I grin. “Of course. We can hang out all summer long. Now go. Your mom never has any time off. Let her take you to dinner.”
He straightens up, and his T-shirt seems even clingier since being pressed against me.
“What?” he asks, and I realize I’m staring at him all blown away by how cute he is.
“Nothing.” I shift from one foot to the other. “Would it be bad if I told you to hurry home?”
“Morgan.” He laughs. “If it were up to me, I’d already be back.”
*
After Ben’s bath, I encourage my mom to take the night off. She settles in her room with a book while Ben and I settle on the couch with a movie and a heaping bowl of popcorn. Ben tells me all about the last-day-of-school party they had in his classroom and the water balloon fight they had at his after-school day care.
“I got soaked.” He snickers. “It went all the way through to my underwear.”
“That’s good stuff,” I tell him.
He leans his head against my shoulder and props his bare feet up on the arm of the couch. I know he’s just a little kid, but sometimes he looks so grown-up. Thankfully, my phone buzzes with a text before I start ugly-crying and telling my little brother to stop getting older.
Evan: You up?
Me: What do you think? I live with a 6 y.o. who just started summer break.
Evan: LOL
Me: How’s dinner?
Evan: Over. I miss u.
My heart goes all fluttery. It’s only three words, but the idea of being missed by Evan Kokua does something to me.
Me: I miss you, too.
Evan: Can I come over now? I might have leftovers wrapped in tinfoil that looks like some sort of exotic animal.
I laugh, and Ben asks me what’s so funny. “Evan,” I tell him.
“Yeah, Evan’s funny all right.” He chuckles to himself like Evan’s sitting right here and just cracked a joke about dinosaur poop. He stretches, yawns, and curls up against me, his eyelids miraculously fluttering shut.
Me: Come home. Ben is fading fast.
Evan: See u soon.
*
Ben manages to fall asleep against my shoulder in the time I’m waiting for Evan to arrive. I pick him up and carry him to his bed. My phone vibrates with a text as soon as I’ve shut the door to our room.
Evan: Can you come outside?
I head to the front door and open it. Evan is standing there on my welcome mat. Waiting for me. Holding up his tinfoil-wrapped leftovers. “I think it’s supposed to be a swan,” he says, bending the long neck back into place as I take it in my hands.
“Fancy.”
“We ate at a fancy restaurant.”
“I didn’t know Pacific Palms had one of those.”
“I’ll take you sometime.”
I take a whiff through the tinfoil. “What’s in here, anyway?”
“Come up to the roof and I’ll show you.”
“Oh, I bet you will.”
“What? I just meant we’ll have a picnic,” he teases. “You have a dirty mind, Morgan Grant.”
“You know you love it.” I click the door shut behind me and take his hand. “I’ve never been on the roof. Aren’t there opossums and other vermin up there?”
He pulls me around the corner. “I guess we’ll find out.”
“Super.”
When we get to the edge of the building, Evan sets the leftovers on the ground and hammocks his hands together. “Climb on. I’ll give you a boost.” I look at the roof. It’s only one story up, but it seems higher. “I’ve got you. Trust me.”
I take a deep breath, stick my bare foot into his hands, and grab on to the storm drain, hoping I don’t tear it down as he pushes me upward. Within seconds, I’m able to scramble across the worn wood shingles, though I’m certain I’m getting splinters and deadly brown recluse spider bites in the process.
I look down at Evan. “How will you get up here?”
He tosses the leftovers up to me and climbs onto the railing that wraps around the balcony of our floor. “Like this.” He teeters on the thin metal like an adept tightrope walker.
“Oh, my god. I can’t watch.”
But before I can tear my eyes away, Evan jumps high enough to be able to grab the edge of Paradise Manor and hoist himself up and over. There’s something to be said for being athletic. And agile. And Evan. He lands next to me with a thud and rolls over onto his back, staring up at the sky.
“Don’t you dare let Ben ever see you do that.”
He laughs, full and free, into the middle of the night. “Deal.”
“Okay, let’s check out these leftovers.”
I begin to unwrap what has become a completely deformed tinfoil swan. I’m slow and deliberate, anticipating something good, but I start laughing when I see what’s inside.
“You got a burger and fries at your fancy dinner?”
“What can I say? I’m a creature of habit.”
“Bet they loved wrapping that one up.” I take one of only two bites left of the burger and lie down next to Evan. I turn my head to look at him. “I know you didn’t really bring me up here to eat a hamburger.”
“Are you saying offering you the remnants of my cold food isn’t as smooth as I think it is?”
“You don’t have to have smooth moves to get me to hang out with you.”