A familiar empty weight filled him that always did when he thought of his sister. He missed her and he didn’t think the void she left would ever go away. Gloria, his other sister, seemed to move on, but she had Darrel and the kids to keep her busy.
He hated when he got like this, thinking about the past, and moping around in a sad haze while pretending that everything was A-Okay on the outside. He wasn’t one to talk about feelings. No one wanted to hear that shit. Certainly not the men on his crew.
Sophia had always been the one to pull him out of his shell. It wasn’t that he was shy, he just went with the flow and anything that interrupted the flow got stuffed down and tucked away. But his little sister always knew when something was bothering him, sometimes even before he did. She was the one he could always depend on to smack him upside the head when he was being thickheaded. Even in the end, when she was barely holding on, she somehow found the strength to call him a fool and knock some sense into him. She’d reached a point where the cure became worse than the disease, but she still put up a fight when it came to worrying for him.
“Ty,” Sophia had whispered, her feeble hand reaching for his. She’d become too delicate, barely anything separating her flesh from her little bones. Her curls were too fine to braid anymore, and dark shadows surrounded her eyes.
He wished he could erase those memories of the way she looked in the end. No matter how many flashbacks he held of her looking young and vibrant, his mind always saw her the way she was in the end.
When he gave her a tender squeeze to let her know he was listening, she smiled and shut her eyes.
“I worry about you.” Her brow tensed as she released a deep breath, never admitting when the pain was gaining on her.
“You don’t need to worry for me, Phia.”
It was a terrible impression of bravery. His emotions were simply too strong at that point to hide.
“Hush.” She smirked. “You might have everyone else fooled, but not me, Ty. Not me.”
He didn’t have the energy for deep, so he tried to keep the moment light. “What’re you talking about, Phia? You’re high from the morphine.”
She breathed a raspy chuckle. No matter what, she always had a smile at the ready. “My senses are just fine.” Taking a deep breath, she held his hand a little tighter.
“So strong,” she mumbled while keeping her eyes closed. “You’ve done everything you set out to do. Got everything you wanted, but Ty, you’re a fool.” She peeked at him under sparse eyelashes. “You got them all fooled. But not me, Ty. Not me.”
He didn’t want to have this conversation. He didn’t want to have some final moment, wasn’t ready to see his baby sister wither away to nothingness. Her mind had always been so sharp. Her ramblings were only more proof of the cancer’s progression.
“Phia,” he soothed, fighting back the lump in his chest. “Rest, baby girl, rest.”
“There’ll be plenty of time for me to rest when I’m dead.”
“Phia,” he hissed.
“And that’ll be soon enough.”
Choked by a sense of importance, he allowed her to go on.
“I’ll never know what true love feels like. I’ll never experience a child growing inside of me. Never know what it’s like to be called mother or wife.”
His jaw locked as his vision blurred. “Jesus.”
“Now, Ty, don’t you go cussin’ God for this. The good Lord’s all I got and the only solace I find is that eventually He’ll stop the pain and welcome me into His kingdom.”
Losing the battle against his tears, he wept like a child, resting his forehead on their entwined hands. “I wish I could take this from you.”
“No. This isn’t your destiny. It’s mine. But you’ll do me this one favor before I go.”
“Anything.”
“I love you, but you’re a dumb ass.”
He scoffed and laughed, the weight in his chest slightly dissipating, but there was no room for humor. Only hollow sadness.
“What?” She chuckled and coughed. “You think no one around here can tell you how it is? Well, I ain’t got nothin’ to lose.”
He waited through another crackling cough.
“I want you to do all the things I can’t, Ty. I want you to find love. I want you to know what it is to hold a child of your own in your arms. I want you to get out of this area and finally be the man I know you’re meant to be.”
