Chapter Twelve Ozzy
Chapter Twelve
Ozzy
“What are you so happy about?” Tia asks, refilling her coffee mug while Lola eats breakfast.
I slide my sandwich into a brown bag and glance to my right, unsure who she’s talking to.
“You’ve had a smirk from the moment you came upstairs. And you had one all day yesterday, even when Lola’s team lost their softball game.”
I point to myself, eyes wide.
She frowns before nodding—the happiness police.
Yawning, I shake my head. “You’ve mistaken my grimace for a smirk. I didn’t sleep well.”
“Why not?”
“Were you up late watching TV with Pa?” Lola asks, milk dripping down her chin after taking a bite of cereal. That’s a smirk.
“Amos doesn’t stay up late watching TV. He’s snoring on the sofa by nine,” Tia says, eyeing Amos sitting across from Lola at the kitchen table.
Amos keeps his head bowed to his phone. Maybe he’s intentionally ignoring us, or perhaps he’s not wearing his hearing aids.
“That’s not true,” Lola says. “One night I—”
“Yes. One night, you thought he was up late, but he was actually asleep,” I say, cutting her off before she rats him out.
Lola looks at Amos and then at me.
I give her a tight-lipped grin and jerk my head toward the door. “Brush your teeth, and let’s go.”
With her signature eye roll, she heads toward the stairs, and I put her bowl and spoon in the dishwasher.
“Are you taking Lola to her shrink appointment, or am I?” Tia asks.
I slide Lola’s lunch into her backpack. “I’m taking her to her therapist .”
“You should get an update. See how close we are to revisiting the car situation.”
“Yes. I’ll see how close we are to that,” I mumble.
“Ozzy, you need to—”
“Ready.” Lola saves me from a lecture with her perfect timing. There’s no way she brushed her teeth for more than five seconds.
“Later,” I say without another glance in Tia’s direction.
After we get our bikes from the garage and pedal onto the sidewalk, I ride beside Lola. “I really need you to forget about that night you saw Pa watching TV late.”
“Dakota said it’s called pornography or porn. His mom talked to him about it after his sister and her friends got in trouble for watching it online.”
So much for my next request, which was that she never mention it to any of her friends.
What’s happening to the world? There’s no way I knew anything about porn when I was ten.
“Starting now, I don’t want you to say another word about it to anyone. Can you do that?”
“Why? Pa is an adult. Dakota said porn is just for adults.”
“True. But do you remember when you first got invited to a sleepover, and I told you not to forget your stuffed bear, and you didn’t want your friends to know you still sleep with a stuffed animal?”
“Yeah.”
“I told you it’s perfectly normal for someone your age to sleep with one, but you still didn’t want everyone to know. Well, even though Pa is old enough to watch whatever he wants, he probably doesn’t want the world to know he’s watching that.”
“Like when he smokes out back and tells me not to tell you?”
I mimic her eye roll. I knew the cigarette butts weren’t blowing into our yard from the neighbor’s. “Yeah,” I grumble, “like that.”
“I promise not to say anything if you promise to get me a cat, since you let that kitten on the trail die.”
“First, you don’t know if that kitten died. It’s quite possible that some cat lover with a car showed up after us and rescued it. Second, it’s not okay to blackmail me into getting you a cat, or anything, for that matter. I asked you not to say another word about the incident with Pa, and that’s final. No negotiating. No blackmailing. No ifs, ands, or buts. Got it?”
“Mom would have saved the kitten.”
I bite my tongue so hard I taste blood. It’s not often that Lola plays the Mom-would-have card, but when it happens, it knocks the air from my lungs and makes me question whether she’s right. Would Brynn have taken the cat home?
We don’t say another word the rest of the way to school. When I stop at my designated spot across the street, and Lola walks her bike through the crosswalk with the crossing guard, I call, “Love you. Have a good day.”
Nothing from her in return.
Ozzy: How’s your day? What are you doing?
I text Maren while eating my lunch in the break room.
Maren: I’m house shopping with Jamie and Fitz. They’re thinking of making an offer on the house I want!
I chuckle.
Ozzy: Outbid them
Maren: It has a tree house in the backyard for Bandit
Ozzy: Maybe don’t outbid them
Maren: Because you don’t think Bandit deserves a tree house?
Ozzy: I was dragging ass yesterday, but Saturday night was so worth it. When do you want to sneak out again?
Maren: I empathize with Lola. The way you dismiss Bandit is heartbreaking
Ozzy: You should send me pictures of Bandit
She sends me a half dozen pics of the tiger-striped kitten in the next ten seconds.
Ozzy: lol how many are on your phone?
Maren: Let’s just say I had to pay for more cloud storage
Ozzy: Lola has therapy after school. We usually go out to dinner on therapy nights. What if you happened to be at Build a Bowl around five-thirty?
Maren: Two chance encounters in a few days?
Ozzy: Too suspicious?
Maren: I’m good at faking it
Ozzy: Noted
Maren: Omg! No! Not that
“Maren? Maren Bernabe?” my nosy coworker asks, disrupting me.
I turn my phone face down on the table as Ira sits beside me with her white take-out bag that smells like fries.
She eyes me with a shit-eating grin while adjusting her black-and-gray-streaked ponytail. Ira’s the only female A according to Taylor, she’s a genius. So everyone looks over her shoulder to see what she does that’s so extraordinary.
Can I complain that she looked over my shoulder just now?
“What’s for lunch?” I nod to her bag as she opens it.
“Oswald, are you ignoring my question? Were you texting Maren Bernabe? I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Ira pulls out a chicken sandwich and fries before handing me the sack with stray fries at the bottom.
I don’t turn them down. “Hypothetically, if I was texting her, why don’t you think it’s a good idea?” I’m not conceding that she’s a genius. But she has more than ten years of life experience over me, so I’m open to her wisdom.
“Your daughter lost her mother in a car accident. And the effects were so catastrophic that you ride a bicycle everywhere. So you think it’s a smart idea to date a woman who flies a plane over wildfires?”
She’s one of only a few people here who know why I ride my bike to work. I’ve found that the women here are more curious and sense the trauma behind my behavior. In contrast, the guys, including my boss, assume I’m a pussy tree hugger obsessed with my carbon footprint.
“I think my wife had one of the least dangerous jobs in the world, yet she died,” I say.
Ira stops midchew and glances at me, eyebrows forming two perfect peaks. She has grease on her cheek. “Oh my god,” she mumbles with a mouthful, her words muffled. “You really like her.”
“It’s new. I’m not telling anyone. So, can you keep a secret?”
She swallows, shaking her head. “No. I’m the worst secret keeper. Ask anyone.” She sips her drink through the straw. “But I’ll try.”
“That’s not comforting, Ira. But I have faith in you.” I scoot my chair back and stand. “I know you can keep this between us. Taylor says you’re a genius.” I grab my water bottle and lunch bag. “But I know you’re more than that. You’re a trusted friend.” I squeeze her shoulder, and she leans into my touch.
“Aw, Oswald, you think of me as a friend?”
“If you keep my secret,” I say, heading toward the door, “you might be my best friend.”
Brynn used to say that people will exceed your expectations if you let them know what you expect. If you set failure as an expectation, they can fail miserably, or they can be smashing successes if you set the bar high.
I’m setting the bar high for Ira, my friend .