by MC Lee
She slapped Noah’s outstretched palm and then stood back, her head swiveling until her eyes focused squarely on me.
“You’re Emmett Callaghan,” she said brightly. “All the girls talk about you.”
I shuddered inwardly, not wanting to ask, but knowing it was expected. “Yeah? What do they say?”
“Mostly they say you’re the cutest boy in school.”
I could feel a blush steal up my neck. Noah turned his smothered laugh into an unconvincing cough.
She cocked her head. “They also say you used to be something special. But after your brother was killed you got really weird and now everybody thinks you’re––”
“Hannah!” Noah barked.
She jumped and looked back at her brother in alarm. “That’s what everybody says,” she protested.
“You know better than to repeat gossip—”
“It’s all right,” I said, suddenly finding my voice. “It’s mostly true.”
“See,” Hannah said. She started to walk past, but then she stopped and looked back at me. “You’re definitely cute. I can see why everybody drools over you. And I bet you’re still special,” she continued thoughtfully. “I don’t think that changes, no matter how bad things get.”
Speechless. A freshman had dissected the last nine months of my life in a single offhand sentence and left me speechless. Not that I’d been winning any debating contests before she came along, but now there was truly nothing in my head.
Noah looked pained. “I’m sorry,” he said. “She never learned the concept of self-censoring. She says every goddamned thing that comes into her head.”
“That’s okay,” I mumbled, mostly to stop him feeling bad.
“I’d pretend it’s just a phase, but she’s always been like that.”
I shrugged. “The truth hurts.”
Because it was the truth, and it hurt like hell.
Luckily we were drawing a still life of fruit and flowers in art class, so I could let my hands do their own thing while I tried to get my roiling emotions under control. Hannah wasn’t exactly right. I’d never considered myself special in any way. But I’d once at least been normal. South side Whitmore normal. With an older brother who was my living hero long before he became the town’s dead one, a mother to come home to, and a father who struggled to control his temper, even though nine times out of ten he failed. I’d have given everything I owned to get back to that place.
I took advantage of art class to sneak looks at Noah. More often than not he was frowning at his easel, the end of his paintbrush clamped between his teeth. I noticed a tiny scar underneath his left ear, and all of a sudden an image jumped into my head of the tip of my tongue tracing the ridge. My face warmed as the picture transformed into something a whole lot more intimate. I was just wrestling my unruly thoughts into line when I glanced up and realized Noah was watching me.
“Come show me what I’m doing wrong,” he said.
It was a spectacularly bad idea, but my legs were on autopilot, and I suddenly found myself standing beside him. His painting was… terrible. Everything was out of proportion, his lines lacked fluidity, and there was no sense that any of the items on the page related to each other.
“It’s shit, I know. But why?”
I tried to suppress a shiver when his warm breath brushed my cheek. He was standing so close, I could feel the heat from his body, and the smell of his expensive aftershave tickled my nose and left me pleasantly light-headed. My palms tingled with the urge to reach out and touch him.
“Perspective isn’t great,” I muttered.
“How do I fix it?”
I took the paintbrush out of his hand without turning around. “Try this.” I held the brush out and closed one eye, measuring the apple that was at the front of the composition, then marking it with my thumb.
“I always thought that was just what they did in movies,” Noah said.
I transferred the measurement onto his page and sketched a couple of lines until the apple took shape.
“Here. You try.”
Noah’s fingers slid against mine when he took the brush back. He copied my movement, squinted at the still life, and then carefully drew a stilted line on the page.
“You might want to loosen up a little,” I suggested. “Just let the line flow.”
“How?” he asked.
Though every molecule inside me screamed that it was stupid, I stepped up behind Noah and then reached around and covered his hand with my own.
“Like this,” I murmured.
Our joined hands dipped the brush into the paint. As one, we flexed our wrists and transferred the paint onto the sheet of paper in one fluid motion.
“Yeah,” Noah sighed.
It was hard to say if I just imagined the way his body pressed back lightly against mine, his firm ass a whisper away from my dick. A bolt of desire shot through me, and my fingers tightened around his, making the paintbrush skitter across the page under the added pressure.
“Fuck!” I dropped his hand and stepped back.
He turned his head, and his face seemed as flushed as mine. He opened his mouth to speak, but I retreated back to my easel, mumbling something unintelligible, and for the rest of the class, I kept my eyes fixed firmly on my own work.
When the bell rang for the end of the lesson, I tried to blow past Noah, but he snagged my sleeve and stopped me.
“Any better?” He nodded toward the easel. It was still mostly a mess, but he’d clearly tried.
“Better,” I croaked.
“Thanks to you.”
I didn’t give him a chance to say anything else. I just beat it the hell out of there as fast as my shaky legs would carry me.
Because the last thing I needed in my already messed-up life was to read the signals wrong and throw myself at a rich straight boy.
