“You don’t have any allergies, do you?” I ask, realizing I should’ve probably asked that first.
“What’s that?”
“Allergies, you know... some people are allergic to peanuts, which means peanuts can kill them, so they can’t eat them. You got anything like that? Anything that can kill you?”
“Lots.”
Shit. “Really? Like what?”
“Guns.”
I look at her, brow furrowing. “Guns?”
“Guns can kill people.”
The little walking, talking PSA stares at me, not being a smart ass about that at all, simply answering my question. I almost forgot what it was like dealing with a kid. Almost.
“Allergic to guns... got it,” I mutter, moving on to the fridge. “No foods that can kill you?”
She hesitates before saying, “Porridge.”
“Porridge?” What the hell? “What kind of porridge?”
Again, she hesitates, before saying, “All the kinds.”
I glance at her, eyes narrowed. “You’re telling me porridge will kill you if you eat it?”
She nods adamantly.
I’m pretty sure she’s bullshitting, but I can’t call her bluff. She’s only five, for fuck’s sake. If I try to make her eat some, to prove she’s lying, I might accidentally kill her, and we can’t be having that.
Besides, it’s not like I have the shit around here to make porridge. What do I look like, Oliver Twist?
“No porridge, then. I won’t ever feed you it.”
She grins, a smug little smile. Manipulative little shit.
“Okay, look, kid... I’ll be straight with you. We’ve got bologna, we’ve got fish sticks, and we’ve got a bunch of shit to maybe make a salad in here.”
She makes another face.
Doesn’t sound good to me, either.
“You don’t have breakfast?” she asks. “Lucky Charms?”
“No, but I can probably make pancakes.”
Her eyes widen, her expression brightening.
Ding, ding, ding.
“Pancakes, it is,” I say, gathering what I need. Truth be told, I could make pancakes in my sleep with how often I’ve made these things for Leo.
Sasha kicks her legs impatiently as I whip up the batter, her heels banging against the legs of the chair.
“You want some kind of something in these pancakes? We’ve got...” I glance around. Shit. “Looks like we have some chocolate chips.”
She gasps. “Can I? Please?”
“Yeah,” I say, grabbing the bag of chocolate chips, dumping the whole fucking thing in the batter.
As I wait for the pan to heat up, I grab a tangerine.
“Can I have some of that, too?” she asks, watching me.
I grab another tangerine and walk over, rolling it to her on the table. She picks it up, eyeing it warily, clutching it tightly as her gaze turns back to me. I peel my tangerine, tossing the scraps on the counter, and pull out a segment to eat as the pancakes start to cook.
“Ugh, how do you do this?” she grumbles.
I look at her as she claws at the tangerine, poking a hole, her finger going right through it as juice drips out onto the table. “Never peeled a tangerine before?”
“I don’t know,” she says, frustrated. “I just wanna open the orange.”
Laughing under my breath, I walk over again, taking the tangerine and starting to peel it, showing her how to do it so she can finish the rest. “It’s a tangerine, not an orange.”
“It’s not an orange?”
“It’s more of a mandarin,” I tell her. “They’re all citrus fruit, but tangerines are smaller than a normal orange.”
She glares at it, looking skeptical. “How does it taste?”
“Like an orange.”
She gives me a look that says, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? What was your point?’
I’m so preoccupied with the tangerine that I burn the first pancake, having to toss it out. I focus after that, still trying to wake up, stacking up nearly a dozen pancakes on a platter. As soon as they’re finished, I grab some plates and turn around, freezing when I look at Sasha.
The kid’s a fucking mess.
Juice drips from her chin, smeared on her face, even somehow finding its way into her unbrushed hair. Tangerine covers the table in front of her, clinging to her shirt, like she fucking bathed in the juice. She licks her fingers, not at all bothered, her eyes lighting up when she sees the pancakes. I slap a few on a plate in front of her, ignoring the tangerine as I give her a fork.
