Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
EURYTHMICS, ANNIE LENNOX, DAVESTEWARD, “WOULD I LIE TO YOU?”
Eve
“Do you like applesauce?” I asked, leading Josh down the grassy hill and up the next to the orchard.
He replied with a slight nod.
When we reached the modest orchard, I hoisted him up. “Pick that one?” I pointed to the apple with the reddest skin.
He wrapped his tiny fingers around it.
“You have to tug at it. Pull hard.”
It made a snapping sound, and Josh grinned as he held the apple. After I set him on his feet, I nodded toward the tree. “Can I pick some apples?”
He returned a blank stare for a few seconds before giving me a tiny nod. I felt proud of myself for getting permission, and I smirked while gathering at least a dozen apples, folding up the front of my shirt for a makeshift basket.
When we reached the house, I deposited the apples into a big bowl and lifted Josh onto the kitchen counter. “First, we’re going to rinse off the apple,” I said, quickly washing it and drying it with a towel. “Then we peel it.”
He watched me with wide eyes as I peeled the apple, leaving one long ribbon to toss into the compost bin by the trash.
“Now we shred it.” I retrieved the cheese grater and a bowl and pulverized the apple using the fine side of the grater. “Do you want to try it?”
Josh shifted his gaze to me and slowly nodded.
I held my hand over his and helped him move the apple along the grater until it approached the core.
“Okay,” I said, wiping his hand with a damp washcloth. “Now we add some cinnamon and sugar.”
He grinned. All kids grinned when they heard the word sugar.
Mom had a special shaker with the two already mixed together, so I handed it to Josh.
“Can you shake that over the bowl?”
He nodded and shook the bottle a couple of times.
“Keep going.” I grinned. “These apples might be a little tart for you, so shake more onto it.”
His grin doubled as he continued to shake it.
“Perfect,” I said, taking the bottle from him and plucking a spoon from the silverware drawer. “Do you want to stir it?”
He shook his head.
“Okay. I’ll do it.” I stirred it and offered him a bite.
He hesitated before parting his full lips. At first, his nose scrunched in a sour expression, but then it softened, and his eyes widened as he smiled.
“It takes a second for the cinnamon and sugar to sweeten the tartness.” I laughed. “I usually let it sit for a while, but I know you’re hungry.” I held the bowl in front of him and offered the spoon.
Over the next ten minutes, Josh slowly ate it, and I was dying to call Erin and tell her about my hot neighbor.
“I have to poop,” Josh whispered, leaning to the side and pressing his hand to his butt.
“Poop?” I lifted my eyebrows.
He nodded.
“You need to go poop?”
Again, he nodded.
“Oh, okay. Um …” I lifted him off the counter and led him to the bathroom under the stairs. “Do you do everything by yourself?”
He looked at me like I wasn’t speaking English.
“Can you get your pants down, get on the toilet, and wipe all by yourself?” I had worked many summers with kids at vacation Bible school. And not all kids his age were proficient at pooping independently.
“I’m a big boy,” Josh said.
I grinned. “Of course you are.” I turned on the light. “Let me know if you need help.” He closed the door, and I waited for him to finish, which felt like forever.
“Are you okay in there?” I asked with my arms crossed over my chest while pacing the hallway beside the pocket door.
“Yes,” he replied in a soft voice that I barely heard.
A minute later, he flushed the toilet, and a few seconds later, he mumbled, “Oh, shit!”
Did he say “shit?”
I cringed, recognizing the sound of the incomplete flush. “Josh?” I said his name while slowly opening the door.
He finished pulling up his pants as the toilet water rose to the top with a ton of toilet paper mixed with a couple of turds. “Oh, jeez!” I lifted him onto the vanity. “Uh, wash your hands while I grab the plunger.”
I ran to the basement, a musky dungeon where we kept a few things like the plunger and old cans of paint. The stairway was filled with cobwebs, and I hated going down there, but I had no choice. When I returned to the bathroom, Josh had half the bottle of soap pumped onto his hands, the water running full blast, and the sink filled with bubbles. But I didn’t have time to worry about that because the toilet was on the verge of overflowing. Luckily, it stopped running right as it reached the rim.
God was good.
As I dipped the plunger into the toilet, the water breached the rim and ran down the sides onto the floor, along with soggy toilet paper and a turd. “Crap, uh crud. ” I wrinkled my nose, quickly jumping back to avoid getting my shoes wet.
“Oops,” Josh mumbled, eyes wide and unblinking.
I glanced over my shoulder at his guilty face.
