21
After
Literally every pair of jeans I own has holes in it and Soledad’s got plans of her own, so I strap Hannah into her car seat and take her for what, I hope, will be the world’s shortest and most efficient trip to the Gallería on East Sunrise Boulevard. The mall smells like chlorine and Cinnabon. A perky high-school salesgirl carries my stuff into the dressing room, her shorts so tiny that the pockets stick out the hem against her tan, skinny legs. “She’s so cute,” she tells me, smiling at Hannah, who’s passed out asleep in her stroller with one spitty fist crammed into her mouth. “Are you babysitting?”
“Nope,” I tell her quickly. I get this question a lot and it used to fluster the crap out of me—I’d stutter my way through explanations to bank tellers and baristas, both of us wishing to God they hadn’t asked. Eventually I found it was better to be clear and direct. “She’s all mine.”
The salesgirl’s eyes widen, just for a second. She’s probably only a year or so younger than me. “Oh,” she says brightly, averting her eyes as she hangs the jeans on the hook inside the brightly lit cubicle. “That’s great.”
I’ve barely gotten the door locked and my pants unzipped before Hannah wakes up, flushed and cranky. “Hey, baby girl,” I say with a smile, trying to head her off at the pass. “We’ll be out of here in two seconds, okay?”
No dice. Hannah whimpers as I try to shimmy in and out of the first pair of pants; by the time it becomes clear to me that everything I’ve picked out is at least a size too small she’s smack in the middle of a truly spectacular tantrum, screaming like she’s being tortured as I lift her out of the stroller, do what I can to calm her down.
“Everything okay in there?” the salesgirl calls shrilly.
“Yup,” I call back, trying to sound like I know what I’m doing. I do know what I’m doing, really; I try to remember that as I press my lips to Hannah’s forehead. “We’re fine.”
We’re not, though: Hannah needs a change, and she won’t stop crying. There’s not going to be any shopping today. I get my own holey jeans on as fast as humanly possible, Hannah all hiccups and hollers and the occasional furious “Nooo!” As I hightail it out of the store I’m painfully aware that I look like something out of one of those MTV reality shows people watch to feel better about their own lives.
“Oh, too bad,” the salesgirl calls behind me. “None of them worked?”
*
All I want is to head home and give up for the day, but I told Aaron we’d come by after the mall for pizza and a movie, some thriller I agreed to against my better judgment. “Relax,” he tells me halfway through, laughing as I almost jump off the couch for the third time in twenty minutes. I hate scary movies, is the truth.
“You relax. Bitch is toast,” I reply, reaching for the popcorn on the coffee table and nodding at the girl detective on-screen. Hannah’s asleep in Aaron’s bedroom. Maxie, the bulldog, is snoozing on the floor.
“Nah.” Aaron pulls me closer, one bear-paw hand playing idly in my hair. He smells like saltwater and soap, clean. “She’s too cute. The cute ones never die.”
“In what universe?” I ask, laughing. I’m about to lean into his shoulder when my phone starts making noise in the depths of my purse: the Rolling Stones, I realize after a second, “Sympathy for the Devil.” My heart does a funny thing inside my chest. Junior year of high school Shelby changed the ringtone on my cell so that it played “Sympathy for the Devil” when Sawyer called. When I hear it now, I just sort of … freeze.
Aaron starts laughing, and then looks at my face and frowns. “Who’s that?” he asks as I dig the phone out of my bag.
“Nobody,” I say, recovering, hitting the red IGNORE button. “It’s just … a joke.”
“Is it Sawyer?” He doesn’t sound particularly happy about the idea. The light from the TV flickers blue across his face.
“Yeah,” I confess—no reason to lie, right? Nothing going on. “But I don’t need to talk to him, so.”
“So,” Aaron fires back, unconvinced. “What’s he calling for, then?”
That surprises me a little—it’s the first suspicion I’ve seen out of him, really, and it must show on my face, because he backpedals. “Look,” he says. “I’m not trying to be a dick. I just—”
“No, I know,” I say. “It’s fine. I have no idea what he wants, honestly. But I don’t particularly care, either. I’m hanging out with you right now, you know?”
“Okay,” Aaron says eventually, and we hang out for a while, twenty lazy minutes on the sofa once the movie is over. He was right, for what it’s worth: The plucky policewoman lived to fight crime another day.
“Can I ask you a question?” he says once I start to extricate myself—it’s getting late, and I glance around for my flip-flops. “What would happen if you stayed?”
“I can’t,” I say automatically, a reflex, though for a moment I wonder how it would feel to say yes. “I mean, the baby is here, and—”
“I mean.” He looks disappointed for a second, gets a look on his face like no kidding: The first time I brought Hannah to Aaron’s, he bought covers for all the electrical outlets. “I wasn’t going to send her home in a cab.”
“I know.” Here’s the thing: I really, really like him. You don’t need a map to navigate the level terrain of Aaron’s heart. Still, staying over feels like a big deal for some reason, a step I don’t know if I’m a hundred percent ready to take with him: I think of my phone ringing earlier, “Sympathy for the Devil.” Try to stop thinking about it.
At last I smile, scratch through the sandy hair at the nape of Aaron’s neck. “Another time,” I promise, and head into the bedroom to get my girl.