I shouldn’t be feeling triumphant at having learned his name like some kind of stalker, but a part of me is elated by the fact that I can stop internally calling him Mr. Hotty and a whole host of other names that just don’t suit him at all.
“Look, I know we’re strangers, so you’re probably not supposed to talk to us, but do you think maybe we could cut through your house to get to ours across the street? There’s a rabid raccoon out here.”
Her large eyes widen a little, and she leans to the right to look past my shoulder into her backyard. She must see it because without a word she opens the screen door and ushers us inside like we’re seeking refuge from a zombie apocalypse.
The inside of Nate’s house smells like apples and cinnamon, a much more upbeat scent than I imagined the few times I pictured myself walking across the street and introducing myself. I thought maybe laundry detergent, but this welcoming aroma has potential, and I suddenly wish I had apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Maybe him feeding it to me across a candlelit table while singing love songs…
“Come on,” the girl says, and for the first time since we stepped up onto the porch I notice my little brother’s in some kind of daze. He drifts past me, gliding behind her like a ghost drawn by the sound of her mystical voice.
Part of me wants to reach out and slap him across the back of the head and snap him out of it, but the other half of me—the one that knows I’d be acting the same way if Nate were the one leading us through the shadowed curves and angles of his house—doesn’t want to embarrass him.
Especially not in front of a girl.
I’ll save my ridicule for later, when we’re safe at home and recounting our adventure over the subs growing soggier by the second in the paper bag tucked into my arm.
There are photographs lining the walls and I find myself drawn to them, tucking away little tidbits for later contemplation. Nate playing soccer, Nate in a baseball uniform, Nate and his sister, a collage of school pictures from kindergarten through senior year, growing from ridiculously adorable on through to deliciously recognizable as the guy I’ve sort of been spying on every night from my bedroom window. There’s something confident about those pictures, an air of arrogance in his smile that intrigues me, and then the little girl is talking to us, snapping my attention back to the matter at hand.
“You guys just moved into the witch house, didn’t you?”
“Witch house?” Art swallows.
“Yeah, but we haven’t seen any witches,” I shrug. “No ghosts, either, and we’ve been looking.”
“I think there’s a cat ghost in my bathroom,” Art tells her.
Smooth, Art. Super smooth.
“I saw a ghost in the upstairs window once when I was six,” she tells us. “It was a little boy, and he looked really happy to see me, but then he disappeared and I never saw him again.”
“Are you sure it was a ghost?” Art sounds skeptical.
“Pretty sure. No one’s ever lived there and I’ve been here my whole life.”
“Well, if I run into him, I’ll tell him you said hey. Ask him why he disappeared.”
My brother jams an elbow into my stomach so hard I almost drop the bag in my arm.
We pass through a sitting room and I was right about Judge Judy. There she is on the flat screen TV, her mouth all pinched up in a scowl and her eyes beady as she levels them at the plaintiff before promising to throw her out for contempt of court if she doesn’t keep her trap shut.
It isn’t until we’re standing by the front door that she says, “I’m Delilah Thorne.”
“Arthur,” he tells her, “Arthur Wick and this is my sister, Tali.”
“Pleased to meet you, neighbor.”
She grins, but not at me. No, it seems she only has eyes for my brother, and before I can gag audibly I nudge him a little and say, “Thanks for helping us escape. I don’t know, maybe you might want to call somebody, or something?”
“My brother’ll be home soon. He’ll know what to do.”
“Yeah, well, don’t go outside, I guess.”
Delilah shrugs, never looking away from Art when she says, “We should hang out sometime, Arthur.”
“Yeah,” he nods. “Okay.”
I wait until we’re outside again to begin mocking him. We’re halfway across the street when when I croon, “Arthur,” as if it’s the most ridiculous word in the world. “We should hang out sometime, Arthuuuuur.”
“Shut up,” he growls, and though he’s trying to play it tough, I do catch him sneaking a glance back over his shoulder at Delilah, who’s standing on her front porch watching us cross the street.
