The five-year-old smiled and nodded, whispering, “Shh,” at me. “He’s sleeping.”
I could see that. When the hell had he gotten into the house? I didn’t care that he was over—of course I didn’t—but I was confused. I figured I would just ask Josh but told Lou instead, “Get off him, Lou. He’s sleeping.”
“He told me it was okay,” he argued. “Stop talking so loud.”
Oh my God. Was this kid telling me to be quiet? I opened my mouth and closed it again, taking in the sleeping man beneath him. Shooting Lou a look he didn’t see because he’d turned his attention back to his game, I kept going into the kitchen where Josh had disappeared to.
He was already waiting for me, immediately handing me the box of my favorite strawberry cereal and peeled my banana for me as I got out the milk, watching me with those brown eyes so much like Rodrigo’s and mine.
“When did Dallas get here?” I asked him in a quiet voice.
Josh hesitated for a second before reaching to take the gallon of milk out of my hands, going to pour it into the bowl for me. “Around eight. Louie woke me up when he heard the knocking.”
“Did you check to make sure it was him before you opened it?”
He shot me a look as he put the cap back on the milk. “Yeah. I’m not a baby.”
“I’m just making sure,” I muttered back. “What did he say?”
“He came inside and asked if you were okay. Then he said he was really tired and was gonna take a nap on the couch.” With his back to me as he set the milk back inside the fridge, he asked, “Are you mad he’s here?”
Plucking a spoon from the drawer, I stuck it in my mouth as I moved my bowl of cereal to the edge of the counter. “What? No. I was just surprised… he was here. Did he say anything about Miss Pearl?”
“No.” Had Josh’s tone gotten husky or was I imagining it? He seemed to think about something for a second before adding in a weird voice, “He called you stupid last night.”
With the spoon in my mouth, I realized he was right. He had called me stupid and an idiot. A stupid fucking idiot or something like that. Huh.
“You were dumb,” Josh whispered, his words making my head snap around to tell him not to talk to me like that. But the expression on his face made me keep my comments to myself. If rage and grief could have a child, that was what would have been reflected on my nephew’s face. It made me want to cry, especially when his eyes went wide as he battled the emotion inside of him. “You could have died,” he accused, his eyes going shiny in the time it took me to blink.
The scare from last night seemed to swell up inside of me again, the possibilities fresh and terrifying. My own eyes went a little watery as I shoved the bowl away from the edge of the counter and faced Josh head-on. There was no point in lying to him or attempting to play off the situation as anything less than what it had been. It was easy to forget sometimes how smart he was, how mature and sensitive this eleven-year-old could be.
So I told him the truth, our gazes locked on each other. “I know, J. I’m sorry I scared you. I was scared too, but there was no one else out there—”
“We have neighbors,” he declared, his voice uneven and low so that I knew he didn’t want to let Louie hear what was going on between us. “They could have gone in so you didn’t have to.”
“Josh.” I reached out and tried to take his hands, but he hid them behind his back, making me sigh in exasperation. “No one else was out there. I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t leave Miss Pearl in there and you know it.”
His throat bobbed and he squeezed his eyes closed, killing me a little inside.
“I love you and your bro more than I love anything, J. I would never intentionally leave you,” I whispered, watching his face as I pressed my good palm against my thigh. “I’m sorry that I scared you, but there was no other choice for me but to go in there and get her. You can’t always wait for someone else to do the right thing when you can do it yourself.”
Josh didn’t say anything for a long time as he stood there in front of me. His eyes stayed shut. His hands stayed balled at his sides.
But finally, after what felt like forever, he opened them. They weren’t glassy. They weren’t pained or angry. They looked more resigned, and I wasn’t sure how that made me feel.
“Bad things happen all the time, and we can’t control them. You’ll never know how sorry I am that you’ve had to learn that the hard way. But I love you, and we can’t be scared of shit we can’t do anything about. We can just be happy to be alive and enjoy what we have. I don’t know if something bad will happen to me now or fifty years from now, but I would do anything to stay with you two.” I touched his cheek and watched him let out a shaky exhale. “And like my grandma used to tell me, the devil will probably kick me out of hell the day I die. I won’t go anywhere without a fight.”
He eyed me quietly for a moment before asking, “You swear?”
“I swear.” I touched his head, and he didn’t move away from me that time. “I’m sorry, okay?”
“Me too. You’re not really dumb.”
“Sometimes people say crazy things when they’re upset that they don’t mean. I get it.”
He ducked his chin but kept eye contact with me. “You do that sometimes.”
“When?”
“When you’re… you know…” His cheeks turned pink. “That time every month.”
I was never going to forgive myself for having to break him into the female period so early in his life, but it had happened, and there was nothing I could do to change it. It was him either thinking I was dying, thinking I was a vampire, or knowing the truth. I’d gone with the truth. I’d started making sure I locked the bathroom door after that one incident of him busting in and finding me in the middle of wrapping up a used nighttime pad. It had taken us like two weeks until we were finally able to look each other in the eye again after that.
“Mind your own beeswax. I’m always nice.”
That had him snorting.
“What? I am.” I smiled at him.
“Sure, Tia.”
I stuck my tongue out at him, pleased every single time he called me tia since he did it so rarely now, and he stuck his out right back.
“Morning.” Dallas’s voice made us both jump, the sound of it about fifty times raspier than normal.
I turned to look at him, suddenly remembering how angry he’d been hours ago and feeling uncertain. The expression on his face as he moved into the kitchen and rested his hip against the counter didn’t help any either. In fact, Dallas looked more pissed than I’d ever seen him. How could someone wake up that mad? Those clear hazel eyes flicked down to Josh’s for a moment, a brief smile flashing across his mouth. “Hey, Josh.”