by Jolene Perry
“Just that teenage girls, in general, are the biggest owners of drama there is.” He lowers his face so he can look up at me with his teasing expression, but now all I see is lashes. For a blondie, he has really nice lashes.
“Well, I didn’t used to be.” Until stupid Shelton, and his perfectly pressed clothes, and perfectly laid-out future. And his stupid way of breaking up with me that didn’t include him telling me that he liked someone else.
“Kate!” A woman’s arms crush me. “It’s so nice to see you again.”
“Uh…you too.” I stand back. Right. We’ve met at Jen’s a few times. And wow Aidan’s mom looks exactly like Jen’s mom. I remember this now that I’m standing in front of her. I thought they were twins when I first met her. The reality of him being my best friend’s cousin hits me again. This whole situation of Aidan and me hanging out could seriously backfire.
“You’re so grown-up and stunning!”
Stunning. That’s a word I never thought would be associated with me. “Uh…Thank you?”
“It’s almost bedtime, so the night should be pretty simple. You have no idea how grateful I am to you two.” Her eyes moisten up, and I want to elbow Aidan. I’m not the only person whose life is filled with drama.
She rattles off some instructions and I’m mostly looking between Aidan and his mom. It’s easy to see they’re tight. They stand close, talk easily with each other. And then it’s over, and I have no idea what was just discussed.
His step-dad and mom walk out, and Aidan already has the baby in his arm. “Mom said Trey needs to be rocked to sleep, which I can do, but I might need help getting him in his bed as softly as he’ll need to be laid down.”
I step into the small, unfamiliar house. “Okay.” I never know what to do with kids—especially little ones.
Two three-year-olds immediately accost my legs. I don’t babysit. Ever. Kids are messy and smelly, and their little pudgy hands are always sticky.
“Come watch Dora!” The boy pulls on my hand. As Aidan disappears into the baby’s room, I wish I’d paid better attention to the instructions we were given.
I sit on the couch, and immediately have a small child on each side of me. I’m going to be crushed, suffocated between two three-year-old squishy rolls of children with sticky hands.
“D-D-D-D-D-Dora!” They both sing with the show.
Okay, Kate. Breathe. They’re just kids. They can’t be that sticky and dirty. This is totally not a big deal. Aidan seemed perfectly fine holding that tiny, squirmy baby with only one arm. Crazy.
How long am I supposed to give him to put the baby to sleep?
Great. It’s not like he can yell out when he’s ready for help.
“Tico!!” The little boy points to the TV and laughs. And then the little girl laughs, squirms, and contorts into these tiny giggles. This show is like a huge blast from my childhood.
Now that I’m here, on the couch, knowing I’m stuck, it’s not so bad. Their little bodies are warm and soft. I actually like this a little. Maybe.
By the time the show’s over, I’m ready for bed. I’m all cozy on the couch and warm.
“Time for bed.” The little girl stands up and takes my hand.
Wait. “Don’t kids hate to go to bed?”
“We share!” The little boy runs ahead and through a doorway, the little girl follows.
I stand in the door.
“Now you read us books.”
“Me?” I ask. Which is a stupid thing to ask because of course me.
I sit and we read. More Dora. She’s sort of numbing my brain after thirty minutes. No wonder Aidan’s mom was teary when we came to watch her kids.
“Uh-oh…” the little girl says.
“Uh-oh, what?” I ask.
“My gum.”
Gum? Are little kids allowed gum? I sit up off the bed and look around. Gum lying somewhere is not a good thing.
“Is there…” She points at me.
Oh. Great. On me. This is perfect. I look on the front of my shirt, and my shoulders, but I don’t see anything.
Now they’re both looking at me with their large blue eyes and smiling.
“Hair!” the boy says.
My stomach drops. Not in my hair. Please not in my hair. I run my hands down my head, and yep, about three inches up from the bottom is a knot of hair and gum. Great.
“Okay, you two.” Now what? “Um…you can stay up as late as you want, but if I hear anything, I come in and turn out the light, okay?”
