by Piper Lennox
“I need some air,” I said, to no one in particular. She still nodded and followed me onto the deck.
“That was...different.” Easton laughed nervously and took a water from the cooler right after me.
“Good different, or bad?”
“Good, I guess.” She picked at the label. “Strange different, mostly. I don’t know.”
“Yeah.” Strange different. This seemed accurate. I would have picked “good” before, but by the end—after she whispered my name—something shifted. Now I wasn’t sure.
“It’s getting late,” she said, after a minute. Actually, it had been several minutes. Maybe seven exactly. It was surreal how slowly time passed in that little square of darkness and coats, compared to out here.
I nodded and finished my water. “The party will probably wrap up soon.”
“Do you want to walk together?”
Once again, she gave that laugh. I looked at her feet, shuffling back and forth on the splintered wood.
“I’m probably crashing on Bram’s couch, actually.”
“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.” She hovered near me a moment. Later, it would dawn on me that she was waiting for a kiss goodbye.
“Goodnight, Ford.”
“Goodnight.”
I watched her step down to the lawn, already calling her parents to pick her up from whatever fake sleepover they’d taken her to, earlier in the night. It was kind of funny, in a really messed-up way, how different her life was from mine, living just a few feet away on the same stretch of dirt. If I called my old man to pick me up, I’d get forgotten at best.
My friends surrounded me as fast as they’d left. Hudson slapped my back while Tanner and Bram made crude noises.
“Fuck off,” I told them, but had to laugh, to keep up appearances.
“I can’t believe she didn’t slap you when she saw your face,” Bram chuckled, cigarette sticking to his lip as he groped the deck railing for an abandoned lighter. “I thought she hated you.”
“Ah, it’s all an act,” Tanner added. “You can tell she doesn’t hate him.”
Hudson fell into a lawn chair, half its straps snapped like over-dried fruit. “What now?”
“Yeah, you going steady or something?”
Their teasing kicked back up, but I just forced a smile and shook my head through all of it. I had to. Anything to keep myself from replaying those seven minutes.
But when the party ended, Bram’s house shrinking back to normal in the silence, it was all I could think about. That constant flash when I kissed her, and the blurred, calming blue when she touched my face: they played across the ceiling all night.
Thirteen
“I thought you were disappointed it was me in the closet.” I shake out the quilt Mom draped on the back of the futon and wrap it around my shoulders; Ford also replaced the old air conditioner in the front window, something I’ll be very grateful for by midsummer. “You got even more distant after that night. We stopped talking on the tire swing and in your garage. I figured I’d done something wrong.”
I pause and pull a piece of hair from my mouth. My lips tingle, like his story woke up the nerve endings there. “Or, you know...been the wrong person. I didn’t know you planned it.”
“Yep. Bram was in on it too, though. So put some of that blame on him.”
“There’s no blame. I’m not upset about it.”
“Yeah? Even though I basically iced you after that?”
I prop my feet on a box of books. “I just assumed you iced me because you didn’t want me getting any ideas, since you didn’t like me that way. As far as I knew.”
“Did you? Get ideas, I mean.”
“You wish.” He dodges my elbow. “Can I ask, why did you get all weird after that? Well, not weird, just...quiet, again. For the next couple years, it felt like you avoided me almost completely.”
“I did,” he confesses, sinking lower in the futon. “It freaked me out, feeling something like that for someone. Feeling like...I needed another person.”
Without meaning to, I scoff. “Sounds about right.”
“Yeah. Definitely some emotional stunting.”
I’m tempted to make some jab about how he didn’t learn from it, since he had the same basic reaction just four years after that—but I manage to control myself. This is nice, sitting here with him and talking. Just being near each other, the way we used to do on those nights we couldn’t sleep. At least, not alone.
“Surprised your dad hasn’t been out here to replace your curtains.”
“What?”
