27 - Fallon
~ 27 ~
FALLON
“Did you put oil in the water?”
“Yes, Mrs. Marshall.”
“Not too much oil though, right?”
“No,” I giggled. “Not too much oil.”
I stirred the homemade linguine dutifully, making sure none of the strands stuck to any of the others. It wasn’t easy, seeing everything through the steam. But if I stopped stirring for even a second, just to check, Dalton’s mom would swipe the wooden spoon from my hand again.
“And what did I say about you calling me Mrs. Marshall?” she admonished me, anyway. “Do you remember?”
I smiled through a tired sigh. “Yes, of course I do.”
“I’m Lisa, especially to my friends,” she huffed, adding a wink. “And especially to my son’s friends. I might be a little older than all of you, but I’m not ready to be Mrs. ‘anything’ just yet.”
Dalton shrugged helplessly at me as his mom circled the kitchen, adjusting and readjusting plates while picking apart components for tonight’s dinner. And what a dinner it was, too. It looked like we were feeding a small army instead of a large family. We hadn’t stopped making things for more than an hour.
“Mom!” whined Jonah, bursting in from the next room. “When can Fallon and I play outside?”
She slapped her son’s hand away as he reached for one of those little mozzarella cheese balls with flecks of basil and oil all over them. Hell, I didn’t even see her put them out.
“You’ll get her after I’m done with her,” she repeated for a third time. “Which will be after dinner, after cleanup, and after you wash your hands.”
Her attention snapped back to my boiling pot, and for one terrible instant I had a vision of all the linguine sticking together. Lisa Marshall gave me a quick nod, instead.
“That’s ready to be strained.”
I half expected the full-blown Italian to reach into the pot, grab a string of pasta, and fling it against the wall to see if it was done. But Dalton’s mom was apparently a pro. She could tell just by looking at it.
“Are you sure it’s okay if the kids stay here this week?” she murmured to me, as she reached for the colander.
“What?” I blinked. “Yes, of course they can stay!”
It seemed a little odd that she was asking me instead of her son, especially considering I was only a guest here. But I wasn’t exactly sure Lisa had figured that part out yet.
Or maybe, just maybe, she was fishing.
“Because if it’s a big inconvenience,” she went on, “or if it’ll interfere with your studying, or the boys’ practice, we could just as easily get an extra hotel room for them.”
“No, no,” I assured her. “Don’t be silly. Trey’s already building a tent fort for them in the living room. They’re gonna crash out late and watch movies. It’ll be fun!”
“They already have sleeping bags,” she went on. “And pillows. And blankets.”
“Mom…” Dalton cut in.
“And plenty of snacks,” she pressed. “Nothing unhealthy, though. Jonah and Morgan don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but Ripley would eat through a solid chocolate wall if you left her to it. So make sure she doesn’t—”
“MOM,” Dalton said again, adding a grin. He dropped a big hand to her tiny shoulder. “Relax. We have plenty of food and snacks here, Fallon makes sure of that. It’s all good.”
At the casual mention of me doing the shopping, Lisa shot me a sideways glance. Almost like another piece of the puzzle was falling into place. In the meantime, I was marveling how someone as big and tall and amazing as Dalton had come out of such a tiny Italian woman.
“Hey momma.”
Emerson walked in, kissed his foster mom on the cheek, and proceeded to pop one of the mozzarella balls into his mouth with total impunity. Dalton always told me he was her favorite, but I’d never believed him. But the way she blushed as he delivered the kiss while ignoring his transgressions told me otherwise.
“Dad’s almost done outside,” said Emerson. “He told me to tell you he’s so hungry he could eat at Arby’s.”
Momma Marshall wrinkled her nose. “Tell him that’s disgusting, and that he’d better wash up. And don’t be tracking anything in here, either. This place is dirty enough.”
“Roger that,” said Emerson, pushing his luck by swiping a meatball. “But this whole house is a construction zone, so…”
“Construction or not, that’s no excuse for laziness.”
Dalton and Emerson both made crazy faces at me over their mother’s shoulder, and I had to look away before I laughed and got in trouble. I could’ve told her that her boys were the least lazy people I knew. That they worked incredibly hard, at both school and football, and how they spent part of every evening working on the house, as well. I don’t think I would’ve gotten through to her, however. Lisa Marshall, through all her impressive kitchen multitasking, had a singular personal goal: righting whatever wrongs she saw in her immediate world, big or small.
