Wait for It

by Mariana Zapata

  Jesus. I hated it when she acted like that.

  “Don’t talk about your brother.” I barely heard her.

  I sighed and rubbed my eyebrow with the back of my hand. Every single time with her. God. We could never talk about Rodrigo. Ever.

  With a sigh, I tried to keep my attention on the game, only paying about half my attention to it while the other half bounced back and forth between thinking about Rodrigo and Dallas. I thought my brother would have liked him. I really did.

  The game nearly ended before my mom finally spoke again. “You can be friends, but nothing else.” She made this delicate sound in her throat that I don’t think I’d ever be able to imitate.

  Why could she never let things go? Why could I never let things go and tell her what she needed to hear? Rolling my eyes, I snuck my hand under the cap I’d put on, Dallas’s, and scratched at this spot that had been itching for a day or two now at the back of my head near the crown. I hadn’t washed my hair in a few days, it was probably time.

  “Did you hear me?” she asked quietly.

  I slid her a look before focusing on the game again. “Yes. I’m just not going to tell you what you want to hear, Ma. Sorry. I love you, but don’t be like that.”

  The breath she let out would have scared me back when I was ten. At twenty-nine, I didn’t let it bother me a tiny bit. At the end of the game, my dad showed up with Louie in tow, sweaty and tired from their time at the playground. I didn’t exactly go out of my way to give my mom space, but it happened. When the next game started almost an hour later, I made sure to sit beside my dad with Louie on my other side as a buffer between us. The Tornado won that final game of the day—which was always bittersweet because that meant the boys would have a game the next day and I’d have to wake up extra early for it since the salon was closed on Sundays.

  We followed my parents out to their car to say bye, and my mom and I just gave each other a quick kiss on the cheek. The tension was so thick my dad and Louie glanced between both of us before they got into the car. On the way to our car, I spotted a red pickup parked five spots down from me. By the bed, busy throwing a bag into it, was an even more familiar sight. Dallas.

  Standing a few feet away, talking rapidly, was Christy.

  Josh noticed what I was looking at because he asked, “Are you gonna ask him to eat with us?”

  It was that obvious to him? I lifted a shoulder. “I was thinking about it. What do you think?”

  “I don’t care.”

  Giving him a cross-eyed look, I led our crew over to the pickup just as Dallas closed the lip. He either heard us coming over or sensed us, because he looked over his shoulder and stood there. Christy, who was facing us, scowled just enough for me to notice, but I stopped paying attention to her. Louie was holding on to one hand and Josh was next to me with his bag trailing behind him. The smile that came over Dallas’s face as he took us in was genuine.

  “I’ll get back to you on the fundraising. There’s no rush for it,” my neighbor told the woman to his right without meeting her eyes. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  Christy’s eyes darted from Dallas to me, and she let out a deep breath that I would bet an ovary had some cuss words mixed into it. She said something to the coach, shot me another look, and started walking off.

  I waited until she was a decent distance away before lifting my chin at him and asking, “We’re having hot dogs for dinner, Lex Luthor. You want some or what?”

  * * *

  “Lou, what’s wrong with your head?”

  Louie, who was sitting on the couch playing a video game against Josh, had suddenly dropped the controller into his lap and started scratching the shit out of his scalp, wincing. “It itches.”

  I frowned over at him. “Make sure to wash your hair tonight then, nasty.”

  He said, “Uh-huh,” just as he grabbed the controller again, focused on the fighting game he was currently playing against Josh.

  We had finished eating dinner a half hour ago, and since then, the four of us—Dallas included—had rotated playing what I would have called Street Fighter when I was his age. I had no idea what the game was really called. I’d lost the last match against Josh, and Louie had taken my spot.

  Adjusting myself on the couch, I pulled up my knee and accidentally hit Dallas’s in the process. His attention had been on the screen until then, and he turned to give me a small smile.

  “Do you want another hot dog?” I asked. “We ate all the fries.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m stuffed. Thanks.”

