“Wait a minute. How am I going to get to the community center tomorrow?”
Edge didn’t even bat an eyelash at my question. “I’ll take you.”
I stomped my crutches. “This whole thing is a ridiculous inconvenience for everyone.”
The whole point of coming to this place in the middle of nowhere was that I would have a certain amount of independence. I would be able to work. I would have my own apartment. And I would be able to nurse my wounds without my mother hovering or my brothers making jokes about my knee.
Very little had been in my control for the past two months. Not my career. Not my body. Now, in the space of an hour, my plans to be independent had fallen apart. I wanted to cry over the change of plans, but damn if I would do it in front of teddy bears and a man who thought his steering wheel was a drum set.
“Are you all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I clenched my teeth and moved on, grumbling under my breath. “I love being helpless . . .”
I clodhopped my way up a virtual mountain and dug the crutches into the slushy ice, wishing it were a certain spunky blond trainer’s face I was smashing with every step.
Edge followed behind me. “Just watch yourself. It gets slippery when the sun starts to go down.”
I moved up the driveway, feeling sorry for myself every hobble of the way. Then I hit a particularly slippery spot and my good leg started to slip.
Two hands reached out and grabbed my waist. “Whoa. Steady there.”
I twisted away. “I’m good.”
Edge reached down and picked up the luggage he had dropped “Course you are.”
I should have thanked him. He saved me from a face-plant that might have cost me years of dental work. “I don’t want to be a bother. I can find my own ride tomorrow.”
“It’s not a bother. I’m heading into town anyway.”
“You have your, uh . . . garbage work to think about.”
“The trash can wait.”
“I don’t want to make the teddy bears mad,” I said before turning up the driveway.
He laughed behind me. “Humor. Glad to see you handling this change of plans so well, Lily.” Actually, I wasn’t being funny. Sarcastic, yes. However, unlike Edge Callahan, everything wasn’t a joke to me. I hated people who made everything in life a stand-up routine. They reminded me of my brothers.
He opened a door and we entered a large room. A flat-screen television dominated one wall and several video game consoles and controls cluttered the floor. A futon covered with pillows and blankets rested opposite the television and a Ping-Pong table was folded in half against the wall near a sink and a refrigerator.
My older brothers would have died for a room like this when they were younger.
Edge put the suitcases down and removed his boots. He took my coat and hung it on a peg while I sat in a chair near the door and struggled to remove my boots. Without a word, he knelt down and helped me, making me feel a million times worse. I stared at the top of his curly head and wondered what kind of man would drive a teddy truck and help a lame woman with her shoes.
Louise’s voice called out from somewhere upstairs. “Edge, you can put Lily in your bedroom.”
I almost fell off the chair.
“You should see your face right now,” Edge said with a wicked grin before heading down a back hallway with my luggage.
I followed, struggling to recover from the image of Edge and me sharing a bedroom. “Uh, Edge, your mother didn’t mean we would share . . .”
We passed several doors. One was closed and had signs across the front that said KEEP OUT! The other room had a trail of clothes that led from the door to the bed and posters of teen bands taped to the walls.
Edge put down my luggage and waited for me beside a door at the end of the hallway. I stepped inside the room. The curtains were open and the late afternoon sun painted pink squares on the blue carpet. A bed that may have been half of a bunk bed at one time sat against the wall. A dresser, and a desk with pictures and a stack of old textbooks, were the only other furniture in the room.
Confused, I asked, “Is this your room?”
“You don’t mind sharing the bed, do you?” What kind of backwoods humor was he trying on me?
I sent him a withering gaze and he picked up the bags and placed them in the room. “Almost had you.”
“Not funny.”
“I thought it was,” he said, tilting his mouth up. He signaled toward the front of the house. “I live across the street in Grandma’s old ranch, nowadays. This used to be my bedroom. The sheets are clean and the closet is mostly empty.”