They both grin.
Guess this is okay.
My heart’s going all panicky as I step out of their room and feel my hair again. This is not good. I flick on the bathroom light, and yeah, it’s even worse than I thought. I can’t tell where my hair begins and the gum ends, it’s all smashed in together.
And it’s not like I have the best hair or anything, it’s that…gum.
In my hair.
Oh. Aidan. I flick off the bathroom light, head still spinning over the stupid hair situation. I take a few slow breaths before slowly turning the doorknob on the baby’s room.
“Bout time you showed up,” Aidan whispers.
I stop. His hair is a little longer each time we get together, and I would have noticed sooner, but the whole babysitting thing sort of threw me. His blue eyes shine, even in the dark, and my stomach tightens at the way he’s looking at me.
“Kate?” he asks because I’ve probably been staring at him too long.
“My hair.” I pull the side forward to show him.
He tries to give me a sympathetic frown, but I can tell he’s trying not to laugh. “Can you slide him in his bed?”
Oh. Right. Baby.
Now that I’ve leaned over, the warmth of him hits me, and we’re close. Really close. Aidan’s breath hits my face, and I slide my arms over his toned stomach and down his muscular arm to get my arms around the baby. And for the first time, I’m touching a guy who I’d really, really like to see with his shirt off. Our eyes catch, and his breath blows across my face. Whoa. Butterflies are running circuits through my insides, over a guy who’s two years older, and only wants to hang with me so I can babysit with him.
What’s wrong with me? I’m like all hormonal or something. Even making out with Shelton didn’t make me all breathless like this. I scoop up the bundled baby, and lay him down in his bed, relieved I didn’t break him or wake him or something.
I back away from the crib and run into the stomach and chest I was just thinking about.
“Sorry.” My cheeks heat up and I stare at the floor, as if he’ll somehow know what I’m thinking just by looking at him.
“Excuse me.” He jumps back a step and holds the door for me to walk through.
Yeah. Guess it was awkward for both of us.
I go for the kitchen and sit at the table, trying to see the knotted mass in my hair.
“That is bad.” He takes the chair next to me.
I let out a sigh as I realize the more I touch it, the worse it gets.
“Okay.” His fingers touch the mass in my hair. “I have no idea what to do about this.”
My chest sinks. “Well, I was thinking of cutting my hair anyway.”
“Want me to cut it out for now?” he asks.
“Well, I definitely don’t want to sleep on gum.” Someone else’s germs are in there. I shudder.
Aidan walks away, so I let myself notice him again while he can’t watch me doing it. He’s always in a plain white T-shirt. Always. It pulls across his chest and shoulders, just a little. But also, when he twists or turns a bit, I can see his sides, his abs, and his waist. The way I feel scares me. It’s not the more-than-friends thing I felt with Shelton. It’s more like want-my-hands-on-your-bare-skin and I can’t believe I’m even thinking this. It’s not like Shelton and I even went that far in our year together. Nothing under clothes. Ever. Okay, maybe a little on my back and waist, but that’s it.
And here I am watching Aidan walk back toward m
e with a pair of scissors, and part of me wants to reach up under his shirt to feel his stomach.
I have problems.
“Can you do that with one arm?” I ask.
“Do you use two hands on scissors?” He widens his eyes a bit, and I can never tell if he’s joking back, or if I’ve almost gone too far again.
“Uh…no. But I do use one hand to cut, and one to hold.”
“Oh. Right.” He stands to my left side and again, his breath hits my neck sending shivers through me. I’m pathetic. He’s nineteen, waiting for disability, and I’m in high school. So not a good idea.
“I promise to be careful.” He tries to hold in a laugh as he surveys the damage again.
“You know what?” I need to do something with all this pent-up energy. It’s just hair, right? I can be bold. Forward. Cool. Unexpected. “Cut it all off, you know, all the way around.”
“I can’t.” He shakes his head.
