Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
“I’m home!” Reese calls from the front hall.
Ainsley doesn’t react, because she’s sitting at the kitchen table with her gigantic Princess Leia headphones on, presumably tearing her way through Sir Elton John’s discography. She’s got a gigantic nest of tiny rubber bands in front of her. When I was a kid we put those on our orthodontia, but these days kids apparently twist them into bracelets.
Miles, on the other hand, overreacts to Reese’s arrival, going straight as an ironing board and immediately hiding away the Cheez-Its he’s just been snacking on.
“Miles ate all your Cheez-Its,” I say the second Reese enters the kitchen.
He turns and looks at me like he’d really enjoy punting me down a water slide if given the chance.
It’s knee-jerk. She laughs at the expression on his face. “Yeah, that’s okay,” she says. “I can afford another box.”
Would you look at that; perhaps for the first time ever, Reese and Miles have had a nonstiff greeting. He blinks at her as she crosses the room toward Ainsley.
“Ains. Ains!”
Ainsley jolts and one of the rubber bands slingshots off her finger.
“Ouch! Shit!” Reese bends forward into a crouch, her hands over one of her eyes.
“ Mom! Oh, Mommy, I’m so sorry.” Ainsley scrambles her headphones off and tumbles her chair in her hurry to get to Reese.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Reese says, patting her daughter with one hand and covering her eye with the other. “I just…Let me just.”
Miles is there in an instant. “Let me see.”
“It’s really okay,” Reese insists, trying to get past Miles while Ainsley tugs on her pants leg.
“Mommy, I’m sorry,” she says again, and then bursts into tears.
“Oh, Ains—”
“Seriously, Reese, just let me see.” He puts a hand on her elbow as she’s reaching down toward Ainsley, who is now fully wailing.
“It’s okay, Miles. Ainsley, come up here, sweetie.”
“You don’t know if it’s okay yet, just let me—”
“Miles! Back off. I’m fucking fine if I say I’m fucking fine, okay?”
We all freeze. There’s a sobbing breath and it doesn’t come from Ainsley.
“Just back off,” she says again, her voice quaking. And then she turns, Ainsley in her arms, and leaves the kitchen.
Miles’s back is to me, his hands on his hips and his head down. Not everyone will accept help when they’re grieving. Some people just…go inward and bear it all alone. Those were his words when we sat outside the sandwich shop, when I asked him why it was so important to him to help me through this time.
I make it to his side. He looks down at me, so frustrated and hurt. Useless, is what he called himself.
He takes a deep breath.
“I’ve got stuff for pancakes. Come up when you’re done here.” He goes to leave, pauses in the hallway, and then makes his way out of the apartment.
—
A few hours later, I knock on his door upstairs. He opens up, looking a little wrecked.
“You okay?” I ask tentatively.
“Fine, fine. Sorry…you had to see that.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” I can’t get the word useless out of my head. This ragged version of Miles is not what I’m used to. He needs a task. “Hey. I’m not really in the mood for pancakes. Plus. I’m…in the dumps.” (I’m actually not, right now.) “Can you think of a way to cheer me up?”
He smirks, like he can see right through me, but he takes the bait. “Let’s go for a walk.”
He abruptly turns around and walks back into his apartment.
“Outside is the other way!” I lean into his apartment and call to him.
“Where’s your Big Bird sweatshirt?” he asks, heading back my way. “You’re always in T-shirts and it’s getting chillier at night.”
“I like my clothes!”
“Me too, but it’s the beginning of fall.” He’s back at the door, a sweatshirt in hand. “You haven’t been back to your apartment in Brooklyn to change out your summer clothes for fall clothes yet, have you?”
I sag down. “No.” Now I am in the dumps.
“When’s the last time you were back? I thought maybe because you always show up in different clothes…”
“I get new stuff from secondhand shops a lot. My wardrobe is expanding. Soon it will consume your entire apartment. You’ll have to dig me out with a snow shovel.”
“Well, next time you’re in a thrift store, buy some warmer clothes. Put this on for now and there might be a couple warmer things back at my place if you need them.”
And then he is shoving a blue sweatshirt on over my head. The hood is big enough to fall forward over my eyes and when I thread my arms through the sleeves, there’s eight inches of fabric left before I make it to the wrist holes. It’s warm and soft and old and smells like laundry detergent.
“Why do you still keep clothes there?” I ask him.
He tilts his head toward the door and I follow him into the hallway.
“In case Reese wants me out of this apartment. I mean…technically it’s mine. But if she asked me to leave, I’d go.”
“Why would you leave the apartment if it’s yours?” I ask.
He locks up and we’re out on the street before he answers my question. “Because that apartment used to be hers. Well, sort of. I mean that she and Ainsley used to live there.”
