Wait for It

by Mariana Zapata

  “I like this,” Louie confirmed as I took a seat on the bed furthest away from the door and Dallas took the opposite spot as we let go of each other’s hand.

  Snorting, I started tucking his comforter in around his legs and let his comment go. “Did you brush your teeth?”

  “Yes.”

  “What story do you want to hear today?” I asked, still tucking him in.

  The little boy made a humming noise as his eyes bounced to Dallas. “What do you think, Mr. Dallas?”

  “What do you usually hear? Only stories about your dad?”

  “Yeah,” he answered like he was saying “duh.”

  Dallas made his own thoughtful noise. His hand went to the top of where Louie’s foot was and he gave it a squeeze. “What about one of your mom?”

  The cowardly part of me said “Shit.” The part of me that knew this was a conversation I’d continued to push aside even though I shouldn’t thought that it was about time someone had brought this up. Louie, on the other hand, didn’t say a word but I could sense his gaze on me. I could feel his tension.

  Dallas knew Louie’s mom wasn’t alive. I’d mentioned Mandy and Rodrigo’s wills before, but I still hadn’t told him what happened. Guilt was a painful son of a bitch no one liked to remember.

  “My mom died.”

  The statement out of Louie’s mouth had me glancing up at him as sneakily as possible. That sweet, innocent face wasn’t exactly blank, but it was his eyes that said it all. He looked as hurt as he had two years ago, and that ate me up inside. I should have handled this better.

  “My dad died when I was a kid,” Dallas told him gently. “I still miss him a lot. My mom used to tell me stories about him too sometimes but not like your Buttercup does. You’re really lucky, you know that?”

  “Your dad died too?”

  Dallas nodded. “I was ten. He was the best man in the whole world. I wanted to be just like him. I still wanna be just like him.”

  I kept my mouth shut and watched Louie’s face as he said, “My daddy was a policeman. I wanna be like him too.”

  “You can be whatever you want to be, Lou,” our neighbor said. The hand he had on Louie’s foot moved and his fingers plucked at one of Louie’s toes.

  “That’s what Tia Di says.”

  “She knows what she’s talking about.”

  Louie smiled. His eyes flashed over to mine and his smile grew even wider. “Yeah.” Just as quickly as it had arrived, the curves of his mouth disappeared and he glanced once more at Dallas. “I only like stories about my dad.”

  “You might like stories about your mom, too, buddy. I’m sure she had to be pretty special to have such a nice son like you.”

  This guy was killing me. “She was pretty special, Goo,” I let him know, my voice just a little unsteady. I had to take advantage of this opportunity Dallas was giving me. “Where do you think you get how sweet and cute you are from? Everyone loved your mom.”

  He blinked and his fingers peeked out from over the top of the comforter, curling over the edge of it. I’d swear his eyes narrowed just a little. “They did?” From the tone of his voice, it confirmed he didn’t believe it. Had my parents said something in front of him to make him think otherwise? I doubted the Larsens had, but what did I know?

  A lump settled into my chest, and I had to force myself to ignore it. “Oh yeah. Ask Josh.” I wanted to ask him if he didn’t remember her but that seemed almost cruel. “She was always happy and she never had a mean thing to say about anyone.” I smiled at him.

  Those blue eyes jumped between me to Dallas and then to his comforter. I glanced at Dallas and reached out to put my hand over the one he had on Louie’s feet. His fingers spread wide and took mine between his.

  “Did she…” Louie hesitated. “What did she say when I was born?”

  I wasn’t going to cry in front of him. I wasn’t going to cry in front of him.

  The last time we’d talked about Mandy had been right after she died, weeks, maybe a couple of months maximum. Louie had cried. He’d been a toddler back then but his hurt over how his mom had rejected him in the long weeks after Rodrigo passed away had been unavoidable. It had taken long enough for him to understand my brother wasn’t coming back. Death wasn’t something a three-year-old could really process. For the longest time he’d thought he was at work, and it wasn’t until one random day that he accepted never meant never. His daddy—my brother—was never coming back. Not that day or the next, or a year from then.

  What he hadn’t been able to accept or comprehend was why his mom hadn’t been there afterward.

  I could remember the tears and the questions. “Where’s Mommy?” and “Why doesn’t Mommy play?” There’s no way I could forget how confused Louie, more than Josh, had been back then. I didn’t doubt Josh had loved Mandy, but she wasn’t all he’d ever known. Josh had always been aware of the situation with Anita. The only thing that had worked out in that time period was that Louie had always been close to me and hadn’t rejected my love and attention back then. He hadn’t understood what was going on with his mom but he’d jumped into what I had been more than willing to give him.

  I think he’d been too busy grieving my brother to really let him feel anything other than anger at his mom after she was gone, and after a while, he’d just stopped talking about her. Like he didn’t want to remember she existed. No matter how much I tried bringing her up, he refused.

  Until today.

  “She cried a lot,” I told him softly, forcing myself to smile. “Happy tears. Like when Santa brought Josh his baseball bat and he cried, remember that? She kept saying you were the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, and how she couldn’t believe she could love anything as much as she loved you. She didn’t let me hug you for two days after you were born, can you believe that? She didn’t want to share you with anybody, only your dad.”