Chapter Five
WHEN I got home later that day, one of Dad’s friends had dropped by to sit with him awhile. I put up with them because Dad seemed to like them being here; even when he was in his more spaced-out place, something deep inside recognized who these men were and what they had once meant to him. It was as if he rallied when they were around, and he was more his old self with them. I’d read about dementia on the computer in the school’s library, so I knew that wasn’t the way it worked, but I couldn’t deny that Dad was a lot more mellow when they came by.
They were all men who’d been cut from the same bolt of cloth. They came up together in Whitmore, even poorer than we were today. Tough, unshakable, and with a code of ethics as strict as it was unfathomable, these guys all thought it was perfectly acceptable for me to give up my plans, my ambitions, my whole goddamned life to take care of my father. They acted like it was his due, like anything I might have wanted didn’t even warrant a mention. They’d been the same when Jamie had been killed out in Iraq, stoically accepting, as if dying thousands of miles away on foreign soil for some obscure reason none of us understood was just the way things were.
I pretty much hated them all, and didn’t like them being here. But I sucked it up for Dad’s sake, and because every time one of them came they pressed fifty bucks into my unresisting hand on the way out. I had a lot of misplaced pride, but taking a free handout from these men wasn’t part of it. And, I grudgingly admitted, they came like clockwork, clearly on a roster they’d worked out in some Irish bar within days of Mom walking out the door. They had never missed a monthly visit. I could at least give them credit for that.
Frank Taylor was one of the more tolerable of them. He and Dad were tossing back a beer when I walked in, and a quick glance at Dad told me he was mostly with it.
“Frank.” I nodded a greeting, and he raised his bottle in salute.
“How are you doing, Emmett?” He was the only one of them who ever asked.
“Fine, Frank. You?”
“Grand,” Frank replied. “I was just talking to your dad about your football team.”
“Jamie’s playing well,
don’t you think?” Dad said.
“Emmett,” Frank reminded. “It’s Emmett’s turn now.”
“He’ll never be half the player Jamie is,” Dad sneered.
It was clearly a day for ugly truths.
I left the two of them to their meander down memory lane and walked into the kitchen. The cash that had been tucked into the envelope I’d received on Thursday was safely stashed in my wallet, so there was money for groceries. I did a quick scan of the cupboards and made a list, and then I walked back into the living room to find the TV blaring and Frank opening another beer.
“Can you stay for another thirty minutes, Frank? I need to pick up some things from the store.”
My father’s head came around sharply, and for a horrible moment I wondered if he remembered Mom’s line before she disappeared. But after a brief frown, he turned his attention back to the TV.
“No trouble,” Frank said, waving an airy hand. “Take your time.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out some bills, already folded and clamped together with a paper clip.
“Here, son. Take this.”
“Thanks, Frank. Appreciate it.”
I was long past the pretense of putting up even a token amount of resistance. Fifty bucks a month and a two-hour visit was the least these men could do for one of their own, for a man who had grown up alongside them, fought for them, cried at their children’s weddings, stood in respectful silence beside their parents’ graves.
I walked out of the house, feeling a strange lightness. Dad was in totally safe hands, and I had a whole thirty minutes to myself, forty if I wanted to push it. Sure I had to pick up groceries, but it still gave me time to myself without the weight of my father on my back.
I started walking to the corner store, only to find myself surrounded by five of the neighborhood kids, who’d been tossing a football between them.
“Stay and play with us, Emmett,” one of them shouted.
“No way. I’ve got things to do.”
“Aw, come on, man. Show us what you’ve got. Or are you too chickenshit?”
Tommy Douglas was the smallest of the gang, though not the youngest. His old man had been laid off from the plant at the same time as mine and, like Dad, had eked out a living doing odd jobs and small contracts for minimum wage ever since. Though small and skinny as a broom handle, he was definitely the leader of the younger kids in this hood. When he shouted “Heads up” I knew the football they had been tossing was screaming toward my head, as targeted as a heat-seeking missile.
I twisted around in time to pluck the football out of the air, and then I had no option but to finish out the play. I spent a few minutes kicking around with them, soaking up their admiration just like the good old days. I was reluctant to call time, but I was on a tight schedule and I needed to move it.
I tossed the ball back to Tommy, and he tucked it under his arm.
“So where are you going in such a hurry?” he asked.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I was going to Henley’s.”
I turned and started walking down the street, hiding a smile when five junior thugs fell in beside me.
“When are you going back to the team, Easy?” Tommy asked.
“When I’m good and ready.”
“That Williams kid can’t play for shit. We need you back, man.”
I needed a distraction, fast. Luckily we’d reached Henley’s, the corner store that doubled as an ice-cream parlor. I stopped at the take-out window, and all the kids who’d been following me like ducklings stopped too.
I glanced down at their eager upturned faces. “Anybody interested?”
“You buying?” Tommy asked.
“I guess I owe you for the practice. Only a single scoop, though. I’m not made of money.”
Tommy grinned, and a few minutes later, he and his friends waved as they walked off, their faces buried in their cones.
“Chocolate for you, Emmett?”
