Every Glance (Every Life #3)

by Tasha Ivey

  I glance over at Devyn to tell her she can come into the lab or sit in the waiting room—hoping she chooses the latter—when I notice the goose bumps covering her skin. “Come on back with us,” I tell her, deciding I would be a complete jerk if I didn’t do something to get her warm.

  We turn down the hallway, and I step just inside the door of my office to grab one of the lab coats hanging on the back of the door. “Here. Put this on, so you can warm up. It’s clean.”

  She smiles in silent appreciation and slips it around her shoulders before putting her arms into the sleeves. Noticing they’re way too long, I reach out and grab the excess bit of sleeve and roll each one up until her hands are visible again.

  “There. Perfect.” I turn, nearly running into Simon. “Oh! Simon, I had some scrubs for you, but I left them at home. I guess I was just too excited to get here.”

  He looks defeated, but shrugs. “That’s okay.”

  “No it isn’t. You need something, too.” I grab another coat from the back of the door. “Here.” I pull it around him and roll his sleeves up, too. “Now you look the part.”

  “Cool,” he says, even though it’s so long that he’s stepping on the bottom.

  We spend the first half hour in the lab, looking at books and talking about every bit of equipment and what everything does, while Devyn sits on a stool in the corner and stares into space. In the harsh fluorescent lighting, I can see the dark circles shadowing her eyes. The distance in them tells me that she and her husband must’ve another fight. Poor Simon.

  And, okay, I feel sorry for her, too.

  “Can we look at something under the microscope?” Simon asks. He’s peering over the edge of the counter and trying hard to keep from touching it.

  “Sure. There’s a box of sample slides in the cabinet. I think there’s even one with mosquito larvae.” I pull out the box and turn the microscope on while he drags over a stool to sit on.

  “Really? That’s gross. But cool.”

  I give him some gloves and show him how to carefully change the slides and magnification, and he immediately immerses himself in the task. I always loved playing with microscopes when I was a kid, and there’s nothing that wasn’t fair game to go in a slide. Lint, saliva, bug wings, mashed potatoes…I’ve seen it all.

  I glance over my shoulder at Devyn, and she hasn’t moved at all. She’s still staring blankly at nothing with a solemn expression clouding her face.

  When I touch her shoulder, she jumps and nearly falls off the stool, so I grab her elbow to steady her.

  “Are you okay?” I ask when her wide eyes meet mine.

  “Oh, uh, sure. I’m just tired.”

  “Are you warm now?” It’s really unfair how good she looks in my lab coat.

  “Much better. Thanks.”

  “Good. Are we boring you to death?”

  She sits up and furrows her brows. A dark strand of silky hair falls over one eye. “Do you enjoy playing twenty questions?”

  Her snarky response reminds me of the old Devyn. The one I hated to love.

  “As long as I’m the one asking the questions, then yes. But you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Kinda.” She smirks.

  “Mom, you should see these. They’re really cool!” Simon never even looks up from the microscope.

  I cock my head to the side and raise my eyebrows.

  “Okay,” she agrees and crosses the room to stand next to Simon.

  She looks at a few of his favorites, not quite as excited about it as he is, but I can tell he has her full attention.

  “Can we see something real now?” Simon puts the last slide in the box very carefully and closes the lid.

  I put it back into the cabinet. “Those things are real, buddy.”

  He shakes his head, tossing his curly hair around wildly. “No, I mean…uh…can we make a slide? With, like, bacteria or something?”

  I tap my chin and squint my eyes, thinking hard to come up with something he’d love. “Oh, I know. How about blood?”

  “Yeah!” he shouts, his face practically bursting with excitement. I didn’t know his blue eyes could possibly get any bigger until just now. But it doesn’t last long. “Wait. You don’t mean my blood, do you?”

  I shake my head. “If you don’t want to see yours, I’ll let you look at mine. Will that work?”

  “You’d stab yourself just to let me see your blood? That’s a little weird. And a little bit awesome.”

