by Hazel Jacobs
“So how’s the songwriting going?” Claire says, bringing Sersha back into the present and reminding her that she isn’t alone in the room.
“Great… yeah,” Sersha replies. “Tommy’s really talented.”
“I don’t know where he gets it,” Claire replies. “I always thought my boys would go into the sciences, like their father and me.”
Sersha wants to ask where the father is. There are no pictures of him in the house, and the place has a distinct single-mother vibe. Just like the house that Sersha had grown up in. That’s how she knows that she shouldn’t ask.
“What does Tommy’s brother do?” Sersha asks, containing a wince when Emily pulls rather hard on a handful of hair.
Claire gives her an odd look. “Geoffrey’s still in high school,” she says.
Sersha has to work very hard not to let her surprise show on her face. Though this does explain why there had been so many pictures of that other boy, but none of him as a man, like there are of Tommy. It’s because he’s not a man yet.
“I see,” she says.
Her surprise must show anyway because Claire just gives her a wry smile.
“Geoffrey’s girlfriend planned to put Emily up for adoption,” she says, giving the baby in Sersha’s lap a fond look. “But Geoffrey wanted to keep her. So he’s got custody. Single dad at sixteen.”
“That’s… unfair,” Sersha says.
“Hmm…” Claire replies, reaching over to wipe some spit from Emily’s chin.
“Still, I mean, he must be a good dad because she’s really well behaved.”
“And her uncle dotes on her,” Claire agrees.
Tommy brings his younger brother downstairs. Sersha had been expecting one of those gross teenage boys with a backward baseball cap and his pants down around his knees. But this boy seems to be a smaller, quieter version of Tommy. He wears the same style of long-sleeved plaid shirt, though it’s a little bigger on Geoffrey, and his hair is cut a little shorter than Tommy’s. The boy shakes Sersha’s hand and politely asks how she is, giving the baby a kiss and a soft smile that makes Sersha’s insides turn to goo.
“So you’re in school?” Sersha asks.
“Yeah, tenth grade,” Geoffrey replies, ducking his head modestly.
“How do you like it?”
“It’s all right,” says Geoffrey, shrugging. “The English classes are okay.”
“Both of my boys are poets,” Claire says. She shakes her head as though this is a grave disappointment, though there’s a grin on her lips. “I don’t know how that happened.” She sips her coffee.
He’s a sweet kid, but the sweetest thing is seeing Tommy with him. Geoffrey stays in the kitchen while his mom types and Sersha and Tommy talk about the tour. Emily demands to be put in her father’s lap, and he bounces his knee while he watches the others talk. Tommy walks around the room while he’s talking to Sersha, preparing a sandwich for his brother and brushing the boy’s fringe out of his eyes when he sets the plate in front of him. He gets his brother a Coke from the fridge too, before the boy even has to ask. Then Tommy cleans the kitchen. Sersha tries to help him, but Tommy waves her off.
“You’re a guest,” he says.
Sersha settles hesitantly back into her seat, watching Tommy move around the room with practiced movements, as though he does this a lot. Sersha wonders how often he visits his family. She knows that the band has a brownstone in New York, but if her mam were only two hours away, she’d be visiting every weekend.
Geoffrey lets Emily have a crust from his sandwich. “So you’re a lyricist like Tommy?”
“Nobody’s a lyricist like Tommy,” Sersha tells him.
Next to the sink, Tommy chuckles.
They seem like a tight family. Claire keeps bemoaning her sons’ interest in the humanities. Geoffrey tells Sersha excitedly about his latest English project while bounding Emily on his lap, and Tommy cleans around all three of them.
Sersha chats with Geoffrey and Claire about her work—how she started, what her family is like. Tommy joins them at the kitchen table after he’s brought the rest of the kitchen’s chaos into some control. It isn’t until Geoffrey is carrying Emily upstairs for a diaper change that Sersha looks out the window and realizes that the sun has gone down.
“Oh, geez… I should be heading back,” she says, grinning self-consciously at Claire and Tommy. “I didn’t mean to take up your whole afternoon.”