  I wasn’t surprised; he’d eaten four already.

  Another spot on my head started to itch, and I reached up to scratch at it with my index finger. Louie wasn’t the only one who needed to wash his hair. When I glanced back at the man sitting one cushion down on the couch, he raised his eyebrows in question and I raised mine right back.

  “Ugh!” Josh shouted out of nowhere, his remote flying across the floor as both of his hands went up to his hair, scratching the hell out of his head. “It itches so bad!”

  What the hell was going on?

  Out of the corner of my eye, Louie started doing the same, except with only one hand. It looked like they were both trying to get blood. I’d barely thought that when another spot on my scalp started to itch, and I went to town on it.

  “What the hell is happening?” I asked, scratching.

  The only sound in the room was the sound of us raking our nails across our scalps. Then, Dallas said, “Louie, turn on that lamp.”

  Louie did what he was told with his free hand.

  “Do we have bed bugs or something?” I asked, hoping he might have an idea.

  Dallas was too busy bouncing his gaze from one boy to the other and me; his expression was thoughtful. He gestured at Lou to come toward him and the boy did. I was still scratching as Dallas parted Louie’s hair with those big hands, his face dipping forward really close to take a look at his head. He didn’t say a word as he drew his hands back and then moved his palms to a different spot, doing the exact same, his nose coming inches away from Louie’s scalp. He did it a third time, too.

  I glanced at Mac asleep on the floor and asked slowly, “Do we have fleas?” I gave him his flea medication on the same day every month.

  Dallas sat up and pinched his lips together, and somehow managed to say calmly, “No. You have l-i-c-e.”

  “L-i-c-e?” Josh muttered the letters under his breath.

  “Li-cee?” That was Louie.

  I still had a hand on my head as I wrinkled my nose. “What—Oh my God. No!”

  * * *

  There are only a handful of things in the world that I’d been embarrassed to buy. When I was a teenager, I’d purposely only buy pads and tampons at stores that had a self-checkout lane. In my early-twenties, I started buying condoms online because I was too embarrassed to buy them at the store. There was also itch relief medicine for that time I had a yeast infection, and lubricant that I had bought for Louie when he’d been a baby and needed to get a thermometer where no thermometer should ever have to go.

  And then the lice happened.

  Lice. Lice. Fucking lice.

  Vomit crawled up my throat each time I thought about the eggs and little critters covering my head and the boys’.

  Buying three boxes of medication and a gallon of bleach at the twenty-four-hour pharmacy went on the list of things I was ashamed to buy. When I was a kid, we had gasped over the nasty kids who’d had lice. And now I had three of them in my house, one of them being me.

  “You really don’t have to do this,” I had told Dallas the second it clicked that I needed to be at the pharmacy five minutes ago and claimed we needed to leave right then.

  Standing in front of me and in between two freaked out kids that had yelled, “THERE’S BUGS IN OUR HAIR?” all he had done was blink and stay cool, and then he’d plucked my car keys from my hand. “I’ll drive. You look up what you need.”

  Well, when he pu
t it like that, I swallowed my “I’ve got this.” There were eggs in my hair, in Josh’s hair, in Louie’s. Oh my God. It was disgusting. Really, really disgusting. I swore my head felt even itchier after Dallas had confirmed what the hell was on us. For one moment, I thought about calling my mom, but after we’d ended the night, the last thing I wanted was for her to find a reason to blame me for the boys getting lice, because she would. Forget that I knew for sure I’d gotten it once in elementary school—my entire fourth grade class had gotten them—but it would be a whole different situation if it happened on my watch.

  Like Dallas suggested, I spent the ride looking up what I needed to buy and do. He stayed in the car with the boys while I ran in and bought what was needed, the clerk only side-eyeing me a little when he rang me out.

  “You do their treatment and I’ll help with the sheets,” Dallas said in that crisp, no-nonsense tone of his as we pulled into the house.

