“Hell, yes.”
“Daddy, we don’t say ‘hell’.”
He looked back over his shoulder at this sweet little angel, who, just weeks ago, had been a hell-demon. “I’m sorry, honey, you’re right.”
Kelsey grinned at him again, she looked cool and collected in jeans and a white tee-shirt. She was ready for the first day of school, no doubt. He simply gathered up Andie and her backpack, which was on wheels. What was with the wheels? How many books was she going to have?
They started walking the three blocks to school. And, of course, after the first block Andie didn’t want to carry the Tinkerbell backpack, and when she dragged it she did a really bad job. He wouldn’t have known it was possible to do a bad job dragging a wheeled bag, but she sure did. Eventually he gave up and slung it over his shoulder. It bothered him until he saw a dad full-on wearing a pony backpack, then a second carrying a Barbie lunchbox.
When they reached the gates of the school, Kelsey, Allie and Daniel dropped them off at Andie’s kindergarten class before traipsing off to find first grade. Only Allie seemed in tune with his trauma, but she had a huge hug for Andie, and only a simple wave for him.
Andie found her room number, and waited patiently while he hung out and met the teacher, a nice older woman who immediately set him at ease. The next classroom over was run by a sweet, young beauty, who looked to him like she’d be cake before ten a.m. She was already having difficulty fending off one near-leering dad. How was she going to handle the twenty kindergarteners who were filing into her room?
But then Andie’s class was starting and he had to pay attention. He was sitting on a square of carpet and feeling like a kindergartener himself. The teacher lectured them on the importance of promptness and having homework handed in on time. Homework? In kindergarten? He filed that away under ‘ask Kelsey’. After a quick tour, the parents were all promptly dismissed.
A few parents had introduced themselves and their kids, but he’d been so focused he didn’t think he’d retained any names. JD walked home alone, the streets were empty of all but a few random people.
The three blocks disappeared in no time, now that he didn’t have small children cutting the pace. He worried about Andie in her kindergarten class. Then he worried that he worried about her when she had seemed just peachy.
The house seemed quieter when he let himself back in. Even though twice a week she had gone to stay with Kelsey, today it just seemed emptier. Still, he parked himself at the computer and went to work. He sold one stock for a nice profit, not quite as good as the last one, but enough to keep them afloat. He decided to park some of it in savings, just in case.
At noon he headed back out the door to pick Andie up, his nerves cranking up, wondering how she’d fared her first day. As he turned the corner on to the main street, Kelsey swung by in her van. She honked and he nearly jumped out of his skin. The passenger window peeled down and she leaned over. “Will you wait for me? I’ll be just a minute.”
With a nod, he turned and followed to her house. He jogged to get to the garage before her, lifting the door so she could park. He made a mental note that an automatic garage door opener would be a good Christmas gift. Then he reached in to help with the bags.
He didn’t speak until she said she was ready to go, only they’d piled all the groceries on the kitchen table and not put anything in the fridge. When he pointed that out, she just laughed. “First day of school getting to you?”
“What?”
“Look in the bags, silly.”
He hadn’t been called ‘silly’ in ages. He saw computer memory and cables in one bag. Another bag held plastic encased lenses and camera equipment.
He started picking out pieces and examining them. She had reams of heavy-weight, high gloss photo paper, as well as what looked like hand pressed stock. There was a brown jug of chemical and an accompanying wide, soft-bristled brush. There were lenses and cases, and . . .
She laughed at him again. “Come on, we don’t want to be late. It’s the first day of school.”
Kelsey grabbed his hand and pulled him out the front door.
His hand was still in hers half a block later when his working jaw finally produced some sound. “You did it.”
“Yeah, to the tune of about a thousand dollars.”
“Really?”
She nodded, a little grimly. ‘Yeah, I’d better be good at this.”
“Oh my god.” He felt like a slacker. The guys hadn’t even moved into the garage yet. He tried to stay focused on Kelsey and her project. “Have you done anything that I’ve seen?”
She nodded, “All the pictures of the kids in the house. Except the ones I’m in, and I even did a few of those.”
He blinked. He had thought the photos were done by a pro. He’d thought maybe Andrew had had a talent for it. He squeezed her hand. “You’re going to do just fine.”
“Thank you.” She tugged, urging him to go a little faster. “We want to be waiting at the gate when they come out.”
Three minutes later they were at the gate, and two minutes after that kids started pouring out the front door. The kindergarten and first grade came out a side door for the little kids.
JD let out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
Andie didn’t look any the worse for wear. Not even a little confused at the sea of five-year-olds swarming around her. Daniel found Andie before she spotted them, and brought her over. Neither child said ‘hello’ or how their day was. They simply asked if they could have pizza. Apparently there was an after school sale, at a buck per slice, the whole first week.
He almost swore right there at the entrance to the kindergarten, with both Andie’s stern older teacher, and the younger, somehow still fresh-as-a-flower teacher looking at him. He bit his tongue. He had no cash on him.