“It won’t be pretty, but I can get that fixed later. I’ve always wanted shorter hair. My sister cuts hair. You know, I could do an a-line cut that’s barely above my shoulders?”
“I don’t even know what that is.” He smirks.
“Just cut. Please. All the way around. Do it and get it over with.” I squeeze my eyes tight.
I expect him to protest further, but he doesn’t—just cuts and cuts. The sound of the scissors going through my hair is startling, crunching, smashing, something. It sounds like he’s cutting through hair much thicker than mine, that’s for sure.
“Done.” He stands back. “It might be a little uneven in a spot or two.” He tries to hold in his smile, which is my favorite thing because his cheeks get super dimpled.
I seriously need to stop thinking about him like this.
“I figured you’d put up some kind of protest.” I slowly bring my hands to my head, and run them through my hair, top to bottom. The ends are a mangled mess, but my hair feels thicker, better.
“It’s hair.” He leans his face down to look up at me through his amazing lashes again. “Not an arm.”
“Right. So since your perceptions are warped by your missing arm, my hair gets cut without a second thought?” I raise a brow.
He chuckles. “You wanted it. Besides, once someone evens the edges, it’ll be perfect.”
Great. Only I breathe in and smell some kind of lickable aftershave, and spearmint toothpaste—so, it was kind of worth it to have him so close.
“Come on. We have a few hours before they get back. Let’s watch something.”
And now I’m wondering how close I can sit next to him on the couch, but when we reach the living room I jump in the chair while he digs through movies. This is safer. Much, much safer.
8
Aidan Connelly
MOM’S HANDS COME TO HER mouth as she and Stan step through the front door. “Kate, your hair,” she gasps.
Kate’s smile is wide. “I know. Your son did a terrible job. You know with only one arm and everything. I should have known.”
“What?” Mom throws an accusing glare my way.
I start to defend myself when Kate speaks again. “There was an issue with gum, and it seemed like a good time to get it over with.” Kate shrugs.
Mom’s face falls. “Which one of the twins did it?”
Kate opens her mouth. “The…uh…girl?”
I chuckle because it’s obvious she forgot her name, or never heard it to begin with.
“Well, let me pay to fix it at the very least.” Mom starts rummaging in her purse.
“Mom. I got it,” I say. “Kate thought we were going to hangout somewhere or something, and instead I dragged her here.”
Mom stops. “Well thanks you two.”
“Thank you,” Stan adds.
“Oh!” Mom’s face brightens. “My friend Janet owns a Regis, two blocks down. I know she’s still there because her car was there when we came home.”
“Isn’t it kind of late?” I ask.
“My sister cuts hair. I’m good,” Kate says. “Besides, what would I tell your friend Janet? Some one-armed guy attacked me with scissors?”
Mom’s eyes widen slightly. I don’t think she knows how to react. Kate has the great stunned look on her face that she always does when she blurts something like this out.
“No being sneaky around Kate.” I toss my arm over her shoulder. “If you’ve got a missing limb, she’ll notice every time.”
Kate blushes and Mom chuckles as we step out the door.
I keep my arm around her for no real reason, just—she’s here. But now that I’m thinking about it, maybe it’s too much. Too personal. I jerk my arm away. No reason to keep her slim body close to me, even if it feels good.
“Thanks for coming with me,” I say. Her eyes find mine, but quickly look away, her cheeks turning pink. “It was interesting.” Interesting. It was that.
I lie in bed, once again unable to sleep.
I’m not good with girls. I wasn’t the coolest guy in high school, and didn’t have sex until I was in basic training. It’s still amazing we found a way because we didn’t get a whole lot of free time. When I was deployed, I was with an Air Force girl a few times. It was so casual. I’m lonely. You’re lonely. Let’s get together. Every time we camped in the Air Force camp, we’d get together. But a girlfriend? I don’t even know where to start. I know I don’t want the high school version of “going out.” The whole smothering each other thing. But I also know I really want to spend time with her. With Kate.