Ford nods to the thin, flowy lace covering the window we looked out before. “The ones in your old bedroom were like that, weren’t they? The see-through kind? Then your dad swapped them for those flannel ones.” He cuts his eyes my way. “Because of me, I assume.”
“Not...specifically,” I stammer, but we both know that’s exactly why Dad switched them. You only need privacy if someone’s close enough to watch you.
“For the record, I never saw anything. It wasn’t like I stared at you, waiting for you to undress or whatever.”
“I know. Mom and Dad just figured they’d ‘remove the temptation’ proactively.”
“Good call on their part. Another few years, and I probably would have spied on you.”
I laugh. “A few years later, you were crawling through my bedroom window. Clearly the new curtains weren’t effective.”
“Then I guess you’ll be leaving these ones up,” he retorts, “since it wouldn’t matter either way.”
It’s a joke—I know it is. There’s the sideways smile. The hop of his brow.
But underneath, it feels like something more. Equal parts request, and challenge.
“I guess so.”
This is still a game, whatever’s between us. If I want to survive Ford’s return to Hillford, and my return home, I’ll have to keep the upper hand.
The overhead light flickers. It’s the bell at the end of a round, but I’m not sure which of us won.
“I need to replace that.” He gets a bulb out of the storage container by Dad’s old desk, now holding my television set, then grabs a chair from the corner.
“Oh, you don’t have to. I can change it later.” I stand by him, useless, while he climbs up.
“I’m already here, might as well.” Ford curses and lets go of the bulb, then wets his fingertips to try again. I hold the quilt over my hands like oven mitts, catch it, and set it on the table. When I come back, he’s already got the new bulb in place.
“Piece of cake,” he says—before the chair rocks, one leg loose, and almost knocks him onto me.
My hands push up. I don’t know if I’m trying to catch him or shield myself from getting squashed, but he steadies himself before either can happen.
But not before my hands touch him, palms flat against his stomach. I feel every tense ab through his shirt, every pulse of his diaphragm as he breathes, hard, and looks down at me.
Oh, no.
That smirk. That flash in his eyes.
Spilled oil and faded tobacco. Sweat across skin. A combination that has no damn right smelling this good.
But for all the things that drive me crazy about Ford simply because they drove me crazy once before, there are so many new ones. The broader chest. The darkened stubble on his jaw.
The scar on his forehead, still shiny and pink. Still healing.
No—I will not make the same mistake twice. I said I’d play the game his way, keep the upper hand, and that’s it.
“Probably shouldn’t say this,” he whispers, and the air feels like I’m inhaling dry ice as he shifts his hips closer, “but you look great from this angle.”
Hearts aren’t meant to beat this fast. I’m going to die.
My mouth opens, but I have no idea how to respond. I’m too busy pretending I don’t feel the heat behind his jeans, right in front of my face. Pretending, with every actor cell I have, that I don’t absolutely love seeing him from this a
ngle, too.
“Easy,” he laughs, “I’m kidding.” He hops off the chair, his weight rattling the photos on the shiplap walls.
My arms are still up, hands open, waiting to touch more of him. I yank them back to me and cross them.
“Thank you,” I manage, after he lifts his shirt—God, he must be doing this on purpose—to wipe the sweat from his face. “It was nice of you to fix this place up, for my mom. And me.” I shrug, like I’m just the afterthought in this business deal, and we both know it.
Ford starts down the stairs. The thin, lacy curtains trail after him. “You’re welcome. I’ll see you.”
I lift my hand. I think my stupid lizard brain remembers how to smile.
As soon as he’s gone, I wrap myself in the quilt and faceplant into the futon.
Okay, so I wasn’t kidding.
I was, in the sense I knew there was no way in hell Easton was about to give me head. But I wasn’t kidding when I said she looked great. The situation put some ideas in my head, that’s for sure.
Of course, walking into a house with a screaming infant will cure a man of that.
“It was just here.” Caroline lifts the mail on the dining table and drops it with a smack. Dad shuffles from drawer to drawer.