He opened the closet door and pushed several hangers toward the back. “You’ll have to share a bathroom with my sisters. I can’t guarantee that there isn’t makeup and other girl stuff all over the counter. But I’ll tell them to leave you some space.”
All of this was happening so quickly.
“Why don’t you wash up and get comfortable? Dinner will be ready soon.”
When he left, I closed the door and leaned back. I wanted my condo in L.A. back. I wanted my career at the Pacific X Gym back. I wanted sunshine and my BMW and the job I lost.
What the hell had I been thinking? This new job was already a disaster. Stuck in a town full of strangers who thought trucks covered in stuffed animals were normal.
I felt like a little girl at camp all over again, assigned to a strange cabin with people I didn’t know. I wanted to write home to tell my parents to come and get me. This wasn’t what I wanted after all.
What was it Dad had said when I called home from camp once? Take it one day at a time. Wash up. Get a good night’s sleep. Make a friend tomorrow.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the desk. My large brown eyes had circles under them and my golden skin looked paler than normal. My knee throbbed. All the travel today made it feel like it had grown ten sizes since this morning. Trying not to think about anything but the task at hand, I unpacked as much as I could. I made my way to the bathroom with my toiletry bag.
The bathroom was cluttered, but there was no need for anyone to go out of their way for me. My needs were light these days. Soap. Shampoo. Even clothes-wise, I dressed simply. Loose yoga pants and Lycra tops, most of the time. My taste had always been sporty. I was much more at home in Lycra than linen. Even when I did dress up, I gravitated toward Title Nine and Athleta dresses. It drove my mom crazy. For years all she talked about were her friends’ beautiful daughters who wore makeup and high heels. Too bad for them, I told her. Not only was I the comfortable one, but at the end of the day, I could still run five miles on feet that weren’t sore.
I washed my face and applied gloss to my dry lips. Morphing back to my normal self made me feel better. I brushed my straight dark hair and kept it loose where it fell just below my shoulders. I double-checked my image in the mirror. To me my Korean heritage dominated my features. But some people mistook me for Hispanic. Or Greek. Or even Middle Eastern. My imo, Aunt Julie, called me “interesting” looking. There wouldn’t be many Koreans in Northern Michigan. I guess people would think I was just one of those crazy California mixes.
I was going to stand out like a palm tree in the woods here.
When I was finished cleaning up, I wandered into the recreation room. Edge lounged on the futon with a remote control in his hand. The talking heads on ESPN were breaking down the upcoming basketball tournament in Indianapolis.
Sports. I almost felt at home.
USC, my own alma mater, wasn’t anywhere near the top of the rankings. But my brother’s was. North Carolina was favored to win the tournament and I never heard the end of it when Chip was around. At least my other brother Ned’s team sucked. Stanford was better at football than basketball these days.
A player for North Carolina raced across the court and pivoted before passing the ball.
“Traveling!” Edge and I called out at the same time. The referee thought so, too. He blew his whistle.
“Do you think they’re going to take it again?” I asked, referring to the blue-and-white Tar Heels on the screen.
“Naw. I think the Spartans have a chance. O’Roarke gets those rebounds faster than—” He glanced my way and stopped midsentence, as if he forgot he wasn’t talking to one of the guys. His eyes traveled from the tips of my striped socks to my head. His nostrils flared and he took a deep breath as he forced his eyes back to the screen.
“O’Roarke . . . you were saying?” I prompted.
“He’s really good on the rebound.” His lips curved as if he was pleased with his choice of words.
He unfolded his body and stood up. He took two short strides and was across the room. I felt like a twig next to a skyscraper.
“You can take the chariot upstairs.” He pushed a button on the wall and down floated a chair.
I didn’t know whether I should be pleased or embarrassed. “You have a stair lift in your house?”
“Sure do. Handy, isn’t it?”
After the chair glided to a halt, Edge flipped a lever and the chair pivoted toward me. Now, I really felt stupid.
“I can make it without this.”