  Louie watched me the entire time. A smile never crossed his face. It was only the fingers he had at the top of his covers that tapped along the material as he listened.

  Dallas’s fingers tightened around my own. “That sounds like she loved you a lot,” he said to my Lou.

  All the little boy said was “Hmm.” That was it.

  I was going to take it. For now. Not wanting to force him to talk about her any more for now, I told him, “Your brother has tons of stories about her. You should ask him to tell you some of them one day. He loved her a lot. I loved her, too.”

  Louie’s eyes were glassier than normal when he glanced at me and nodded his head quickly. Way too quickly. His mouth twitched sadly and he swallowed. Then he swallowed again, and I felt like he’d come to a decision about something. “Like you love me?” the sneaky booger asked in his normal voice.

  I had to accept we had gotten somewhere tonight by at least bringing her up. I winked at him. “Don’t get crazy. Not that much.”

  That made him smile.

  “Why don’t you tell me a story about your dad tonight, Lou, hmm?” Dallas asked.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “I’ll be outside waiting for you, Josh!” I yelled that following morning when I noticed we had exactly five minutes before we needed to leave for school so the boys could make it in time.

  “Okay!” he hollered back from the kitchen where he was finishing his cereal.

  Louie stood right next to me with his backpack on and a toasted piece of bread with honey on it in his hand. I could already imagine the crusts stuffed into his seat or thrown on the floor of my car. “I’m ready,” he said, those blue eyes completely innocent, as if he wasn’t capable of doing anything remotely bad in his life.

  I gave him a tired smile, and tilted my head toward the door. I was exhausted. After putting the boys to bed, I’d stayed awake, replaying every single conversation I’d had with Dallas since we’d met. And there had been a lot of them.

  How many times had he told me that he was going to stay faithful to his wife until they got divorced? Every single time she
was brought up?

  How many times did he mention something about his imaginary future girlfriend having to wait for him?

  He knew me. I know he knew me. And mostly, he wasn’t some asshole who might say a bunch of things and not mean a single one of them.

  And then, I thought about Vanessa’s words and how she’d told me not to be a chicken. How she’d reminded me of who I was now. It had taken me a lot of years, but I knew who I was and I knew what I was willing to do for the people I loved and the things I wanted.

  And that was everything. I would do everything and anything.

  So where the hell did that leave me?

  Busy thinking about all things Dallas-related, I turned around with my bag to head down the pathway when I spotted a motorcycle across the street in Dallas’s driveway.

  It was Jackson’s.

  It had been weeks since our confrontation at the barbecue. Weeks since I’d seen his bike on the street. Just the day before, while I’d been making dinner after practice, I asked Dallas if he’d seen or heard from his brother, and he’d said no. But it was his face when he answered that had really dug deep into my gut.

  It was only with family that you could be so fucking angry, and yet still worry and love them. I understood. His brother was a piece of shit, but he was still his brother.

  I sighed and glanced at Louie who was already heading toward the back passenger door of my car. “Goo, I’ll be right back. I think I see Dallas’s brother, and I want to ask him something. I’ll be back in a second.”

  “Okay.”

  Did I want to go across the street and talk with this motherfucker again? No, I didn’t. But this adulting thing was a lot harder and more complicated than anyone had ever warned me, and I had never known how to mind my own business. This whole loving-the-wrong-person thing also wasn’t easy either.

  I jogged across the street, ready to say my two cents and hopefully not get smacked in the face in the process because I’d seen the urge in Jackson’s eyes at the barbecue.

  Sure enough, standing beside the beefy motorcycle was the blond with the thick beard who was obviously not going to the tournament this weekend if the bags he had on the back of his bike said anything. As I came up to him, he looked up and blinked in a way I’d seen his brother do countless times by that point.

  I came to a stop, leaving close to ten feet between us, and raised my hands in a peaceful gesture, watching that face that really did look older than Dallas’s. “Look, I just came to tell you that you shouldn’t punish Dallas for what I said and did to you, all right?”

  He snickered and shook his head, moving around to tighten down a strap on the other side. “You’re not here to apologize?” he scoffed, so full of sarcasm I wanted to smack him in the face or throw some more Hawaiian Punch at him.

  “Why would I? You deserved it.” I watched him to make sure he didn’t start to get all bent out of shape, but he didn’t even glance in my direction again. “I just don’t want my big mouth to make things worse than they already are between you two. That’s all.” I paused and watched him for a second before this tiny amount of dread filled my stomach. “Look, I’ll shut up after this and never say anything to you again, but if you disappear on him like this… he already feels guilty enough about what happened when you were kids—”

  “I’m not disappearing,” he grumbled. “I can’t stay here when Nana Pearl is here. She already gave me enough shit in the five minutes I was—” Jackass Jackson let out a frustrated breath. “Forget it. I’m packing up my shit like he asked me to weeks ago.”

  Weeks ago? As in at the barbecue?

  He’d kicked his brother out?