  “Really, you don’t have to do that. It’s already almost twelve.” Fuck, it was almost midnight? From the instructions I saw online, I was going to be up all night, washing sheets, clothes, and vacuuming. We were going to have to wake up early too, for Josh’s next game.

  I was going to be sick. I could handle blood. I could handle the boys when they were sick and threw up all over the place. Diarrhea and me were old friends… but this lice thing crossed a line into a territory I couldn’t deal with. Bugs and I were not friends meant to have a close, personal relationship together.

  I caught him glancing at me briefly before turning his attention forward again, but his hands flexed across the steering wheel. I’d put a grocery bag over the headrest for him because I was paranoid. “I know I don’t have to.”

  “I have fleas!” Louie hollered from the backseat.

  “You don’t have fleas. You have lice,” I corrected him, crying a little on the inside at the reminder.

  “I hate lice!”

  “Lou, do you even know what lice do?” I asked.

  Silence.

  I snickered and laughed a little despite it all. It was for the best that he didn’t. “Okay, which one of you borrowed someone’s hat?”

  There was a brief moment of quiet before Josh let out a groan. “I used Jace’s hoodie last week.”

  Son of a bitch. How many times since then had we all spent time on the couch together or had I hugged one of them, pressing our heads together? Louie had slept with me and shared my pillow twice the week before. I knew for sure he had slept with Josh one night also.

  “I’m sorry,” he blurted out.

  “It’s okay, J. It happens.” I hoped it never happened again, but it wasn’t like he’d gone out of his way to get infected, or whatever it was considered.

  “I was at sea once when a lot of people got lice,” Dallas piped up not two seconds after I finished talking. “I’ve never seen so many adults cry in my life, Josh. We’ll get it all sorted out, don’t worry.”

  Why did he have to be so nice? Why?

  “You were in the army?” Josh asked.

  “Navy.”

  The eleven-year-old scoffed. “What? Why didn’t I know that?”

  I could see Dallas’s mouth form a grin even as he kept his attention forward. “I don’t know.”

  “For how long?”

  “Twenty-one years,” the man answered easily.

  The noises that came out Josh’s mouth belonged to a kid who couldn’t begin to comprehend twenty years. Of course he couldn’t. He still had at least seven more years before life started bowling right by him. “How old are you?”

  “Jesus, Josh!” I laughed.

  So did Dallas. “How old do you think I am?”

  “Tia Di, how old are you? Thirty-five?” he asked.

  I choked. “Twenty-nine, jerk face.”

  Josh must have been joking to begin with because he started cracking up in the backseat. Without turning around, I was pretty sure Louie was cracking up too.

  “Traitor,” I called out to the little one. “I’m going to remember that when you want something.”

  “Mr. Dallas, are you… fifty?” Louie blurted out.

  Oh my God. I couldn’t help but slap my hand over my face. These kids were so embarrassing.

  “Thanks for that, Lou. No, I’m not fifty.” Dallas chuckled.

  “Forty-five?”

  The man behind the steering wheel made a noise. “No.”

  “Forty?”

  “Forty-one.”

  I’d known it!

  “How old is Grandpa?” Louie asked.

  By the time I confirmed that Grandpa Larsen was seventy-one, Dallas had turned the car into my driveway. We hadn’t even made it into the house before our neighbor said, “You three shower, and I’ll take care of the sheets.” He already had the container of bleach in his hands.

  “You’re sure?” If I was him, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about being in a house full of people with lice.

  Dallas blinked those beautiful hazel eyes as he waved me toward the house. “Yes. Go. I need to grab something from my house, and I’ll be right back.”

  As I unlocked the door and led the boys toward their bathroom, I didn’t even think about Dallas going into my bedroom and how I’d left a bra hanging off the doorknob.

  I shut the door, with the three of us crammed into their tiny bathroom, and clapped my hands. “I have to put this stuff on you and wait ten minutes before you can shower. So get naked, you dirty monkeys.”

  Louie groaned, “But I took a bath yesterday.”

  While the other one—God help me—yelled, “You’re a pervert!”

