As I continued glancing around, waiting for Josh, I spotted Dallas, his brother, the bitchy mom named Christy, and her son walking almost side by side toward the parking lot, which was where I was standing. It seemed like the woman was the one talking while Dallas just nodded along, and the other two seemed off in their own world. For a brief moment, I thought about tying my shoelace that didn’t need a retie or pretending I was on a phone call. Then I realized how cowardly that made me feel. All because Dallas hadn’t been Mr. Friendly at the bar? I had to face it. I was going to be around these people for a while. I wasn’t scared of them, and I wasn’t going to be shy and shit.
If he didn’t like me for whatever reason in the world he might have made up for not being my fan, then too damn bad. My grandma had told me once you couldn’t make someone love you or even like you, but you could sure as hell make someone put up with you.
So, the second they were close enough to me, deep in a conversation that didn’t require a whole bunch of mouth movement, I let out a breath, reminded myself that two of these people were Ginny’s family, one was a child and the other… well, I wasn’t worried about her, and I said, “Hi, guys.”
The greeting I got in return didn’t amuse me.
One glare from the mom for a reason I couldn’t even begin to figure out.
One weak smile from the little boy on Josh’s team.
And two grumbles. Literally. One that sounded like “Mmm,” and the other didn’t really sound like anything at all.
Had Mac mysteriously broken out of the house, taken a shit on Dallas and Jackson’s front step, and lit it on fire without me knowing? Had I done something wrong or rude to the mom? I didn’t know. I really didn’t know, but suddenly I felt a little betrayed. A part of growing up was accepting that you could be nice to others but shouldn’t expect that kindness to be returned. Being nice shouldn’t require a payment.
But as the group of four walked by, honest to God making me grateful that no one had seen that encounter, it aggravated me. More than a little.
A lot.
If I had done something, I could understand and accept responsibility for my actions. At least I wanted to believe that. But I hadn’t. I really hadn’t done anything to either one of them.
And most importantly, Josh had been picked to be on the team. So….
“Don’t worry, I found it,” came Josh’s voice from my left, tearing my thoughts away from the men who lived across the street from us.
I slanted one of the few people in this world who wouldn’t dishonor me a look. “Worried? You should have been the one worried you weren’t going to make it to turn eleven if you hadn’t found it.”
*
About an hour and a half later, the three of us were driving down our street when Josh piped up, “The old lady is waving.”
“What old lady?” I asked before I could stop myself from calling her that. Damn it.
“The really old one. With the cotton hair.”
There were two things wrong with his sentence, but I only focused on one: I couldn’t tell him to stop calling her old when I’d just done it, but hopefully I would remember next time. “Is she still waving?”
Pulling the car into the driveway and parking it, he unbuckled his seat belt and turned to look over the backseat of the SUV. “Yeah. Maybe she wants something.”
There was no way in hell her hair needed cutting so soon, and it was almost ten o’clock at night. What the hell was she doing awake? The boys shouldn’t even be up at this point either, but that was just part of the beast called Select Baseball. The three of us all got out of the car, tired and ready to go to sleep after we’d eaten at my parents’ house, and a huge part of me hoped that, as I got out of the car, Miss Pearl didn’t actually need anything. I’d barely slammed the door shut when I heard, just barely, a near whisper this far away, “Miss Lopez!”
We were back to Miss Lopez.
I just managed to hold in my sigh as I turned to face her house. I waved.
“She’s waving at you,” Louie’s helpful ass explained.
Damn.
“I’m sleepy,” he added immediately afterward.
I didn’t need to look at Josh to know he had to be exhausted too. They were both usually in bed by nine on nights that didn’t fall on baseball days. “Okay. You two can go inside while I go see what she wants, but lock the door behind you, and if someone tries to break in”—this was highly unlikely, but stranger shit had happened—“Lou, call the cops and blow that train horn under your bed I know your Aunt Missy bought you for your birthday while Josh tries to break a skull in with his bat. Got it?”
They both seemed to deflate with relief that I wasn’t forcing them to go over to Miss Pearl’s.
“I’ll only be fifteen minutes tops, okay? Lock the door! Don’t turn on the stove!” I said, watching them nod as I started off across the street. I turned around once I was on the other side to make sure the door looked securely closed and not left half open. By the time I made it up to Miss Pearl’s driveway, she was at her doorway, wearing a snow-white robe over a dark purple nightgown with her cat in her arms. “Hi, Miss Pearl,” I greeted the older woman.
“Miss Garcia,” she said, smiling at me a little. “I’m sorry for botherin’ ya in the middle of the night—”
I chose to ignore the “Miss Garcia” and smiled at her calling ten the middle of the night.
“—but the pilot light on my water heater went out. If I get on the floor, I might not be able to get up, and my boy isn’t answerin’. Would ya mind helpin’ me out?”
Pilot light? On a water heater? I could faintly remember my dad working on ours as a kid.
“Sure,” I said, not knowing what other option I had. I could look it up on my phone, I hoped. “Where is it?”
Maybe that was the wrong question to ask because she gave me a funny look. “In the garage.”
I smiled at her and immediately reached for my phone in my back pocket. As she walked me through her house and into the garage, I quickly looked up how to turn a pilot light on a water heater and managed to glance at the basics behind it. So when we stopped, I asked, “Do you have a lighter or a match?”
That must have been the right thing because she nodded and walked over to a work table pressed up against one of the walls, pulling a box of matches out of one of the drawers. I shot her a tight smile when she handed them over, hoping like hell she wouldn’t be one of those people who stood there watching and judging.
She was.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket again and, in front of her, looked up the model of her water heater on the Internet and read the instructions twice to be on the safe side. When I set my phone down, I made sure to meet her gaze; I smiled and then did exactly what I was supposed to. It took a couple of tries, but it worked. Thank you, Google.
“All done,” I let Miss Pearl know as I got to my feet and dusted off my knees before handing over her matches.
The older woman raised one of those spiderweb thin eyebrows as she accepted the matches. “Thank you,” was her surprisingly easy answer without any comments about what I’d done.
“You’re welcome. I should get going back home. The boys are waiting for me. Do you need anything else?”
She shook her head. “That’s all. Now I can get my bath in.”
Beaming at her, I walked toward her front door and waited until she caught up. “It was nice seeing you, Miss Pearl. Let me know if there’s anything else you need later on.”
“Oh, I will,” she agreed without any hesitation. “Thank you.”