Round Twenty-Two
BILLY
At two minutes to noon on Saturday morning, I knock on Maggie’s front door and stand extra tall. Extra straight. Extra muscular, maybe.
Fuck, I don’t know.
Fortunately, I don’t have too long to obsess over myself, because something crashes inside her house, and right after, Maggie’s hiss of anger follows.
“You think she’s okay, Dad?” Jeremy hovers on my left, his arms wrapped around a Battleship game box as he hugs it to his chest. “Did she hurt herself?”
“Just her pride, buddy.” I drop my hand to his fresh hair. “She has a metric ton of it bottled up in her body, and sometimes, people don’t know how to handle all that pressure. She’s like a boiling kettle with all the steam coming out the top.”
“Cos she’s proud?”
“Happens to the best of us.” I knock a second time and earn her feral growl. “See?”
“I’m coming!” She stomps across her house, the angry little kitten she is, and trips her way into a pair of shoes according to the step-step-clomp of her stride.
“I told you I could drive myself, ya know!? I’m a fully grown woman who can—” She swings her door open and stops dead, her eyes locking onto mine, then flipping down to my son. “Oh. Hey.”
I may as well be a fucking ghost, because she lowers into a crouch and strokes Jeremy’s brown locks. “You got a haircut?”
He flashes a wide grin. “Uh-huh. Do you like it?”
“I sure do.” She tilts her head to the side and runs her fingers through the shorter side. “You look very handsome. Did you get that done today?”
“Uh-huh.” He hooks a thumb in my direction. “After my dad got done mowing the lawn, we went to the shops. He got a haircut, too.”
Too proud for her own good, Maggie tips her head back and acknowledges me through narrowed eyes. “I see that. Were they having a two-for-one sale down at the barbers?”
“That’s what I said!” he cackles. “But nuh-uh! Dad had to pay for both. Is his haircut handsome, too?”
“Mmhm.” Slowly extending her legs, she straightens out and shows off a soft pink blush warming her cheeks.
Should I try to kiss her again? Now would be a good time, since she’s less likely to stab me with her keys when Jeremy’s watching.
“Maggie?”
“Yes. Your dad’s haircut looks great.” She drops her gaze, her long lashes coming down to tap her cheeks. “Very handsome.”
“But not as handsome as me, right?” The little shit shoulder-checks me back and forces himself into the gap between us. “People tell me I look just like he did when he was my age, but now he’s old. So he can’t be nearly as handsome as me.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Ya know, he’s not that old.”
“He was born in the nineteen-hundreds!”
“I was born in the nineteen-hundreds, too.”
He nods. Simple, clean, devastating. “I know.”
“Yikes.” Laughing, she turns on her heels and heads back to the base of her stairs.
“I packed a picnic basket, since Ramone’s thing is a barbecue lunch and I didn’t want to turn up empty-handed.
” Hefting the heavy basket onto the crook of her arm, she cuts left and snags her phone and keys, slipping the former into the back pocket of a denim skirt that stops several inches above her knees.
She wears an oversized sweater, with too-long sleeves and a neck hole too large not to sit askew.
She risks drowning her body in fabric and creating an amorphous blob, but her skirt fixes all the problems her sweater creates, and her sinfully long, ridiculously toned and tanned legs make up for every single unkind thing she’s ever said.
Or thought.
Or done.
Oh, the power of a fantastic pair of legs.
“Alright.” She stops at the door with a bright smile—for my son—and long brown locks hanging loose. “I’m ready to go.”
“You want me to take that?” I extend my hand and work on softening my voice. Because there’s a chance my harsh tones are half the reason we bicker. “The basket?”
“Um… sure, thanks.” She dumps the twenty-pounds onto my arm, then she extends her hand—for my son—and smirks as he accepts. “How was school yesterday? Was it good?”
“It was fine.” He leads her down the porch steps and across her yard, since we’re going in my car. “I spilled my lunch on my seat in the cafeteria and almost sat in it.”
“Oh, no! That would have been embarrassing.”
“Uh-huh. But I didn’t. But then I sat on my friend’s lunch instead.”
“Oh, no!” she giggles. “So neither of you got to eat! Did it make a complete mess of your clothes?”
“Yuh.” He helps her across the garden. “We had chocolate pudding with our lunch yesterday. Do you know what chocolate pudding smooshed on the bottom of your pants looks like to people who wanna pick on you?”
She covers her smiling lips with her hand, her rosy cheeks rising anyway to encroach on her glittering eyes. “That sounds really unfortunate.”
“If you really are a witch, maybe you could put a spell on the kids who laughed at me.” He leads her all the way to the passenger door, opening it wide and keeping a hold of her hand, even as she slides in.
“They laughed and said I pooped my pants. But I didn’t, Maggie.
I haven’t pooped my pants since I was four. ”
“I believe you.” She cups his cheek. “That’s not very nice of them to laugh at you.”
“I mean…” He rolls out of her touch and dives into the back seat. “I would’ve laughed if it happened to someone else. So if you do do a spell, probably don’t make it way bad. Cos then next month, it might be me laughing. Karma might whack me in the butt if I’m not careful.”
“Quite the conundrum indeed.” She twists in her seat and glances into the back. “Why don’t we consider this a lesson not to laugh at others, since, one: we know how it feels to be laughed at, and we don’t like it, and two: karma is a nasty woman who she never misses.”
“I guess.” He releases an unimpressed huff. “What’s the point of having a witch next door anyway if I can’t use her spells? Why does karma have to watch everything?”
