar of his shirt. “I think you might have given me a hickey. Come and check it for me.”
Now I’m curious because I don’t remember giving him a hickey. I settle on my knees beside him and tug on his shirt collar. “You do not have a hickey.” I slap his shoulder. Suddenly, he snakes an arm around my waist and yanks me down beside him. He flips me over and I’m on my back with my head on his lap. I try to get up, but he flings an arm across my chest. “This isn’t funny.” I struggle against his hold.
“Talk to me, Star.” His voice is strong and firm, and it stops me cold. Well, stops me warm. Hell, it just stops me.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” he asks softly. “Because I look like a thug? Thugs have hearts too.” Looking up at him, I realize he’s really handsome. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before. His hair is dark and cropped close to his head and he has a five o’clock shadow that I want to scratch at with my fingernails. His lips are full and red and his face is soft as he gazes at me. He looks so hard the rest of the time.
“Am I hurting your legs?” I ask. Then I realize that’s a dumb question and I wince.
He chuckles. “I can’t feel my legs, so I wouldn’t know.”
“You can’t feel anything?”
“My issue wasn’t my spinal cord. I broke my back. So, sometimes I can feel my toes. And I have some phantom pain, occasionally. But there’s not enough motor control for me to walk.” He suddenly looks uncomfortable and I’m sorry I asked.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
His hand hovers over me. “Can I touch you?” he asks. His voice is as soft as his pillow was earlier.
I freeze. “Where?”
He takes a deep breath. “Anywhere. Everywhere.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “I like touching you.” He lays his hand on my stomach, on top of my shirt. He’s not being weird or anything. “I forgot how nice it was touching someone. I didn’t realize how much I missed it until you climbed in my lap last night. I never wanted to let you get up.”
“Oh.” His hand moves up and down my belly with my breaths. But he’s comfortable and he’s just resting his palm there. I lay my hand over his. “How long has it been?”
He scratches the top of his head with his free hand. “Since before my accident.”
“When was that?”
“Years ago.”
“Oh.”
His finger rucks my shirt up and his hand lays flat on my naked belly, skin to skin. “This okay?” he asks.
“You’re not…like…getting a boner or anything weird, are you?”
He chuckles. “You think boners are weird?”
“Never met one I liked,” I murmur.
“What?” he cries. He slaps his free hand to his cheek like the kid in Home Alone. “Never?’
I shake my head. “Never.”
“Have you met a lot of them?”
“My share.”
“Interesting.” His hand doesn’t move. We just lie there with his hand on my belly. I take a deep breath and watch his hand rise and fall. “You feel good,” he says quietly.
“Are you trying to seduce me?” I look into his face.
He grins. “If I was trying, I’d be inside you by now.”
“Can you…you know…do that?”
“My dick apparently thinks I can, all of a sudden.” He looks a little embarrassed.
“Wait,” I say. “You mean you haven’t…since the accident? And that was years ago?”
“Yes, Sherlock. You have put together all the clues.”
“The ex-con with the boner in the living room,” I say.
He pulls his hand back from my belly. I grab for it, because I think I just made a mistake. “I’m sorry. It was a board game reference. I didn’t mean it.”
I lift my shirt back up and press his palm to my skin, covering the back of his hand with my palm. He’s stiff as a board.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
He starts to relax around me. “It’s okay.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“I would understand it if that’s how you see me, but if that’s truly how you see me, I should go ahead and take you to the hospital.”
I look up at him. “It’s not. It’s not how I see you.”
“How do you see me, then?”
“I…don’t know.”
“Fair enough,” he says quietly.
“How do you see me?” I ask. I can barely hear my own voice.
“You’re like a Christmas present,” he says.
“How so?”
“Wrapped up really pretty on the outside with bows and glitz.”
“You think I’m really pretty?” I grin. I can’t help it.
“I think you work really hard to be perfect on the outside.”
And he just summed me up with that simple statement. “Yeah,” I breathe.
“But I think you’re soft as cotton on the inside. And I don’t think many people realize it.”
“I think you’re wrong.?
?? So wrong. I’m not soft. I don’t have the ability to be soft.
“What happened last night?”
“Nothing.”
“You flinch when you lie.”
“Do not.”
“Do too.” He chuckles. His finger taps on my belly. “Tell me.”
“My brother came to see me. That’s all.”
“What did he want?”
“To reconnect.”
“And?”
