Len laid a much gentler hand on his arm. “Nolan.”
“I heard you. I just need to ride.”
Len nodded and let him go.
~oOo~
The cold was harsh, and even wearing hardcore winter riding gear, after an hour or so, Nolan thought he would find himself in trouble if he rode much longer. He turned back and headed for Signal Bend while his mind was still having a riot inside his skull.
Most of the town was at the clubhouse—the lot was full, the SBC lot was full, and cars were parked on the road, too. Nolan didn’t want to go back to the party, which by now would be in full swing. In fact, as he rode past the turnoff, he could hear the thump of music coming from the clubhouse.
For a minute, he thought he’d just go home instead and crash in his room. But that felt lonely. He hadn’t worked his head out, and he didn’t want to be alone with the thoughts that were making his stomach so sour—not while he was sitting still.
Without thinking about it, he took the turn that would bring him to Show and Shannon’s house. He knew that Loki and most of the other Horde kids were there, and that Iris was watching them. Hanging with the kids sounded safe and comfortable.
It didn’t occur to him to wonder if Iris would want him there until he was already parked and walking toward the house.
It was a big old farmhouse, like most of the houses the Horde lived in. All the lights seemed to be on, and Nolan paused and looked up. A house at night, with the lights glowing yellow from all the windows, had always made him feel an odd, almost cozy melancholy. All that nightwalking he’d done as a kid, and the nightriding he did now, whenever he saw a house like this, he’d feel both isolated, like the outsider he was, and hopeful. The thought of a family snugged into their house for the night made him feel a deep kind of want.
Music was blaring from the house, too, and Nolan saw the kids bouncing around in the living room window. As he stepped onto the porch, he sidled over that way and peeked in, trying not to be noticed.
They’d shoved all the furniture off to the side, and Iris had all the kids, even the three- and four-year-olds, arranged in three rows. She and Gia were teaching them to line dance. Even Lexi, with her bum leg, was dancing—in fact, it looked like Lexi was helping teach, calling out moves with Iris and Gia. The Tractors’ ‘Baby Likes to Rock It’ was making the windows rattle.
Iris was dressed in clingy black pants, like sweats or yoga pants, and a bulky hoodie from her college. She and all the kids had on little plastic cowboy hats, like party favors, and they were doffing them as they danced.
He watched her and the kids moving around, dancing and laughing, messing up and starting again. He watched Loki, Ian, and Joey acting like dorks, clowning around like they weren’t trying to do it right just as hard as everybody else.
Little Caroline, only three, was really getting into it, swiveling her little hips like a hula dancer and flinging her wild red curls all over the place.
But Nolan’s eyes kept coming back to Iris, watching her hips move gracefully. His reaction to that was…visceral.
The song ended, and the kids all shouted for more, so Iris started the music over.
As he watched, Nolan felt lonelier than he could remember feeling. He would be an intruder in that lighthearted scene.
His throat got tight, and his eyes burned and itched. Fuck! He was not going to stand out on this freezing porch any longer and look in from the outside like some kind of beggar. And he was not going to fucking cry about it. Jesus.
He turned and started to cross the porch, meaning to head back to his bike and just go home.
But he must have moved into view from inside as he’d turned, because all at once he heard a lot of young, muffled voices calling his name over the music.
And then the front door opened, and Iris stood there, rosy-cheeked and breathless, her bright blonde hair in a mussed, loose ponytail. A gaggle of children pressed up behind her.
“Hey. Everything okay?”
He could feel the blush warming his cheeks, but the cold had probably reddened them anyway. “Yeah. Yeah. I just…wasn’t feeling the clubhouse, so I thought I’d check in on you guys.”
Lexi pushed in next to Iris. “It’s cold, Nolan. You should come in before you get sick.”
Little Lexi. Always the responsible one.
“I don’t want to crash the party.”
“You’re not,” Iris said with a smile. “We’re dancing, and then we’re going to make banana splits, and then we’re going to play games. Come in. Lex is right. It’s too cold out there in the dark.”
There was truly nowhere he’d rather be on this night, so Nolan accepted with a nod and stepped into the bright, warm house.
CHAPTER SIX
Standing on the porch in the dark, sharp cold, Nolan had just looked so sad. Even after he’d put on a smile for the kids, Iris had seen the gloom in his eyes. Like he was near tears.
But once he was inside, a rock star had joined their party. All of the kids jumped up and down, and hugged him, and told him all about their night so far. After he’d gotten off all his gear and hung it neatly on the hall tree, and set his boots on the floor next to it, he swept Caroline into his arms and smiled at Iris—and that was a real smile.
There was such an obvious difference to her in the smiles he merely wore and those that truly happened. It made those worn smiles seem positively heartbreaking.