I’m not sure how to balance it, and now the whole thing is sort of giving me a headache. I like her. The smell of her, the way she speaks, says things, smirks. And most of the time I think she doesn’t like me, but tonight, the way she looked at me when I walked into the room with the scissors. There are a few things that make me feel like there might be something there.
But do I want there to be?
Kate swimming around in my head is keeping me awake just like the Army does. My forced departure from it. My friends still deployed in it. All of it. But thinking about Kate is better. For now. I think.
Foster takes me to lunch. We sit in a high-backed booth, and I could tell by the look on his face when he asked me here that it wasn’t really an option thing. I mean, I guess it is, but no matter what, he’ll find time to say what he wants to say. I might as well get a free burger. We order, and he starts to look a little nervous—shifting his weight back and forth.
“So, what’s up?”
“Mostly I want to see how you’re doing with everything.”
“Everything, huh? That’s kind of vague.” I knew this was coming, but it sticks inside me just the same, making it hard to breathe.
“The list is long,” he says. “I’m worried. I feel like I should be helping you in some way, but I don’t know what to do.”
The list is really long. My heart starts pounding in my ears and I can feel the words coming to the surface whether I want them to or not. “I hate my shrink. I’ve skipped physical therapy. I have nightmares, hate my calming drugs, and now I’m hanging out with Kate who I don’t know what to do with. Mom’s awesome and trying to help, but I don’t know how she could with her new, crazy family, or even what to ask her. I’m supposed to be getting ready to go to college, or something, but it’s hard to get motivated when I don’t know what I want to do. My infantry unit comes back in weeks, and they all want me there, but I don’t know if I can go. Pilot’s wife needs to be visited, and I don’t think I can do that either, or even if I want to. And then there’s the matter of the car I love that I can’t drive.” I’m breathless at the end.
Foster scratches his head and taps his fingers on the table a few times.
“And this is why you always say fine and nothing when we ask you how you are and what we can do for you, right?” Foster leans over the table.
A lump stretches in my throat, and I nod. Unable to do more. It’s so much. All of it is so much. Why the hell did we need to go somewhere public? I
rest my elbow on the table and press my palm to my forehead. “Shit, I’m sorry,” I whisper, as I try to get my body under control.
“Whoa, whoa. Don’t be sorry.” Foster reaches to the side, rubbing my shoulder a few times. “Aidan. Why don’t you work on one thing, and then when you’re feeling comfortable with that one thing, then work on something else.”
“But it all needs to get done.” I lift my head off my hand. “All of it.”
“It does,” he agrees. “But it doesn’t all have to be done at the same time. You know what I mean?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Let’s tackle one thing at a time. First, Kate. You’re spending time with a cool girl. Don’t try and define it so much. If it’s working, keep it working, if not, then don’t. Just be straightforward with her. Honest. Because I really like Kate and neither of us wants to deal with the aftermath if Jen feels like you slighted her best friend.” He chuckles. “Well, and Kate’s almost another daughter around my house, so I might not be happy either.”
“You’re adding to the list of reasons it’s not a good idea.” I sit back in my seat.
Foster shakes his head. “That’s not entirely what I meant.”
“I’m. I’m going to try to push that one off a bit. Kate. Or maybe make things happen slow, or…I mean, I don’t even know if she likes
me, you know?”
His smile spreads a bit. “You like her.”
“Can we hit on something else?” Anything to not be talking about girls with Foster would be good.
“Sure.” Foster looks more relaxed already. Like we’re planning a trip to Hawaii, and not my mess of a future. “It’s pretty simple. Just sign up for school. You might not know what you want to do with your life until you get into school. One small step—maybe make an appointment with the guidance counselor at the community college. Your school is paid for. You need to take advantage of that. And I don’t mind driving your car one bit, so no hurry there.” He chuckles.
“Okay.” One appointment. That I can do. And I can put off getting rid of my car.
“The therapy stuff, I can’t help you with, Aidan. But Pilot’s wife—”