  I chuckle and head over to the sink to scrub my hands, noticing a bright smile on Devyn’s face. “What?” I ask, desperate to know what had suddenly changed her mood.

  “Nothing.” She shrugs. “Simon’s really excited, and that makes me happy. I’m guessing you don’t have kids?”

  “Nope.” I pull out a new slide and everything I’ll need to make a blood smear.

  “It’s not that it’s a bad thing either way. I just know that you’re older than Kyler, so I wasn’t sure if you were married or had kids before her.”

  She talks as if Kyler and I are serious or something. Now, I wonder what Kyler has been telling her. “No, I haven’t been married either. And I don’t plan on it for a very long time, if ever.”

  “Really? But how old are you?”

  I glance down at Simon, who is clearly uninterested in our conversation and completely wrapped up in watching everything I’m doing. “Twenty-seven.”

  I’m too busy swabbing my finger with alcohol and getting the lancet positioned to prick my finger to realize where this conversation is heading.

  “So you’re six years older than Kyler.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you’re my age.” Devyn says just as I’m stabbing the needle into my finger a little harder than I meant to.

  “Whoa. Did that hurt?” Simon asks, noticing my scowl.

  I shake my head. “Nah. I just don’t like poking myself that much.” Or the fact that I just told your mom that we’re the same age. It’s only a matter of time before she realizes who I am now. I guess it’s just as well. I’m going to tell her anyway.

  Simon looks on as I dab a tiny drop onto the slide and smear the sample using the spreader. I’m avoiding looking at Devyn at all costs. I’m too afraid that, if I do, I’ll see recognition written all over her face.

  “Why do you have to spread it out like that?” Simon isn’t picking up on my paranoia at all, thankfully.

  I think about how my dad explained that same thing to me. “Well, it’s kind of like having a messy room and needing to find something. If everything is thrown together in a big pile in the floor, you can’t find what you’re looking for. But if everything is put away, or spread out, you can see everything better. Understand?”

  He nods and watches me finish the slide prep and load it into the microscope. Turning it toward me, I scan around to find a good area with individual cells. When I’m satisfied, I scoot it back over in front of him. “Okay. It’s all yours.”

  Simon looks up at me and smiles before peering into the microscope. Without even thinking about it, I glance over him at Devyn, who is also smiling at me.

  “Thank you,” she mouths silently.

  “Your blood looks so weird. Does mine look like that, too?”

  “Yep. Sure does.” This kid. He kills me. “Do you see the red blood cells?”

  “Mmm-hmm. Look mom! You gotta see it!”

  “Okay, okay.” She leans over in front of him to look inside, and she’s close enough that I can smell her shampoo. The light floral scent is perfect on her. “It is pretty neat,” she tells Simon as she stands straight.

  “Thanks, Dalton,” Simon says, throwing both arms around my waist. His voice is almost a whisper. “Maybe I can come back sometime, and we can grow something in a Petri dish.”

  A kid after my own heart. “You bet. Just let me know when, okay?”

  “Can we go to your house now to get the scrubs?”

  Devyn gasps. “No, Simon. You don’t invite yourself
to someone’s house. That’s rude. Dalton said that he’d let you come here again, so you can get them then.”

  “Sorry.” Simon jumps down from the stool with his arms crossed and walks over to lean against the door frame.

  “Actually,” I begin, keeping my voice low, “I really don’t mind if you want to follow me home and get them. He seems pretty excited about it, and I feel bad that I forgot.”

  She looks over at Simon’s pouty face and caves. “Okay, but only for a minute.”

  “Hey, Simon, would you like to come over to my house to get those scrubs now? I’m inviting you.” I look over my shoulder and wink at Devyn.

  Wait, why did I wink at her? She’s my arch nemesis. My enemy. The evil villain who still torments my past memories. I can’t just wink at her.

  “Yessss!” he yells. Jumping in the air, he looks like a happy seven-year-old kid should, and I feel like doing a little happy dance myself. I’m so glad I asked him to come today.