Kelsey smile and produced a five she’d tucked in her back pocket. “The first week there’s always pizza.”
As though that just explained everything.
TJ plugged in another extension cord, and JD prayed it would be the last. They’d used Kelsey’s garage to power themselves at her birthday, but they hadn’t done a full set-up. He prayed they wouldn’t blow a fuse and shut down her whole house.
The kids were off at school and daycare. Craig had gotten his Starbucks shifts moved, and they were starting their first practice in permanent digs since he and TJ had ditched the old studio where they’d lived.
Craig plugged in, strummed a cord, and tuned up. “So, JD, tell me, how’d you swing this? You fucking her?”
“No!” God, he was so tired of getting asked that.
“Don’t bite my head off.” Craig actually looked offended. “I just wanted to know if our digs are tied to your dick.”
TJ laughed, and jumped in, keeping him from replying with the exasperation that was building. “No, and he won’t either. You don’t screw the babysitter. He’s been good, he’s keeping it in his pants.”
JD shook his head. “She’s also my next door neighbor, I am not touching that with a ten-foot pole.”
Alex actually snickered from behind his drum set.
Of course, TJ jumped on that. “She’s not my babysitter. Can I touch her with my ten-foot pole?”
“Can we all please keep our hands and other body parts off the hot neighbor?”
There was a chorus of ‘damn’s as JD glared at all of them. “She gave up her garage for us. She also talked me out of taking the corporate job I was offered and into sticking this out with you dipshits. So maybe you should just show a little respect . . .”
The voices all came on top of each other, “You were going to quit?” from TJ.
“She did save our butts.” from Alex.
“Did he just ask us to ‘show some respect’?” from Craig.
Oh yeah, he’d turned down money and stability for this. He hit a hard chord, “Just play.”
Chapter 14
Kelsey felt she had settled into the rhythm of work after the fir
st week of having the kids in school. What she wasn’t prepared for was the itch. She’d never felt it before, this desire to just quit. It was harder to start loans in motion and harder to do the necessary follow-up.
She wanted to be outside with her camera. She’d spent tons of money and she was getting a handle on how to use the equipment. In addition to shopping, she’d emptied the linen closet the first day of school. The second day she’d ripped out the shelving, while Allie rotted her brain on TV all day. Her daughter had seen almost the entire collection of Baby Einstein. She was going to be brilliant but with severe emotional problems.
Kelsey caved and sent her to daycare the next day. It was way better than being at home with a mother who was busy installing a counter into the old linen closet, and still wondering where to put the linens that had been in it.
She liked that the band practicing created a soundtrack to her day during school hours. She couldn’t quite hear the words but there were tunes and voices coming from the garage all the time. She remembered how much she had liked them when they played for her, but, until they’d started up in her garage, she’d forgotten just why.
Thursday she forced herself to work only on her loans. And she worked her ass off, knowing that if she didn’t her boss was going to call and wonder why she wasn’t getting anything done, and that there wouldn’t be any food on the table come October.
Friday she went out in the yard with her camera, and photographed ants until she convinced herself it was all right to go into her own garage and listen to the band in there. Sneaking in the side door, she tried not to disturb any of them. It was no use, they all noticed right away, but none of them missed a beat.
Feeling awkward, she waited until the song ended then motioned to the camera in her hand. “Can I practice on you guys?”
They looked at her with something akin to revulsion in their eyes. For a moment she wondered what the hell she’d done wrong.
It was Craig who spoke up, “We’re supposed to be practicing.” He leaned away from the camera as though it might bite.
It dawned. They thought she wanted them to model for her. “No! Keep practicing. I’ll just take photos while you do, if that’s okay?” She held her hands up, “feel free to say ‘no’, it’s all right if you do.”
Alex looked at each of the others. “While we practice? Sure, why not?” That was all the thought he paid to it and started playing again. Kelsey grabbed her camera, clicking off shots.
The camera was new to her, and she’d been getting a grasp on what it could and couldn’t do. It was high time to try it on some actual people.
She caught sweat in midair, flying from Alex. She caught his sticks in a single frame, when they’d been a blur to her eyes. Craig using his whole body to hit a final chord. Later JD and TJ sharing a mic.
She groaned when she used up the photo card. The damn thing held three hundred photos. So she had three hundred to sort through on her computer. She could spend hours just wading through them. She might never come out of the office.
But that was what this whole photographer thing was about, not just messing around like when she’d toyed with the idea. So she thanked the guys and fixed herself a ham and cheese sandwich and loaded the photos into her new huge memory bank.
She chewed as she waited for the pictures to start appearing. Then she stopped chewing. It took a good twenty minutes to pick and choose from nearly identical takes, just keeping the best ones.
The ham sandwich sat, forgotten, while she skimmed through what she had taken. This camera really beat the old one all to hell. She’d wiped out nearly half her savings on this stuff, and today she felt it was really worth it.
She was feeding page after page of high gloss stock into her printer. Five by sevens weren’t big enough, she was making eight by tens. She’d turned out at least five of each of the guys and another fifteen of two or more of them together.
