They would probably keep talking, except that Sher’s voice is suddenly closer to the wall than I expect. I jump back and fall against the bathroom counter, upsetting my deodorant and soap and all the other junk I have lined up on it. Sher’s giggle penetrates the wall between us.
“I gotta go, Hals Bells…I’m fine, but I think Landon wants his phone back. I’ll call you when he gives me my pants back, okay?”
***
I emerge from the bathroom at the same time that Sher comes out of my room. She gives me a sly smile, holding out my phone.
“I’ll let you listen in next time, if you give me back my pants.”
I laugh, flashing a look at her legs.
“No thanks,” I tell her. “Keep the phone. It’s not really an even trade.”
“Give me my pants, Landon.”
“Why? What are you going to do with them?”
“I don’t know…take a walk, get the mail…”
“Run down to the clinic,” I add. Her jaw clenches. She whips the phone at my head. When I dodge it, she throws herself at me, like a tiny, slapping tornado.
“This isn’t just your choice either, Landon!” she yelps. I take her hands and hold them together in my fist.
“I didn’t say it was,” I tell her as she tries to yank away from me.
“That’s exactly what you keep saying!”
“So what should I do, Sher? I know it’s your body, but it’s my baby too! What would it take for me to change your mind? Name it.” I pull her closer, until my chin hovers over her forehead. She tips her head back, eyes burning, and I get another glimpse of her mother. This time, I can see the hard fire flame up and I know that Sher’s going to be one powerful woman when she’s older. That’s for sure.
“I want a house, a nice one,” she flares. “And a car. I told you before, I want to be with my baby during the day, so I can take college classes at night. You would have to babysit, whenever I need it, while I go through college.”
“You got it. How about some unicorns?” I snort. “Want a few of them too?”
“You asked what I wanted and that’s most of it,” she says, looking away. “I want a chance.”
I release her hands, softly to her sides. I stare down at the top of her head, breathing in the mix of shampoo and perfume and whatever else she puts on herself. She smells like a naked summer night with the windows open, all sexy and warm and exposed.
“You said most of it. What else do you want?”
“Nothing. You can’t get it for me. I can’t even get it for me.”
“Well, what is it? I can’t try to help if I don’t know…”
“I wanted to do things, Landon! I wanted to do things before I got tied down with a kid!” Her hands shake as she throws them in the air. I chuckle and Sher’s exasperation freezes on her face.
“Like what?” I ask.
“I…I don’t know. I wanted to have a life. I haven’t gotten to do anything yet. All I’ve ever done is homework and watch my brothers and sister at the apartment. I’ve never even gone out on a real date! The closest I’ve ever come was being with you at Hale’s wedding and look what happened!”
“So, you’ve got a bucket list,” I say.
“I’ve got a frickin’ well, buddy!”
“What else do you want to do?”
“I don’t even know enough to know!” She tosses her hands in the air again. “I want to ride horses and learn how to pole dance! I want to get a tattoo and screw a stranger on the beach! I don’t know, Landon! I just want to live! I haven’t done a damn thing yet!”
Horses, pole dancing, tattoos, stranger sex on the beach. I try to keep my lip from hanging open.
“Okay,” I rub my hands together slowly. “I really didn’t see three of those things coming.”
She roots her hand on her waist and I think, damn. I can almost see her, holed up in a crappy apartment years from now, shooting idiotic boys from her balcony, and I get a good look at why this whole mess scares her so much.
It doesn’t surprise me when she asks, “So, what do you see coming?”
But now I don’t know what to tell her. I haven’t really been thinking of the us, so much as of the it. I’ve been so focused on giving this kid a chance, I’ve haven’t given a lot of thought to what kind of chances it gives us or what chances we’ll have to give up. Until now, my goal has solely been on paying the piper. I haven’t thought about how I am going to work the rest of my life, with a kid and Sher in it. The wide screen picture of maintaining this whole crazy coaster of our merging lives is so overwhelming, I go back to the little picture, where I just worry about paying for the ticket to ride.
“I’m looking for a chance too, Sher. However that glues us together.” I reach for her hand. “You can live with me, or next door to me, or down the street—whatever you want. You can go to college and I’ll take care of the baby at night. You can date and screw people on the beach and I’ll watch the baby, if you want. I’ll do whatever I can to make it work for both of us, if you just give this baby a chance, Sher.”
She bows her head and I feel her fingers working in my grasp, tracing the edge of her thumb with the middle finger on the same hand. I let go of her hands and take a step back, looking down at her.
She’s crying.
CHAPTER TEN
HALE SHOWS UP ON MY DOORSTEP, WITH PANTS, for Sher.
“Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” Sher squeal-giggles, running across the room and snatching them from Hale’s outstretched hand. She slides into them, right in the middle of the living room.
“Yeah, thanks,” I tell Hale. She pats my back.
“You can’t keep her locked up if she doesn’t want to be here.”
“It was going just fine, until you showed up.”
“It was not,” Sher glowers, before turning back to Hale. “Want to take me out for some Mojitos at a Hookah lounge?”
I nearly choke on my tongue. Hale laughs.
