“Oh shit.” I slapped my left hand over my throbbing eye while catching the glass with my other hand.
“Oh my God. I am so sorry. Are you okay? It felt like I stuck my finger in Jell-O right then.” She shivered and closed her eyes.
I opened my other eye while squeezing the injured one tightly. “It’s okay. I have two. And I like a challenge.”
“Seriously? Like, I can drive you to Urgent Care or wherever. You might have a scratched cornea and that blows. I hated when it happened to me.”
“Someone poked you in the eye in the middle of the night?”
“No. I had an accident in cheer. Our bottom was a little off her game and I wound up knowing what four inches of her finger felt like in my brain.”
“Man, that’s not the sentence I want to hear wrapped around the words of four inches of finger in.” I staggered over to the counter and set down my glass.
“What did you want to hear?” She was smokin’. Forcing me to tell her about my dirty mind.
“Nothing. No worries. Why are you up in the middle of the night?” I slumped against the counter.
“It’s time for my two a.m. fudge bar.” She moved to the freezer part of the fridge and yanked it open. She had the ice cream she sought set up like a dispenser. She plucked out a cold one and had the paper off of it in a practiced motion.
Here I was feeling spoiled for having water from the dispenser. Girlfriend had her own private ice cream truck in her kitchen.
“You set an alarm for that or something?” I lifted my chin in her direction.
“It’s a built-in notification” She tapped her temple with her phone. “How’s your room downstairs?”
Stupid luxurious. Spacious. Private. Alone. Sad.
“Great. Bed’s a little soft.” I attempted to open my poked eye. Couldn’t do it.
I watched as concern zipped her smile into a straight line. “You really might have some damage there.” She took a step toward me.
If she only knew. The damage I had and the damage I intended to do.
“Let me see.” She popped the whole ice cream into her mouth and clamped her lips around it. Then she was in my space on her tiptoes. She put her hands on my face like we’d known each other our whole lives. I flinched a little and she settled a hand behind my neck. She pried my closed eye open with her fingers. In the meantime, she made sucking noises around the ice cream. It seemed like she might actually be in distress, so I grabbed the Fudgsicle out of her mouth. She licked around her lips and squinted some more.
“I can’t tell crap. It’s too dark.” She stepped back and took her ice cream from my hands.
She did some very thorough licking of the melting parts as she made her way to the light switch. She turned it on and returned to me. “I need to set this down.”
She opened the cabinet next to my head and took out a bowl, setting the fudge bar in it.
Then she resumed her position and clamped onto my neck and eye again. “Sorry, I am so used to being in people’s personal space between makeup and cheer.”
She seemed to be apologizing for putting her chest against me and blowing her sweet breath onto my face.
It was all making things happen in my pants. Too much. As she looked intently at my eye, interrogation-style, I had to stare at her. She had to be the prettiest human I’d ever seen in person. Her eyes were set up like blue starbursts and her skin was beautifully smooth. I wanted to lick it like she was my ice cream treat. She let go of my eyelid and it snapped shut.
“It’s red and bloodshot.” She pointed to the kitchen chair.
I lumbered over and sat down, grateful for a place to hunch over my growing problem.
Teddi went back to the freezer and came back with a cold pack. “Tilt your head back a little.”
I did as she asked again, and she straddled my leg, again holding my neck. Sure, my eye felt like it still had her finger in it, but all this closeness was really having me and my pants hoping she was going to kiss everything and make it better.
She gently pressed the ice on my closed eye. “Keep it closed. The eye really does heal itself a lot. You just need to give it time.”
I grunted in acknowledgment. As I peered at her through my working eye, she rooted around in the kitchen. Her tiny sleep shorts and tank top were my own personal cable channel. She used the water from my glass—whatever was left—and then refilled a water bottle with a straw in it.
“Here, now you can drink easier while your eye does what it has to do.” She held the bottle near my face. I took it out of her hand.
