by Lila Ashe
“That.” Coin pointed at the screen. “If you fall in love first, I’ll buy you and your guy two round-trip tickets to Bora Bora.”
“But that’s so expensive!”
“What?” he said. “This is your idea. Besides, you’re single, no kids, and you work overtime, just like me. You have the money.”
What would have sounded rude anywhere else just came out as blunt. It was true. Most of them in the department worked too much, and money just kind of stacked up in the bank. Lexie wasn’t great at spending it on herself, so her savings got bigger every year. Definitely a perk of the job.
Lexie narrowed her eyes. “But do you want to go to Bora Bora? Really? Because I can see you throwing the whole bet just to prove your point. You’ll let me fall in love, and then send me and my ridiculously cute boyfriend away to the islands.”
“You think I’m that generous?”
“Yes.” One year, Lexie had run the Adopt-a-Family for Christmas, an annual tradition at the fire house. For one needy family the entire department had raised almost seven thousand dollars’ worth of gifts. Then Coin’s money had come in. He’d tried to make it anonymous, but the computer transaction had let his name slip through. He’d more than doubled the amount raised, and the family had been able to buy a used van with his funds. Lexie was the only one who knew. She hadn’t run the program in subsequent years, but every year, she knew that something similar happened, moneywise. She had her suspicions.
“And what am I supposed to do if I win? Take Serena with me on the days I’m supposed to have her? Janice never lets me get out of a single one of my days.”
“Have you ever, even once, wanted to get out of a day with your daughter?”
Coin had the grace to look chagrined. “No. But I know if I did, Janice would throw a fit and say she had an out-of-town business trip or something.
“I’ll babysit, then.”
“You?”
“Hey! What’s wrong with me? I find your surprise offensive, my friend. And Serena’s my little pal.”
Coin drained his coffee cup and thumped it on the table. “When was the last time you babysat?”
Lexie stuck out her tongue at him.
“When?”
“I am a superb babysitter. I got an award for it once.”
“How old were you?”
She’d been thirteen, and it had been an automatic award, given by 4H for completing the babysitting class. “Old enough.”
“So you haven’t watched a kid since you were a teenager.” Coin grabbed a mug from under the microwave and poured her a cup. Without asking, he added cream.
“Thank you. How do you always know what I need?”
“Just because you’re too stubborn to ask for anyone’s help doesn’t mean I can’t read you like a book,” said Coin.
“Hey, by the way, if she chokes on anything, I’m shockingly familiar with how to dial 911.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“What if I tell you I give CPR instructions all the time?”
“I am never, ever leaving my kid alone with you.”
Lexie grinned. “Seriously. We could do this.”
“Fall in love?”
For one long moment, Coin’s dark gaze met hers. He held her eyes for one second too long, and Lexie felt that strange thump echoing in the pit of her stomach again.
“Yeah. We could.” Then she clarified, “Find someone to love. We could do that.”
“Why don’t you just go out with me, and we can cut out the middle part?”
She stared at him.
Then she laughed. “Oh, cut it out. For a second I thought you were serious.”
There was a pause before he laughed, too. “A race to love,” he said. “This is the most stupid plan we’ve ever come up with.”
Lexie felt that hollow thump again and decided she was just hungry. “Agreed,” she said. “Now. What’s your profile name going to be?”
CHAPTER FIVE
“I want peanut butter, pickles, and grape jelly,” Serena said without looking up from her book. “Extra pickles.” She sat at the kitchen table, her legs twisted, pretzel-like, under the chair. One hand twirled a dirty-blond strand of hair while her other hand tapped the table next to her Harry Potter book. Always in motion, always moving. And always reading. At least she got that from him. To both Coin and his daughter, the perfect evening was pizza night with books. Total silence, except for the sound of crunching and pages flipping.
“Color me surprised,” said Coin. He made the sandwich, cutting off the crusts without being asked.
“Thanks,” she said, taking it without lifting her eyes from the page.
“How many times have you read that one?”
She looked surprised, and turned the book over to look at the cover. “The Philosopher’s Stone? Maybe only eight or nine times. I haven’t reread it as much as the other ones.”
“Why not?”
“It was under the bed for a while.”
“That’ll do it.”
Serena had inherited her mother’s acceptance of chaos. Coin sometimes literally walked behind Serena, catching things as she dropped them to the floor. A book, an umbrella, her jacket, two more books, a comic, a comb, a lip gloss. She scattered things like a dog shaking water off its back.
He didn’t mind. He hadn’t liked tidying up after his ex-wife who should have been old enough to know better, but his daughter? Coin would happily clean up after her until she was sixty without minding a bit. He knew that.
Coin made himself a sandwich, carefully omitting the pickles, sticking to PB&J.
Serena didn’t look up when he sat. She wiped her hand absentmindedly on her jeans. The smear of jelly matched a couple of other smears that she must have picked up earlier in her day at school. He studied the color.
“Ketchup? Did you have tater tots at school today?”
“Sweet potato tots. Yeah.” Serena turned a page and took another large bite of sandwich.
“I don’t even know what that means. What’s that?”