“Just burgers and fries, Landon,” she says. “And I’ll have her home by curfew.”
Sher snorts. “Let me just grab my purse…oh wait. That’s right. Landon also hid my purse.”
“Have a good time,” I tell her with a grin.
“I need my purse to do that,” she says.
“Nope. We’ll call it pur-surance.”
Sher groans, planting her hand on her hip again. “You don’t need insurance. I’m coming back,” she says, and I almost choke on my tongue again. She is?
But Hale just slips her hand through Sher’s arm and drags her to the door.
“I’ll buy you a new purse,” she says. “Let’s just go eat!”
***
The girls are gone for less than three minutes when my mood sinks like a 50-pound pancake in my stomach. I’m not sure she’s actually coming back. It’s not like I’ve given her any reason to do it, besides holding her belongings hostage. So I do what I do whenever I’m stuck. I call in my big-sister-back-up. Gina gets it on the first ring.
“What’s up?” she barks on the other end. That’s how Gina answers the phone. I hear the machine shop grinding away in the background.
“Want to grab a bite over at the Coney Island on your lunch hour?”
“You buying? All I got is a ham sandwich and no wallet.”
“I’ll buy.”
“Good. I get lunch in a half hour.”
“Can you make this a long one?”
“Alright,” she says slowly. The machine shop muffles a bit. I can just about picture her, with her finger stuffed in her free ear and tipping her head toward her chest as she asks, “What’s going on?”
Gina is the third child in our family, the third in the five girl line up, and the sister I’m closest to. Five years older than me, she was the one sister I could’ve taken to the bar as my wingman, if only we went to the same kind of bars.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “Just need some Gina-input.”
“Okay, fine. Just bring a load of money, beca
use I’m starving and now I’m expecting dessert too.”
“Will do. I’m on my way.”
***
Even though she’s coming from work, Gina still makes it to our usual lunch spot before me. She’s sitting in a booth near the window, hitting on the trainee waitress, when I slide into the seat across from her. Gina smiles at me.
“This is my brother, Landon,” Gina says. The waitress’s smile brightens, her fingers lifting a bouquet of curls off her collarbone and splashing them back, over her shoulder.
“I’m Duncan. Can I get you something to drink?” she asks.
“Lemonade?”
Duncan flashes me the barbell pierced through her tongue. “Fruit punch?”
Any other day, the barbell would have intrigued me, but not today. My smile is only polite.
“How about water with lemon?”
“I’ll be right back with it,” Duncan chirps and my sister glances over her shoulder to admire everything she can about the waitress walking away. Only after Duncan’s behind the counter pouring our drinks does Gina relax against the booth again, stretching one arm across the back.
“She’s yours,” Gina acknowledges. I shrug and Gina drops her arm, sitting up straight. “Whoa now. That’s a woman. A pretty dang gorgeous woman that, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to be playing for my team. The least you could do is show some respect for my good taste and keep her at the table for me. What’s the matter with you? You always want a shot at my sloppy seconds. What’s going on? Wait. Don’t tell me that psycho chick is back on your radar.”
I toy with one of the plastic cream cups, flipping it over with my finger.
“Amy? Hell no,” I say.
“Who is it then?” Gina asks. Duncan returns with our drinks and asks for our order. Gina gives me a competitive little grin, but no matter how many times my sister interrupts me, to grab Duncan’s attention, the waitress stays riveted on me. Gina snorts when Duncan scoots away.
“She wants you,” Gina says, putting her elbows on the table and clasping her hands in front of her. “Ok, so onto business. If it’s not the psycho girl, than who are we talking about?”
“Her name’s Sher.”
“Where’d you meet her?”
“Oscar’s wedding.”
“That was a couple months ago. Since when do you keep your girls a secret from me?”
I press my back against the the booth, probably pushing the guy on the other side into his soup. Even though Gina’s gaze is burning a new hole in my skull, I stack up the little, sealed plastic cups of cream in a tiny pyramid.
“She wasn’t my girl. We just had a night together,” I say. I take a glimpse at Gina, her tongue rolling in her cheek.
“A night. Together,” she repeats. Then she leans across the table, her chest on her clasped hands. She whispers, “You didn’t knock somebody up, did you?”
I grimace. “I did.”
Gina throws her own back against the booth seat. She crosses her arms on her chest and sticks her thumb nail in her mouth as she stares at me. The waitress returns again, placing our food on the table. Gina remains frozen.
“Can I get you anything else?” Duncan asks softly. I expect her to lay her fingers on my arm.
“No thanks,” I tell her with only a glance. My gaze returns to Gina’s blazing, laser-beam stare and I catch the waitress’s frown in my peripheral, before she tromps away.
Once she’s out of ear shot, Gina says, “You’re joking, right? Tell me you’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh Landon,” she groans. “Are you going to marry this girl?”
“She doesn’t want that.”
“She’s not getting rid of the baby, is she?”
“I have no idea.” I take a long drink so neither of us has to talk. Gina leans back across the table, her whisper hot and angry.
“Are you kidding me? You of all people? You’ve been raised better than that. You remember what happened with Harmony. You’ve got to do right by this girl.”
