“He’ll be someone else’s kid by then.”
“I didn’t mean only Cal, Tim.” He peers at my face. “How you doing with that? Him?” I’m kicking at the sand with one toe, holding the flat granite rock tightly enough that the sharp edge digs into my palm.
“Good. Fine. Whatever. I don’t know.”
“That’s four different answers. Which one’s the truth?”
I toss the stone, which sinks immediately.
“Do you feel like he’s your son? Like he—belongs to you?”
Yes.
God, I do.
Um. Shit.
Blindsided, I bend over, hands on knees. I fuckin’ care about this kid. Not just like I’m babysitting him and waiting for his goddamn parents to come home. Like he’s home when he’s with me. Or fuckin’ scarier still, I’m home when I’m with him. And Alice. And that’s the thing . . . you let people in . . . they’re there. They’re a goddamn part of you. Except that at any time—soon, in Cal’s case—anytime, in Alice’s—they could chip right off and float away.
“Tim?” Dom’s voice floats in my head, a little distant. “Tim. Talk.”
Okay, okay. That’s okay that I do. Care about Cal. Good that I do. Less chance I’ll screw up and leave him somewhere by accident. It’s a good thing.
Right?
But, God, why bother with this? I had the dad who wasn’t there. Now the kid who won’t be there. Which makes me another dad who won’t.
Dominic reaches over, puts a new stone in my hand, bending his elbow around my neck, giving me a whacking hard pat on the back.
“Is this the part where we hug?” I ask.
“Manly back-patting is plenty. Save the hugs for the kid and Ms. No One in Particular.”
Chapter Thirty-six
TIM
Self-control. Alice called me on having it, using it too often, but pretty sure we both know that’s not what’s going on here.
Whatever it is, I’m so done using it with her.
I’m across the kitchen in two strides, too fast to even see what she’s wearing or her expression or anything.
I reach out, very slowly, rub my thumb along Alice’s soft deep-pink lower lip. No lipstick or that sticky gloss crap. Just her, just Alice. Her dark lashes lower and she takes a deep breath. My thumb trails to circle under her jawline, tilting it gently up as my head slopes down.
A calmer, more deliberate kiss than we’ve ever shared. Different from the times before when we locked together fast and hard as if drawn magnetically. This is intentional, like it’s saying something. When her lips part, it’s a declaration as much as an invitation.
When I inhale, I take in Alice, sunshine, salty-sweet, peppermint. Not losing myself. It’s finding her.
Oh, Alice.
She makes her little hum in the back of her throat, curling in. I edge my hands down her back, to the tops of her thighs, pulling her closer, just as she does the reverse, slipping her palms up under my shirt to shove my shoulders down. She was standing in the light from the window. Her skin is sun-warm under my fingertips.
Our kisses are still calm, amazingly, since all of Alice is aligned against all of me. I fall back against the wall, scooping her even closer as my fingers move down her back, slide along the tops of her legs.
I should stop. I’ll stop. I’ll just take this last minute. And this one. And this next one and . . .
“Wow. Mommy. Alice and Tim are kissing in the kitchen.”
Alice jerks back from me and both of us whirl to look at George, who’s wearing an I MET SANTA ON THE ESSEX STEAM TRAIN shirt and for some reason, pink sweatpants. “You two were kissing,” he tells us, in case we might have missed it the first time.
“George . . .” Alice waves her hand in a circle, looking like she’s trying frantically to come up with an explanation.
“Kissinnnnnnng,” George repeats as Mrs. Garrett comes in with some shopping bags, followed by Jase, Andy, Duff, Harry, and Patsy. What, no camera crew?
“Hi Tim.” Mrs. Garrett sets her bags down on the kitchen table. “Are you hungry? We ran out of everything—it was Cheerios or nothing—but we’re restocked now.”
I look up and meet Jase’s eyes. He gives me a quick, rueful smile, and then becomes preoccupied with emptying grocery bags. No chance in hell he didn’t hear George.
ALICE
Not surprisingly, Tim does not stick around. He says, “Thanks, Mrs. G. Gotta head out, I have a—thing. Catch you later, Jase. And, um, you too Alice.” And leaves.