Eventually the pasta was strained, the table was set, and the rest of the meal came out of the oven. Trey entered the kitchen flanked by children, only to be sent right back out to wash up.
“Hey…”
Dalton pulled me into the pantry momentarily, as his mother was busy unwrapping aluminum foil from three feet of garlic bread.
“Just wanted to say I’m sorry about all this,” he said sheepishly. “I had no idea they were coming, much less staying all week, to catch the game on Saturday.”
The pantry was small. The proximity of our bodies would’ve left nothing to the imagination, had anyone been paying attention.
“Are you kidding?” I smiled up at him. “I totally love this.”
“Yeah, but it’s a lot.”
“You think so?” I challenged. “I’d trade my childhood for yours any day of the week. I mean, look at the spread your mom’s putting out. You know what dinner looked like at my house?”
“Ummm… I’m guessing potatoes?”
“Yup. And lots of them.”
Dalton chuckled.
“Dinner was mystery-meat-of-the-week, a glass of tap water and a plain baked potato. Always a baked potato, mind you, even though we owned a potato farm and there are a thousand different things you could do with potatoes. Linda had no imagination, though. Or rather, she just didn’t give a shit.”
“Sounds grim.”
“It was. But this?” I gestured back toward the kitchen. “This is magical , Dalton. Your family is amazing.”
“My family is chaotic,” he countered. “Mom’s a whirlwind of doom, and the kids are destroying the living room with Trey’s help. Dad’s out back, hammering away at the old awning we planned on ripping down anyway, trying to patch it up with wood from behind that decrepit old shed. And Emerson’s helping him.”
“Emerson’s making memories with his foster father,” I countered. “And good ones, at that.”
“I get that,” he conceded. “But this is a lot to spring on you. Especially now, right after we got back. And we haven’t even… you know…”
“I know,” I was only barely aware that my hands had already wandered up to his chest. Reluctantly, I pulled them away. “But it’s only a few days. Plus, you and Emerson get to see your brother and sisters. And they get to see you play.”
“Eastern New Mexico,” he nodded. “Big game.”
“Uh-huh. And you’ll kick even more ass than usual, knowing we’re all in the stands, watching.”
The sound of a slotted spoon banging against the top of a pot reminded me we’d been gone for too long. I risked a quick kiss, but there was no such thing as a quick kiss between us. Dalton’s tongue teased mine, his hands going to my hips for just a brief instant…
But it was an instant too long.
“Hey! I see what you’re doing!”
Joshua stood in the pantry doorway, pointing an accusatory, freshly-washed finger. Immediately, Dalton let go of me and tousled his brother’s very similar head of hair.
“And just what were we doing?”
“You were kissing!”
I turned bright red, grabbed something from the shelf, and quickly handed it to him.
“Nah-uh,” I countered, shaking my head dramatically. “Dalton was only lifting me up to help me reach this, on the top shelf.”
The boy looked down into his little palm. “A can of fish?”
All three of us looked down at the ancient can of anchovies he was suddenly holding. The label was so old and pitted, the picture of the fish was barely visible.
“Ummm… yup.”
“We’re gonna eat this? ” he curled his lip.
“Anchovies are good!” I lied. “Ever have them?”
“No,” he grunted. “Yuck.”
“Well trust me, they go great with pizza.”
“But we’re not even having pizza,” Jonah shot back.
I looked to Dalton for help. For lack of a better plan, he flicked his little brother in the ear.
“Will you stop complaining and just bring that to mom, already? She’s the one who asked for it.”
Jonah stared back in confusion for a moment, then took off. We could hear the shuffle of chairs now. Everyone was sitting down around our table, either in chairs or on the makeshift boxes and buckets we were using for chairs.
“You know that can of anchovies is from the nineteen-eighties, right?” Dalton chuckled. “It came with the place.”
“Well it was either that, or he runs out telling everyone we’ve been kissing,” I said.
The tall quarterback smiled, and his pure blond beauty took my breath away. I was utterly helpless as he bent to kiss me one more time.
By the time those lips had finished with me, I was a literal puddle.
“I want to tell the whole world we’ve been kissing,” he whispered into my ear, before turning away.