“I think she loves you,” I shove into him with my hip. “She wants to kiss your cutey little face.”
“I’m gonna kill you when you’re sleeping.”
“You can try.”
“Where have you two been?” There’s a hint of worry in Mom’s voice when we barrel through the door pushing and shoving each other. “You left to go pick that up forty minutes ago. It’s a twenty minute walk, there and back.”
“Yeah,” I heft the bag up onto the table they set up in the dining room yesterday, “we ran into some trouble.”
“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
But before I can answer Art steals the show, recounting the details of our wild adventure. Which is fine by me. It gives me a chance to push paper plates and napkins around the table while thinking about the fact that my new favorite one man band has a name.
Nate.
He played soccer.
And baseball.
And he has a sister.
And a job.
I wonder if he’s a Nathaniel or just Nathan.
I wonder where he works.
I wonder if he has a girlfriend.
If maybe he might want one…
“Wow,” Mom gasps. “You’re lucky the neighbors were home.”
“I know, right?”
“And thank God your sister was with you.”
“Totally,” he rolls his eyes. “I’d probably have rabies right now if it wasn’t for her. She saved my life.” He gags himself dramatically with his hands before dropping into the chair, and of course Gwen has to mimic him because that’s what she does.
“Don’t make me regret it.”
Mom wedges Gwen into her high chair, buckles her in and slides her up to the table. “Someone should probably call animal control. Maybe I’ll have Dad walk over after supper and see if it’s still there. Maybe take some pictures for me.”
“Why do you want Dad to get rabies?” Art wonders, flopping into his seat and huffing the curls off his brow.
“Who has rabies?” Dad saunters in from the hallway dressed in a pair of paint-spattered coveralls. I don’t think he’s been painting, so much as he just feels most comfortable wearing them.
“You will if you listen to Mom,” I laugh. “Art and I almost got attacked by a killer raccoon on our way back from picking up dinner. We’d be rabid right now if it wasn’t for Arthur’s new girlfriend, Delilah.”
His face is instantly purple, even the tips of his ears look like little beets as he leans threateningly across the table and growls, “She is not my girlfriend.”
I’m about to open my mouth and start singing him into a tree when Mom lets loose a weary breath: code for she’s just about had it up to here with the two of us.
I decide I’ll wait until later, when we’re upstairs and she can’t hear us killing each other. It’s so much easier that way, and I can tell as he glares across the table at me he’s thinking the same thing.
Tonight—REVENGE.
SIX
Appliances mean grocery shopping, and groceries mean real food. No more of that stomach acid-curdling goodness we’ve been feasting on for what feels like an eternity. We’ve managed to make the kitchen look semi-respectable, and I’m no longer as concerned as I was when we first arrived that we’re going to contract the plague if we put food on the counters. The cupboards and refrige
rator are bare, and mom keeps calling herself Old Mother Hubbard every time she opens the door of the fridge to look inside.
It’s not home yet, but then it probably never will be.
It is starting to at least feel like a house, so I guess that’s all that matters.
It won’t be long before Dad’s having meetings with local contractors so he can begin recognizing a vision only he can see, but in the meantime he and Mom are up to their necks in busy work. Which means it’s up to me to do the grocery shopping and the babysitting.
I’ve got Gwen with me. She’s strapped into the shopping cart, swinging her feet and sucking on a freeze pop and dribbling berry blue slobber down the front of both our shirts. She keeps holding it up to my face and telling me to bite it, and if we were home I would probably comply, but I’ll be avoiding as much embarrassment as possible while out in public—or so I think.
I’m pushing the squeakiest cart on the planet through produce when yesterday’s curiosity is answered. Nate works at the grocery store, and before I can duck out of his line of vision and maybe hightail it into the pasta aisle next door, he glances up from the bananas he’s stacking and rearranging and catches my eye.