Serena groaned, and inwardly, so did Coin. His daughter was only eleven. Okay, almost twelve. How did she already know how to make that disgusted teenaged sound?
“Dad. It’s sweet potatoes. In tot form.”
He felt gratified that she’d looked up at him. “Sounds great to me.”
“Yeah.” Her eyes dropped again to the book.
“Hey. Before you go back to that?”
With a barely suppressed sigh, Serena said again, “Yeah?”
Coin didn’t have a way to say it smoothly. Just better to say it, ignoring the nerves that danced in his stomach. “I was talking to my friend at work yesterday. You know her, Lexie? In dispatch?”
“Duh. Yeah. Is she getting a new tattoo?”
“I have no idea.” For a moment, Coin was distracted by thinking about the way the roses wound out the sleeve of Lexie’s work shirt.
“Are you getting a tattoo?”
“Not anytime soon.”
“You should. When can I get my first tattoo?”
“When you catch up to my age.” What he meant was when he was dead and in his grave and even then he’d probably roll over, but if he said that, she’d probably be the first sixth grader to get an illegal tattoo in Darling Bay. Heck, she was good enough with the computer that she could probably figure out how to give herself one, safety pin and pen ink, prison style. And his daughter was enough off a badass that she could probably do it.
“That’s not fair. I’ll never catch up to you.”
“When we’re older, time slows down. And it speeds up for you. By the time you’re sixty, you will have caught up with your old man.”
An eye-roll. “So what were you going to say about Lexie? Are you two dating or something?”
The question caught Coin flat footed. “Why do you ask that?”
Serena just stared at him. She had a smudge of black under her right eye. Coin reached out and tried to w
ipe it off. “What is this? You look like someone punched you.”
She perked up. “Really? Does it look like a black eye?”
“No. Like you were trying on mascara or something.”
Serena deflated, poking a finger at the remaining half of her sandwich.
Coin felt he barely had control of this conversation, something he felt more and more often these days. “You were trying on mascara?”
“Sophie made me. But then she stuck the wand in her eye and then her mom had to wash it out and she cried for like half an hour.” She scrubbed at her eye with the back of her hand.
“You’re only making it worse. Cut that out.” Coin got up and wetted a piece of paper towel. He held her chin still and rubbed under her eye with his other hand. “What is this stuff made out of? Tar?”
“Quit it, I’ll get it off in the bath. So, you and Lexie are dating?”
“No, we’re not.”
“Okay. I didn’t think so, anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Dad.”
“What?”
“You’re kind of …”
“What?” Now Coin really wanted to know.
“You’re kind of not that cool.”
“You’re my kid,” Coin said as easily as he could. It still stung a bit. Strangely. “You’re supposed to be embarrassed of me.”
Serena shook her head. “I’m not embarrassed. You’re a fireman. That gives you automatic cred.”
Cred?
She went on, “But you’re not exactly outgoing enough for her.”
“You sound like you’re twenty. You scare me.”
“What can I say? I’m mature for my age. Can I have a tattoo when I’m sixteen?”
“No. What if I dated someone else?”
“Who?”
“No one you know.”
“Who?” Serena didn’t even look bothered. She looked genuinely interested.
“Someone online.”
“You’re going to do online dating?”
“Oh, come on, Serena. Like I’m the very last one in the whole world who would go on the internet to find a date.”
She raised one eyebrow archly. She looked like Janice when she did that. Pretty. And calculating. “I think you are. There’s that guy you work with, the one I call Lurch?”
“Devo.”
“He would be the last. But you would be the second-to-last.”
“So I’m right at the back of the pack with a guy who eats rocks for breakfast.”
In front of his eyes, she changed back into a little girl, all giggles. “He does not.”
“I’ve seen it. Rocks. Like cereal, but rocky.”
Delightedly, she said, “Gross!”
“He pours sand on top, instead of sugar.”
“What does he use for milk?”
Coin leaned forward and whispered, “Tide pool water. The scummy kind, where it’s been sitting for days in the sun. He likes it warm.”
Serena almost fell off her chair laughing.
When she’d calmed a bit and had finished her sandwich, he said, “So you wouldn’t mind? If I dated?”
“You don’t want to just date Mom?” she asked hopefully.
“Baby. You know she’s happy with Tom. And you like him, too.”
A shrug was his only answer.
They’d been clear when they’d separated five years ago. It had been as amicable as a woman leaving one man for another ever could be. “And I’m happy, too.”
“Then why do you want to change that?”
Coin thought. “You ask good questions, you know that?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“I don’t know the answer to that.” For a moment, Lexie’s big brown eyes and messy red curls flashed in front of him. “Because it’s time, I think.”
“Fine,” she said, lowering her head to her book again.
“Serena.”
“Really, Dad.” She reached out and patted the back of his hand without looking up. “It’s fine by me. This time, though, try to date someone who likes sports. Mom does not like sports.”
“Neither do I,” said Coin. “You still like me.”
Another long-suffering sigh. “If someone doesn’t teach me how to throw a softball and soon, I’m not even going to make the team.”
“Sorry, slugger.”