Iris realized that she wanted to save him. Whether it was a good thing or not, she didn’t know, but it was a true thing. He was a big, strong guy. He was the Sergeant at Arms of the Horde. He’d probably done all kinds of violent, brave, hardcore things. But Iris could not shake the sense that what he needed more than anything was rescue.
“I gotta warn you guys,” he was saying to the kids. “I don’t dance.”
“But dancing is fun! We have hats!” Megan yelled and patted the pink plastic cowboy hat on her head. “Nolan needs a hat, Irie!”
Iris could tell that Nolan wasn’t in the mood for the Electric Slide. Taking pity on him, she sighed theatrically. “But we’re all out of hats, Meg. Nolan can’t dance without a hat. Why don’t we do banana splits now instead?”
There was loud and enthusiastic agreement with that idea.
“Can we leave the music on?” Megan asked. “Can we dance if we want to?”
“Absolutely. C’mon—to the kitchen! We have bananas to split!”
Iris had been having a great night with the kids, and the house showed it. When they all went into the kitchen, Nolan’s eyebrows went up and his eyes lit up with amusement. “Wow, you guys.”
“WE MADE PIZZAS!” Deck yelled.
“And caramel corn and brownies and nachos!” Millie added. “We’re overindulging.”
Nolan laughed. “I see that. It looks great. Is there any pizza for me?”
“YEAH YEAH YEAH!” Deck yelled. “Our pizza!” And then he giggled maniacally, and Joey and Henry chimed in. Loki and Ian joined the amusement, and pretty soon all the kids were laughing.
Iris laughed, too. “Um…The boys made a special pizza.”
“FRANKENPIZZA!” Deck yelled. Declan was a yeller. He got excited.
Nolan came to her side and looked. “Oh.”
Everybody had gotten to put whatever they wanted on their pizzas. The girls had all made fairly normal pizzas, with meat and cheese and sauce and vegetables. The boys had made a couple of those, as well. And then they’d gotten adventurous. It had started out as a cheeseburger pizza, with ground beef and cheddar cheese, and ketchup and mustard for sauce.
When it went into the oven, it had sweet gherkins, pickle juice, soy sauce, green olives, honey-roasted cashews, dried cranberries, chocolate chips, pearl onions, chili pepper, and blue cheese crumbles. They’d ransacked the fridge and pantry and had dumped just about everything they could find on it.
Once it was baked, Iris had made all involved taste it, and she’d taken lots of pictures of their funny faces while they did.
>
Most of the Frankenpizza had spent the rest of the evening sitting on the counter.
“There are a couple of pieces left of one of the pepperoni pizzas,” she assured Nolan as he studied the congealing concoction.
“Nope. This one looks good.” He gave Iris a conspiratorial smile and picked up a slice of Frank. The kitchen went silent as all of the kids watched him take a bite.
“Mmmm. That’s great.” He chewed as if he were relishing every moment that mess was on his tongue, and the kids went wild, screaming ‘GROSS!’ and ‘EWWW!’ and giggling and groaning in exaggerated disgust.
“No, really. I bet this is going to make some epic farts later.”
At that, the boys just lost it. Deck even collapsed onto the floor, overcome with hilarity.
Nolan finished the entire slice. When he was done, he rubbed his belly. “Now that is some pizza!” Then he turned to Iris and muttered quietly, “Damn.”
If someone had asked her right in that moment, Iris would have said that she loved him. She laughed and muttered back, “I’ll get you a soda to wash it down. Or beer?”
“Soda will do, thanks.” He grinned—an honest, full-hearted smile, and Iris had to hold herself back from just throwing herself into his arms. Instead, she went to the fridge.
“You want more, Nolan? There’s more.” Ian asked. Iris saw a little cynical gleam in his eye. He was only eight, but there was a kind of tired wisdom in him. He was like Nolan in that way.
“You know what?” Nolan took the bottle of Coke from Iris’s hand. “I think I want to save room for banana split.” Then he drank down half the bottle and belched impressively, to another appreciative, childish chorus.
With raucous agreement from the kids on the question of ice cream, Iris looked across the kitchen at Gia, who’d seemed to have come over shy when Nolan had arrived. She’d been holding herself back from the chaos since. “You want to help me get that set up, G?”
“Okay.” As she answered, Gia blushed—hard—and let her long hair fall forward, covering her face, and Iris realized that Gia had a crush on Nolan.
Gia was fourteen. She looked a lot like her mother, Lilli: tall and gorgeous, and already developing the kind of body that Iris would have liked to have—the one she might have had if she’d been blessed with her dad’s tall genes the way she’d been blessed with her mom’s boob genes.
Iris thought back to when she’d been fourteen. Yep. There had been more hormones burbling in her veins than red blood cells. And every crush had been a total crisis, a life or death need. It sucked to be fourteen.
“Nolan, would you take the rest of the kids and go and clear off the dining room table while we get stuff ready for ice cream?”
“I want to help you!” Millie complained.
“How about you, Lex?”
“I’ll do whatever you need.”