“And I haven’t told Wren yet.”
“Are you going to?”
“As soon as I figure out how.”
“What did he want?”
“A place to stay while he’s in town.”
I sit up because I don’t want to talk about my brother. He’s the one that our aunt and uncle kept. The only one. Wren and I went to foster care when our parents died in a car accident. Our aunt and uncle could only take one of us and they picked him. I resent him for that and I know I shouldn’t.
“Don’t go,” Josh protests as I sit up.
“What’s up with this touching thing?” I ask.
“You started it.” He chuckles. “I didn’t climb into your lap.”
I squeeze his knee and push myself to my feet. Then I realize he couldn’t feel that. “Sorry,” I say.
“No worries.”
He transfers back to the wheelchair. “Are you ready to go to the hospital?”
“We probably should.” I need to keep my thoughts to myself, but I can’t. “I like it when you touch me,” I blurt out.
His brow crooks. “Really, now.”
Heat creeps up my cheeks. “Yes. I just wanted you to know. You know…in case I never see you again after tonight.”
“What if I said I want to see you again after tonight?” he asks. He stares at me.
“I’ll think about it.” A grin tugs at my lips and I turn away so he won’t see it. He passes me his phone and I put my number in it. Then he texts me really quickly so I have his too. I feel like a kid at Christmas.
“Are you still drunk?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
“You sure?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You just let an ex-con touch you in the living room with his hands. And it was nice.”
I nod and bite my lower lip. “It was nice.”
“Let’s do it again sometime.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Okay.” His face falls. But what he doesn’t realize is that I’m really thinking hard about it. And I’ll probably say yes, as long as no one will ever know.
Josh
The waiting room at the hospital is completely full when we get there. There are Reeds stacked everywhere. Pete and Reagan, Matt and Sky, Logan and Emily, and Paul and Friday are all there. Not to mention Peck’s family, the Zeroes, and her parents.
Pete, Sam’s twin, looks like he might shit his pants. He jumps to his feet. “Why do you think it’s taking so long?” He starts to pace.
Reagan reaches out a foot and kicks his leg as he paces in front of her. “She’s pushing a baby out of her vagina, Pete. It’s going to take a while.” She nods toward the lump of blankets in her own lap, and I can only imagine that their daughter is nestled in there stuck to a boob. “You remember what it was like, don’t you?”
“It didn’t take that long for you to push Kennedy out of your vagina.”
She rolls her eyes. “Stop talking about my vagina in front of people.”
He grins. “But it’s, like, magical.”
She growls at him. “If you ever want to touch my magical vagina again, you’ll stop talking about it.”
Matt clears his throat. “Pete might not remember Kennedy’s entrance into the world. If I’m not mistaken, he hyperventilated and passed out in the middle of the delivery room.”
Reagan laughs. “He woke up in time to cut the cord.”
“Not all of us can be pros at the having kids thing,” Pete grouses. “Matt has so many that he should get a star on the boulevard or a statue or something.” He narrows his eyes at Matt. “You figured out where those things are coming from yet?”
Matt grins at his wife. “Yep.”
She leans over and kisses him. Her phone goes off. “Speaking of which, Seth says your favorite kid won’t go to sleep.” She shows us a video of Matt’s newest screaming her head off.
“Oh, Gracie’s mad,” he says, talking like he’s speaking to a baby.
“Gracie is always mad,” Sky says with a laugh. “Hope she doesn’t wake Hoppy and Matty up, or Seth will have his hands full.”
I try to count up all the Reed kids in my head, but it’s hard. Matt and Sky have Seth, Mellie, Joey, Hoppy, Matty and Gracie. Their oldest three were adopted. Paul and Friday have Hayley and PJ, and she gave birth to Jacob and Tuesday, both of whom spend more time at Paul and Friday’s house than they do their own. Logan and Emily have just one and her name is Kit, but Emily is pregnant again. And Pete and Reagan have a little girl named Kennedy, named after a dead president, which I still don’t understand. And now Sam and Peck are about to have their first. No name yet, although I doubt I’d remember it if someone told me what it was at this point.
I roll myself to the window and look out. “You okay?” Paul asks quietly as he comes to sit in a chair beside me. I turn myself to face him.
“Great.”
He jerks his head toward Star, who is sitting with her sisters. “She looks like she’s better now.”
I nod. “She’s fine.”
“You know what happened?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, then…” he says.