She wheezed in a short breath. “Dying does weird things to a person. Sometimes talkin’ gets too hard and all you do is stumble through your mind. You see things, you know? I see you. Not here, but somewhere that the air smells of fresh cut grass, somewhere that the breeze carries the chatter of children, and a tire swing hangs from an old oak tree or some such quaint shit like that. I see you coaching little league and packin’ brown bag lunches with cute smiley faces drawn on the napkins.
“When I go, Momma’ll be there for Daddy and Darrel’ll be there for Gloria. But who’ll be there for you, Ty? You know how to build a house, but I want you to build yourself a home. And once you do, I want you to find your soul mate and fill that home with babies and be the best daddy you can be.”
Just like that night, his vision blurred with tears. The paint hit the walls in wavering strokes as the memory play like a reoccurring nightmare. Sophia had died that evening. The funeral was on a Tuesday. After everyone left the cemetery to return to his parents’ house, Tyson stoically watched the burial of his baby sister.
The hours that followed passed like years. Days were lost in the shuffle of life and grief. Gloria was the first to put on a brave front and get on with her life. His mother and father would probably never completely recover, but they had eventually cleared out Phia’s things and figured out how to laugh again.
Ty seemed the only one who still suffered the weight of this unbearable loneliness most likely because he had no one to fill the void. The tension of tears striving for an outlet drove his mind away from such sad memories. He couldn’t keep going back to that time. She was gone and she wasn’t coming back.
He tried to think of some happy thought and there she was—Kat. Soft, brown wavy hair with a dusting of pale freckles across her nose. He gave in and let his mind wrap itself in everything Kat. The relief was swift and powerful. How did the thought of a person he barely knew affect him so strongly?
He wasn’t sure why he was so obsessed with this woman, but after so many hollow nights of grief, she seemed the only distraction great enough to pull him away from the sadness. As much as he promised to keep his distance, another part of him was inexplicably drawn to her.
As he finished painting the last coat, his mind decided on three things. One, it was time to let his grief go. Two, it was time to be happy again. And three, getting Kat naked would make him a very happy man. He just wasn’t sure if that made him a wise man.
Chapter Five
The heavy, bloated clouds hung low on the gray horizon. Kat stared out the window listening to the pitter-patter of rain, waiting for any sign of Tyson. The air was musty and she’d settled into a pathetic, misty gloominess suitable for such weather.
You’re being ridiculous.
Mia, with her exhaustless energy, had finally settled in with a movie. Without the option of walks to the park or playing in their yard, the cottage seemed to shrink with every waterlogged minute.
She hadn’t seen or heard from Tyson since the night he kissed her. This was exactly the reason why she didn’t date. She was obsessing over what was probably nothing. She’d replayed the memory so many times she had to wonder if her hazy recollections were even remotely close to what really happened.
Gnawing thoughts that she’d done something wrong, or embarrassed herself in some way, haunted her. Perhaps he was avoiding her and it had nothing to do with the dreary weather they had been having.
There wasn’t much that could be done while the spring showers lasted, yet Kat never stopped listening for the echoes of power tools. It was ridiculous
to think of him so much. Almost as ridiculous as lying in her bed the night they kissed, cupping her hands over her face and breathing in his scent that lingered on her skin. And how sad was it that their kiss had been the best kiss of her life?
“You are such a loser,” she mumbled, her breath forming a soft sheen of mist on the drizzly glass. She pressed her finger into the steamy patch and drew a big L.
“Loser.”
If he saw her now he’d go running for the hills. She wasn’t sure how old he was, but figured he was several years older than her. Confidence oozed from his pores while she sat there drowning in her insecurities. She wasn’t mature enough to even hold a conversation with a man like Tyson Adams.
The dignified way he carried himself made her self-conscious of all the ways she was still a child trying to play a very real game of house. Other than their street name, they had nothing in common.
She had no right getting upset that he hadn’t stopped by again. There was no sense in leading him on. If Kat let Tyson kiss her again, he’d eventually want more—and that was something she couldn’t provide. There were too many hidden pitfalls involved with dating. The risk that Mia could somehow be hurt was too great.
