“There was this stupid girl.”
“Yeah, when I was your age, a lot of stories started that way.” There were more ice cream cartons in the freezer than meat. Mike pulled the cover off the Cherry Vanilla. One spoonful for Teddy. Two for him.
“We were doing Simon Says. And I took four steps like I was supposed to, only that meant I sort of ran into this stupid girl. So she turned around and slugged me.”
Mike did the next round of ice cream, this time with a wet dishcloth ready for the spill he knew was coming.
“I didn’t do anything, Dad. I was just playing the game like I was supposed to. Only, I won the last one and I think she didn’t like that. When she punched me, I really, really, really, really wanted to punch her back. But I didn’t. You tole me a million times. You never hit a girl.”
“You did the right thing,” Mike assured him. “So then what?”
“So Molly hit her.”
“Molly?”
“That was the thing. I told her I couldn’t hit a girl. She said fine, but nobody ever said she couldn’t. So she hit her. But, Dad. It’s a bad thing. A very bad thing. When a girl has to do your hitting for you. I was so mad I started crying. It wasn’t fair.”
Mike put away the ice cream, hooked his arms to make a seat for his big guy, and they moved into the bathroom, then the bedroom. Slugger and Cat both knew Teddy was upset. The critters climbed on the bed first, so there was almost no room for Teddy.
Mike was still trying to figure out what had upset Teddy more-that a strange girl had hit him, or that Molly had been his hero instead of his having the chance to be one himself.
Apparently his stress level wasn’t all that great, because he zonked out before Mike could pull up the covers or turn out the light. “Cat. Slugger,” he called, thinking that the critters needed one more let-out that night…but neither acknowledged him in any way.
They weren’t leaving the kid.
Abruptly the house turned silent…and Mike turned restless. He cleaned up in the kitchen, because he’d learned early on that ice cream spills were easier to deal with when they happened, rather than waiting for the next day. After that…well, there was always stuff to do. Start a load of wash. Hit the mail, go through bills.
Instead, he just…sort of aimlessly paced. Overall, he wasn’t unhappy at how the Home Owners’ meeting had gone. He’d gotten what he wanted. He just had a real bug about other people imposing rules on him…but most of the neighbors were nice enough. A bunch of the guys invited him to a Wednesday-night poker game. A few moms had clustered around him, talking about preschools.
But the only one he’d wanted to be with was Amanda. He wanted to know what she thought of the group. He wanted to tease her-she was supposed to be as afraid of suburbia as he was-yet she’d fit in so easily; both men and women warmed to her right away. Not that he was surprised. She gave off a quiet friendliness, an honesty and warmth.
His prowling around eventually led him to his front window, where he just stood there, staring at the windows in her place. Her household looked shut down. Molly had undoubtedly been put to bed by now. He saw no movement in any of the rooms, nothing but some distant light.
She definitely wasn’t finishing her evening on the deck tonight. The firefly-night rolled through his mind on slow replay. The fireflies, the dancing in the grass, the moonlight, her soft silver laugher… He remembered every minute of that crazy evening.
Abruptly realizing how long he’d been standing there, staring at empty windows next door like a complete fool, he pivoted around. Kicked off his shoes. Headed for the shower.
When Molly was finally asleep, Amanda left her daughter’s bedroom with a major sigh. They’d had quite a discussion before bedtime-brought on by the shiner in her daughter’s left eye. It wasn’t a bad bruise, considering the other little girl in the altercation had been a hefty second grader. But it invoked a torrent of talk about when “wrong is wrong” and when “wrong is right.”
It was always wrong to fight, Molly knew.
But it was always right to stand up for a friend against a bully.
So which was the rightest answer? If you had to act really quick and your friend was hurt right then and there was no time to go in and ask your mom?
Amanda wasn’t about to agree that hitting was an effective answer for anything, but by the time she wandered into the kitchen, her head was spinning. In the next life, she wanted to be her daughter. So passionate about life. So full of spirit and love and absolutely certain of what she felt about everything.
Without turning on a light, Amanda opened the fridge, then a cupboard. There didn’t seem to be anything she wanted to eat or drink. Nothing she wanted to do. She was definitely too antsy to watch a show or read…and positively too wide-awake to sleep.
But then she froze.
Mike was awake. She could see him across the way, a tall dark silhouette. The distant sink light provided the only illumination, or she’d never have caught his shadowed frame. He couldn’t see her. He was facing her windows, but she had no lights on. So it was unlikely he could see her, yet he stood there, as if he were searching, and then suddenly turned away and disappeared back into the darkness.
Her pulse started thrumming…and wouldn’t stop. A lump filled her throat…that refused to be swallowed.
It was his loneliness that struck her. An invisible loneliness, nothing he’d say or admit to, nothing anyone was supposed to see.
But he’d been looking at her house, her windows. For her. Even if he never said it. Even if he never intended to do anything about it.
And something abruptly snapped in Amanda. She couldn’t explain what exactly. She just felt suddenly, oddly…angry. Vibrantly angry. Impatiently, infuriatingly, zestily angry.
She tore around the house faster than a wet cat, brushing her hair, brushing her teeth, unearthing the monitor she used when Molly was a baby. Then she charged outside, barefoot, prancing fast because the grass was wet and the night damp-cool and ghostly.
Before she lost her nerve-before she got scared-she zipped up his deck steps, didn’t knock on the back door, just pushed open the glass and charged in. Immediately she stubbed her toe-on heaven knows what, probably a toy-made a groan of a sound, loud enough to wake the dead, but his watchdog didn’t even come out to see her, much less bark. Mike couldn’t possibly be sleeping yet; she’d seen him from the window less than ten minutes ago. But he didn’t show up, either, no matter how much noise she was making, stomping around.
Of course she realized why, when she aimed toward a flicker of light, and finally heard the sound of water coming from the master bath.
She took a step into his bedroom, and in the dark, for just a second, she lifted her foot because the toe was still stinging. She was acting crazily, she knew. She was behaving completely out of character.
She was taking a risk she was terribly afraid of.
On paper, this was just an impossibly wrong thing to do. On paper.
She took a breath, turned the knob on the bathroom door. Steam engulfed her, dancing on the mirror, shining up the tile floor. A giant gray towel waited on the counter. Mike was in there, beyond the smoked-glass shower doors.
She put the monitor on the counter, pulled off her cowl-neck top, pushed down her green cotton slacks. Opened the door and stepped in.
Mike turned around on a spin at the sudden burst of cool air. There was soap in his hair, water in his eyes. Mostly what she saw was somewhere around two hundred pounds of wet, naked man.
His first reaction was shock. That shocked silence lasted somewhere around a short millisecond. Initially his mind was clearly on something unrelated to sex. One look at her, and his body altered faster than a millisecond, too.