“That’s just one of those things in life, I guess.” Clicking her tongue, Maggie twists to the front and meets my eyes. “You coming, or what?”
I’m still on her porch. Still holding her picnic basket. Still trying to decide for myself if she is, in fact, a witch. Or just a really beautiful fucking succubus who refuses to give me even a minute of her time.
“Billy?”
“Yeah.” I yank her front door closed and move down the steps, depositing the basket into my trunk right beside a six-pack of beer. Striding to the driver’s side, I slide in and meet her eyes. “I like your hair, too.”
“You…” She grabs a long lock and holds it between her fingers. “What?”
“Your hair.” I close my door and start the engine. “Looks pretty. Your whole…” I gesture her way, from her head to her legs. “All of it. Looks pretty.”
God. Just shut the fuck up already. Idiot.
“O-okay,” she stammers. “Thanks.”
“You’re here!” Ramone swings his front door open and reveals a megawatt grin, a beer in one hand, and no shirt—no fucking shirt—covering his torso.
It’s damn near November, and the prick is wearing board shorts and his bedroom eyes.
“You look fantastic.” He grabs Magnolia’s wrist and jerks her forward until she crashes against his chest. “I hope you’re wearing your swimsuit under that sweater, Ms. Sava, cos I’ve had the hot tub warming all morning.
” He presses a noisy kiss to her cheek, then he looks down at Jeremy, winks, and stakes his claim, despite my son’s beady-eyed wrath.
Turning on his heels, he drags Maggie inside and leaves us behind.
“Come on in. Kitchen’s that way.” He gestures…
away, absolutely not the direction of his kitchen, because he’s too fucking busy flirting.
“Not sure I need to introduce you to anyone, since you met ‘em all at that event you hosted, but,” he leads her straight through the house and out the back door, “Tommy and Lana. That’s Franky over there, and sweet baby Hazel.”
“He’s gonna steal our girl if we’re not careful.” Jeremy’s eyes swing up to mine, furious and determined. “He’ll take her, Dad, and then neither of us will get her.”
Stunned, my stomach flips with nerves. “You don’t get her. Ever. You are a child!”
“Bet.” He smacks me square in the gut and takes off at a jog.
“You better hurry, Detective Caster.” Molly Jenkins, ten years old, with light brown hair and a reputation for smartass comebacks, looks me up and down with a kind of pity glowing in her gaze. “He already told me and Franky he was gonna marry Ms. Sava someday.”
“Who’s gonna marry Ms. Sava? Ramone?”
“Jeremy.”
“He’s a child!”
She shrugs. “She thinks he’s cute, and my grandpa said you keep trying to charm her, but you suck at it.” Her lips curve into a taunting smirk. “My grandma says Jeremy’s winning this war so far.”
Fuck he is. I charge through the house and deposit Maggie’s basket in the kitchen to be dealt with later.
I grab two beers from my six-pack, since I guess we’re noon-drinking now, toss the rest in the fridge, then I shove through the back door and find Maggie already comfortable in a chair beside Alana.
Worse. My son is sitting on her fucking lap.
“Hey, buddy.” I have to stay cool. Stay calm.
Stay in control of this bullshit situation.
So I meander down the porch stairs and onto Ramone’s grass with a slow swagger to my steps.
Pulling up a chair beside Maggie’s, I look down at the pair and hook a thumb back the way I came.
“Molly’s inside. Said she wants to play Battleship with you. ”
“I don’t wan—”
I grab him around the waist anyway and deposit him on his own two feet. “Poor Maggie’s legs were probably getting squashed under you, since you’re such a big boy now.” I lower into my chair and tilt a beer toward Maggie in offer. “Go inside, Jeremy. That’s where the kids are playing.”
“They are not!” He jerks a hand in Franky’s direction. He’s just a boy who wants to read and not get roped into someone else’s shit today. “He’s outside.”
“Here.” I tap Maggie’s arm with the beer she’s yet to accept, then I grin when her eyes come to mine. “You can drink, since I’m driving. I left your picnic basket on the kitchen counter, since I didn’t know what you wanted me to do with it.”
“Um… it’s okay.” She takes the bottle and drags her sleeve down to cover her hand, all so she can twist the cap off without hurting her palm. “Thanks. I’ll go inside soon and fix the food.”
“Magnolia Sava.” Ramone drags one of the other cops from our station across his yard.
“This is Hudson Jarvis. Detective.” He claps Hudson’s back and forces the guy forward.
“He didn’t grow up in Plainview, so you wouldn’t have met yet.
Hudson is thirty-five, single, unmarried, never married, has no baby-mama-drama, and likes to work out sometimes. ”
“Dude!” I snarl. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Helping.”
“Uh…” Maggie’s face burns red with a furious blush. She sets her beer in the drink holder and climbs unsteadily to her feet. Swallowing, she offers a shaking hand. “Hi, Hudson. You can call me Maggie.”
“Maggie slept in my dad’s bed on Thursday night!” Jeremy announces.
Really.
Fucking.
Loudly.
Every single person in Ramone’s backyard, all thirty-odd people—even Franky—shuts their traps and stares like their lives depend on it.
“She was at my house all night and fell asleep,” Jeremy gloats, puffing his chest forward and standing as tall as his eight-year-old body can manage.
“My dad carried her up to his bed and tucked her in. Also, Maggie said my dad’s new haircut is handsome.
” He flashes a devious grin. “I love having Maggie as my next-door neighbor.” He lights Hudson on fire with his don’t-fucking-think-about-it glare.
“So close, I can look out my bedroom window and see hers.”