If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now

  “Very. Just like you’d expect. So, are you okay watching Noah for a while longer?”

  “And if I said I wasn’t?”

  “I guess I’d rush back. But I don’t want to.”

  She relented. “It’s fine. We were thinking of going out to dinner. We’ll take him with us. But, Rickie—”

  “What?”

  “Be careful.”

  “When am I ever not?” I said jovially. “Oh and Mom?”

  “What?”

  “Thanks for babysitting.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  It wasn’t easy to get the words out, but I did it: “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “You don’t ever have to find out,” she said and hung up.

  “What’ll we do until the food gets here?” Andrew asked with a smile as I put my phone away.

  We managed to pass the time.

  The food smelled good and I piled heaps of it on my plate, gooey pad thai and some kind of gingery chicken and lots of sticky rice, and then I took one bite before looking up and catching Andrew’s dark eyes watching me… and I couldn’t eat any more. I pushed it around on my plate with my fork, waiting for him to finish.

  His appetite was apparently unaffected by whatever was destroying mine: he finished off the rest of the food.

  Together we tossed the take-out containers back into the bag they had come in, and then I went out into the hallway and threw it down the garbage chute. When I came back, Andrew was washing the plates in the sink. I leaned against the counter and watched him, watched his arms with the too-narrow wrists and the slender forearms and big-knuckled slim fingers as they neatly and efficiently sponged and wiped and propped up the plates in the dish drain.

  “You’re good at that,” I said.

  “I’ve had a lot of practice. You could help, you know.”

  “Nah. I like watching you.”

  A minute later, he put the last dish in the drain and wiped off his hands on a dish towel. “Now what?”

  “Want to play Scrabble?”

  “I seem to remember that you’re awfully easy to beat.”

  “Them’s fighting words,” I said. We went back into the living room and I pulled the game out of the cabinet where Mom stored it. We set up the board, kneeling on the floor on opposite sides of the coffee table.

  Andrew’s very first word was “exotic.”

  “You suck,” I said. I made “deluxe,” using his “x.”

  “Not bad.” He studied his letters, rearranging them on the wooden rack.

  I shifted on my knees restlessly. “You take too long.”

  “I can play fast or I can play well.”

  “Is it my choice? Because I know which one I’d pick.”

  “Here.” He put down the letters to make “wreck.”

  “Huh,” I said and played around with my letters, trying out different combinations on the rack.

  “Now who’s taking too long?” he said.

  “Shut up.” I reached up absently to stroke my eyebrow; I had a habit of fiddling with the ring there when I was thinking. Only it wasn’t there. I hadn’t put that or the nose stud back since Casino Night. I ran my finger over the unfamiliar smoothness.

  “Why’d you take it out?”

  I looked up, startled. I hadn’t realized he was watching me. “I don’t know. Wanted to look pretty at the party, I guess, and just forgot to put it back in.”

  “If you didn’t think it made you look pretty, why’d you get it in the first place?”

  “Because it made me look like I wasn’t someone’s mother.”

  “You don’t look like anyone’s mother,” he said. “Even without the hardware.”

  “What do I look like?”

  He stared at me a moment, thoughtfully. Then he swept his arm across the table, sending the board and the Scrabble tiles flying. He got to his feet, pulling me up with him.

  “We’re done playing Scrabble?” I said, my breath catching in my throat.

  “For the time being.” He pressed against me and our mouths found each other. His hand burrowed inside my hair, feeling the shape of my head, holding it in place so I couldn’t move away. Not that I wanted to.

  Our kissing wasn’t just eager anymore—it was desperate. “I never showed you the bedrooms,” I said against his mouth.

  “Show me,” he said and released me. I led him down the hallway, into the room Melanie and I had shared last time we were there. “Sea horses,” he said because there were patterns of them all around the room, on the blankets and curtains, painted on the walls. “Which one is yours?”

  At first I thought he meant which sea horse and was trying to figure out an answer to that, and then I realized he meant which bed. “Does it matter?” I said. “But I usually sleep on this one.”

  He steered me backwards and gently pushed me down on the bed. I reached my arms up and pulled him down on top of me. For a while that was enough: we kissed and pressed our bodies together, his hard and heavy on top of mine, the weight and the feel of him so delicious I didn’t need more. For a while. He moved against me, just a little, maybe even unconsciously, his hips kind of rolling against mine. Then he stopped and lifted himself up onto his elbows. “I don’t suppose—”

  “No, sorry. Do you have anything with you?”

  He shook his head. “What about your mom’s medicine cabinet? You said she—”

  “Only back home. Not here.”

  He gave a funny little sigh. “Oh, well… it’s okay. No rush, right?”

  “Right,” I said. “This is nice.” He lowered himself and we kissed some more, our hands slipping under each other’s shirt. Then I pushed at his chest until he raised himself up again and grunted out a “What?”

  “On the other hand,” I said, my voice also a little thick and hoarse, “there’s a drugstore in town. Less than five minutes away.”

  “I like drugstores.” He rolled off of me and onto his feet, then reached out a hand and helped pull me onto mine. “Let’s go.”

  “You might want to straighten out your hair,” I said. It was sticking out all over his head.