I know his face now. I’ve spent hours laying in bed daydreaming about his soft mouth and running my fingers into the shade of stubble darkening his cheeks and chin. From the window though, he’s usually hidden behind an elusive raven curtain of hair, but today he’s got the top drawn back into a topknot style ponytail that reveals the closely cropped skater cut beneath. A few strands like loose wires dance across his forehead, wavering in his breath when he exhales through a looped lower lip.
God, he’s even more gorgeous up close, without a bunch of windows between us to obscure my view, and for the first time since I saw him on his porch that day in the car I can actually see his eyes. Dark blue, a pale wash of white in the irises making them shimmer beneath the dull fluorescent overheads. They’re even sadder than they are from afar, and though we’re perfect strangers—aside from that whole thing of feeling one hundred percent sure I know his soul thanks to his music—I want to walk up to him and ask him to lay his troubles at my feet.
Whatever it is, I want to fix it. I want to see those eyes shine, find out if there are dimples under the stubble shading his cheeks and kiss my way across his perfect lips until he opens his mouth to welcome my tongue inside…
And then I’m yelping, the sound surprising me more than the cold splash of popsicle Gwen pushes down the front of my shirt before smashing it with the palm of her hand and crunching bits of ice into my bra. She’s clapping triumphantly, grinning up at me with her tiny little blue teeth like some kind of monster.
“Gwen!”
“Tali eat it!” She reaches out for me, fingers dripping slobbery blue crystals onto the floor between us.
I snatch the plastic tubing from her hand and tell her matter-of-factly while crumpling the sticky thing in my hand, “Well, no one’s eating it now. All gone.”
She starts crying, because of course she does, her bottom lip jutting out so far I could probably land a jet on it, and now everyone in produce is looking at me like I’m the worst teen mother on the planet, with my shrieking child and cotton candy-colored hair spun up like Princess Leia buns with trails of hair poking through the middle that I catch jostling from the corner of my eye when I drop my head back and groan frustration.
Bringing my head back down, I see him, the barest hint of a smile teasing the corner of his mouth, and low and behold it’s just as I guessed: the indentation of a dimple hides beneath the stubble on his cheek. Wiping his hands on his apron, he steps away from the bananas, but I don’t see where he goes because I’m busy soothing my baby sister and trying not to threaten her with bodily harm. Not that I would. She’s just a baby, but who hasn’t wanted to toss a sibling off a cliff? Especially after they’ve pretty much ruined your life in front of the most attractive guy you’ve ever seen.
“Come on, Gwenny,” I plead, knowing I’m six phases past embarrassment, beyond humiliation and edging ever closer to eternal mortification. “I thought you loved Sissy. Why do you want to ruin her life?” Several old ladies tsk as they circle around us like we’ve got a disease and it’s catching, and the people working in the deli are leaning up over their counter to get a better look at the spectacle we’ve become.
“Here,” a deep voice says from over my shoulder, his arm sweeping forward with a chocolate chip cookie gripped between the long, beautiful fingers that have been unwittingly playing me lullabies for the last week. “Maybe this’ll help.”
Gwen stops wailing, her glassy eyes looking over my shoulder at the stranger behind me while her tentative hand starts rising toward the cookie. Every warning my mother ever gave me about taking candy from strangers should be shooting around inside my head like Fourth of July fireworks, but she never said not to take cookies from strangers. At least I don’t think she did. My sister sniffles a little, her chubby fingers latching onto that cookie and her eyes never leaving his face.
“What do you say, Guinevere?”
“Please?”
A soft snort of laughter sounds over my shoulder. He tips his head forward before bowing graciously and saying, “As you will, Your Majesty.”
Bringing the cookie to her lips, crumbs spill from her clenched fingers onto the floor beneath the cart, soaking into the puddle of blue juice from her popsicle. Crisis averted, I start to turn and thank him when it occurs to me how ridiculous I must look with my stained shirt, mismatched flip-flops and rainbow-colored hair. This is not how I imagined making my first actual impression, not that it could really get any worse than face planting on the sidewalk as he’s driving by me. My stomach flounces around inside me like a hundred kids in a bouncy house, but I swallow my pride and smile as if I absolutely mean to look exactly like I do. I mean, aside from the giant blue stain in the middle of my Vampire Weekend shirt, this is pretty much how I look any other time, and I’m not shy about my eccentricities.