“You could. But why bother when you can use the chair?” He leaned down and held out his arms as if he was prepared to lift me. “Or I could carry you.”
“Oh no. I can sit.”
I fell for it and he chuckled.
Stairs had been one of the things my mother had been most worried about. Besides being upset that I insisted on taking the job before my knee was stronger, every few minutes she asked me how I was going to live alone. I ended up lying through my teeth. I told her that I was living in a flat with another woman who was going help me manage until my knee was stronger.
Ironically, my lie had caught up with me. Now it was practically true.
I sat down in the stair lift and Edge reached down to help work the controls.
I raised my elbow to block him from hovering over me like a nursemaid. “I can do it.”
“Suit yourself.” He was distracted by the sound of car doors slamming and raised voices in the driveway. He stepped outside and left me sitting alone. I settled myself and my crutch and pushed the button. The chair made a slow ascent.
The next level of the Callahans’ house came into view, bottom first. A powder-blue carpet with haphazard vacuum tracks. Chair legs that hid a half-eaten dog bone. A pair of fuzzy blue socks perched on the footrest of a wheelchair.
When I reached the top, the owner of the wheelchair and the fuzzy socks stared at me from behind her gold-rimmed glasses with the sharp eyes of an owl. “Turn.”
“What?”
She raised a bony finger and pointed at the bottom of the lift chair. “Turn.”
I looked down the stairs for help. Edge was nowhere to be seen.
I rose out of the chair. The old woman slapped the armrest of her wheelchair. She shouted, “Turn . . . lock . . .”
Giggles erupted from the nearby dining room table. A set of identical little people pointed at me as if I was the most hilarious thing they had ever seen.
The old owl with a shock of white hair moved her lips and I was pretty sure her teeth were missing. “Do!”
“Turn . . .” She shook her wheelchair with her body.
“Ma!” Louise rounded the corner, a dishcloth still in her hands. “Lily is our guest. Don’t scare her before you even meet her!”
The older woman deflated right in front of me. She lowered her hand, and her shoulders slumped. Her eyes grew hazy.
Louise reached for a lever I hadn’t seen at the side of my chair. She flipped it. My chair spun and locked, making it safer for me to disembark without falling down the stairway.
“Thank you.” I felt ridiculous. Of course, Louise’s mother had been warning me to do it right.
Edge’s reason for offering his own family’s home as my new lodgings became clear. It was already equipped for handicapped access. A chair lift, easy pathways for a wheelchair (and crutches), and a family who was used to dealing with a semi-invalid.
I adjusted my crutches and moved into the living room. A large set of windows with a panoramic view dominated the room. The tips of the bare branches stretched out, making me feel like I was in a tree house. Beyond the trees and across the road was a one-story house and a large lake beyond.
“Lily, this is my mother, Ivy Adler.” Then Louise piped up in a louder voice, “Ma, this is Lily Shue.”
“Shoe?” Ivy looked at her feet.
“Her name is Lily Shue, Ma,” Louise explained. Ivy pressed her lips together and stared at me.
I held up my hand and waved. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Adler.”
“Feel free to call her Ivy, Lily,” Louise said. She turned and pointed behind us to the kids who watched the show from a dining room table covered in Play-Doh. “And those are my grandsons, Justin and Jason.”
The boys smiled as they smashed a handful of dough in each fist, letting it seep out between their fingers. My heart did a funny nosedive. It hadn’t occurred to me that Edge was married with children.
“The boys and their mom, my daughter Tracy, live over the garage,” Louise added.
“Oh.” Was that relief? Why would I care about a man who looked like he could be on Duck Dynasty?
A door slammed downstairs. Angry voices carried to the second floor.
Louise rubbed her hands on the towel and nodded toward a couch, as if screaming girls were an everyday occurrence. “Have a seat, Lily. Can I get you something? Juice? A glass of—”
“Bourbon!” the older woman in the wheelchair said loudly.