“It’s fine. It’s not your fault.” It was all his fault, but I didn’t want to make him cry.
Leaving the plunger in the toilet, I lifted Josh off the counter and abandoned the mess. “Let’s go back to your house.”
He took off running when I set him down outside our front door. I jogged after him through the orchard, down a hill, and up another.
“Hey, did you get a snack?” Kyle asked, closing the back of the moving truck.
“I pooped,” Josh said.
Kyle looked at me, biting his lower lip and shaking his head.
“And the water went up up up.” Josh pressed his hands to his cheeks and made an O with his lips.
Kyle’s gaze flitted between us.
I found my fake smile like it was no big deal, like my dad wouldn’t come home to a mess on the bathroom floor. It wasn’t the first time I’d abandoned a clogged toilet. But it was just the first time it wasn’t my fault.
“He clogged the toilet?” Kyle asked.
Pressing my lips together, I nodded.
Kyle pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m so sorry. Did you get it unclogged?”
“Of course,” I chirped.
“No. We ran,” Josh called me out before sprinting into the house and leaving me alone with Kyle.
With a nervous laugh, I shook my head. “We didn’t run. It’s fine.”
“I feel really bad,” Kyle said, sliding his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “You did me a favor and got way more than you bargained for. I’m?—”
“It’s fine.” I waved it off because he was so hot, handsome, sexy, and every other word that described the man of my dreams. We didn’t need to discuss runaway turds when I wanted to know if he liked younger women who had a penchant for trouble, enjoyed a few drinks, and thought nonstop about sex.
“Well, if you ever need help with math …” He didn’t finish.
I forced my gaze to his face, and he smirked. Was he making fun of me?
“Or any other favors. I owe you one.” He winked.
Heat crawled up my neck, so I looked away and tightened my ponytail. I was not the butt of anyone’s joke, no matter how hot they were. “What if you tell my mom you need a babysitter tomorrow night.” I pulled my shoulders back and slipped my fingers into my back pockets.
“But I don’t.”
“Even better.” I returned my version of a smirk, but I didn’t go so far as to wink.
“You’re grounded,” he murmured, rubbing the back of his neck like he just remembered what my mom had said.
I nodded.
Kyle twisted his lips. “You want me to lie for you?”
“Lie is such an ugly word. I like your word better.”
He chuckled, gazing at the ground between us. “What’s my word?”
“Favor. Let’s not think of it as a lie. Let’s think of it as the favor you just promised me.”
“Aiding and abetting?”
I laughed. “Abetting implies you’re encouraging me. So just aiding.”
Kyle’s eyebrows peaked.
“Just because I didn’t understand the inversion function of the cosine doesn’t mean I don’t know what abetting means.” I learned the meaning of that word a few weeks earlier in a movie.
“Arccosine is the inversion function of the cosine,” Kyle said.
I rolled my eyes.
“What are your plans for tomorrow night?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“Yes. It matters. I can’t aid you if you plan on doing something your parents don’t want you to do.”
“My parents don’t want me to leave the house, laugh, or have an original thought.”
He narrowed his eyes for a few seconds and smirked. “What did you do to get grounded?”
“Does it matter?”
He slowly nodded. “Yeah, it matters.”
I sighed. “I had a few drinks.”
“Driving?”
I shook my head. “By the creek.” I gestured to my right.
“Are you going to drink tomorrow night?”
“No.”
Maybe.
“Drugs?” he asked.
I grinned. “No.”
“Unprotected sex?”
All the blood in my body surged to my head until I felt my pulse in my burning cheeks. Was he making me an offer? “I’m a preacher’s daughter. What do you think?”
His smile beamed. He was so sexy. “If you hadn’t confessed to drinking by the creek, I would have assumed you were a rule-follower. A perfect angel. But I’m getting more of a rebel vibe now.”
“Pfft. Angels are just rebels in disguise. I’m going to the bowling alley with friends. We bowl between memorizing Bible verses and exclusively snack on Gold Fish, Animal Crackers, and grape juice as a nod to Jesus.”
Something on Kyle’s face changed as he paused before responding. He rubbed his fingers over his mouth but grinned anyway. Then, his fingers curled into a fist as he laughed. “Eve …” he said, shaking his head.
I wanted to bottle the feeling he gave me. Very few people appreciated my humor.
“So you’ll say you need a babysitter?”
He cleared his throat, still grinning. “Do you have a fake ID?”
I barked a laugh. “Everyone in Devil’s Head knows who I am. If I could get into a bar with a fake ID, do you think I’d drink by the creek?”