Yet, here she was, staring out the window like a stupid teenager, wishing he would give her some sign that he liked her too. Her curiosity was inflamed with one simple kiss and she had no clue how to deal with the involuntary yearnings he’d stirred.
She tried to distract herself with everyday reality, methodically going about her normal routine, but nothing took away the inner restlessness. Even Mia seemed to detect something was wrong with her. And of course there was something wrong with her—she had a crush on a guy who was the last person she should be fantasizing about.
He was too mature for her. He owned his home. She rented a cottage. He even owned his own company for crying out loud! Kat didn’t even own her crappy, used car. She’d be making payments on that pile of junk until Mia was in first grade. The car probably wouldn’t even last that long.
Common sense told her she was being an idiot. Not only that, but she had no desire to date. So what the hell was she doing?
The problem was her curiosity. The need to know what it was like to be with an actual man created some sort of hybrid emotion she didn’t know how to handle.
Let it go. Drop it. He clearly isn’t interested. And the last thing you need is a boyfriend.
Her head dropped like a broken flower. She had to get a grip and stop acting like a lovesick sixth grader. Starting right this minute—right now—there would be no more thinking about Tyson Adams.
The phone rang from in her lap and she jumped back from the window. “Hello?”
“Hey, girl, whatchya up to on this beautiful day?”
“Hey, Jade. Nothin’. Just sitting around.” She cradled the phone closer to her ear glancing up at the blackening, stormy sky
“What’s wrong? Why do you sound upset?”
She sighed. So much for promises. “Tyson kissed me.”
“What? Wait? The chocolate hottie?”
Kat quickly held the phone away from her ear wincing at Jade’s squeal of excitement. She probably should have kept this to herself.
“Yeah.” She turned away from the window and let her head fall against the wall with a thump.
“Oh my God, when?”
“A few nights ago. Mia dropped a toy down the drain and my garbage disposal broke. I was just gonna fix it myself, but I didn’t have the right tools so I ran to Tyson’s to get a pair of pliers—”
“Nice. Nice.”
“—but then he showed up to see if I needed help.”
“Oooh, was he all dressed up for the job—work boots, sexy tool belt, big ol’ burly muscles flexing out of his tight, sweaty shirt?” Jade made a gargling purr.
“Uh, sort of.”
“Okay, so then what happened? Details! I need details!”
“Well, Mia and I watched a movie while he fixed the sink.”
“Then what?”
For a girl who had a pretty active social life, Jade acted like she hadn’t seen any action in years. “You are getting way too excited about this. I’m telling you it was nothing.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. Keep going.”
“Well, Mia fell asleep and we were in the kitchen talking.”
“About…?”
Kat rolled her eyes. “He asked about Jeremy.”
“Because he’s into you! I knew it!”
“Settle yourself. He did say I was amazing.”
“Awww.”
“Oh my God, I forgot the biggest part—”
“—Yeah, I bet it’s big.”
“Will you get ahold of yourself?” Kat laughed. “Jade, he’s moving into that house. It’s his. He’s gonna live there.”
“No shit? That’s awesome. Permanent eye candy. Okay, go on and get to the kiss.”
She shrugged. “It’s nothing. He just…kissed me.”
“You’re such a liar. I can tell by your voice it was more than a kiss. Where were his hands?”
“Um, first on my face, then in my hair, and then sort of on my wrists.”
“Nice. Dominant. Go on.”
“That’s it. He kissed me and left.”
“Has he called you or anything?”
“He doesn’t know my number. You’re making this way more than it is. It was a spur of the moment thing. Besides, I don’t want it to be anything. He probably regrets ever coming over here.” In a smaller voice she added, “Men like that don’t like girls like me.”
Jade was silent for a minute. “You don’t know that. And what does that even mean, girls like you? You’re a woman with a child and not the first one. Oh my God, you should totally fuck him!”
“Jade!”