“Why were you kissing Tim, Alice?” Beating around the bush is not in George’s bag of tricks. He pulls on the hem of my shirt. “The longest kiss was fifty-eight hours. Do you think they did that without drinking water? Wouldn’t they die, Alice? How’d they pee?”
“I’m sure they . . . I don’t—I was just, um . . . Here, Mom, let me help you put those away.”
Mom, because she’s tactful or because she’s trying to torture me, says nothing as we put things in cabinets. Jase, who usually helps, who was helping, has faded away. The others always vanish at chore time, so it’s just me, Mom, George, and Patsy in the kitchen.
Patsy attaches herself to my leg like a limpet. “Where Hon?” she cries mournfully. “Why Hon go? I love on Hon.”
I sneak a look at my mother, afraid she’s going to ask exactly how much loving on Hon I’ve been doing, but she seems preoccupied with putting away the frozen food, jamming the extra-large Sam’s Club containers into our crowded freezer.
I’m humming under my breath when Mom puts a hand on my arm, nods her head at the cabinet under the sink where I’ve just placed a container of ice cream, a jumbo package of pork chops, two cartons of eggs, and a can of shaving cream next to the dish soap and the glass cleaner.
“Um . . .”
In the end she must take pity on me, and tells me to go upstairs. I am a coward and do it, leaving her to unpack the last forty-five grocery bags alone, or with the dubious help of George, who just takes something out, says, “Oh good, we have Oreos,” and opens up the package. And of Patsy, still mourning the disappearance of Tim. “Want my Hon . . .”
Oh Pats. Me too.
I’m sitting on my bed a few minutes later, trying to resist the urge to march over to Tim’s, when the door opens and Jase comes in with his corn snake entwined around his forearm.
“You’ve brought Voldemort to attack me?” I ask. Jase has always loved animals. His bedroom is like Petco.
“Nah. He escaped and made a break for Mom’s shoe rack again.” He sits down on the edge of Andy’s bed, incongruously masculine against her lavender-and-purple tie-dyed bedspread. I’ve had years to get used to the fact that my little brother is a hottie, but his looks still startle me sometimes. Jase takes a breath, puffs it out, resting back on his elbows, letting Voldemort the corn snake sashay slowly across his chest, kicks the rug with his shoe.
“Just say it.”
He glides a finger along the length of Voldemort. “This is your business, Alice. Just . . .”
We Garretts are all about two or three years apart in age, and you’d think that we’d be equally close—but in real life, it doesn’t work that way. Not all the time. Things shift. But Jase and I have been tight ever since Dad drove Joel and me to the hospital to pick up Mom and the newborn Jase for the first time. In an attempt to stave off jealousy, as the story goes, she put him in my arms and said, “Here’s your baby.”
I believed her.
I called him “my baby Jase” for the first three years of his life. I used to crawl into his crib and hold his hand at night, sure he’d sleep better, be safer if I were there.
Maybe he even was. Because that closeness never has left.
His green eyes meet mine, then shift downward. “Don’t do your thing with him, Alice.”
“My thing?”
Jase has never warned me off a guy. I’ve done it to him (with girls, obviously)—once when I heard rumors about his ex-girlfriend Lindy and again when he an
d Samantha were briefly broken up last summer. I caught him by the sleeve as he was headed out to try to talk to her, get her back, told him to give it up, have some pride. As it turned out, I was wrong to do that, and they got back together.
So he has every right to advise me . . .
I warned Jase off Samantha because he was in too deep with her almost before they’d even spoken. I’d seen Jase catch sight of her walking up her driveway or looking out of her window and lose track of what he was saying. I wanted no part of that.
But this . . . is nothing like that. Not the same at all.
I fold my arms over my stomach, hunch forward against the inevitable real.
It’s just like that. I’m just different now.
“Your thing,” he says. “Your date ’em, dominate ’em, ditch ’em thing. Tim . . .” Voldemort slithers off his lap and starts to glide down Andy’s bedspread in search of our closet, our shoes. Jase scoops the snake back around his wrist. He chews his lower lip, sighs.