“Okay—Gia and Millie with me. Lexi is in charge of Deck, Megan, and Caroline. Can you read them one of the stories we made?”
Lexi smiled and nodded.
“Thank you, sweetie. Joey, Henry, Loki, Ian—you go with Nolan.”
“Let’s go, fellas.” Before he left the kitchen, Nolan kissed Iris’s cheek. He lingered just one extra second, but Iris felt it on her skin long after he’d left the room.
~oOo~
After banana splits, they played party games. Iris had gone online for some ideas about games for kids in the range of ages they had, so they played a game where she whispered an animal in each kid’s ear, the same animal for two kids, and they all wandered around the house being that animal until they found their match. Nolan had played, too. Iris had paired him as a shark with Ian. They’d found each other pretty quickly.
They played a balloon game where everyone tied a balloon to their ankle and then had to pop other balloons while protecting their own.
That one had gotten a little bit out of control. Iris hoped Shannon hadn’t been overly attached to the brown lamp.
By the time they were playing Dress-Up Grab Bag, a game she remembered from when she was a kid, and they were all running around in Shannon and Show’s old clothes, Iris could see that the little ones were fading. It was almost ten o’clock.
Time for movies. They were all going to spend the night downstairs together, in sleeping bags and blanket forts, in the living room, so Iris got everyone motivated to spread out the blankets and pillows and bags on the floor, in front of the television. Then she got them all in their pajamas and made hot—well, warm—cocoa. She put Wall-E in and turned down the lights.
She had something planned if the kids made it to midnight, but she didn’t intend to force anyone to stay awake. If they were sleeping, she’d change her plan.
With all the kids snuggled together on the floor, Iris sat on the sofa behind them, and Nolan sat with her, at the other end.
By the time the movie was over, Caroline, Megan, Joey, and Millie were all on the sofa with them. Megan sat on Nolan’s lap, sucking her thumb. Caroline stood in the middle, leaning on the back of the sofa and talking to the movie—and to everybody else.
Only Deck had fallen asleep. The others were awake on the floor.
“Is it midnight?” Millie asked when the credits rolled.
“Seven minutes,” Nolan answered.
“SEVEN MINUTES?” Caroline yelled, as if she had any idea what that meant.
And with that, Deck was awake, too. His eyes popped open, and he sat up. “Is it Happy New Year?”
Iris reached down and ruffled his blond head. “Almost. I’ll go get everything ready. Gia—will you take over in here?”
“Sure,” she said and eased out of her sleeping bag. Iris could tell she was still trying to be cool and grown-up around Nolan.
“Can I help?” Nolan stood and set Megan on the couch.
“Yeah. There’s a bag in the cabinet under the mirror in the hall. If you could get that and then help me in the kitchen? Nolan nodded and went off to do what she’d asked, and Iris went back to the kitchen.
When she came back out with a tray full of little plastic champagne glasses full of sparkling cider, Nolan was leaning on the wall in the front hallway. He grinned at her.
“That’s probably not champagne, I guess.”
“Apple cider. And you were going to help me.”
“Sorry. I got derailed by an important discussion about the rights of robots.”
She laughed and nodded at the big bag in his hand. It was full of noisemakers. “You ready? We’ve only got like two minutes.”
“Let’s do it. This is going to be loud.”
“That’s the point. It’s New Year’s. Gotta make some noise.”
Once everyone had their little glass and their noisemakers—one to shake and one to blow—Nolan held out his phone so everyone could see the clock count down. They called out the last ten seconds, even Caroline yelling out the right numbers, and then they drank their cider and made a ruckus.
Nolan gave his New Year’s kiss to Caroline.
~oOo~
Sometime after two in the morning, the house finally went quiet. All the kids were asleep. Millie and Joey had conked out together in the way they had when they’d been just little babies, their heads together and their arms over each other. They hadn’t shared a bed since they were too big to share a crib, and they hadn’t shared a room since they were four. It warmed Iris’s heart to see them still so close. She supposed that was the way with twins.
She and Rose weren’t all that close. Most people thought they were, because they’d spent so much time together, and for a long while they hadn’t had any friend but each other—but that had been more about survival than real affinity. They’d never been enemies, like she knew was the case with some siblings, but they didn’t share many interests. Their personalities had become a lot different, too, as they’d grown.
And then there was the divorce. That had always been a fence between them, especially when it had become clear that Iris wasn’t on board the Daddy-blame
train with Rose and their mom.
At that point, their mom had begun to favor Rose pretty clearly. At least that was the way Iris saw it. Rose always argued that Iris was just too sensitive and that their mom didn’t have favorites.
But she also argued that their dad favored Iris. Actually, Rose argued that their dad favored Daisy most of all. Many times, she’d sniffed that she couldn’t compete with a ghost.
Iris had never been able to understand why Rose believed that competition with their dead sister was even a thing.
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