  I didn’t even think Louie or Josh had been this much of a pain in the ass at any point in their lives. This was cranky kid behavior, and my gut said it was pointless. I’d sensed the stubborn-ass in him the first time we’d met, and I could still sense the stubborn-ass in him right then.

  Rolling my eyes, I took a step back and sighed. I almost told him good luck, but then again, this was the person who had called me a bitch and made rude comments about my brother after what I’d done for him. Ungrateful asshole.

  Luckily, I hadn’t been expecting an apology because I sure as hell didn’t get one as I ran back across the street just as Josh came hustling out of the house, running down the steps of the deck before I pointed back at the door so he could lock it. By the time we pulled out of the driveway, we were running more than five minutes late.

  And Jackson hadn’t left yet.

  I wondered what would happen to him and Dallas, and part of me hoped they somehow managed to work it out. But who knew. Sometimes self-destructive people didn’t know how to ever turn that button off. My abuela had always said you can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves.

  * * *

  I made it all the way through my first two appointments before I realized that Dallas’s appointment was that evening.

  It was no big deal.

  It was no big deal that the more I thought about our situation—with him kissing me and writing notes that he hadn’t given me and telling me “as you wish”—the more I wanted it—him. I wanted something with Dallas if he did, and I was pretty sure that was the case.

  So I knew what I was going to do, and I wasn’t going to back down.

  When my appointment right before his ran late because the client showed up twenty minutes after she was supposed to—and she was one of my regulars who showed up religiously for her roots to get redone—I might have been rushing to finish. Just a little.

  I’d caught his eyes in the reflection as I drew the straightener through my client’s hair and took in an eyeful of his slow smile as he paced around the waiting room with his attention on his phone.

  “What’s American History X doing here?” my client sneered. We joked around with each other, that was nothing new, but in this case, I froze.

  “What’d you say?” I asked playfully, thinking I’d heard wrong.

  “The skinhead. Since when do y’all do fades?” She kind of laughed at the end of her question.

  I cleared my throat and clamped her hair between the ceramic. “We’ll do anyone’s hair,” I answered her slowly, reaching for another piece of hair even as I felt my neck get hot.

  She made a dismissive noise in her throat, but as the minutes rolled by, I got angrier and angrier. Who was she to judge Dallas? And to assume he was a skinhead? American History X? Really?

  I stared at her head as she walked in front of me toward the front desk, and I was gritting my teeth as I swiped her card. My head started hurting in the five minutes it took to do all of that, and when she asked, “When can you schedule me in for four weeks from now?” in a cheery voice, I just about lost it.

  Dallas had gotten off his phone and was sitting on one of the chairs, looking at me. I let out a shaky breath as I took in those beautiful hazel eyes that had done so much for me. Then I glanced back at my client. “Trish, I don’t think I can schedule you in for a month from now. Sean’s gotten pretty good with doing color. He can definitely do what you need. I’ll put you with him if you want to keep coming back here, but it’s completely up to you.”

  The expression on her face melted off in a split second. “I don’t understand. What do you mean you can’t schedule me in?”

  “I can’t schedule you in. Thanks for coming to me for so long now, but I don’t feel comfortable with it anymore.”

  Her face paled. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “The ‘skinhead,’”—I used my fingers as quotation marks—“is my really good friend.” I dropped my hands. “Actually, I think he’s going to marry me one day.”

  I said it. I owned it.

  And she, my client, went pink from the roots of her hair down her chest.

  “You can call in to schedule an appointment if you want to come back, I don’t mind. I’d ask for Sean though.”

  She cleared her throat, nodded, and ducked her head. Then she spun on
her heel and, with her attention still on the ground, rushed out of the salon. I could sense my own face getting hot and uncomfortable, but I knew it was either that or living with that layer of guilt that would saturate my thoughts and bones for days if I didn’t do something. It wasn’t until after you had a major regret that you understood the importance of not putting things off or being scared to do something about your problems. I could live with my client thinking I was a dick for saying something. I could live with never coloring or cutting her hair again.

  What I couldn’t live with was not standing up for someone who was so much more than his looks and his skin color and his fucking haircut. Someone who was worth so much more than two hundred dollars a month.

  “You ready?” I called out as I went around the front desk, my head still pounding with my not-really altercation.

  He already had those amazing eyes narrowed on me as he stood up, making me think of how he’d pressed his boner into my stomach the night before. Shit.

  “Yeah.” He took me in again and raised his chin. “What’s wrong?”

  “Stupid people. They’re what’s wrong with me,” I answered him honestly, too frustrated about what had just happened to be thinking about other things. Things like kissing.

  His grin was a wary one. “Stupid people will do that to anybody,” he replied.

  I nodded and blew out a breath, willing myself to chill out and forget about Trish. “Come on. You don’t look like you need a haircut, but I can take my time so you think you’re getting your money’s worth.”

  The smile crept over his features slowly and easily, like he didn’t have a single worry in the world, like this thing between us didn’t make him lose any sleep at all. God, he was handsome. “Do what you did to my neck last time, and I’ll pay you double.”