“Tim what?”
“He’s got enough going on. He doesn’t need anything else messing with his head right now.”
“Shouldn’t you be off punching him because he’s dishonored me?”
“You’re completely capable of doing that on your own. If it were any other guy, I’d leave you to it—” A shadow crosses Jase’s downturned face. He looks up at me. “What’s up with Brad anyway? I saw you two running last week.”
“He’s out. For keeps.”
“He knows that for sure?” Jase asks carefully, looping Voldemort around his neck and catching him as he slithers down the front of his shirt.
“I’m not stringing anyone along, Jase. Or playing games. I’ve been up-front with him. He’s not happy, but he’s gone.”
“Let me know if that changes.” He stands up, wrapping the snake around his upper arm this time. “Or you need backup.”
“J.?”
He pauses in the doorway.
“It’s not my ‘thing.’ With Tim. Not anything I know. I don’t know what I’m doing. But I’m not out to hurt him.”
He nudges the corner of my rug up, then back down with the toe of his shoe. “Alice . . .”
“What?”
“Do better than that.” He heads out of the room before I can answer or argue or defend. Or tell the truth.
Chapter Thirty-seven
ALICE
“I just happened to be . . .”
“In the neighborhood?” Tim shoves the door open wider. He props one arm against the doorframe, shoves his hair out of his eyes, his smile shifting from sweet to wicked as he looks down at me. “You decided not to sneak in while I was out, play Goldilocks again?”
“That turned dangerous last time. I’m being civilized.”
“Damn. Back to professionalism and rule-making. I thought we busted through that.”
“You mean when we got busted? Jase told me to stay away. Not to do my ‘date ’em, dominate ’em, ditch ’em thing.’”
“Yeah, I got a dose of that too. But here you are.”
“Here I am. Come with me. Outside,” I say.
He trails me down the steps, across our dew-wet grass to the purple-dark backyard, no questions asked, although they’re radiating off him. I lead him back behind the pool fence, near the playhouse Dad started to build this summer, which still smells like fresh-cut pine.
“We’re camping out?” Tim surveys the saggy army-green canvas tent, flap open, electric lantern set on low, floor heaped with blankets, pillows, sleeping bags.
I shrug. “We don’t have to . . . Duff was having a sleepover, but they got freaked out. They’re asleep now. Everyone is. I thought . . .”
“Are we telling scary stories? Playing Truth or Dare?”
“This is as far as I got with the plan.”
“Works for me.” He drops to his hands and knees, ducks his way through the flaps, halts a moment, possibly sighting the box of condoms over on the side of the tent, on top of a stack of Duff’s LEGO Mindstorm books. Then he keeps moving, readjusts two pillows so they’re lined up close to each other, smooths out the dark green nylon sleeping bags, turns over onto his back, and folds his arms behind his head.
Ruffled dark red hair, watchful eyes, at last a slow smile, vivid in the muted light.
He moves one hand down now, carefully, until it lies, palm up, flat on the blanket. Silent appeal. Eyes locked on mine.
“Do I have to dare you?” he asks quietly.
His hand, resting there. For a moment I stare at it, my stomach giving a small, jolting flip. Calluses. A little cut on the pad of the thumb. No Band-Aid, of course.
Something so Tim about that hand.
“No,” I say. “This is more truth than dare.”
I stretch out by his side, slide my own hand into his; tighten my fingers on the fast-beating pulse in his wrist, know it picks up pace, although his face stays the same—thoughtful, focused, only the widening of his eyes showing any effect. My whole body is both loosening and tightening at the same time.
“Can I ask you something?” I rush on before he can say yes or no. “All the flirting you’ve done? Now when I’m—here—it’s different. It’s like you’re holding back. What is that? It’s not—about the chase, is it?”
His thumb swipes across my hand, bump-traces each knuckle. Then he slowly pulls it to his lips, kisses the back. Rests his mouth there for the space of one breath. Two.
Then he meets my eyes.
