IGNITE

by Paradis, Lily

  I opened it enough to slip through and then quickly closed it again.

  “Could you unbutton my dress, please?” I asked Mary. She patted her stack of cards, smiled at Chase, and then got up to help me.

  As she undid the button so I could get the zipper down later, Chase just looked at his cards.

  I felt bad that I hadn’t really gotten to know him yet, but he was a sweet kid.

  “What are you guys playing?” I asked him.

  Chase looked up, like he was surprised that I was talking to him. I felt even worse that I hadn’t made much of an effort.

  “Old Maid,” he said quietly.

  “I’ve never heard of that one,” I said, trying to force a smile. “Can you teach me sometime?”

  He nodded and looked back at the cards.

  “Thanks,” I said to Mary, and she patted my shoulder and turned back to Chase.

  As I was leaving the room, I was startled when Chase said my name.

  “Hey Lauren?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I really hope you stay.”

  I smiled sadly at him. I didn’t know how much they’d heard from the Callie blowup, but apparently it was enough.

  “Thanks buddy.”

  NO ONE SAID anything substantial for days. We all walked around avoiding each other, co-existing in the same house without interacting. Even Emma was a mess.

  I was cleaning up the milk she had spilled all over the kitchen table when the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” Callie said blithely, not looking up from her phone.

  Chase was watching some leftover holiday movie on TV.

  I sighed. I was kind of bummed that I had missed Christmas while I was in the hospital. I was even more bummed that my mom didn’t even call to wish me a Merry Christmas or to make sure I was okay after surviving a near death experience with an avalanche.

  I put the rag in the sink and poured Emma a new glass.

  “Be super careful this time,” I warned her as I double checked to make sure the lid was secure. She nodded and sullenly pulled the cup toward her.

  I heard familiar boots down the hallway and looked up. Dean had become a fixture in the house lately, and I was more at ease than I ever thought I’d be.

  “What’s up?” he asked. He sat down next to Emma, whose eyes immediately lit up when she saw him.

  I shrugged.

  “You know, same old same old.”

  He smiled sadly.

  Callie grabbed a water from the fridge and plopped down on the couch, still focused on her phone.

  No one said anything for a minute and I was acutely aware of the silence.

  “I’m so bored,” Chase said suddenly, turning off the TV and setting the remote loudly on the glass table in front of him. “Can we go somewhere?”

  “Uh, sure,” I said, uneasily looking at Dean. “Where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know.” He sighed. “Somewhere cool.”

  I tapped my fingers on the counter while I thought of somewhere to go that we would all have at least a mild amount of fun. Dean, however, had his own ideas.

  “Guys, go pack something,” he said suddenly.

  Callie tore her gaze away from her phone.

  “Why?” She didn’t hide the judgment in her voice.

  “Yeah, why?” Emma said, looking at him with her huge eyes.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him curiously, and Callie shot me a look, then flounced upstairs.

  “I’ll call Jenny,” she called down to us.

  Chase ran upstairs after her, and Emma was close behind, nearly knocking her cup all over me in the process. I gave Dean a look that encompassed the exasperation and relief I felt that I didn’t have to clean up spilled milk yet again.

  I was left alone with the culprit, and he wasn’t very good at hiding the charming little grin on his face.

  “What are you up to?”

  “You’ll see,” he said, grinning even bigger as he leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, which caused me to shiver. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get used to the shock of that.

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and walked out of the room.

  “I’ll be right back,” he assured me.

  I sighed. Dean Powell, man of mystery.

  Thirty minutes later, we were all standing at the front door holding our bags. Well, I was holding Emma’s Tinker Bell backpack, and she was gripping my hand.

  “Are you going to tell us what’s going on?” Jenny asked, leaning against the bannister with her own bag in hand.

  “Like I said, it’s a surprise,” Dean answered, ushering us all out the door and into the car. We all piled into the Range Rover. I was in the front, and the four kids were in the back, with Jenny and Callie sharing a seatbelt.

  “Jed’s going to be mad,” I said under my breath as I gave Dean a look.

  “You don’t even know where we’re going,” he countered. “Besides, if he wants you to be their guardian, he’s going to have to start trusting you with them, right?”

  I nodded and put my head back against the seat. He had a point.

  “Can we guess where we’re going?” Chase asked.

  “Sure, go for it,” Dean said, adjusting his mirror so he could see them in the back.

  “McDonald’s!” Emma said excitedly before any of us could guess.

  Callie looked disgusted.

  “Ew, Emma.”

  “Callie,” I said, giving her a warning look.

  “Well we packed clothes,” Callie countered. “We’re not going to have a sleepover at McDonalds or something.” She crossed her arms and looked out the window.

  “Somewhere in California,” Jenny said next.

  “Jenny!” Dean eyed her in the backseat. “How did you know?”

  She shrugged.

  “I still have your email password.”

  He beat his hand lightly on the steering wheel.

  “That’s cheating.”

  “Hey, not my fault you don’t know how to change passwords.”

  California. That meant we would be getting on a plane, unless Dean expected the four of them to be squished in the back like that for twelve hours.