I smiled at Laurie Carmichael, who worked shifts here and at Food Basics, and who was a year behind me at Whitmore High. It no longer embarrassed either of us that she had a crush on me, one she’d never tried to hide, even after she knew which team I batted for.
“I’ll take a Coke too, Laurie.” It wasn’t often I had money to waste on junk food, but I was feeling flush today with Frank’s cash in my pocket.
When I’d paid for the treats, I wandered into the park across the street and sat down on a bench. I hadn’t really been aware of how warm the days had become until I realized with surprise that we were already halfway through May and that we only had a couple of weeks left before school was out.
I had decided to try to get a part-time job for the summer in the hopes of saving a little—just in case. I didn’t want to get too comfortable relying on the weekly handouts, not knowing how long they would keep coming. I could still remember the day the first one arrived, like a gift from God when we’d needed it most. There had been no return address on the envelope, and the handwritten note inside had simply read I love you. But I knew who had sent it.
It wasn’t much, but after that first time, Mom sent the same amount every Thursday, always with a note—I love you or Thinking of you—and never anything to tell me where she was or how she was or why, why, why! Anybody with a backbone would have tossed the envelopes aside, but I couldn’t afford a backbone any more than I could afford pride. I told myself she was trying to salve her conscience or minimize her guilt, offering something she thought was a suitable substitute for not being here. Besides, I figured the money wasn’t actually coming from her.
The Army had compensated for Jamie’s death with a lump-sum payment, some soulless paper-pusher having calculated to the last cent what a stolen life was worth. Barely any of the money had been spent on his funeral—the town’s patriotic senses had been stirred enough that most of the merchants of death had donated their time and services for free. My parents had used some of the blood money to pay off the mortgage on the house, and the rest had disappeared with my mother. I figured she was only sending us our fair share. Or at least, that’s what I told myself to help swallow my resentment.
However I looked at it, I knew that without Mom’s handout, Dad and I would have gone down without a fight a long time ago.
“Emmett?”
I had just polished off the Coke and was halfway through my cone when I heard a voice over my shoulder. I turned to find Noah standing behind me, looking down quizzically.
“What are you doing here?”
I realized as soon as the words were out of my mouth that I’d made them sound like an accusation, but he was the last person I expected to see walking these streets.
He smiled. “I just dropped Neil Hamilton off at his place and thought I’d take a walk. Check out this neighborhood.”
“Shit! You didn’t leave your car anywhere isolated did you?”
Noah waved a hand vaguely. “It’s parked outside Neil’s place. Why?”
Jesus! He couldn’t be that innocent, surely.
“You have to be careful. It’s not always the safest neighborhood,” I said. “It should be okay outside Hamilton’s place, though.”
Noah jerked his chin toward the bench. “You mind?”
I shrugged nonchalantly, though I was secretly thrilled when he sat down beside me.
“You live around here somewhere, don’t you?” Noah asked.
“Few blocks over,” I replied.
Noah looked around, taking in the hooker on the street corner, the two winos sharing a bottle beside the park entrance, the vagrant sleeping on a bench.
“It’s an interesting place,” he said.
I snorted, but I didn’t bother to argue. He was so clearly a tourist just passing through, it wasn’t worth the effort.
“You’re dripping,” Noah said.
I stared at him blankly, until a cold trickle of ice cream slid over the back of my hand. I hastily licked the cone into shape, trying to ign
ore the way my stomach flipped at his amused smile.
“I’m sorry about my sister,” he said. “She wasn’t being mean. She just doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut.”
“It’s okay.” I was still smarting over her words, but only because they were so true. I had been practically absent from my own life for months now, and right at this moment, it was impossible to think I’d ever get back to being normal.
“So, why did you give up football?”
I shrugged. “I had too much going on. Couldn’t spare the time.”
Noah sent a sidelong look. “What else are you interested in? I didn’t see your name at any of the clubs or teams.”
I didn’t know whether to feel pissed that he was being so nosy or pleased that he was interested enough to have checked me out so thoroughly.
“It’s not school stuff,” I said.
“Is it anything I might like?”
It was my turn to send a look his way. I hadn’t meant it to be confrontational, but Noah threw up a hasty hand. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come off so pushy.”
I didn’t want to get into it with him, so I didn’t say anything else. I wasn’t about to spill my guts in front of a stranger. Even one as likeable as Noah Davis. I expected him to cover the strained silence with some inane babble, but he waited patiently for me to speak, so I cut him some slack.
“It’s hard being the new kid. I get that.”
He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and my stomach did that crazy flip all over again. “I’m used to it, actually. My dad gets posted to a lot of different places. If the job looks like it’s going to last more than a few months, the whole family tags along. This is my second new school this year.”
I was weirdly pleased to think he’d be sticking around for a while, although I wasn’t idiot enough to say it. Instead I just shrugged. “A guy like you won’t have any trouble making friends here.”
Noah raised an eyebrow. “A guy like me?”
“Rich, smart, good-looking, trying out for the football team. You’ve got it made.” I wondered if he would detect the undercurrent of resentment. I usually tried to keep it under wraps, but it slipped out now and then.