Kelsey hit the print button again, as her stomach growled. The ham sandwich still sat to the side of the computer, which was really a bad thing. She was going to ban herself from having any food near her equipment, just as soon as she finished this sandwich. Her eyes wandered to the clock that lived in the lower corner of her computer screen.
2:37
Holy shit! No wonder she was hungry. She sat down somewhere around noon, if she remembered right. Pulling the last print off the tray, she gathered what she had done and headed out to the garage.
Only as she pulled open the door did she stop to question her decision. Until they all turned to look at her, she hadn’t considered the possibility that they might not want her bothering them again.
“I- uh, I- . . . I’m sorry.” She stammered. Kelsey couldn’t remember the last time she’d stammered. “I didn’t mean to bother you again. I just wanted to thank you for letting me take pictures earlier.”
They all nodded at her. JD at least produced a smile.
“I’ll just leave these.” She motioned to the stack of photos in her hand. But there wasn’t a flat surface anywhere that wasn’t covered. There were notepads, cords wound up and tied, sheet music, cases, and things she couldn’t identify.
Alex stood up to take the pages from her. “Thank you.” He gave a polite smile and started to set them on top of another pile. “Shit. Guys, come here.”
She started to back out the door, wondering what he’d seen, and sorry that she’d clearly interrupted. A hand grabbed the side of her shirt, then let go to take hold of her hand and pull her back in. TJ had a firm grip on her and wasn’t going to let go.
“I’m sorry I interrupted.”
He shook his head. “We were about done anyway.”
Craig’s voice broke over the murmurs from the corner. “Damn, these are great.”
“I told you she was good.”
Kelsey perked at the note of pride she heard in JD’s voice, but it was TJ’s eyes searching her own for something. She just wasn’t sure what.
JD’s voice came through clear on the phone. “I was going to get Bethany, but Andie asked me to call you first. She hasn’t been there in a while.”
A while was five days. Then again, she’d been here so much this summer that Andie probably did feel the loss. Kelsey knew she did, and so did her kids. They’d asked after Andie on more than one occasion, but Kelsey had put them off, thinking JD and his daughter needed time to be together. And she needed the time to shake her growing attraction to JD.
“Of course I can take her.”
“Thank you.” There was an audible sigh of relief. “I was afraid you would already have plans.”
She almost barked out a laugh. Plans? Plans required a life, friends. “No, I didn’t have plans that night.”
As though she might have had some on another night.
“I may be late.”
“That’s okay.” Late would be fine.
“Listen,” His voice turned low, like he was saying something confidential. Or maybe that was just her mind at work. “The guys really liked the shots you took of us the other day.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re really good.”
She smiled and couldn’t help herself even though she knew he couldn’t see it. She would have just told him to come over, but her kids were already in bed, and probably Andie was, too.
“TJ’s threatening to have the one of the two of us singing blown up and framed and sent to my mother.”
“Oh, I can do that.” She could easily get it enlarged. She’d registered at a print shop as a pro, and would get the resale price. “I’ll get it framed—”
“No! It’s a joke. I’m- I-” That was it. He let the conversation flounder.
“What? I thought that one was pretty good. It—”
“It’s not the shot, Kelse. My mother thinks I’m a moron for giving up a good life to come out here and . . .”
“Chase your dream?”
He laughed. Even though it was low, she heard it through the line. “Something like that.”
“She doesn’t really, does she? She realizes how good you guys are, right?” Surely he was exaggerating.
“My mother has every faith in us. She’s quite convinced that we’ll never be able to support ourselves. I’m being a foolish child by doing this.” His voice was just shy of flat. The only thing she could distinguish in it was a touch of wistfulness.
“That can’t be right.”
“Get over it, Kelse.” He tightened his voice. “My mother got me my first guitar and insisted on getting me lessons. She says now that she regrets that with all her heart.”
Kelsey felt her chest squeeze as she realized he was serious. “How?”
“And to make matters worse, I got TJ involved. There wasn’t much I could do that would have hurt her more. I stole her baby.”
“Jesus, JD.” That was the worst thing she thought she’d ever heard.
“The last thing she wants is a portrait reminding her of what she considers the worst mistake ever. And speaking of the worst mistake ever, there’s something else I’ve been meaning to ask your help about.”
“Okay?”
Only after a moment did she hear him sigh. “I can’t tell you now, but sometime. Maybe on the walk home from school tomorrow.”
“All right, then. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
He said good-night, then hung up, and for a moment she simply sat with the phone clutched tightly.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a phone call like that. It had felt . . . intimate.
Kelsey sighed. If nothing else, JD opened her eyes. She’d been living a very solitary existence.
Now she had a real friend. One who called her at night and asked favors of her. No one did that, not before now. Her mother and Andrew had simply fallen apart, maybe because they knew she’d pick up the pieces for them. Kelsey had friends in college, but never let herself get close. Maybe because she always felt like any moment she could get called back.
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