  “When I asked if we could go somewhere, I meant Chuck E. Cheese’s or something,” Chase said in a tone that made us all laugh.

  “Where we’re going is so much better than Chuck E. Cheese’s,” Dean said, smiling his half grin that made my stomach flip.

  “Promise?” Emma asked.

  “Promise. Now, before we go on this adventure, can we please make a pact?” he glanced in the rearview mirror to find four expectant faces.

  “What?” Callie spat, looking out the window. Jenny nudged her and gave her a look.

  Dean sighed. “Can we all just try to get along? Or, I don’t know, maybe even try to like each other?”

  “I like everyone in this car,” Chase announced.

  “I love everyone in this car!” Emma shouted gleefully, throwing her hands in the air.

  I glanced at Dean, who couldn’t help but hide his smile. I was with Emma. I was starting to feel the same way. Leaving the kids was going to be a lot harder than I originally planned, and I wasn’t sure I could go through with it anymore, not after they had all worked themselves into my heart.

  When we arrived at the airport, Dean parked the car in one of the garages and we made our way to the terminal. None of us had bags that were big enough to be checked, and Jenny made Callie throw away her hairspray so she could carry her bag on, much to her dismay.

  “You can buy more hairspray when we get there,” Jenny told her, rolling her eyes. Emma was gripping my arms so tightly I felt like they were going to lose feeling and fall off at any moment.

  “What’s security?” she whispered in my ear.

  “They just need to make sure we are who they say we are,” I told her. “They’re going to check our I.D.’s and they’ll see our pictures. Then they are going to check our bags and pu
t it through an X-ray machine. You know, like the time that you broke your arm? It takes pictures of things so they can see the inside.”

  “What are those people doing then?” Emma pointed at the people walking through the metal detectors.

  “They’re being checked too. Just to make sure.”

  “Make sure of what?”

  “That you’re safe, that’s all.” I smiled reassuringly at her, and she slowly smiled back.

  “Okay.” Then her brow furrowed. “I don’t have an I.D.”

  “That’s okay silly,” I told her. “You’re with me, so you don’t need one.”

  She seemed to like that answer and smiled again. “And Dean.”

  “And Dean.”

  At the mention of his name, he turned and tapped her playfully on the nose.

  “We’re almost there,” he told her, smiling at me.

  I bit my lip. I thought it was all a little bit strange that we were getting on a plane together already. In reality, I barely knew him, or the kids. I rarely even traveled with my friends or my family, let alone people I’d known for a couple of weeks. I felt like I had known Dean for far longer than that, and I started to wonder if this was how people felt when they said cheesy things like that.

  Callie, Jenny, and Chase went first. Dean had given them their individual plane tickets, and one by one, each of them were checked through. Chase proudly displayed his school ID when the TSA agent asked for it, and I was glad that she was friendly enough to humor him and make a big deal out of the fact that he had his own card. He followed Jenny and Callie to the bag check, beaming with pride.

  “Good thing we both have excellent new license photos,” Dean whispered in my ear as he took my bag from me so I could hold Emma.

  I couldn’t help but laugh softly as I realized that’s how all of this began.

  The woman called us forward and checked my ticket off first. Emma was holding my I.D., since she was taking up my arms and I wouldn’t be able to reach for it later.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking it from Emma. The agent must have been in her late sixties, and I was fascinated by how shockingly white her hair was against her dark skin. She checked my license and handed it back to Emma.

  “Beautiful girls,” she said with a kind smile. “Of course the two of you would have beautiful children.” She nodded at Dean, wiggling her eyebrows and looking him up and down mock-suggestively in a way that an older woman would.

  The heat in my cheeks was instant. I glanced at Dean out of the corner of my eye, and it looked like he was doing his best to hold back peals of laughter.

  “Oh no,” I quickly corrected her. “She’s my sister.” I didn’t know what else to tell her that wouldn’t raise suspicions, so I decided it was best.

  “Ah,” the woman said, still looking from me, to Emma, to Dean. “Still beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” I managed, still blushing.

  She took Dean’s license next and told us to have a good trip.

  The second we were out of earshot, he burst out laughing. I wasn’t sure what to say. It was funny, but I thought it was more embarrassing than comical. Did I really look old enough to be Emma’s mom?

  He was still stifling laughter when we caught up to Chase, Callie, and Jenny.

  “What’s so funny?” Jenny asked, shoving her bag into a bucket.

  “Nothing,” Dean said, placing tubs on the conveyor belt for the three of us.

  Callie narrowed her eyes and looked to Jenny, who shrugged.

  “No seriously, what happened?”

  “You’re so nosy,” Jenny hissed, clearly trying to get her to leave it alone.

  “Oh nothing,” Dean said casually as he placed the bags in the plastic tubs. “The TSA agent thought Emma was our child.”

  I gave her a look, and she blushed instantly, looking between us.

  I set Emma down and pushed our bags along.

  “Exactly,” I muttered under my breath.

  After the excitement that was the underground train that took us to our terminal, Emma decided to fall asleep on Dean. I tried to take her once so he could carry our bags, but she was having none of it. Neither of us really wanted to be responsible for a screaming child in the airport, so I decided to carry my bag, plus Emma’s Tinker Bell backpack and Dean’s duffel. I was pretty sure my arms were going to be aching later because I didn’t quite have the muscle set that he did, considering he made it look easy to carry all of it.