“What? Come on, Kat, you haven’t been with anyone since Jeremy and Tyson’s gorgeous and seems totally into you.”
“He’s going to be my neighbor. Technically, he already is. What happens after the fact, Jade? I’ll have to see him every day and my God, what if I got pregnant again? I’m already struggling to support myself and Mia.”
“Katherine Marie D’Angelo! First of all, you aren’t a stupid teenager anymore. You’re old enough and smart enough to buy condoms and use birth control. And even if it’s a fling, so what? People have casual sex all the time. Do you think I’ve never run into ex lovers?”
Kat moved at much slower speeds—turtle speeds—speeds of turtles walking in backwards. Casual sex didn’t exist in her situation, because there was nothing casual about raising a child.
“Yeah, but condoms aren’t always safe.”
“My God, Kat. So what, are you going to live the rest of your life as a nun?”
“No, but—”
“But nothing. You have to bang this guy. You owe it to women everywhere!”
While a big part of her wanted to rub her body all over him like a kitten in catnip, another side was scared to death and clung to her controlled, boring life.
“That’s not going to happen, Jade.”
Her friend scoffed. “You suck.”
“I know.”
“You should be sucking him.”
“Damn it, Jade!” She laughed. In the end she was grateful for the rain.
Sunday morning, after Mia found all of her Easter eggs, they rushed to get ready for church. They didn’t attend church on a regular basis—not like it wasn’t a nagging thought in her mind every weekend—but there never seemed to be enough time.
The air held the scent of dampness from the rain, but the skies were blue with soft, fleecy clouds. The ground was soggy, which was a challenge in their Vivian approved shoes, but they managed.
The Christian church in their neighborhood was an old, colonial style chapel that seated no more than fifty. The picturesque little chapel sat between clusters of sycamores with a loose stone path that led to a forgotten graveyard. She liked that the reverend wore jeans. Mia liked the choir and the fact that Mrs
. Bradshaw attended service there.
Mia spotted her babysitter in the front row, wearing a flamboyant Easter bonnet. Mrs. Bradshaw was a no-nonsense woman in her early seventies who somehow pulled off gaudy as stylish.
The service was a little longer than usual, because of the holiday, and enforced silence was never easy for Mia. The heavy, oak pew creaked as Mia fidgeted. “Momma,” she said in a loud, jellybean scented whisper. “When’s this over?”
Kat patted her knee. “Shh.”
Mia sat for a few minutes. Her tiny Mary Jane shoes swinging as she sighed with impatience. “Momma,” her hissing whisper came again, drawing the attention of nearby parishioners. “This guy talks too much.”
Hot embarrassment burned Kat’s cheeks. Mrs. Bradshaw’s raspy chuckle only drew more unwanted attention.
“Mia.” She placed a stilling hand on her swinging leg. “Just a little longer. Try to sit still.”
Her daughter squirmed, her curious eyes darting from the shelf of bibles on the back of the pews, to the windows, to a transparent study of everyone sitting in the church.
Hoping to occupy her, Kat passed her the paper pamphlet they had been given for the Easter service when they arrived. Mia’s pudgy fingers turned the page and she began to make up a story as if she were reading it. “Once upon a time…”
A wave of creaks and whispered snickers surrounded them as people turned.
“Mia, no talking,” Kat hissed, taking the pamphlet.
“Momma,” she whined. “This is boring.” Her words dragged out so long, not a single person missed them—including the reverend.
Mrs. Bradshaw tipped her chin and pressed her knuckles into her lips, as she chuckled. Kat’s mortification was complete as her stomach filled with giggles and she fought the infectious laughter. It was completely inappropriate to be laughing in church! If she let one snicker escape her lips she was done for.
Pulling in a deep breath, she forced herself to be serious. This guy does talk too much. Her eyes followed a filtered ray of sunshine highlighting dust motes and her heart lodged itself somewhere in the pit of her stomach. Tyson was staring right at her from the pew beside the window.