Sitting down across the table, I hand her a bottle of syrup, watching as she drowns the pancakes in it and dives right in. I eat some, just folding the fuckers over like tacos, not bothering with silverware.
If I thought she was a mess before, it’s got nothing on her now. Mess on top of mess on top of mess. Sticky syrup and melted chocolate cover her—on her hands, on her face, on her clothes. I watch incredulously as she drops her fork and jumps down out of the chair, licking her fingers once more. My gaze follows her as she heads straight for the fridge, leaving a chocolate covered handprint on the door handle as she opens it.
She doesn’t say shit. Not a goddamn word.
She reaches right inside, helping herself to a Capri Sun.
“Give me one of those,” I say, holding my hand out, a sticky juice pouch landing in my palm.
“You’re welcome,” she says right away, even though I hadn’t thanked her, and I almost feel a twinge of guilt over that—over forgetting my manners—until it strikes me she hadn’t thanked me for the fucking pancakes.
Yeah, I know I’m petty.
You don’t have to tell me.
Pulling the little straw off the back of the pouch, I take the plastic off and aim for the hole.
I miss.
Every fucking time.
I stab the air, I stab the pouch, I stab myself. I’m about to lose my cool and throw the fucking thing when I hear Sasha laugh. My gaze darts to her. She’s sipping her drink. She got her straw in the hole, no problem.
“I can do it,” she says, launching herself across the table, grabbing the straw from me. I surrender it, pushing the juice pouch at her. She shoves the straw right in before giving it back. “There you go!”
My gaze flickers between her and the Capri Sun. “Thanks, shortcake.”
She smiles widely, her voice soft as she says, “You’re welcome.”
“Oh my god.”
A voice cuts through the room, coming from the doorway, catching both of us off guard. Scarlet stands there, wide eyes watching us.
“Mommy, I ate chocolate in pancakes!” Sasha says, turning toward her, nearly falling out of the damn chair as she tries to shift out of the way, to show her mother her breakfast.
“I see that,” Scarlet says, strolling closer, grasping the back of the chair as she looks her daughter over. “Looks like you’re wearing it, too.”
Brow furrowing, Sasha looks down, like she can’t fathom what the hell her mother’s talking about. Plucking off a piece of pancake that’s stuck to her shirt with syrup, she pops it right into her mouth. Scarlet laughs with disbelief, hauling her out of the chair and onto her feet. “Why don’t you go find a bathroom and wash up?”
Sasha doesn’t argue, trudging out of the kitchen. Once she’s gone, Scarlet slips into the chair across from me. I can tell she has shit she wants to say, so I just sit here, waiting her out, sipping from my juice pouch, knowing she’ll get to it eventually.
Her voice is quiet when she finally speaks. “What are you doing, Lorenzo?”
I glance down at myself, just as confused by that as Sasha had been about wearing her breakfast. What does it look like I’m doing? “Sitting here.”
“No, I know that, I just mean... what are you going to do now?”
“Probably keep sitting here for a while.”
She smiles softly. “What’s your plan?”
“For today?”
“For ev
ery day.”
“For every day,” I repeat, not sure how to answer that. “I’ve never been good at making plans, Scarlet... even worse at keeping them. I kind of just get up and go and hope for the best.”
“Any idea where you might be going?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On how long it takes you to quit beating around the fucking bush and tell me what it is you want,” I say. “Because the rate you’re going, I might not ever make it out of this chair.”
She makes a face at me, like I’m being a pain in the ass, but I’m not a mind reader. I’m not in the business of making assumptions, so while I could guess what she’s getting at, I need her to just be straight.
For her sake.
For my sanity.
Because there’s a kid off somewhere in my house, probably flooding my fucking bathroom, and she needs us to be on the same page about this. If there’s going to be a ‘we’, it’s not just ‘her’ and ‘me’, since there’s also a little ‘she’ that has to be factored in somehow.
A little ‘she’ that complicates shit greatly.