“Thanks. You send mixed messages to weirdos in your kitchen. Attack, first aid, apply water.” I took a deep suck and realized I was super thirsty.
She went back to her ice cream and opened a drawer until she came up with a spoon. Her snack had become a cold soup and she ate it as such.
I hit the bottom of the bottle with a loud slurp.
Teddi grimaced. “Damn, son. You were parched.”
She grabbed my bottle and filled it again. The little kindnesses she was showing me were getting embedded into my skin. Where I was from, how I was raised, kindness was hard to find. I could go whole days without getting treated like a person by anyone besides my mom.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And I’m sorry I turned you into a pirate. The good news is, I have an eye patch from last Halloween for you.” She pointed at my eye with her spoon.
“Then I’m all set.” I was able to get half the second water bottle down before I was truly done with feeling thirsty.
She watched me as she ate. “So how long are you here for?”
I shrugged and she shrugged in return.
“You going to school?” She licked the back of her spoon.
This accidental meeting in the kitchen involved a lot of her tongue.
I shrugged again and she did the same.
“Sorry to hear about your mom.” The sympathy pulled down on her lips.
Man. Just the word mom was a trigger for me. Rage. Anger. So much missing.
All I did was nod. That was the good part of being a dude. People didn’t expect us to emote all the time. I could hide in that and did.
“So you just met Gaze? Like recently?”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat and moved my ice pack a little. The skin was starting to burn, so I took to dabbing my eye with the pack instead of holding it straight on.
“What’s he like?” I wanted to have all the information I could. I needed to look at every interaction as an opportunity to fact find. You didn’t just decide to be a professional robber and go in that day, I was assuming anyway. I would do it like it was a research project. The money would be my final grade.
“Gaze? Um, he’s great. We were really excited to get a foster kid that fit right into our family so quickly. He’s sweet. He’s in love with Pixie. He would give anyone the shirt off his back. I love him.” And then Teddi polished off the rest of her ice cream while I set down my ice pack on the table.
“He sounds great.” I ran my damp hands through my hair, slicking it back for a few seconds. It had a mind of its own and really, really liked flopping in front of my face.
It did just that as Teddi stood with her hands on her hips. “Give me a second.”
She took her index finger and ran it underneath the hairband on her wrist. She stood to the side of me and started scooping up my hair into her hands. She was not gentle and I let out a few grunts.
She snapped the band in my hair and stepped back. “Probably best not to have it poking you in your injured eye, right?” And then she smiled. “Oh. That’s a look for you.”
Teddi picked up her phone on the counter, and before I knew it, I was looking at a picture of myself on her screen with my hair sticking up like a palm tree.
“Wow. This is kind of starting to feel like the illegal stuff they do to prisoners of war. The eye poke, the icing, and now the hair humiliation.” I titled my head, knowing it was
probably making my hair dance for her.
She burst out laughing and my heart grabbed a fistful of butterflies and shoved them into my stomach. Dammit. She had better knock off being cute because I had no place for a crush. Not here and definitely not now.
When she slowed down to intermittent giggles, she finally motioned to my face. “Okay, give the eye a try.”
I opened my injured eye and it was painful and blurry, but I could see.
“You’ll be good now. If you can open it, it will heal.” She took the ice from me and brought me a new one.
“Do you eat ice cream every night?”
“Yes.” Simple answer as she cleaned up her bowl and spoon.
I imagined the sure thing of an ice cream every night and what that must be like.
I stood up. “Thanks for the help. I’m going downstairs and keep this closed.” I pointed to my eye.
“Yeah. Seems like the best idea. Night.” She left me in the kitchen to go upstairs to her room. I watched her take the stairs two at a time. I needed to concentrate on not concentrating on Teddi Burathon.