“Hell no. No. I guess . . . I . . . wanted . . . you to come to me. Be sure we’re in this . . . uh . . . together?” His voice cracks a little on the last word, flush high on his cheekbones. “Besides, um . . .”
TIM
Say it.
“Ah, I’ve never . . .” My voice is hoarse again. Alice’s eyes, fixed on me, pupils wide and dark in the pale light from the lantern. Circle of green, glints of gold. Steady.
Say it.
“I’ve never had sex sober. Never. I—might actually suck at it.”
Her crooked smile dazzles me, then she looks away, face revealing nothing now, not soft and open the way it was only a minute ago.
“Not that that’s necessarily what’s happening here,” I add quickly. “Just—you know—fair warning—”
She’s staring down at our hands wrapped up together. When she speaks, it’s like she’s addressing them. “I’ve always had to be in control. I’ve never—”
She flings the words out quickly, like she’s being defiant. But there’s her face and I can read it well enough now.
Not defiance. Bravado. She’s scared.
Yeah, me too.
ALICE
I repeat, “I’ve never . . .” Never told anyone this. Not my best friends. Not my mother. Not the diary I don’t keep.
“Not even, um, on your own?”
“Not even.”
He looks a little staggered. Why did I let him know? Just more pressure. But Tim doesn’t seem freaked out. Only surprised and a little sad.
I stumble to reassure him, piling on more hard-to-speak truth. “You’ve already made me feel things I didn’t think I could feel. So, if we—when we—”
“We don’t have to—” he says immediately.
“I know. I’m not saying anything has to be right here right now. Just that there are, um, things I haven’t done. So, I might not be able to. It’s not a big deal, so don’t—”
“Truth, Alice?”
“Um—” That was about all the truth in me. What more?
“You won’t fake it. Promise me.”
This boy. Eyes on my face again, little smile lurking, just barely parenthesizing the corners of his lips. He lifts his eyebrows, waiting. And willing to. However long. At the sight of it, there’s an ache in my chest, a flash of near pain, knife-swift, something letting go, slipping free.
“I do promise.” The words come out in a whisper.
His fingers find me now, move to cover my heart, as though he knows.
I
swallow.
“Also? If you have any, uh, suggestions for improvement along the way, you’ll—”
“God, Tim. Is there nothing you won’t say?”
“One or two things.”
Now he’s grinning again, the smile that goes all the way to his eyes, his entire face glowing. I shrug off my sweater. He flips onto his side, pulls me near.
Then he strokes up and down my arm, and as warm as his palm is, goose bumps scatter behind it.
Hand behind my knee now, pressing, the heel of his hand suddenly urgent, although his voice is lazy, almost drowsy, sharp contrast to the intensity of his eyes. “One more promise, Alice.”
“Are you always this chatty?” My own voice, octaves higher than usual, gives me away.
“Chatty?” He starts to laugh.
I wince, look down. His hand is beneath my chin, lifting my eyes back to his face. “Sorry,” he says. “Fair warning again. I’m gonna move your leg, like this, up over my hip. Promise not to kick me.”
“Are you going to narrate this whole thing?”
“Shh.” A kiss, pressed against the corner of my mouth, the next word only a breath of air. “No.”
Now my leg is looped over his hip, the side of my knee pressed against his waist. He’s barely touching me—his hand hovering just above my skin—so close—the almost-graze of his fingers, along my thigh, down over my calf, to my heel, the arch of my foot. There he does touch, thumb pushing hard, then lighter, then outlining the whole shape of my foot, back up my leg, the lightest possible skim. His head bent to my shoulder now, not quite on it, but close enough to feel the uneven rise and fall of his breath, the rapid pounding of his heart.
“I’m gonna need to get that box over there. Soon. But not yet, because I have to—”
“You are going to narrate this, aren’t you?”
“Not narrating. Appreciating. You have to give me time to let this—you—sink in.” He pulls gently at my tank top, shifting it up over my stomach, peeling the straps down. His rough knuckles brush my skin and I inhale sharply. He does too. Then he sets his hand flat on my stomach, eyes serious, face wearing a look of concentration and determination.