  “You’re one to talk.”

  We shared the mirror over the dresser, nudging each other out of the way so we could see, each of us running fingers through our hair. Mine were shaking a little. “Better?” he asked, turning to me.

  “Yeah. Me?”

  He tugged on a lock of my hair. “Yeah.” He kissed me again—very quickly, his mouth open against mine and then gone. “Let’s go.”

  In the car, I let my hand linger on his thigh.

  “You’re not helping,” he said. “Unless you want me to limp in there.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d like that.”

  He shot me a look. I snuggled my fingers into the space where his thigh met his hip and left them there.

  We went into the drugstore together and surveyed the choices on the “family planning” shelf. “If you’re going to be watching,” he said after a moment, “I’m going to have to go for the extra-extra magnum size.”

  “Fine. I’ll leave you alone—I want to get some candy for later, anyway.”

  “Really? That’s what you’re thinking about right now? Snacks?”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not what I’m thinking about. Hurry up.”

  We met at the cash register a couple of minutes later. Andrew paid and we headed back toward the car. We were both quiet and tense on the short ride back to the condo, but in a good way.

  “Where were we?” he said when we were back in the apartment and the door had swung shut behind us.

  “Playing Scrabble?”

  He answered that by tugging my jacket down off my shoulders. I pulled it the rest of the way off and he was already grabbing at my T-shirt, yanking it up until I took over and hauled it over my head. I ran down the hallway then—even though we were alone, it felt like we should be in the bedroom, not out in the living room, maybe because it was my parents’ place—
and he followed close behind. When I turned around, he was naked from the waist up—must have discarded his own T-shirt along the way—and reaching for me. The feel of his naked skin against my stomach and chest and arms was so blissful I closed my eyes and gave a little moan of delight.

  “I haven’t even done anything yet,” he said, amused. But that wasn’t true for much longer. We were both in a hurry and it didn’t take long for everything else to come off and for us to join the sea horses dancing on the bed.

  We didn’t make it back to LA that night. I called around nine to see if it was okay for us to sleep over at the condo. I was worried my mother would be annoyed that I wanted them to babysit overnight, but she was just relieved we weren’t driving back in the dark.

  She put Noah on the phone so I could say good night to him. “I’m staying at the beach place tonight,” I told him. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Can I sleep in Grandma and Grandpa’s room?”

  “That’s kind of up to them.”

  “Grandma said I could sleep in a sleeping bag on their floor if I had to.”

  “Fine with me.”

  “Is Coach Andrew coming to play games with me tomorrow morning?”

  “That’s a very good question. Hold on. You coming tomorrow?” I asked Andrew, who was lying next to me. We were kind of cramped in the twin bed, but neither of us was complaining. “To play with Noah?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Just not too early.”

  “He’ll be there,” I said into the phone. “So get a good night’s sleep. I love you, Noey.”

  “Love you too, Mom. Can I watch TV until bedtime?”

  “It’s already bedtime.”

  “Can I watch TV anyway?”

  “Take it up with Grandma. She’s in charge tonight.” I hung up and twisted toward Andrew.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  He took my hand and raised it to his lips, then lightly traced the tattoo on my wrist with his thumb. “ ‘Noah,’ ” he read. “Were you worried you’d forget his name?”

  “No,” I said. “I was worried I’d forget to be a decent mother.”

  “What about this one?” He dropped my hand and nudged my ankle with his toe.

  I raised my foot a few feet in the air so we could look at it. “That’s a hummingbird. We used to have a lot of them in our backyard when I was little. I don’t know what happened—they don’t come as much anymore. I miss them.”

  “And this one?” He touched the snake on my upper arm.

  I let my foot drop back down on the bed with a thud. “Ah, that. That one has special significance.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. It signifies that I was drunk one night and not thinking clearly.”

  “Why no tramp stamp?” he asked.

  “Too trendy.” I turned on my side so I was facing him and ran my finger down his chest. He had a good amount of hair, enough so he looked like a guy, but not so much he looked like a hairy guy. “You got any tats anywhere I should know about?”

  “I think you’d have found them by now.”

  “They’d have to be well hidden,” I agreed.

  “I’m not into that whole thing,” he said. “Permanently defacing yourself. It seems like something you’d always regret. Or at least I would.”

  “Yeah, well it’s nice to have small things to regret,” I said. “Makes such a nice break from the big ones.”

  He rested his arm across my shoulder, letting the weight of it pin me down. “Where does tonight rank on the list?”

  “Depends,” I said. “Is this a one-night-only kind of thing or something longer-lasting?”

  “Rickie,” he said in a tone that mingled annoyance and patience. “Do I seem in any way at all like someone likely to be in search of a one-night-only kind of thing?”

  I closed my eyes and moved my face close to his chest and breathed in his warm, salty, musky scent. “No,” I whispered happily against his skin. “You really, really don’t.”

  “All right, then,” he said. I curled my legs up against his stomach and he folded his arms around me and I didn’t move for the longest time, just listening to his heart beat under my ear.