“What’s going on?”
“We can’t find Bentley’s pacifier.” She says it like an atomic bomb is about to touch down.
Bentley shrieks again from the bassinet in the living room, and all of us wince in unison. “Bomb” might be accurate.
“Okay, you,” I tell Caroline, steering her to the stairs, “need to sleep. I’ve got Bentley.”
“But his pacifier—”
“—is somewhere down here, right? Dad and I can find it. Just go. Sleep.” I walk away before she can argue. She sighs her thanks and starts upstairs, knowing I won’t let up. That, and she’s got to be dead-tired.
“I tried taking over last night,” Dad tells me as we lift the couch cushions, “but she wouldn’t have it. I’m surprised she listened to you, just now. She hasn’t let that boy out of her sight since they got home.”
“I know. It can’t be healthy.”
“She needs some good sleep.”
“She needs a good shrink.” I almost cheer when I spot the pacifier, wedged deep in the sofa.
“He’s looking more like Bennett every day.” Dad gives a thick cough and turns on the golf channel while I pick up Bentley. “I wish his parents would visit.”
“His mom video-chatted with Caroline last night,” I remind him, but he mumbles back some excuse. “They’re doing their best.”
“Their best? Hauling off to Florida, abandoning their grandson: you call that ‘their best’?” He slides his Skoal off the TV tray and tucks some against his cheek. Another vice he was ordered to give up but, like smoking, doesn’t see the point.
“They’re grieving.” I touch the microscopic scratch on Bentley’s nose where he clawed himself in his sleep one night, nearly giving Caroline a heart attack. “Grief doesn’t always make sense.”
“That’s all fine and good.” Dad spits into his coffee cup, a sight that never fails to nauseate me. “Grieve all you want, whatever. But at the end of the day, you still got people counting on you, shit you have to get done, and it doesn’t matter if you ‘feel like it’ or not.”
He’s damn lucky I’ve got a baby in my arms, or else I’d remind him—and not quietly—that his grieving process consisted of drinking himself stupid, beating me stupid, and scaring the shit out of Caroline for most of her young life. His “shit that had to get done” didn’t get done. He had people who counted on him, too.
“They’ll visit soon. It’s just hard for them to be in this town, I guess. Nothing but reminders.”
While I say this, I glance at him. He’s shaking his head, mumbling at the golf game.
When I was about eleven, I told him moving out of Hillford—away from all the people and places that reminded us of Mom—might be good for us.
Yeah…that idea didn’t go over so well.
Besides: you can’t escape it. Not only did we have Caroline, the most bittersweet reminder of all, but we still didn’t have Mom. You can sever ties with your entire life, but the space a person leaves behind is the one thing you’ll never get rid of.
“Let’s go outside,” I whisper to Bentley, when Dad starts snoring.
The air is damp, sweet with cut grass and woodsmoke from down the road. It’s probably peak season at Sugar Maple, a vacation ranch and spa for tourists. I got saddled with community service there once, when Bram and Tanner dared me to tag the water tower for twenty bucks.
“See this tree?” I angle the baby so he can watch the shifting sunset through the leaves. “I fell out of it the year your mom was born. Broke my arm in two places.”
“Don’t give that sweet, brand-new baby any of your terrible ideas.”
I turn. Easton is pulling a thin sweater over her head while she walks towards us, along her side of the fence.
“It’s a cautionary tale. Trust me, I won’t let anything corrupt this kid, especially me.”
Easton smiles and drapes her arms over the fence. “He’s much more alert now. Has that nursing tea been helping?”
“Oh, yeah, definitely. But you know, I think I just don’t have enough for him to latch onto?”
She stifles her laugh, then quiets and touches Bentley’s hand, clenched by his ear. “Can I...?”
“Of course. Go sit in the swing, I’ll bring him over.”
If there’s one thing on this earth that could melt me and break me in one go, it’s Easton holding a baby. She’s relaxed, intuitive, and speaks right to him, like she knows he understands. Even more astonishing, he stares at her like he does.