Chapter 9
TEDDI
I TEXTED THREE of my friends when I got upstairs, still buzzing from seeing him. Ruffian was so...different. Like his eyes already knew the answer to all the jokes. It was hard to explain, but I wanted more of it. He felt a little dangerous. Like I knew he was more than a little dangerous because my parents were trusting both Ruffian and me to treat each other like brother and sister. But I had literally no feelings for him that could classify as sibling-like.
Is he coming to school? Peaches popped up in my text messages.
Not sure. I mean, I think so. We shall see.
I went to the local public high school. Being a senior, I had a lot of plans, but I was really drawn to working with kids. Granted, it was only volunteering right now, and I wasn’t sure how to actually make it a job.
I watched videos on my phone, stayed on social media too late, and fell asleep after four a.m. My parents said I had more energy than a herd of cats stuffed in a bag. I certainly proved them wrong when they came to wake me up at eight a.m. Mom turned on my light. I covered my head with a pillow. Dad came in and sang a fake Italian song at the top of his lungs. I burrowed deeper into the bed.
They had to take drastic measures and try to sneak my phone out of my clawed hand. I rolled out of bed and went to put my hair up with my wrist scrunchie. When my fingers found nothing to twirl, I remembered that I had put it in Ruffian’s hair. I bit my lip to keep my smile from forming. Instead, I grabbed a hair clip from my headboard and secured my hair in a bun. I put on a hoodie and pulled it up over my hair. I kept on my shorts and put my feet in flip-flops on my way out the door.
Before I knew where we were heading, I was in the backseat with my seatbelt fastened.
“Hey, Princess T. Thanks for getting it all together to come with us this morning.” Dad readjusted his rearview mirror so he could see me.
“I didn’t have a lot of choices, but you’re welcome. What’s going on?” I plucked at a loose thread on the hem of my shorts.
Mom took over. “You know we just made a pretty big family decision on the fly and we wanted to talk to you about it. Make sure it works for you.” Mom turned in her seat so she could look at me. Clearly Mom had been up for a while. Her hair was fixed and neat, and her makeup looked like it had been on for a few hours.
“You mean about Ruffian?”
My dad nodded while my mother said, “Yes, exactly.”
“He needs a place to stay and his mom just died, so I think we kind of have to take him in, right? He’s Gaze’s brother. It’s not even a choice.” I couldn’t think of an alternative. That’s not how we did things.
I watched as my mom gave my dad a look and a smile. I felt the burst of pride I always got when I could tell I made them proud.
Dad pulled the car into the parking lot at my favorite ice cream store. “We came here to discuss our options, but we could just eat instead.”
Dad opened my door and gave me a hug. I was slow getting out of the vehicle because I had to text a friend. Dad managed to snag my phone from my hands and slid it into his pocket. “Can we just have you for a few minutes? No phone?”
“Fine. Can I hold it, though? I don’t want you pocket FaceTiming Taylor again.” I held out my hand.
“I still don’t know how that happened.” He gave me my phone and I slid it into the pocket of my hoodie.
“Ice cream for breakfast! Can’t beat that.” Mom held out an arm and I grabbed her hand and put it around my shoulders.
We decided on flavors and only had to wait for the worker to finish up the store opening procedures. I had rocky road and Dad had coffee flavor. Mom liked vanilla best. We then settled into a booth and got a good head start on our ice cream.
“So why did we have to meet? Does everything work out on your end?” They’d already agreed to let Ruffian live with us, but I was getting a sense that there was something more.
Mom dotted her mouth with a napkin. “Yeah, actually. We reached out to our contacts in the foster program we used with Gaze, and Ruffian’s past is a bit different.”
“He told me that his mom passed away from cancer.” I felt my eyes filling up a little. I had a personal vendetta against cancer. I hated that it ever took anyone too soon. It was part of the reason I did the work I did in my free time. A way to fight back, even if it was just in small comforts.
Dad reached across the table to put his hand over mine. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
I blinked my tears away. “It’s his story. Not sure why I’m crying.”