“Ohhhhhh.” It’s all coming together. “Did she leave most of her stuff? Is that why everything matches and looks so homey?”
He frowns at me. “Yes. I mean, I’m not a Neanderthal. I can pick out matching furniture. But yeah. She left a lot of stuff when they moved to the big apartment to be with our dad.”
He takes a left outside the building and by now, I’ve learned to follow without questions.
“So,” I prompt him. “She moved out to live downstairs with your dad and you moved into her old place?”
He sighs and I guess he gets tired of telling the story in scraps. “About two years ago, Dad had a stroke. It was pretty bad. He called me and asked if I’d come visit. He and I were… sort of in contact before that. But he’d definitely never asked me for anything before. Or asked me to come to the city. So I showed up and…a lot of stuff happened all at once. But the most important part was that our dad needed help. And so did Reese and Ainsley. He’d been helping her raise Ainsley. But suddenly he was in rough shape and Reese went from having a co-parent to having to take care of both him and Ains. I stuck around and helped. First I lived in the studio apartment. But then I moved into the apartment above them. Then he had another stroke, a worse one, and he didn’t make it. He’d owned both apartments and he left the upstairs one to me and the downstairs one to Reese and Ainsley.”
His hands are in his jeans pockets, so I slide my arm through the loop of his arm and momentarily press my face to his shoulder as we walk. We’re a tangle of sweatshirts. “That’s what you meant when you said you unexpectedly came into money. That everything was so new for you. You’re not used to any of it.”
He kicks at an empty chip bag as we walk, and then thinks twice, picks it up, and tosses it in a trash can. “Honestly, I was shocked he called me to come be with him. We’d been in contact a bit since my mom died…he understood that I didn’t really have anybody anymore. He started calling and checking on me. But I always knew there was a limit to what he could offer me…” He glances down at me, and the arm that I’m hugging goes tense. “Reese…didn’t know about me. Not until I showed up at the door two years ago.”
“Oh, Miles. ” I give his arm a huge squeeze. So tight that it throws off our walking balance and we veer toward the street. He rights us and saves the day. “That must have been so terrible for both of you.”
It’s all starting to make sense, in an awful sort of way.
“Not as bad for me. I knew about her since…I don’t know. The beginning? He used to visit when I was a kid. But only when he was on tour. He was married to Reese’s mom at the time. And his image was a family man, you know? So an extramarital kid definitely had to stay under wraps. Once when I was ten or so, he gave my mom and me tickets to one of his shows. Backstage passes. But after the show, when we went backstage, they told us the passes weren’t good. I just thought it was because something was wrong with the actual passes. But when I was about twenty my mom explained that Reese and her mom had flown in and surprised him, so he’d told the bouncers backstage not to let us through.”
“God.” A huge feeling is rising in my gut.
“Mom didn’t let him come visit me anymore after that. She…was the proudest mom of all time. She told me all the time how much she loved me and how proud of me she was. She never missed a basketball game. Saved for years to be able to buy me a used car for my sixteenth birthday. Taught me how to tie a tie and what to say to my first crush. She understood what it means to be someone’s secret. It means that you’re not their pride and joy. And she wanted me to feel that I was hers.”
I tug him to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk and squeeze him around the middle. My cheek is pressed to his sternum and I do my best to melt my feelings out through my body and into his.
For someone so prickly, he sure is a good hugger. Firm arms and his hands spread wide.
“It was hard for Reese too, you know,” he says. “That’s why I give her a lot of slack to be so…”
“Much of a butthead to you?” I supply.
He laughs and his arms finally loosen. “Yes. Let’s keep walking.” We break apart and keep going. “Her dad had a stroke, her whole life was tumbling down, and then out of nowhere she had a brother. She…had a certain view of how her parents’ marriage was. How her childhood was. And my existence kind of exploded all of it.”
“Oh, man.”
“We’re here.”
“Where? This bakery?”
“Have you ever been here before?” There’s a slight sparkle in his eyes, and I’m not sure why.
I shake my head.
“I just found it recently,” he says. It’s a few blocks from Reese and Ainsley’s but I’ve never thought to duck my head in before. As we stand outside in the grainy evening, the scent of lemon poppy seed mixes with warm vanilla and cinnamon, and it physically draws me toward the door.
We pause at the sign that says they close at seven.
“Dang. Five minutes late!”
But then the door swings open and a young man, maybe early twenties, sticks his head out the door. “Y’all can come in. Plenty left.”
I double-take. So does the young man. Our mouths drop open in perfect unison.
“Jericho?”
“Lenny?”
Me and Sparkly Backpack Guy run into each other’s arms like we’ve crossed oceans to get to each other.