  After I get everything cleaned up, I follow them out of the clinic and lock the door. The rain is gone again as quickly as it moved in, and the sun is beginning to peek through the haze in places. My dad always called it whiplash weather.

  “So…a Challenger, huh?”

  I whip my head around to Devyn, who is running a finger along the hood of my car. “Oh, yeah. It’s a ‘70 model, completely restored. My friend and I just finished it a few months ago.”

  Since Sawyer got back from Iraq, he’s been a little stingy with his car, so I finally decided to ditch my truck and get my own. I was driving down the road one day, coming back from Montgomery, and I spotted it under a tarp in a little carport attached to an old barn. I just had to see what it was, so I pulled in and talked to the old woman living there. The car had been her husband’s, and he passed away six years earlier.

  As soon as I pulled the dusty tarp back, I knew I had to have that car. And the old woman was a born haggler. She was more than willing to get rid of it because she knew her husband would want it to go to someone that would fix her up. But she also knew she’d make her husband proud by getting the most money she could for it.

  Her husband should’ve been really, really proud that day.

  I decided to keep my truck, just in case, but ever since Sawyer and I finished the restoration, I primarily drive the Challenger. I love the deep growl under the hood. No GPS, no satellite radio, no electric windows. Nothing but a 440 six-pack engine and American-made steel wrapped in slick black paint.

  And it doesn’t hurt that the ladies love it.

  “What can I say? I have a thing for American muscle.”

  “So do I,” Devyn mumbles softly. I have a feeling she wasn’t talking about cars either.

  “Mom! Can I ride with Dalton? I bet his car goes super fast!”

  “Not a chance.” She shakes her head so fast that I don’t know how she doesn’t get dizzy. “We’ll just follow him over in our car.”

  “Please, Mom?” Simon folds his hands as if in silent prayer.

  I know I shouldn’t, but we guys have to stick together. “Yeah, please, Mom?”

  Devyn rolls her eyes, but a smirk soon follows. “Fine.” She pauses to take a step toward me. There’s only several inches between us. “But I’ll be right behind you, and if you go a single mile over the speed limit, be prepared to have your ass handed to you by a girl.”

  “A dollar in the swear jar, Mom.” Simon yells from the passenger side.

  “Okay,” she calls out to him, turning back to me. “I already owe the jar at least fifty bucks today already. What’s one more?”

  I draw an invisible “x” over my heart. “I promise. You know…you can ride me, too.” I slap a hand over my mouth. “Shit. Sorry. I mean with me. Ride with me. I can drive you back to your car in a bit. Damn, I’m sorry.”

  I cannot believe I just said that. I don’t know how I have any blood in the rest of my body right now because I can feel it all in my face. I’m just waiting for her to slap the shit out of me.

  Devyn grins. And not a polite, I’m-just-tolerating-you kind of grin. It’s an honest to goodness, that-was-funny-as-hell kind of grin. “You must love the taste of your own feet because I swear you just stuck both of them in your mouth.” She giggles softly. “I knew what you meant. Don’t sweat it. And thanks, but no thanks. I’ll just follow.”

  “Okay. And I really am sorry.”

  “Apology accepted,” she says with a wink before walking over and getting in her car.

  She winked at me. Devyn Rion freaking winked at me. I swear to all that is holy that I’m living in some alternate reality. That didn’t really just happen. It couldn’t have.

  I get in the car, and after making sure Simon has his seatbelt buckled, I buckle my own and start the car. Simon kicks his feet and claps his hands with a Texas-sized smile on his face. Unlike a lot of kids, this one seems pretty easy to please. I can handle this.

  But as soon as we take off down the highway, he throws a wrench in how well I can handle this.

  After I look in the rearview mirror to make sure Devyn is keeping up—and I look again…and again—I notice he’s watching me carefully. His excitement is gone. He’s just fixed those big blues on me as if he’s trying to read my mind.

  “What’s up, buddy? Something wrong?” I look back at Devyn again. She’s singing along to something on the radio. I bet she can really sing.

  “You like my mom, don’t you?”