“It’s no trouble, honey,” Claire replies. “It’s nice to meet Tommy’s work friends. Especially the ones who don’t raid my fridge whenever they stop by.”
Tommy snorts as he pulls his phone out of his pocket, typing in the passcode and bringing up the train app. He frowns at the screen.
“I think there might be a problem,” he says.
Sersha leans over to see the announcement on the app.
Electrical problems between Trenton and Edison. All trains delayed until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience.
“Oh…” Sersha says.
Shit, she thinks.
Claire leans over her son’s shoulder to read the screen. “Well, I guess you’re spending the night,” she says.
“Oh, I couldn’t—”
“Yes, you could,” Claire says, waving away Sersha’s protests. “Tommy, honey, go grab some of your sweats for Sersha to sleep in. We can put her in the basement with you, can’t we?”
“Of course,” Tommy says. He pushes away from the kitchen table, brushing against Sersha as he leaves the room.
“Is… uh, I mean is there something wrong with the couch?”
“Apart from the fact that I’m eighty-six percent sure that my grandchild was conceived on it? No, but it’s terribly uncomfortable. The couch in Tommy’s bedroom is much nicer. Slate, Dash and Logan used to sleep over all the time when the boys were younger.”
Claire saves her work on her laptop, talking enthusiastically about the days when Black Lilith was little more than a garage band as she climbs out of her chair and starts bustling around to make dinner. Sersha helps her, more to have something to do with her hands than because she has any particular skill in cooking. She’s still reeling from the invitation to share a room with Tommy. That sounds… dangerous. But so tempting.
As she and Claire work, Claire starts rattling on about her research, giving Sersha a chance to think. She nods occasionally and hums to show that she’s listening, but most of her brain power is focused on pushing away any thoughts that something might happen tonight.
She tells herself that Tommy’s still hung up on his ex. She tells herself that the man is too vulnerable to get involved with someone and that a fling isn’t something she wants or needs. It might have been different if she didn’t like him as a person or respect him as a lyricist. She tells herself that all of their flirting was never meant to mean anything, that Tommy flirts with women all the time, and that she would be stupid to think that she’s special or that he can’t get a girl whenever he wants. She tells herself that Tommy is a sweet, kind guy and that she’d ruin their working relationship by giving into her attraction to him.
“…and that’s why I think calcium makes inflammation worse,” Claire says, shoving some potatoes into the stove for baking. “Of course, it’s not nearly as bad as osteoporosis, so don’t go cutting it out of your diet, now…” Claire keeps talking as they finish making dinner.
Sersha doesn’t know whether she is used to people zoning out when she speaks, or if she can tell that Sersha has a lot on her mind. She keeps giving Sersha calculating looks like she wants to ask, but then she’ll go on another line of discussion which is too complicated for Sersha to follow, so Sersha thinks that she must know on some level that Sersha’s not following along. But she’s grateful for Claire’s company. And the food smells amazing.
Tommy returns with some sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt for Sersha. It’s not plaid, and she decides that she prefers it that way. The gray, impersonal garment won’t make her feel like she
belongs to him when she puts it on.
Geoffrey comes downstairs, sans Emily, and the four of them have a quiet dinner.
“Shouldn’t she be eating?” Sersha asks, jerking her fork up at the ceiling, hopefully pointing in the direction of where the baby must be.
“I’ll feed her when she’s hungry,” Geoffrey tells her. He’s got half a mouthful of potato and bacon, but he’s chipmunked it into his cheek so that he can talk. “I know I’m supposed to put her on a feeding schedule, but she’s never really stuck to it. She just does her, she doesn’t really care about her dad.” He says all of this very fondly, as though there’s nothing in the world he’d rather do than raise a fussy eater.
He’s only sixteen, Sersha thinks.
She can’t imagine being a single parent at sixteen.
“Swallow your food, Geoff,” Tommy says, handing his brother a napkin. “Don’t choke.”
Geoffrey rolls his eyes and doesn’t take the napkin. Tommy tucks it under his brother’s plate instead and ruffles his hair.