“It’s her story. Not mine.”
Paul smiles. “Fair enough.” He points to my neck. “You have lipstick right there.”
I lift my hand, about to swipe it off, but then I leave it. Paul reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a handkerchief. “Her dad is here,” he says quietly.
“So?”
“So, he punched Sam in the face over something that happened between him and Peck.”
“Oh.” I take the handkerchief and rub my neck. I don’t give it back to him, though. I know it’s silly, but I’m going to keep it. “You think he’d hit a guy in a wheelchair?” I ask. I’m kidding. But still…
“I think he’d run you over with a car if he felt like it was justified, chair or no chair.”
“I like people who don’t see the chair. So I’d be okay with that.”
“I think it’s okay to see our differences. And even appreciate them. But not to judge people based on them.”
I think about it a minute. He’s right. It’s fine to notice race, disabilities, hair color, eye color…and it’s wonderful to appreciate them all. There’s not a problem until people start to judge based on appearance.
The Reeds have never, ever treated me like I’m disabled. The day they hired me, they gave me a plunger and told me to go unstop a toilet. Then they gave me a broom, and told me to take the trash out when I finished the floor. Never once did they look at the chair and assume I couldn’t do something. Except for maybe reaching things on high shelves, and that’s acceptable. But their take on disabilities is not the norm.
“Did you kiss her?” Paul grins at me.
A grin tugs at my lips too. I shake my head.
He cups his hands around his mouth and whispers, “You going to?”
“She’s not my type.”
He snorts. “She has a vagina.”
“Are you guys talking about my vagina too?” Reagan yells out.
“No, we were talking about Pete’s,” Paul calls back. He gets up and goes to sit beside Friday. My phone goes off in my pocket.
Star: Were you talking about my vagina?
I grin and swipe a hand across my mouth.
Me: Not yet, but I’m willing. You should totally show it to me so I have some frame of reference.
She giggles across the room and one of her sisters leans over to read her phone, b
ut Star dodges her.
“Are you sexting someone?” Lark cries out.
“No!” Star screeches. But her face turns red.
“Better not be,” her dad mumbles.
Star shoves her phone into her pocket.
Suddenly, Sam appears from around the corner. He stops in the doorway, his hands braced on the frame. “He’s here!” he cries. He wipes his eyes. “Eight pounds, two ounces.” He holds up his fist. “And nuts about this big! My God, they’re huge.”
“How’s Peck?” Peck’s mom asks.
“She’s great. They’re taking care of some really gross stuff right now, but I’ll be back in a few minutes to get you.”
Paul gets up and opens his arms to Sam. Sam hugs him, and Paul pounds lightly on his back and murmurs something in his ear.
Sam nods. “He’s amazing,” Sam says, his voice full of wonder. “I can’t believe I made something so awesome.”
“I can’t either!” Pete calls, but he’s wiping his eyes.
Sam smiles and goes back down the hallway.
Paul sits down beside Pete. “You need a tissue?” he asks, but he’s grinning.
“Nah, I’m good,” Pete replies. He sniffles and Reagan passes him their daughter. She’s asleep, and just her head is poking out of the blankets. “We should get her home,” he says.
Reagan glares at him. “I’m not leaving until I see that baby.”
Paul chuckles.
In a few minutes a nurse comes out to get everyone, and everyone gets up but Star. She stays in her seat. “You coming?” Lark asks.
She shakes her head. “In a minute. You go ahead.”
Lark’s brow furrows. “You sure?”
Star nods.
Her father scrubs a hand across the top of her head as he walks by her, and then it’s just me and her in the room. I’m not family, so I don’t go to see the baby. I just came because Star needed someone to get her here. I’d like to be a Reed, but I’m not. I got a tattoo with the five of them a few months ago that says: Where I go, they go. But that was just because they were grateful for something I did for them.
I followed them one day when they went to do something stupid, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right weapon and the desire to use it against someone I truly hated. He was the leader of a gang I used to belong to, back when I was in my rebellious stage. My shooting him was called “self defense” in the police reports, but I went back to prison because I was carrying a firearm in violation of my probation, and the day I got out, the Reeds were there waiting for me with a home and all the support I could ever need. When we got the tattoos, they were including me, trying to make me feel like family. But I’m not. I’m okay with it. I’ve been alone for a really long time, and I’ve gotten used to it. Or at least I was until Star crawled her fine ass in my lap last night.