“Then where do you get your alcohol?”
“I can’t reveal my source. You’re a teacher, which means you can’t be trusted.”
“Gosh, we just met and already have trust issues?”
“I got all of your dishes and silverware unpacked,” Mom announced, coming out the front door. “And Josh is looking for his monster truck.”
Kyle glanced over my shoulder at my mom. “Thank you, Janet. That was very kind of you.”
“You are most welcome. What else can we do to help?”
“You know, I think that’s good for now. However, I was just asking Eve if she could watch Josh for me tomorrow night if that’s okay with you?”
“I’m sure that would be fine. She has nothing else to do.”
I frowned, and it fed Kyle’s amusement.
“What time do you need her?” Mom asked, wrapping her arm around me for a side hug.
I nudged my elbow into her ribs, trying to subtly wriggle out of her embrace.
“Maybe from six to around eight thirty or nine?”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “What if your date goes better than expected? You could get home closer to ten or ten thirty, which is fine with me. Like my mom said,” I shot him a toothy grin, “I have nothing better to do.”
“You have a date?” Mom asked. “Wow. You just arrived. Can I ask with who? I know everyone in town.”
Kyle pinned me with a look that wasn’t exactly friendly. “A date. Yes. I was surprised too. After all, how could I possibly know anyone after arriving today ?”
Oops.
I bit my thumbnail.
Kyle returned his attention to my mom. “It’s a blind date. Someone at the school arranged it. They heard I was new in town and single. But if it’s okay with you, I’d rather not give any more information in case it doesn’t go well.”
“Oh, of course.” Mom nodded. “I understand. Eve will be here by six. I’ll pop by, too, to ensure everything is going well.”
“No,” I blurted and quickly bit my lips together. “I’m eighteen. Stop treating me like a child. I don’t need you to babysit me while I’m babysitting. Okay?”
Mom eyed Kyle while he tried to suppress his grin.
“Eve, real grown-ups don’t have issues with other grown-ups helping them,” she said.
I couldn’t believe she was picking a fight with me in front of Kyle.
So embarrassing.
“What’s that saying?” Kyle said. “It takes a village? I’m grateful to have found a village so quickly. I’m sure Josh would love spending time with both of you.”
My eyes bugged out at him.
“We’re just as excited to have you here,” Mom said, looping her arm with mine and trying to pull me toward our house.
“I’ll meet you at home,” I said. “I want to run inside and say goodbye to Josh.”
“Okay. Bye, Kyle.”
“Later, Mrs. Jacobson.”
She shot him a grin over her shoulder. “Please, call me Janet.” It was the grin she used when the cop pulled her over.
After she was out of earshot, I stepped closer to Kyle and narrowed my eyes. “Traitor.”
“What was I supposed to do?” He brushed past me toward the house, and I followed him.
“Uh, tell her she didn’t need to check up on me. Now, I have to tell her that you no longer need a sitter.”
“That’s not true,” he said, opening the creaky screen door. “It’s been forever since I’ve been to the movies.”
“You’re stealing my night out?” I stepped inside as he held open the door.
“Stealing? Of course not. I’ll pay you.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Is that it?” Adam asked, jogging down the stairs. “I put together your bedframe, and all your guns are locked in the safe.”
“Yup. That’s it. Thanks, buddy.”
“No problem. I’ll drive the truck back.” Adam glanced at his watch. “Grab the little man, and we can get pizza after you pick me up.”
“Sounds good. We’ll head that way,” Kyle said.
“It was nice meeting you, Eve.” Adam gave me a slight nod with a smile.
“You too.”
When the door shut behind him, Kyle pulled a set of keys from his pocket. “So six tomorrow night?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “My mom said I have to stop taking apples from the orchard now that you own it, but since I’ve lost all respect for you, I’m taking the best ones and leaving you with the wormholes.”
He narrowed his eyes briefly before the corner of his mouth curled into a tiny grin. “I feel like we’ve gotten off to a bad start.” He fiddled with his keys while giving me a slow once-over.
Was he checking me out?
No.
Maybe.
Gah! I hoped so.
I cleared my throat. “And who’s fault is that?”
Kyle shook his head. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“How?”
He smirked. “You’ll see. Josh? Let’s go, buddy. We have to pick Adam up.”
“See ya, I guess,” I mumbled, pushing open the screen door. When I gazed back, Kyle was looking at my ass or my legs. Maybe both.
When our eyes locked, he winked.
He. WINKED!