  I almost hit the brakes, and it takes all of my strength to appear completely unfazed by the question. “Of course, I like your mom. She’s a nice person.”

  “That isn’t what I mean.” He begins plucking at the lint on his shirt. “You like my mom like you like Aunt Kyler. You know…like you want to be her boyfriend.”

  I can’t decide if he’s mad about it or just making an observation, but I have to let him know that Devyn and I won’t ever happen. “I’m only friends with Kyler, and I’m only friends with your mom. I’m don’t want to be anybody’s boyfriend right now.” And that’s mostly the truth.

  “Why not?” He continues plucking at the lint as if it’s burning holes in his shirt. “My mom is nice, and she even makes pretty good chocolate cake.”

  The kid is trying to set me up with his mom? “She is nice, and I love some good chocolate cake, but your mom is married to your dad, buddy. They’re just trying to work things out and do what’s best for all of you. You’ll see. It’ll all be okay.”

  “Mom and Dad were divorced a year ago, and Dad is getting married in January to Blair, his secretary. She doesn’t like me like you do.”

  Oh, hell. Devyn only said they were separated…she didn’t say it was a permanent separation. “She just doesn’t know you yet, Simon. I guarantee if she did then she’d think you’re as awesome as I know you are.”

  “No, Dalton,” Simon growls. “She told me that she doesn’t like me. I have to go over there all the time, so she knows me. And my dad only wants me at his house to make my mom mad. I heard him tell Blair that. I think he likes to make my mom cry. She’s sad every day that she comes home from work.”

  “Why is she sad when she comes home from work?”

  “Dad is her boss. And he makes her work late all the time, so I have to stay at his house and she doesn’t get to see me as much.”

  Damn, it’s worse than I thought. He hardly knows me, and he’s spilling his guts to me, begging for help. How do I make him feel better when his whole world is upside down? My parents were pretty screwed up in the parenting department, but they never split. And they certainly never used me as a bargaining chip or a tool to make the other jealous. His dad is more than enough tool for this equation.

  I can only tell him what I can do about the situation because I have no idea what’s going to happen in his life. “Simon, no matter what happens, I’m always here for you, okay? As much as I hate it for you, I don’t have any control over what happens with your parents. But I’ll always be your friend.”


  He nods only once and stares out the passenger window.

  And I know now that I have to do something.

  I just wish I knew what.

  BY THE TIME we make it to my house, Simon isn’t quite as tense, but he’s still quiet. That is, until he notices that my house, and a few others, borders a small lake.

  “You have a lake in your backyard?” His mouth is gaping open, revealing a couple of those missing teeth.

  “Haha, well, it’s not quite in the backyard, but it’s close. Do you like to fish?”

  “I don’t know,” he answers with a jerk of his shoulders. “Never been.”

  “Well, in that case, I’ll take you sometime. I didn’t get to go for the first time until I was about seventeen when my friend took me. It can be a lot of fun if you’re patient.”

  He squints his eyes and cuts them at me. “If it requires patience, count me out. That has ‘boring’ written all over it.”

  I can hardly get out of the car because I’m laughing so hard. This kid cracks me up. Probably because we have the same sense of humor. Either he has the humor of an adult or I have one of a child, but either way, the kid makes me laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Devyn asks, her feet crunching in the gravel behind me until she reaches the garage.

  “Dalton wants to take me fishing, and said the ‘p’ word. Not happening.”

  I press a hand to my sore stomach muscles. “Patience is a hard limit for him, eh?”

  “Oh, if you only knew.” She looks up at the house. “Nice place. It’s quiet out here.”

  I look out at the wooded area across from my lot. There aren’t too many houses in this neighborhood yet, but I know of three being built right down the road. It won’t be quiet for too much longer. “Thanks. I like it. It’s actually the oldest house in this area. It took some work to get things a little more updated, and I eventually added on this garage, but I kept it pretty simple. The original owners had all of the land around here, but they passed, and their kids sold it off in little pieces. I bought this place and the vacant lots on each side of me and across the road, just to have a little more privacy and space.”