Sersha doesn’t talk much during dinner. The family tells her stories from the boys’ childhood. Most of them, apparently, designed to embarrass Tommy, though he takes all of the ribbing good-naturedly. He seems to be watching his brother closely through the meal. When Geoffrey has cleaned his plate, Tommy tops it off with the leftovers. Geoffrey doesn’t seem to notice.
When dinner is over, Sersha has to fight for the right to help do the dishes.
“You’ve gotta let me do something, I’m no freeloader.”
So she gets a scrubber while Claire and Geoffrey go upstairs to try and entice Emily into eating. Sersha and Tommy stand over the sink together, Sersha washing and Tommy drying. It’s a quiet scene, almost domestic in the way they find their rhythm, passing plates back and forth like they’ve done it for years. Sersha tries very hard not to think about how warm Tommy’s body is next to hers, or how if someone were to come in they might easily mistake the pair at the sink for a couple.
“Your brother seems nice,” Sersha says. “So’s your mam.”
Tommy hums in agreement. “Geoff’s too young to be a dad,” he says. There’s a crease in his brow like he’s thought this a hundred times.
“Well, I suppose you’re right. I couldn’t imagine being in his shoes.”
“Neither can I,” Tommy agrees. He dries a plate and adds it to the rack with the rest, taking another from Sersha and letting his fingers linger over hers. When she glances up at him, she sees him watching her, so she turns away. “Geoff’s always been mature for his age, but this is a bit… much.”
“What happened to your dad?” she asks suddenly. She cringes internally, but Tommy doesn’t seem to mind the question.
“He died. When I was ten.”
“Jesus! I’m—”
“It’s okay,” Tommy says. His voice is tight. “Just… don’t bring it up in front of my mom?”
“I won’t,” Sersha tells him. She breathes in the lemony scent of the dish soap which is soaking into her skin. Then, because she feels like she owes him something, she adds, “My dad left. When I was a kid. He just got in the car and never came back. Mam says it had been a long time coming.”
Tommy hisses in sympathy. The two work in silence for a while.
“Who’s the mother?” Sersha asks. “Emily’s mother?”
Frowning, Tommy puts the plate he’d been drying down a little harder than he usually would have. “An eighteen-year-old.”
“Isn’t that technically…”
“Statutory, yeah. But Geoff begged Mom not to press charges.”
Sersha clucks her tongue. “Did he love her?”
“First love,” Tommy says. He frowns even deeper. “Those always mess you up.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Sersha replies. “I’ve never been in love before.” She realizes what she’s said only moments after the words have left her mouth. She could kick herself for it. This is not how she wanted the conversation to go. Keeping her eyes down so that she doesn’t have to look at him, Sersha vigorously cleans a knife and aims for a joking tone. “Well, that took a turn, didn’t it?” she says. “Let’s talk about something trivial. Have you ever ridden a llama?”
“No,” Tommy replies. There’s something in his voice—some tone she can’t identify—but she doesn’t look at him so she can’t tell what it is.
“Well I have, and it’s really fucking hard.”
They keep on at the dishes, Sersha’s eyes carefully trained toward the bubbly water, while Sersha regales Tommy with the story of how she’d ridden a wild llama when she was seven and broken three ribs for her trouble.
“You’re not sleeping on the couch.”
“It’s so cute that you think you can tell me what to do.”
“You’re the guest—”
“I’m not kicking you out of your bed!”
“You’re not kicking me out, I’m giving it to you!”
“Well, I’m not taking it!”
“You are!”
“I’m not!”
Tommy’s room in the basement is covered wall-to-wall in posters. Music posters, mostly, though there are a couple of flyers for plays and movies that he must have liked when he was a teenager. There’s a beat-up acoustic bass in the corner of the room, a chest of drawers that looks like he made it in shop class, and a queen bed with black blankets. It’s colder than Sersha had expected it to be, but Claire had given her a fluffy blanket to sleep in. The couch is a surprisingly soft, plushy blue number which is big enough for an adult to sleep in if they bend their knees a little.