“Here.” There’s a wad of bunched up brown paper towel in his hand, and I take it to begin mopping up my shirt. I duck down and wipe the floor beneath the cart before rising again and finding him still grinning.
“Thanks.”
“No problem. I have a little sister. I know what they’re like.”
“Little demons.” I nod and try to ignore the sticky hand wiping cookie and popsicle down the length of my bare arm. “My mom gave me a massive shopping list, and there was no way we were getting through the store on meltdown mode. So, thank you. You probably saved my life.”
“One is always happy to be of service.” He tips his head forward chivalrously. Bringing it level again, he says, “You’re the running girl.” Okay, I’ve been called worse, I guess, but my fingers curl into my palm as if to hide the scrapes that have long since healed after my embarrassing stumble last week. “Your family moved into the house across the street from us, right?”
“Yeah, the witch house,” I remember the name his sister gave our residence.
He snorts again, half laugh, half breath and nods.
“And before you ask, no, we haven’t seen any ghosts yet.”
“That’s surprising. No one’s lived in that house forever. It was empty when my family moved here years ago, and none of the other kids in the neighborhood remember anyone ever living there.”
“Well, if I see any ghosts I’ll be sure to let everyone know. I’m Tali, by the way.”
“Short for Talia?” he quirks a brow.
“I wish, but Dad was never big on DC villains. He’s more of a Marvel guy.”
“As you do,” he nods agreement, and I think maybe it’s better if I don’t point out that my dad and I don’t share the same tastes in comic books at all. I’m a total Batgirl, no matter how many times Dad’s tried to convince me Captain Marvel is much cooler. “I’m Nate.”
“I know.”
I can’t believe I just said that out loud. Smooth stalking, Tali. Wa
y to embarrass myself even more. God, could this trip to the grocery store get any worse? Could my every interaction with him not be some ridiculous display of bumbling idiocy that is not who I am at all?
“I mean, I met your little sister yesterday. She thought we were there looking for you.”
“Right,” he nods, “the raccoon incident.”
“Yeah…”
And now everything is awkward, and I feel weirder in my own skin than I’ve ever felt before, and I keep glancing down at the dark black ink of a tattoo winding around his forearm that I’ve never noticed before, maybe because of the shadows and the fact that I’ve spent every second memorizing his face. The two of us just stand there, Nate looking down, me looking at that tattoo and trying to figure out what it is. Words, maybe, but I can’t tell what they say. When someone pokes their head out the stockroom door and calls, “Nathaniel,” I can’t tell if he’s annoyed by the disruption or relieved for an excuse to move on from this embarrassing exchange.
What the heck is wrong with me? I am never this nervous around people, not even guys. I don’t say the wrong things. I don’t make myself look like an idiot, and yet this is at least the third time I’ve felt like a complete and total fool while he was near me. Our first conversation, and I’m an idiot.
“I should get back to work.”
“Me too,” I gesture to the empty shopping cart, then begin smudging chocolate smears from my sister’s face with my thumb. With nowhere to wipe the mess, I push my thumb between my lips and suck it off, not even realizing I’m doing it until it’s far too late. My face must be fifty shades of red right about now, and my heart is on permanent speed-mode. This must be what it feels like to do drugs, I think. Totally not worth it. “Thanks,” I add as he starts to back away from us.
“Anytime.”
Over my shoulder I watch him stalk toward the stockroom, glancing back once as if he feels me staring. He disappears between the double doors, and I don’t see him again, even though I’m in the store for almost two hours. Gwen’s second meltdown is almost more than I can stand, and by the time Mom starts texting me to ask what’s taking so long, I just want to call her back and scream into the phone, “You try shopping with this little maniac!”
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