“Kiddo, you take what you do seriously. You ‘re super positive, but I know those kids get to you and stay in your mind.”
“Yeah. Thanks. It’s not just me. We all help.” I watched as my ice cream ran down the back of my hand.
“We help because you don’t give us a choice,” Dad offered, which was true but also lightened the mood.
“That’s true.” I was a bully of kindness, as Austin told me from time to time. People had better act right or I was going to kick some ass.
I wasn’t really going to hurt anyone, but I was very annoying when I needed things done for my clients.
“Anyway, just to give you the whole picture, Ruffian and his mom were, well…” She dropped off commenting and my dad picked it up.
“They were both arrested.” Dad looked at his hands.
Oh. Oh.
Now I got the reason we were out the door and in an ice cream shop by ten a.m. There were complications.
“He’s seventeen. How arrested could he get?” I handed the rest of my ice cream to my father. He would always step up and eat whatever leftovers I had.
Mom snapped her lips shut and looked at the table.
Dad worked quickly to try to catch the drips from my ice cream.
“Mom?” Now I was getting worried. Maybe Ruffian would be very, very different from our experience with Gaze.
“Robbery. And theft.” Mom met my eyes and I could see she was worried.
“Okay. Wow.” It was a shock for sure. There was a certain way you looked at people when you heard facts. That’s just the way it was. I saw the way my parents were worried. Their impulses and their common sense at war. “I’m sure there’s more to the story that we don’t know. I mean, anything could have happened.”
“They were arrested a few times,” Dad added.
I put my fingers around the phone in my pocket. “Is that why we’re here? A family decision? Without Gaze?”
My mom tilted her head one way and then the other. “Teddi, we just wanted a safe space to let you tell us how you feel about this information. We’re basically taking you from a house where it was just us and having you share that space with this new person that no one really knows.”
They were waiting for me. And I got it. They were protective. But I knew stuff about people. Or at least I liked to think I did. There were grumpy businessmen th
at I could goad into donating to one of my clients. Businessmen that I had to convince that the publicity of doing the right thing was worth the donation of a gift card for a struggling family.
“I think sometimes you have to offer everything as if a person deserves the chance you’re giving them.” And that was my input.
I looked from my mother to my father.
Mom was the one to reach across the table this time. “Okay, baby. Let’s stay the course. Just tell me stuff. We need to know if anything is going on that can make you or us uncomfortable.”
I nodded as I thought of the two a.m. Popsicle last night. The hairstyle. I’d been flirting. And now I knew I was flirting with danger. I wished I didn’t get a little zip that went straight up my spine, but I did.
Chapter 10
RUFFIAN
I WAS UP when the car was pulling out of the driveway. Like I said before, I had experience getting out of a slumber in a hurry. Listening for a change. Any change. When Teddi, Ronna, and Mike left, I was watching from the window in the den.
I got up off the floor and folded the blanket I had spread there.
“Keep making a plan, even if it’s only for a half hour.”
Mom’s advice. So this half hour I was going to get acquainted with this new room. And I was going to miss Mom. That seemed like enough.
I skimmed the perimeters, touching the walls. I noted the window lock, and I could break in here if I ever had to. Quick work for a paint scraper and a well placed fork. Or, my trusty arrow-shaped lock picker.
The walls had some tasteful, neutral paintings. I could hide things behind them, in the tiny ledge that the canvas made between it and the wall. Money. Jewelry.
I needed to reach out to a crew. My group that I worked with. They were probably hurting without me. I was training a few teens to do what I did. When I turned eighteen, I would have to slip into the shadows. Do the less risky stuff. Eighteen was legal. Eighteen was the magic number. I had four months left. I was still considered a minor. I was skirting close to the edge, but this system wanted me in jail anyway. That’s the only place they could put you when they didn’t understand you. When everything you were brought up to be didn’t fit in any of their boxes, they had to put you in one and lock the door.
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