“It’s okay. Now shush. I’m reading.”
CHAPTER SIX
Lexie’s brother James was already on the couch when she let herself into her mother’s house.
“You’re late.”
“I am not,” said Lexie, glancing at a non-existent watch on her right wrist. “I’m perfectly on time.”
The only way Lexie ever got out of Friday night dinner was by being at work—where her mother usually called her at least once to make sure she wasn’t lying, which was actually fair, since she would lie about it if she’d been able to get away with it—or if she was dead. So far the dead part hadn’t happened, and because she worked two out of every six days and her days off rotated, she had to have dinner four out of every six Fridays.
She was better off than James, of course. Her older brother had to eat every single Friday night there.
“You’re five minutes late, so I’m leaving five minutes before you,” he said.
“Always right down to the minute, huh?”
“Always.”
James had a brain like a computer and a master’s degree in applied mathematics. Lexie had a little bit of it—she remembered numbers after seeing them only once, which was handy in dispatch—but that’s where her math brain ended. Lexie still wasn’t sure what James did in his day job, but it was mostly theoretical and had something to do with the planetarium on the hill.
James was very smart. Right then, though, he did not look so. He sat on their mother’s red-velvet covered couch, a drink in his hands, his head pitched back, his mouth hanging slightly open. His eyes were unfocused.
“Oh, my gravy, what is that? Scotch?”
He gave a slow nod.
“How many have you had?”
“Just this one. And I’ve only had a few sips.”
“Oh, no.” Lexie’s heart sunk. “And you look like that already?”
“She’s bad today.”
“Want to make a run for it?”
“And risk having to hear about that for the rest of our natural lives?” James shook his head. “I can’t take it. I can’t. I’m definitely going to have another one of these, though. I can tell you that much.” Pointing to the bottle on the mirrored mahogany bar in the corner of the opulent room, he said, “Want one?”
“Are you kidding me? Yes. No, you stay there. I’ll get it.”
From the kitchen drifted a high voice. “Lexington, is that you?”
“Why?” Lexie paused in pouring the two fingers of Scotch. “How many times have I told her Lexie? One million times? Trillion?”
“Because it gets to you.” James’s eyes were closed. “That’s why. You were the first born and you bear the city of her birth. Lucky you.”
Lexie said, “I’m going to tell her that last eye lift she had made her look like Joan Rivers.”
Her brother snorted. “I’ll pay you a dollar.”
“Make it ten thousand and you’re on.”
“Lexington! Come in here and help me!”
Lexie had to give it to her mother—even if she didn’t want to—her mother knew her way around a kitchen like Lexie knew her keyboard at work. Mira Tindall was known for her four-course meals which she made all from scratch, naturally, during which never she broke so much as a sheen on her forehead. Her mother just had to look at a Beef Wellington for the meat to practically slice itself, perfectly trimmed pieces landing on every plate. If they were in a Disney movie, her mother would be the wicked stepmother who had a magical cooking charm.
“Daddy’s favorite tonight,” sang Mira in a disarmingly cheery voice. “Orange-roasted duck with a marmalade and soy sauce dressing, and a bok ch
oy salad with a gorgonzola dressing.”
Lexie didn’t remember this being her father’s favorite. In fact, she remembered he’d really liked mac and cheese, the kind from the blue box. He’d make it on nights her mother had taken to bed early with one of her headaches. If Lexie’s nose didn’t wake her up, her father would gently nudge her after he’d fixed her a plate. Those were her favorite times, growing up. Sitting at the kitchen table with her father—not the fire chief in those moments, he was just her dad—a man who had loved her, no matter what.
Unlike her mother.
“You look pretty tonight,” said Lexie.
Mira set down the porcelain gravy boat from which she’d been pouring a glaze over the duck and patted at the bottom of her well coiffed, softly curled hair. It had been red once, like Lexie’s, almost as fiery as one of the engines at the station. Now, though, it was a glossy deep auburn, an expensive shade she called “natural.”
“Why, thank you. Did you have to add the word ‘tonight,’ though?”
Naturally, Lexie had already stuck her foot in it. “Sorry. You always look pretty, Mama. You just look even prettier tonight. That color suits you.”
It did. Mira also knew style, and the dark plum of her well-cut dress made her petite figure look even smaller. Lexie wondered again what it must be like to have a tummy so flat and small that you never had to suck it in, ever.
Mira wiped her hands on a red cloth napkin that hung from a hook on the huge kitchen island. “Will you get me the dressing on the door of the fridge? The low-fat one.”
Ah. The Lexie dressing, careful reserved for her. It was all right—Lexie liked this flavor. She certainly wouldn’t complain about not getting the gorgonzola dressing. She knew how this game was played.
Her mother was to be tolerated. Never patronized—oh, no—but accepted. She needed to be listened to. It was simple, if Lexie managed to keep from exploding.
“Good. Carry that in to the dining salon, would you?”
“Can we eat in the kitchen?” Every week, Lexie asked this.
“No,” said her mother, just as she did every week.
The “salon” it was then.
“James!” Lexie yelled in her firehouse voice. “Dinner!”