Those gold-green-brown eyes narrowed as he seemed to process what I was saying. Even the mostly-grin on his lips melted off.
Feeling more indignant than I probably had any right to be, I figured I should go ahead and bring up anything else he might try and use as examples before they pissed me off. I held up one finger. “I went to the bar, Mayhem, with my friend and boss, Ginny, who is Trip’s cousin, who is your cousin, too. I work down the street from there. Please ask anyone who knows Ginny.”
I raised another finger. “The only reason why I told you hi was because you were the only person there that I knew, and I didn’t want to be rude.”
A third finger rose. “And before I called you about the team’s schedule, I called Trip first each time. The only reason I didn’t go over to his house to complain was because I don’t know where he lives.”
In my head, I added “fucker” to the end of that. In reality, I did not. Sometimes I even amazed myself.
The silence between us was thick. And he finally said, with his gaze sharp and his mouth back to a firm line, “I’m married.”
I lost it. “Good for you. Did I say you weren’t?” Jesus Christ. I’d already mentioned I knew he was married and didn’t want to have anything to do with that. “I have married guy friends, and by some miracle, I’ve managed to keep my hands to myself every single time I’ve spent time with them, if you can believe that.”
We stared at each other for so long, eye to eye, one smart-ass expression to another that it didn’t immediately hit me that both of our facial features eased gradually. He had been wrong and I… hadn’t. Dumbass.
It was almost as if he could read my mind because he raised his eyebrow.
I raised mine right back, repeating the word in my head. Dumbass.
His eyebrow stayed where it was and so did mine.
Once you bowed down to someone, you were their bitch. And if there was one thing I’d learned about myself over the course of the last few years and last few dozen mistakes, that wasn’t exactly a title that sat well with me, and it wasn’t one I would willingly take ever again. Especially not from this man who didn’t put food on my table and clothes on my back. I was usually a lot nicer than this, but this was basically how I treated people after they’d known me for a while. It was his fault he brought this out of me so soon.
I repeated the word to myself, hoping he could read my thoughts: dumbass.
Dallas’s mouth twitched, highlighting the fact his bottom lip was fuller than the top one; the lines across his forehead eased, and eventually he extended his hand in my direction, those hazel eyes still on mine. He thought I had a staring problem? He had one too. “We’re good,” he announced to the world, steadily.
Like I wanted to be friends with him by that point.
Trip, I liked. Dallas on the other hand, I didn’t know what the hell to think. Maybe I could have reasoned that the woman in the red car had pushed him over the edge, but I wasn’t going to go there. His brother seemed like he might be a jackass. Jackass Jackson. But…
I was going to be an adult and accept that we all made mistakes. Didn’t I know that by now?
Fuck it. He wasn’t spitting into his hand and I wasn’t spitting into mine to form some kind of undying friendship, like I’d done with Vanessa so many years ago. We might as well make the best out of this situation. Life was a lot easier spent next to a pine tree than a cactus. Plus, this was for Josh. For him, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t or wouldn’t do.
And Dallas and I were going to be stuck with each other for a long time. Literally.
I snuck my hand into his. The callused, much larger body part that consisted of a palm and fingers swallowed mine whole. At least he had the grip of a man. “All right. We’re good.” We shook, and before he’d let go of me, I asked with my face straight, “So has the schedule been changed?”
Chapter Nine
Josh’s words had me freeze-framing in place. I had to glance over my shoulder with a long, marinara-covered spoon in hand so I could read his lips and make sure I hadn’t imagined his words. “What did you say?”
The almost eleven-year-old with his head in the fridge peeked out, a gallon of orange juice clutched in his hand. He faced me as he said the words I’d been hoping to have misheard: “Can my friends spend the night?”
My initial thought was no, please, Jesus Christ, no.
I didn’t even have to try and pull the memories of the last time his “friends” had slept over. Friends? More like demons from the ninth circle of hell.
My soul had been scarred; it hadn’t forgotten for one single second about the broken bunk beds, cracked dishes, clogged toilet, or, God help me, the yelling and the running through our apartment. I’d thought boy sleepovers would be like the sleepovers Van and I had damn near every weekend: we’d hang out in my room, look through magazines, watch movies, paint our nails, talk about boys, and eat all my mom’s snacks. Boy sleepovers were fucking hell, at least at Josh’s age. I took for granted how well behaved Josh and Louie were on their own. I really did. For all the shit they lost, things they forgot, toilet seats they peed on, food products they shoved into the cushions of the car, and the dirty socks they left everywhere, they were pretty damn great.
It wasn’t until I was around other people’s kids that I remembered why—before Josh and Louie—I hadn’t planned on having kids for a long, long time. If ever.
And somehow I’d gotten away with not having more than Josh and Louie at the same time for almost a year. It had taken me a year to recuperate from the beasts Josh had invited to stay over. Hell, I still hadn’t gotten over everything. I’d gotten lucky he hadn’t brought it up before.
Unfortunately, my time had run out.
How could I tell him he couldn’t have friends over so close to his birthday? He had already told me he didn’t want to have a party, but in the words of my mom, how could he not have a party? I’d always thought get-togethers were more for the adults than for the kids, but now I knew for sure that was the truth. Josh really could have been perfectly happy getting twenty bucks and going to the movies or the batting cage.
“Please?” the boy asked with so much hope in his voice it crushed my soul.
Please don’t do this to me, I thought, but what really came out of my mouth was more like “Sureeee…. But no more than three, okay?”
Was it too much to hope that he would say he really only wanted one friend over?
It was.
Because his response went: “Three’s good.”
God help me. I was paying for everything I’d ever put my parents through with interest.
*
“See you tomorrow morning!” I called out to the mom getting into her car, waving a hand with a little too much enthusiasm.