“I’m so glad to see you!” he crows. “I regretted not getting your number that day.” He turns back into the bakery. “Mom! This is the girl who defended my honor when the car smashed my bike!” And then back to me. “Come in! Come in. Everything’s on the house.”
I’m being tugged into the bakery and when I look back over my shoulder, Miles is grinning, hands in his pockets. That wily minx planned this.
“So you’re Lenny!” Jericho’s mother calls from behind the counter. They have the same coily black hair and big brown eyes. Hers have gone wide, taking me in. “Little miss, you are way too small to be picking fights with grown men in the street!”
I step up to the counter sheepishly. “Ah. Yes. Well, actually, I agree with you. It’s not gonna happen again.”
She narrows her eyes at me.
“Really! I swear. It’s not something I would normally do.”
“Huh.” Jericho leans against the counter and eyes me. “Because it seemed to come very natural to you.”
That makes me laugh but I shake my head. “No, I’m…a little off my rocker these days? I lost somebody very close to me this year. Not to explain away my momentary insanity…” No one quite knows what to say to that, so I put my grief wingman to good use. “But. Yeah. Don’t worry about me. I’ve got Miles. He’s making sure I keep things a little more…manageable.” I put one hand on his back and shove him forward into the spotlight. It works.
She turns to Miles. “Oh, hello! You’re becoming a regular.”
He puts his hands in his pockets and ducks his head. “Yes, ma’am.”
I double-glance up at him with wide eyes. Deferential Miles is really something to see.
“Let me guess,” she says. “You want a loaf of the ten-seed bread, the cinnamon pistachio scones, and a lemon poppy seed muffin to go.”
“Ohhhhh,” I say, looking through the display case at what she’s selecting. That’s the exact bread and scones on hand in Reese and Ainsley’s kitchen at all times. I guess because Miles provides them.
“You get these for Reese and Ainsley?”
He nods. “The muffin is just for me, though. I don’t share.”
Jericho’s mom laughs. “That’s my goal with my baked goods. To make some of them so good you just have to share them and to make others so good you can’t bear to share them.”
Miles smiles at her. “The lemon poppy seed muffins remind me of my mom,” he tells her. “They’re just like she used to make.”
“Is that right?” Her face has gone soft and sweet. She understands what he’s saying.
“Yeah. Except hers were terrible.”
This makes all of us laugh. “But she tried.” Miles shrugs and then turns to me. “What are you going to choose?”
My mouth waters looking at all the baked goods, wide and sturdy, golden brown and friendly. “Hmm.” I bend down and peruse. “To go healthy?” I point at a premade steel-cut oats cup. “Or indulgent?” I point at a Nutella croissant.
“We’ll take both,” Miles decides.
They pack up our order and Jericho comes around the counter to make sure to trade contact info with me.
We’re grinning and waving goodbye and leaving the bakery with two hot chocolates and a paper bag that smells like heaven.
“You gotta lotta tricks up your sleeve,” I say to Miles, back out on the sidewalk.
“I thought you’d enjoy that little surprise.”
“Let’s eat.” I reach for the bag.
“Hold on,” he says, swatting me away. “This trip wasn’t just so you could see Jericho again. I want you to pay attention to this. It’s important.”
He pulls out the oatmeal cup and the croissant and puts one in each of my hands.
“Something good for you.” He points at the oatmeal. “Something bad for you.” He points at the croissant. “And a change of scenery.” He points at the bakery.
“Huh?”
“It’s hard-won wisdom. A formula I figured out in my dark days. One I still need sometimes. When everything is going dark and you can’t understand why…when the grief catches up to you again…Or when your sister shouts at you and you feel like the world’s biggest tool. Just remember. Something good for you, something bad for you, and a change of scenery. That’s the winning formula.”
I look at the food in my hands and up at him. “Just like that? It’s magic?”
“No. Of course not. It doesn’t actually fix anything. But it buys you a little time.”
He takes the oatmeal back and shoves it into the bag.
I take a robust bite of croissant and cross my eyes with ecstasy. “Okay, I can see the wisdom here.”
We start to walk and he eats his muffin, bumping our shoulders together. He uses his thumb to get some Nutella off the corner of my mouth and grunts when it tastes as good to him as it did to me. “Let me get a bite of that.”
I offer him the croissant and he offers me the muffin and we eat each other’s desserts for half a block.
“Something good for me, something bad for me, and a change of scenery,” I muse.
“It really works. You gotta use it. Especially if you ever need me and I’m not there.”
“Oh, come on, Miles. You’ll always be there. You’re Old Trusty.”
“I hope so.”
“I wish I could be yours. Or anybody’s,” I say with a sigh.
“You’ll get there, Lenny. I promise.”