“I’m trying,” I tell her. I swallow the sour knot in my throat. “I told her I want the baby. I told her I’d do whatever she wants, if she would just have it.”
“She wants to get rid of it?”
“She’s only eighteen.”
“Holy shit. Are you serious? You’re six years older than her.”
“I did the math, thanks.”
“I’m just saying. No wonder. She just got done being a kid herself.”
“That’s the problem. She doesn’t want the baby because she hasn’t gotten to do anything with her life yet.”
Gina lifts a fry to her mouth.
“Can’t say as I blame her,” she says, “but, unfortunately, it’s not just about her anymore. It’s about the kid and what you want too.”
“She doesn’t see it that way.”
“Well, then, you know what you have to do, don’t you?”
“No clue. I have no clue what to do.”
“It’s simple. You’ve got to give this girl a life first. So she can think about giving you one.”
***
Give her a life. That’s all Gina gave me to work with.
I go back to my apartment and without Sher there, under my watch, the tick of the seconds-hand on the clock is as good as being water boarded. I can only stand it for an hour before I call Oscar.
“Hey, buddy,” Oscar sounds like he was expecting the call a while ago.
“Do you know where the girls are at?” I ask. Damn. I sound so desperate, it’s embarrassing.
“I know they’re not at any clinic, if that helps,” Oscar says. “Last I talked to Hale, they were eating and planning on going from there to a salon, to get their hands and feet painted.”
I finally exhale the breath that has been pressing my lungs up into my nostrils since I got home.
“By the way, Hale’s trying to talk her out of it too,” Oscar says. So, Sher’s still angling to get to the clinic. My lungs resume the position, fully inflated and tucked beneath my nostrils, as Oscar continues. “Hale said it doesn’t sound like Sher’s really committed to getting rid of it. It sounds like she’s just more frightened of having it.”
“That sounds right,” I tell him. “I met her mom and saw where they live. It’s pretty lean. Single mom with five kids crammed in a two bedroom apartment…I can’t say I blame Sher for wanting to avoid a trip down the same road.”
“Huh,” Oscar says. “Your mom did it too though, on her own with six kids. She did a good job.”
“The real difference here is that Sher doesn’t have to do it alone,” I say. “I’m not a part-time dad.”
I hear the grin in Oscar’s voice when he replies, “Good man.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE GIGGLE IS WHAT I HEAR FIRST. Then the rustle of bags, Hale’s laughter, Sher’s talking, the tromp of feet on the stairs. I swing open the door for them before they can knock.
Sher jumps back. There’s a hard blush spread across her cheeks, which makes me think of other things. I smile.
“I don’t have a key,” she stammers. But she chose to come back.
“We’ll have to fix that,” I say, stepping aside. The girls come in, walking like ducks, their drying toenails poking out of flip flops. A weird relief settles in my chest as I watch Sher cross the room. It’s not just the way her hips move, or how the smell of her drifts past me and pings my dude radar. There’s something more to it, a calm that permeates the entire room, just because she’s here.
Hale catches my eye and throws me a cheesy grin. I mouth what? to her, but she just shrugs as Sher piles her bags on my couch.
“Mrs. Maree took me shopping,” she says.
“I bought her some pants.” Hale tilts a stern eyebrow at me. “And they better not go missing.”
I hold up my hands in surprise. “Strange things keep happening around here.”
“Don’t worry about him. I told you what I was going to do,” Sher tells her friend. The
giggle. It’s an amaretto, warming my stomach.
“Yeah, do that. And the other thing too,” Hale tells her. Now Sher’s getting the stern eyebrow, which makes me wonder what the other thing might be. Sher rolls her eyes before returning them to Hale.
“Thanks for taking me out,” she says. Hale jumps across the room and wraps her arms around Sher. As they giggle, they rock each other back and forth, and I can really see how young they are. They look like little girls in elementary school. My sister’s advice comes back to me and I nod to no one in the room.
“I love you,” Hale says as they step apart. “Call me, okay? A hundred times, if you want.”
“I will. Because Landon’s giving me back my phone. Right, Landon?”
“Sure,” I smile. We’ll see.
“Okay, McHale’s Navy, you can go home to your husband now,” Sher says. She wraps her arms around her own head, embracing an invisible man and kissing him wildly.
“I’m right here,” I joke, but Sher just laughs and slaps Hale on the back.
“Get outta here,” she says and Hale goes, the giggling trailing behind her, until Sher closes the door. She turns back to me and I’m shocked when her grin doesn’t fade.
“You’re back,” I say. The grin doesn’t flat line, but it goes a little rigor mortis. Sher goes to her bags on the couch and rustles through them, her back to me.
“Where else was I going to go?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I’m just glad you didn’t.”
“You mean, like the clinic.”
“I mean anywhere else.”
“How can you be so…” she pauses, dropping a bag back onto the cushion and looking at the ceiling. I’m still staring at her back. Her voice is soft, almost frightened. “So into me, Landon?”
What? Where did that come from? I was geared up for a different fight, but her question takes me out at the knees. She wants to know what she means to me? Is she considering that? In two steps, I’m standing right behind her, my fingertips on her elbow.
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