  Neither of us slept much that night, so we got up pretty early and made it back to my house in time for Noah’s lesson. I was glad I wasn’t the one who had to run around for an hour on only a few hours of sleep, but Andrew rallied Noah with his usual good-natured enthusiasm, and pretty soon they were both tearing happily around the backyard.

  My mother had welcomed us a little stiffly when we first arrived, and once Andrew was outside with Noah, she motioned to me to sit down across from her at the kitchen table. “So,” she said, crossing her arms. “You spent the night together.”

  “It was nice.” I was too happy to be defensive.

  She didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “What about the girlfriend?”

  “He broke up with her. I mean, he already had when we saw him at the park yesterday.” She was raising her eyebrows, so I quickly added, “Really, Mom. I swear.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Andrew’s a good guy. He wouldn’t have spent the night with me if he hadn’t broken up with her. He’s not like that.”

  “He does seem like a good guy,” she said. “I’ve liked him from the beginning.”

  “Me too. Well, almost from the beginning.”

  “All right, then. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t setting yourself up for being hurt.”

  “I’m pretty careful about that kind of thing, Mom. These days, at least.”

  She smiled briefly, then leaned back in her chair and glanced around the kitchen. “Don’t you usually bake him something when he comes to work with Noah? I could whip up some brownies…”

  I grinned. “I think it’s okay to skip the brownies this time, Mom. All things considered.”

  “Hmm. I guess you’re right.” She shot me a sideways glance. “But if we should decide to get Noah a math tutor or something in the future—”

  “We’ll find a more traditional way to pay him,” I said. “Promise.”

  There was a pause and then we both started laughing and we didn’t stop for a long time.

  28.

  Tanya said, “I have the details of the family-concert event right here. Ah, Melanie, there you are. Could you please…?”

  Melanie, who had just walked in and was still hovering by the doorway, obediently scurried over to where Tanya was sitting, took the papers she was holding out, and distributed one to each of the women sitting around Tanya’s immaculate and vaguely antiseptic family room.

  “Our job this time is to provide a picnic dinner for approximately a hundred and fifty families,” Tanya said, tapping the paper with a perfectly manicured finger. “I’ve done a little research, and I think our best approach is to hire one of the local bakeries to make sandwiches and cookies and then buy drinks and fruit at Costco. So I’ll need each of you to…” I never did hear what she wanted from us because Melanie had finished her task and come over to the sofa to sit down next to me, and I wanted to talk to her.

  “I miss you,” I whispered. “I feel like I hardly see you anymore.”

  She put her purse on the floor and whispered back, “I miss you too. But I love having my old life back.”

  “And everything with Gabriel is good?”

  “So far, really good. And the marriage counselor is amazing.”

  Maria must have been listening, because at the end of the meeting she grabbed Carol Lynn and they pounced on us. “Did I hear you say you’re back with your ex?” she asked Melanie.

  “Yes,” Mel said. She added, with just a touch of defiance, “And it’s been really nice.”

  The two divorcées exchanged a glance. “Just be careful,” Carol Lynn said. “Stay alert.”

  “There’s this computer program,” Maria said. “I used it on Jonathan. It keeps track of everything they’re doing online. You should try it for a while. Ju
st to make sure—”

  “I don’t really want to.”

  Maria rolled her eyes. “Well, of course you don’t want to. No one wants to do stuff like that. But sometimes it pays to be smart instead of trusting.”

  Carol Lynn put her hand on Mel’s arm. “We just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “Then don’t make me feel like I’m making a mistake,” Melanie said. Her voice was quiet, but there was an edge to it I’d never heard before. “I’m doing what’s right for me.”

  “We’re older than you,” Carol Lynn said. “We’ve seen things you haven’t.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Mel said. She walked off and I followed her with a pleasant shrug at the two older women.

  A couple of days later, Maria Dellaventura, Debbie Golden, and I took our three boys out to a build-your-own-sundae frozen-yogurt place in West LA. I had been surprised when Maria stopped us as we were walking out of school and asked if they could join us. I didn’t think Austin would want to go anywhere with our uncool guys, but he actually seemed happy to be included. The three boys sat at their own table, scarfing down yogurt and trying to top each other in coming up with disgusting combinations, like mustard and onions on mint and raspberry yogurt. They were six-year-old boys, so this was endlessly amusing to them.

  Debbie and I told Maria about the T-ball team. “Wish I’d known about it earlier,” she said. “I would have signed Austin up. How did you know they’d get Coach Andrew?”

  “He arranged it for us,” Debbie said.

  “Teacher’s pets!” Maria said.

  “He just knew our boys needed the extra help.”

  “Did you hear the gossip about him?” Maria asked.

  “What’s that?” Debbie leaned forward expectantly.

  I looked up sharply.

  Maria lowered her voice. “Word on the street is that he broke up with his girlfriend to go out with one of the moms at school. But no one knows who.”

  “Wow,” Debbie said. “If I’d only known he liked older women…”

  “I know, right?” Maria said. “But what are you talking about? You have a husband. I, on the other hand—well, let’s just say that this cougar would have left her cage months ago if I’d thought I had a chance with the guy. But he’s so young it never even occurred to me.” She turned to me. “Like you, Rickie. He must be right around your age, right?”