“He looks like you,” she says. I almost can’t hear it, she’s so quiet.
I take a breath and step behind her, gently pushing the swing. “Don’t give this sweet, brand-new baby a burden like that.”
“It’s not a burden. You were an absurdly cute little boy.”
“Really?”
“As much as eight-year-old me would hate to admit it, yes. Really.”
“And what about now? Still absurdly cute?”
“Definitely absurd, so you’re half-right.”
I hold onto the ropes and lean over her. Across the street, we hear the cicadas start in Mr. Jessup’s ash tree. A pocket of fireflies flashes nearby, hovering over the grass.
“Actually,” I say, and clear my throat, “he looks a lot like his dad. Bennett Hawthorne.”
She watches me walk around the swing and sit against the fence. It’s been a while since I was in this spot, but my hands still know exactly where to pick the best Timothy grass. I put a piece between my teeth while she asks, “Like Calder Hawthorne? The guy who flooded the gym when we were sophomores?”
“That’s the oldest. Calder, Gentry, Landry Jane, then Bennett. He was the baby.”
Easton stays quiet, her shoes kicking up dust as she twists the tire back and forth. “‘Was’?”
“Yeah.” I spit the grass out when Bentley starts crying, saving me from the story.
Thing is, I want to tell it. I want Easton to know everything, wash it all in blue until I’m okay again, the way she used to. But this isn’t one of those things a long talk by the tire swing can fix.
“He’s probably hungry, I should get him a bottle.” I take him back and hold him upright against my shoulder, bouncing a bit until he quiets to a whimper.
Easton rises from the swing slowly. She watches me in glances from behind her hair as I start along the fence to the gate.
“Goodnight,” she calls, when I’m halfway inside my kitchen. When I look back at her through the screen, she gives a smile. “Neighbor.”
I laugh a little. What this is, coursing through the air between us, I have no clue. I just know I like it. “’Night, E.”
Caroline wakes up from her coma around eleven. After grilling me about how much pumped breast milk
Bentley drank, what times, the frequency and volume of his dirty diapers (What the hell?), she thanks me for watching him.
“You should let me do it more often,” I chide. “I’m only here for a limited time. Take advantage of free babysitting while you can.”
She laughs, but there’s a hollowness to it. Like talk of Dad’s death, Caroline hates any and all reminders that I, too, will be gone in due time.
I tell the three of them goodnight and head to the garage. Sometimes I think about moving into the house—Mom’s old sewing room, maybe even the attic, just to be closer to the action, right there whenever they need help.
On the other hand, I take too much solace in knowing that, no matter how crazy it gets in there or how furious a man who’s dying can still make me, I have somewhere to escape.
In my room, I undress down to my boxers and turn on the standing fan to high. I should have installed an AC unit when I moved back, but it felt too permanent. By next summer, I won’t be here.
The bed, a brass twin from Grandpa’s old farmhouse, clangs like a giant wind chime when I plunk my weight down. I brush my teeth with the water bottle from my windowsill and glance outside. Most nights I can see the moon, just past the Lawrences’ garage roof, and find myself watching it instead of Netflix.
Tonight, of course, things are different. There’s something entirely new to watch.
I try not to look in her window. No one in their right mind would believe that, but it’s true: for all my jokes, I respect her privacy the same way I’d want anyone to respect mine.
But a glimpse of skin in the dark registers something strange. It’s too much skin—far more of Easton than a quick, unintentional glance would normally reveal.
She’s naked.
I pull back from the window, just out of sight in the shadows. No way. I’ve got to be seeing things, hallucinating off some spilled varnish down in the garage.
If that’s true, you must be dead. Because what I’m seeing would only happen during an out-of-body experience.
Easton’s on her futon. Yes: naked. All the lights are off, but there’s moonlight bouncing in through the other windows, their curtains drawn shut.