4. Chapter Three #2
“I’ve eaten,” Quentin said. His stomach disagreed on that. One dubious taco was a snack, not a meal. “And not telling your dad? That’s what perverts offer.”
She rolled her eyes at him.
“I know that,” she said scornfully. “We get taught about Stranger Danger at school, but you already SAID you weren’t a pervert.”
Quentin pinched the bridge of his nose.
“That’s—” he started to say, but gave up before he even tried the sentence. It was definitely above his pay grade to resolve that logical fallacy for her, and it amazed him that people eagerly signed up to be parents just to deal with children all day. “You promise not to do it again?”
“Cross my heart,” Jessie said, miming the gesture with the bar of candy. “I just…Joe’s got enough on his plate.”
The tart, old-fashioned solemnity of the phrase made Quentin’s mouth twitch. That had come directly from someone’s grandmother. He could tell.
“OK,” he said. It was against his better judgment, but what did he know about kids? Maybe this was a great move. It could be. “But if you get in trouble again? I tell twice.”
“What?” she said. “Ever?”
“Yeah,” Quentin said as they reached her floor. “You get arrested for insider trading when you’re 30? I’ll be on the phone to the New York Times to expose you as the Candy Convict.”
She stared at him.
“That’s a joke,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
The doors opened before Quentin had a chance to recover from that. Jessie jumped over the gap between the floor and the elevator, both sneakers landing on the whorled carpet at once. The doors started to close behind her, and Quentin blocked them with one hand.
“You know anyone called Fred?” he asked.
“No,” Jessie scoffed. “Nobody’s called Fred.”
Quentin was pretty sure you weren’t meant to laugh when kids were rude. Even if whoever it was deserved it. Like training a dog, consistency was key. He still snorted a little bit.
“So what room were you in?” he asked as he glanced at the directional plaque mounted under the pleasantly bland pictures of rocks on the wall.
“Ummm…” Jessie checked her pockets. She came out with a crumpled-up piece of paper that, when she smoothed it out, was a receipt. “612?”
To the right, then.
A minute later, Quentin apologized to the annoyed-looking woman who’d yanked the door open and tugged Jessie away with him.
“621!” Jessie said as she trailed after him. “That was it!”
Back down the other way they went. This time, when Quentin knocked on the door, he was pretty sure it was the right one since he could hear a toddler crying behind it.
It was Joe who opened it. He’d just had a shower. His hair was wet, slicked back from his face, and his T-shirt clung to his damp skin. He held up his hand to ask for a moment as he tried to focus on the phone call over the hiccuping background discontent.
Quentin caught his breath. That was not going to help keep those ulterior motives at bay.
Stepdad . He reminded himself. Somewhere there was a Mr. Joe.
He probably had—Quentin glanced briefly at Jessie to try and guess—blond hair and freckles.
Probably also a bit of an asshole to let his husband deal with three kids on an early morning flight alone, but Joe probably wasn’t the type to get revenge by cheating.
Which was a bit of a leap.
“What do you mean our order is cancelled?” Joe said into the phone. “Last time I called, it was supposed to be on the way.”
Jessie ducked past him into the hotel room. Joe gave her an absent-minded pat on the shoulder as she went by.
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to remake the order. I want a refund. How can it be too late to cancel? You just cancelled it. You…Hello? They hung up.”
He lowered the phone from his ear as he looked up. His eyes focused on Quentin’s face, and he gawped at him.
“It’s you,” he said. They just looked at each other for a moment, then Joe frowned and looked puzzled. “How is it…you? Why did you have Jessie with you?”
“It’s the pilot?” the older boy blurted. He bounced off the bed and loped up to try and push by Joe, only to be quickly grabbed by the collar of his hoodie. “Did you find my AirPod?”
From inside the room, Jessie made a rude sound. “Sure, he came all the way out here just so he could return your stupid AirPod.”
“It’s not stupid!”
“Jessie! That’s enough.”
The toddler, feeling outdone, hiccuped and shifted gears into a louder wail.
Joe glanced back at Quentin. “I’m…I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re all just tired, and that’s the third Uber Eats order that’s gotten cancelled on us. I don’t know what’s–”
“Come with me to dinner,” Quentin said.
Surprise flickered over Joe’s face. He started to smile, but decided against it as he caught his lower lip between his teeth. Quentin wished he’d smiled. He would consider dinner money well spent if it meant he got to be the one to make Joe smile.
“I…that’s very kind,” Joe said. “But I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Probably, a disapproving mental voice noted in the back of Quentin’s head, because of his husband? That might give him pause?
He ignored it. The husband could have been here—if he wanted to be.
Joe wouldn’t do anything inappropriate, but that was fine.
Quentin just wanted to make sure the guy got fed.
That was apparently his mission in life now, whether it was turkey sandwiches or whatever fast food place was within walking distance.
“It’s late,” Joe pointed out. “There are four of us, and one of them is going to be screaming. It might be me.”
Quentin could almost hear Fred’s dirty chuckle in the back of his mind. He ignored it.
“You can tell me about the...” he paused as he looked over at Benjy and raised his eyebrows. “Earbuds?”
“Airpods,” Benjy corrected him. He looked around at Joe. “Can we go? I’m starving.”
“Me too,” Jessie piped up. “We’ve not had anything in hooooouuurrs.”
That Twix begged to differ, Quentin thought as he gave Jessie a dry look. They were on the same side here, so he wasn’t going to call her out. He just wanted to make sure she knew he’d noticed.
Joe looked torn. He was obviously tempted; the pleading had weakened his resolve, but he wasn’t quite ready to give in yet. That was OK. Quentin was good at getting his own way. It was time to bring out the big guns.
“The rest of my crew are at the Hilton,” Quentin said.
He gave Joe the puppy-eyed look that had always worked on his stepsister’s friends and older relatives.
“And I hate to eat alone. If you don’t come with me, I’ll just end up eating a rubber burger out of the pantry downstairs.
You’d be saving me from myself and a big bottle of Tums. What do you say? ”