  Jenny, Chase, and Callie watched a movie on her computer while we waited for the plane. I was glad they were occupied. Although I still had to deal with her gum smacking, I didn’t have to deal with her shrill voice. We still hadn’t reconciled from our little blowout over the fact that she wanted me to leave, yet she needed me if she didn’t want to be sent to foster care and split up from her siblings.

  From my boarding pass and our gate, I’d deduced that we were going somewhere in Southern California by the fact that it read we were flying into the Orange County airport.

  “Dean, please tell me,” I whispered as I leaned over, trying not to wake Emma. There were tons of sounds at the gate, but I’m sure my voice would be the one to wake her.

  He shook his head and smiled.

  “Nope.”

  “You promised me a secret,” I said.

  His brow burrowed and his eyes went up as if he were trying to remember something.

  “When did I say that?”

  I sighed.

  “When we were at the hospital, you told me you would tell me a secret if I stayed awake.”

  He laughed softly.

  “You remember that?”

  I nodded.

  “Yep. So you better pay up.”

  He adjusted Emma slightly.

  “So,” he said, half smiling again. “I guess that means you also remember my rugged sexuality.”

  I blushed immediately and swatted him on the arm.

  “Oh please. I was medicated.”

  “You just keep telling yourself that.”

  “Oh I will.”

  I was still brooding as we sat in silence for a few minutes until a woman came over the P.A. system to tell us we were boarding.

  “First class passengers only.”

  I glanced at my ticket. I wasn’t really sure what the jumble of numbers were, but I yawned and waited for regular boarding when Dean nudged me.

  “We’re boarding,” he said, moving Emma to his other side.

  I looked down at my ticket again.

  “She said first class, so not yet,” I told him, pointing at it.

  He leaned down and put his finger on the corner of the pass that was emblazoned with a gold holograph.

  “See that? It means we’re boarding.”

  I narrowed my eyes and tilted the piece of paper around so I could see the eagle as it appeared and disappeared on the gold material. Clearly, I had never flown this airline or first class, so I had absolutely no idea what it was.

  I shrugged in awe and followed Dean as he rounded up Callie, Chase, and Jenny.

  A flight attendant ushered us to our seats, which were in front of the normal cabin. I made a right when we entered the plane, but Dean grabbed my hand and led me left. I felt like a complete idiot when Callie laughed at me.

  “Shut up,” Jenny told her as she unwound her headphones. At least someone was on my side.

  We were seated three and three on each side of the aisle in the huge, reclining chairs that looked nothing like any plane I’d ever been on. Dean let Emma sit by the window on the right. When she saw that she had a new view, it was like she had never been asleep at all. He sat next to her, and the other three took the seats on the left. That meant I was sitting on the aisle next to him.

  “This is amazing,” I told him as I sat down. “I guess there’s more to you than rugged sexuality.”

  He shut his eyes slowly and smiled, and I could have sworn I saw a blush creeping up his cheeks.

  LITTLE KNOWN FACT: this was the f
irst time Emma had ever been on an airplane. She spent the entire takeoff trying to crawl into Dean’s lap while he was trying to stop her from screaming, and I was trying to make sure the flight attendant didn’t ask the pilot to turn the plane around and kick us off. If this was what parenting was like, it was not my new favorite activity.

  By the time that Emma had cried herself into a frenzy and fallen asleep, my eardrums were ringing and my head was pounding. I popped a painkiller and handed one to Dean, which he swallowed wordlessly.

  “How does she sleep so much?” he whispered, rubbing his temples.

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking over at Emma. “But right now I’m not complaining.”

  He nodded. “She’s cute when she’s not screaming.”

  I smiled and laughed lightly.

  “She’s cute all the time, but I kind of like my hearing intact. Anyway, how about that secret?”

  I looked to the left to check on the other kids before leaning in towards him. Part of me felt like I was invading his personal space, but the other part of me wanted to.

  A smile played on his lips and I could have sworn his eyes flicked down to mine.

  Our faces were only inches apart.

  “Miss, did you want something to drink?”

  I sighed but didn’t turn right away. For all the flight attendant knew, we could have been kissing. Why would you interrupt that?

  “I’ll take a water,” I told her dryly.

  She jotted it down on her notepad, and then flashed Dean a seductive smile.

  Seriously?

  I scoffed. “Another water,” he told her. “Thanks.”

  She winked at him and flounced off.

  I turned back to him.

  “You have to turn that whole rugged sexuality thing down. You’re going to cause a frenzy.”

  He laughed.

  “You don’t seem to be complaining.”

  I scoffed again and gaped at him.

  “You’re so full of yourself!”

  “No, I just like teasing you,” he said, smiling brilliantly.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “No really,” he said, leaning closer. “I’m sure she would have winked at anyone.”

  He sounded as though he genuinely thought that.

  “Are you really not aware of the effect you have on women?”

  He looked down and blushed in that humble way that proved my point.