“I’m just trying to figure out where I fit,” Scarlet says. “Trying to see if there’s even a place in your life for me.”
“For you both, you mean.”
She nods. “I know this isn’t what you signed up for, Lorenzo. That’s why, when Declan gave me your message, I tried to respect it, and I still will. I understand if we don’t fit in your life. It’s okay. But I just need to know. Because if we don’t fit here, I have to figure out where we do. She’s been through too much for so much of her life to be uncertain. She deserves to belong.”
“So do you,” I say.
Scarlet doesn’t react to that, just staring at me, waiting for something more.
“Look, your plan is what matters here,” I tell her. “Don’t try to squeeze yourself into somebody else’s life, like you’re just a guest in their universe. Because yeah, that’s fitting, but that’s not belonging. I could fit my cock in a million holes, but that doesn’t mean my cock has any business being in any of them. So why don’t you tell me what your universe looks like, Morgan... what life looks like for you and Sasha... and then we’ll decide if I belong there.”
She stares at me for another moment, like maybe she doesn’t know what to think, before finally, she says, “I just need it to be a place where we can be ourselves—where she can be who she is, and I can just be me. I don’t care if there’s a picket fence. I don’t need a boy to turn into a stupid bird. I just... I want to be happy.”
“What makes you happy?”
“You do,” she says quietly.
I think about that, those words bouncing around in my skull. “How do you feel about Florida?”
“Florida?”
“Nothing permanent, just maybe get away for a while, you know, decompress. The guys can handle business here. It’ll give my brother a chance to do his own thing without me looking over his shoulder and breathing down his neck, and it’ll give us a chance to test the waters a bit.”
“Florida, huh?”
I nod. “Florida.”
Scarlet’s quiet for a moment, staring off into space, before Sasha comes running back into the kitchen, not much cleaner than she had been.
“Hey, sunshine,” Scarlet says, grabbing the girl, pulling her toward her. “How do you feel about Florida?”
“What does it have?”
“Uh, sunny skies.” Scarlet glances at me. “Alligators, maybe? Help me out here.”
“Beaches,” I say. “Oranges.”
“A lot of oranges,” Scarlet says. “Oh, and Disney World is in Florida, too.”
Sasha’s eyes widen. “Can we go, Mommy? Please?”
“If you want to go, sure.”
A grin lights up her face as she leans over, cupping her hands around Scarlet’s ear, whispering something to her.
Whatever it is makes Scarlet’s smile grow, a laugh escaping as she says, “Of course.”
The kid lets out a squeal as she runs away, literally running in my house, yelling, “I’m gonna tell Buster!”
She’s gone in a blink.
I stare at Scarlet in silence for a moment before curiosity gets the best of me. “What did she say?”
“She wanted to know if Mommy’s friend could come with us to Florida,” she says. “She likes the way he makes his pancakes and she thinks it’s funny that he doesn’t tie his shoelaces.”
Brow furrowing, I glance down at the loose laces of the combat boots I’m wearing, the ones I never bothered to take off at bedtime, before I meet Scarlet’s gaze again. She’s still smiling, radiating happiness. Warmth.
“When she comes back, you tell her I said she’s not half-bad herself.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Wake up, sunshine,” a voice called out in a raspy whisper as the little girl was shaken, roused from a deep, dreamless sleep.
The little girl peeked her bleary eyes open, blinking a few times as she gazed at the face beside her. “Mommy?”
Her mother smiled—a big, wide kind of smile. It wasn’t the kind of smile the little girl saw every day. This smile glowed with happiness, almost vibrating with excitement, as her mother whispered, “We’re here.”
Here.
It took the little girl a moment to get it, a moment to understand what her mother meant, to remember where ‘here’ was supposed to be. She sat up straight, moving so fast the seatbelt locked in place, trapping her in her booster seat. Groaning, she impatiently tugged at the seatbelt, looking around outside the windows of the car, but it was so dark, and all she could really see were the shadows and the trees.
Lots and lots and lots of trees.