But when Sersha had gotten downstairs, Tommy had directed her to the bed, claiming that he would be taking the couch instead.
Sersha isn’t having that.
“If I were one of the guys in the band, would you make me take the bed?”
“That has nothing to do with anything,” he says. He actually looks confused when he says it, which makes Sersha think that it probably doesn’t have anything to do with anything. “You know, most girls would love to sleep in my bed.”
Sersha cocks her hip and gives him a hard Look. “Okay… number one… don’t compare me to the girls you’ve slept with. Number two… if I want to sleep on the couch then I’m going to sleep on the fucking couch.”
She sits down on the couch. The cushions sink beneath her.
Tommy frowns and sits next to her, and when Sersha tries to shove him off he rolls to try and lay on it. Sersha quickly tries to lay down as well, aiming to claim as much space as possible before Tommy can. She’s glad that they’re in the basement, the noise they’re making should have been enough to disturb the rest of the house.
“You’re on my hair!” Tommy says as Sersha wriggles between him and the couch cushions, trying to find a way to shove him off.
“Now you know how we feel!” she replies.
They tousle some more. Tommy tries to get under her and buck her off, while Sersha throws a leg out and uses the floor as leverage to keep herself on the couch. It strikes her that this is probably one of the stupidest arguments she’s ever gotten into—arguing over who gets the couch because neither of them wants to inconvenience the other, each becoming so determined to play the martyr that they start wrestling over it.
But on the other hand, Sersha quite likes how silly this is. She likes the massive grin that Tommy has on his face even though it comes with a look of stubborn determination. She likes that he’s play-fighting her, trying to get her off the couch without hurting her. She likes the press of skin on skin as they each try to claim the couch for themselves.
He’s not wearing his usual plaid. He’s in a gray shirt and sweatpants, the same as her, and it’s odd to see him out of what she’d come to consider as his uniform. It makes this seem more intimate. Like she’s seeing him at his most vulnerable.
Sersha tries to get her legs behind him and kick, but he swings around and wraps his own legs around her thighs, pinning her down. His hands snake around to gra
b her wrists, so he’s holding her hands above her head. They’re laying across the couch, facing each other on their sides, panting and wide-eyed when they finally realize the position that they’re in.
Pull away, Sersha tells herself.
But she doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t, and it’s not because Tommy’s got her in a hold. She thinks that if she wanted to she could pull away. The atmosphere in the room has completely shifted from a half-joking, half serious argument about sleeping arrangements to Tommy and Sersha laying together on the couch, breathing into each other’s faces. Sersha watches Tommy’s blue eyes as they burn into her, staring with the kind of intensity that she’d only ever seen in them once before, the second time they met when Tommy had seen her tattoo.
Sersha can feel the anticipation starting to build as Tommy focuses on her lips. She wants to press her face into the couch, to hide her eyes, because she doesn’t think that she can take this scrutiny anymore. She can hear the sound of her heart beating or is it Tommy’s heart? Whoever owns the heart, it’s beating wildly, filling the room with the sound of it.
She leans forward. Just a little. Not even enough to really make register for anyone watching them, not that anyone is. She hears Tommy’s breath catch. He seems to be wavering on the edge of something, unsure of what to do, and Sersha realizes that she’s holding her breath while she waits for him to make a decision.
“Fuck it,” he whispers, right before he kisses her.
Sersha has imagined kissing Tommy. Of course. All of those nights alone in her rented flat, enjoying nothing but the feeling of her own fingers, she’s imagined their first kiss over and over. Often it is slow. Intimate. The kind of first kiss that demands attention in the way that a long sunset commands attention—in a quiet, captivating way. A kiss that takes the breath away.
This kiss is hot, heady, and promising. Sersha hadn’t imagined that her first kiss with Tommy would be sloppy and messy because he seems to be trying to taste as much of her as he can. She hadn’t imagined his nose bumping into hers as his tongue pushes between her lips, seeking more. She definitely hadn’t imagined his hands sliding under her top and running over her back, grappling with her toned figure in a way that makes her shiver and press herself harder against him.