“Ma, stop asking for a drink. You know what the doctor said.” Louise sighed and retreated around the corner to the kitchen.
Ivy mumbled under her breath again while I navigated my way to the couch. A series of yips erupted below us and three hairy fur balls vaulted up the stairs. I limped toward a blue skirted sofa with a crocheted throw blanket, trying to avoid the flurry of wagging tails.
The voices downstairs grew louder. “I waited more than twenty minutes for you. And all you were doing was talking to a bunch of your stupid friends.”
“You weren’t supposed to be there until five thirty.”
“Mom said five fifteen. Next time get your own ride!”
“You’re such a b—”
“Take it somewhere else. We have a guest upstairs.” The authority in Edge’s voice surprised me.
A female voice moaned. “Oh no. Don’t tell me Aunt Addie is visiting again!”
I was adjusting the angle of my brace to accommodate a sitting position when a streak of orange flew up the stairs and shot into the kitchen. I ended up falling, more or less, into the sagging cushion of the couch.
“Mom, she did it again.” While the girl continued to vent, I shifted, trying to get comfortable.
Ivy motored her chair until it was facing me. She crossed her hands in her lap and stared, as if I were the nightly news.
“Nice house,” I said, pretending keen interest in the room around me.
Meanwhile, the argument in the kitchen continued and was joined by a disruption at the dining room table. “I was going to use that color!”
“You already took all the blue!”
From the corner of my eye I saw one boy reach over and smash his fist on his brother’s creation. His twin reacted with his own weapon. He put his knuckles to his eyes and let out a piercing scream.
No wonder Louise didn’t mind a guest. What was one more person in this wacky household?
I was tempted to stand up and make everyone do breathing exercises to calm themselves down. Or maybe I should just do it myself. I breathed through my nose and out my mouth, remembering how I used to love the large family gatherings on my mother’s side of the family. The chaos, the constant bickering and teasing, the food that never stopped coming from the kitchen.
I preferred a quiet, more mature life style now. My adults-only condominium allowed no pet
s, no children, and no parties. And even though I sometimes left the TV running all night and put my mom on speakerphone when I ate dinner, it didn’t mean I was lonely.
Footsteps stomped on the stairs. “She could have at least texted me that she was there. Instead she sat in the car and purposely counted the minutes so she could complain.”
I shifted my attention out the window, feigning fascination at the ice-covered, barren lake.
The lanky girl with a red ponytail was halfway through another complaint when she stopped in the middle of the living room and stared at me. “Who are you?”
Edge appeared behind me. “Lily, this is my little sister Olivia.”
“Hello,” I said brightly.
Olivia waved. “Hi there . . .”
“Everyone calls her O-loud-ia,” he said, pulling an ottoman away from a nearby chair and pushing it in front of my leg.
“You’re so funny . . . Edgar!” his sister taunted. She stopped when she saw my leg. “How did you hurt your—”
“Sports injury,” was all I said. My canned answer for anyone who asked.
“But how—”
Edge cut her off with a single glare and she bit her lip. He gently lifted my foot and propped my leg up on the ottoman.
Louise walked in from the kitchen and clapped her hands at the two rascals still fighting at the dining room table. “Time to clean up, boys. Dinner’s soon.”
The streak of orange I had seen a few moments earlier emerged from the kitchen. Older than her little sister, she was also tall, but had long auburn hair. She grabbed the Play-Doh from both boys and jammed the blobs back in the containers. The little guy, the one who had been doing such a good job with his pretend cry, jumped off the chair. He ran toward Edge, practically tackling him from behind.
Edge swept him up in the air. “Not so fast, Justin. Get your butt back to the table and help clean up.”
The little boy giggled when Edge set him down. Edge roared like a bear and pretended to go after him.
Both boys screeched and Olivia rolled her eyes. “Grow up.”
Louise waved toward the girl in a bright orange sweater. “The angry chauffeur over there is my other daughter, Sarah.”
Fit for You Page 3