Whoa, so many trees.
“Can I see them now?” the little girl asked. “Can I see Woody and Buzz?”
Her mother laughed, unclipping the seatbelt so the little girl could climb out of the car. The ground was hard, mostly dirt, with patches of green grass leading to a brown house.
“Not tonight,” her mother said, “but I promise, after we get settled in, we’ll go see them.”
“You two have fun with that,” another voice said as a car door slammed.
Mommy’s friend.
The little girl thought he might be her friend, too, but she hadn’t asked him. He was nice to her, though. He made her pancakes whenever she wanted them and never ever tried to feed her porridge, not even once in the weeks that she’d been around him. The little girl and her mother had stayed at his house with him back in the city before everything was put in boxes and they got into his car to drive the whole way to Florida.
‘Home... for now,’ her mother kept calling it. She said if the little girl didn’t like the place, if it didn’t make her happy, they wouldn’t stay long, but with Woody and Buzz being nearby, how could she not like it?
It was like a dream come true.
“Oh, come on,” the little girl’s mother said. “You know you want to go, too. I mean, it’s freakin’ Disney World. Who doesn’t want to go to the Happiest Place on Earth?”
He raised his hand.
The little girl laughed.
“They have Star Wars stuff,” her mother said. “Rides and stormtroopers and souvenirs.”
“And Woody and Buzz will be there,” the little girl told him. “You don’t wanna see them?”
He looked at her, pausing in a patch of grass. “I’ll pass, shortcake, but thanks. I have plenty around here to keep me busy.”
The little girl glanced around. The air smelled sweet, and all the trees were filled with oranges. It reminded her of an enchanted forest, like the ones from the fairy tale stories.
She turned back to him. “Like what? What are you gonna do here?”
“Pick oranges,” he said. “Eat oranges.”
“Real oranges? Or you mean like them tangerines?”
“Both.”
“Oh.”
It was quiet for a moment, as they star
ed at each other, before his expression cracked and he laughed. It wasn’t a mean laugh, no, so she didn’t mind his laughter. His laugh sounded happy.
He turned to her mother, shaking his head. “She’s so much like you, it’s terrifying.”
“Starting to think you’re in over your head?” her mother asked.
“Pretty fucking positive I’m so in over my head that nothing short of decapitation is getting me back out of this one.”
Her mother laughed, yet another happy sound, as she reached for him and wrapped her arms around his neck. He kissed her then, a messy kiss, all sloppy and noisy and wet. The little girl scrunched up her nose. It kind of looked like they wanted to eat each other’s faces off.
It wasn’t at all like the way the Tin Man had kissed her mother that night in the kitchen.
Maybe this was love, the little girl thought. Maybe love made you kiss all messy. Maybe love made you hungry for faces. Maybe he loved her mother, and maybe her mother loved him back. Maybe they loved each other like the little girl loved Buster.
“Buster,” she gasped.
The sound of her voice made them pull apart, breaking the kiss. Oops.
“He’s in the car,” her mother said, “right where you left him.”
The little girl rushed back into the car, snatching up Buster and pulling him out. There were other people around now, approaching to greet them, people who worked on the orange groves. Her mother had told her all about them. Not flying monkeys.
“Come on, sunshine,” her mother said, taking the little girl’s hand. “How about we go on inside and find you a bedroom while Lorenzo takes care of things?”
The little girl smiled.
She liked how that sounded.
A new bedroom, in a new house, with her mother and Buster... and even their new friend, Lorenzo.
Acknowledgments
Shout out to the makers of Capri Sun for that sharp ass little plastic straw that really does hurt like a bitch when you get stabbed with it. To all the orange growers, who are pretty damn awesome for making OJ possible, even though I have this weird aversion to pulp that Lorenzo would probably kill me for. To George Lucas for creating Star Wars, and to Disney for resurrecting Star Wars… and to both for not suing me for anything I say about Star Wars (I swear, I really do like The Phantom Menace).