  * * *

  It was three in the morning by the time we were done with the showers… and the picking… and the combing.

  Since the boys had been born and especially since they’d come into my life full-time without my brother, I’d been thrown up on, I’d cleaned poop and cleaned up pee off the floor and on underwear more times than I could count. I’d been mentally preparing myself for the day that Josh started balling up his sheets, socks, and underwear. I’d even started taking down notes for what I’d have to say to him the day we had to have the talk about a boy’s bodily functions. Somehow, some way, I would survive saying the word “penis” in front of him.

  But combing eggs out of a child’s hair was almost my breaking point. What kept me from complaining was, when I’d brought the boys into the living room after fighting with them the entire time it had taken me to massage the treatment into their hair and help them rinse it out, how Dallas had come out of the laundry room and asked, “Ready?”

  And I’d asked, “For what?”

  “To comb the nits out.”

  I started to open my mouth and tell him he didn’t have to do that, but he frowned and gave me an exasperated expression. “I know you can do it by yourself, but I’m here. Let’s do it.”

  So we did it. I shoved Josh, who had shorter hair, to him, and I took Louie to the dining room, the only room in the house that still had seats. Dallas had stripped the cushions off the couch, and I could only assume he was washing those too. I was never going to look at fine-toothed combs the same way again. As I sat in the dining room chair, I saw Dallas reach toward his chest and bring something up to his face.

  It was glasses.

  He was putting glasses on. Narrow, black, thick-framed glasses. Shit.

  He must have sensed me staring because he gave me a goofy face. “Reading glasses. I’m farsighted.”

  Reading glasses? More like sexy glasses. God help me. I forced myself to look forward as I let out a breath through my mouth.

  We were all quiet as we combed and combed and combed, and I snuck a couple more peeks at the man in the chair next to mine.

  Eggs. Goddammit. I would take vomit any day.

  One blown-up air mattress later, because the sheets hadn’t dried and I didn’t have extras, the boys were on the bed, and I was falling asleep standing up. My head had started itching even worse over the last couple of ho
urs, but I was pretty sure that was only because of what I saw on the boys’ heads. With both of them tucked in, I headed back into the living room to find Dallas shaking out washed, twin-sized sheets in the kitchen.

  I couldn’t help but let out a big yawn right in front of him, my eyes stinging. “Thank you so much for your help. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you tonight,” I said the second I was able to.

  He looked so tired, too. There were bags under his eyes. He took his glasses off and rubbed his forearm across his eyes as he said, “Hurry up and shower so I can do your hair.”

  Oh God. My face must have said what I was thinking because he gave me a yawn, just as big as the one I’d given him, and a head shake.

  “Shower, Diana. You’re not gonna get any sleep with bugs crawling all over your head.”

  When he put it like that, how could I not do the treatment? As I washed out the medication and soaped up, I thought, I could pay him later. I really didn’t know what I could or would have done without him. I’d probably be in tears right now.

  By the time I got out, I could barely keep my eyes open. I was yawning every five seconds. Tears were coming into my eyes each time I did it.

  I was practically a zombie.

  Pouring bleach all over the bathtub and tiled walls because I was paranoid we’d have some mutant lice that could survive without warmth and blood, I opened the bathroom window and closed the door behind me. I’d clean the crap out of it tomorrow. I found Dallas sitting on the same dining room chair he’d used to do Josh’s hair with his head propped up on his hand, his eyes closed. I’d barely paused between the living room and the dining room when he sat up and blinked sleepy eyes in my direction and patted his knees. “Let’s do it, Eggs.”

  His nickname was so unexpected, I forgot he’d patted his lap, as I laughed.

  Dallas smiled at the same time he spread his thighs and slid the chair back, showing me a folded towel on the floor. “This’ll have to be good enough for you to sit on for a while.”

  “My head is going to be a lot harder than Josh’s,” I warned him.

  He flicked his fingers. “I can do it.”

  “We have to leave for the boys’ games in three hours.”