Chapter 17
Ace
The hallway of the fifth floor of the Holloway Apartments just off Dickson University’s main campus is busy today, the two doors farthest from the elevator on the campus end of the building propped open with doorstops as Julia and I carry up load after load from the cars as we move in.
I’ve been waiting for this day with little to no patience since leaving the lake on Sunday and dreaming of Julia’s and my brief but perfect kiss since it happened late Saturday night.
I know my tongue didn’t work any miracles on its own, but I do feel like it started a mental tangent in Julia’s brain not previously there—a possibility.
A suggestion. A tease of what something more than friendship between us could be.
“Ow, T-bag, watch where you’re putting your clown feet!” my mom shrieks, sidestepping my dad and dropping her end of the nightstand she was carrying with him.
“You don’t complain about the size of my feet when we’re in bed, sweet cheeks, so I don’t know why you’re acting like they’re the next act in the freak show now.”
“Because you clobbered my toe. It’s smashed. I just got a pedicure yesterday!”
“Well, honey, maybe focus on carrying a little more than you’re focused on your pedicure, and I won’t—”
“Guys, please,” I cut them off before they really get on a fucking roll. “Can we not?”
“Don’t you dare complain about your mother complaining,” my dad launches in, setting down the nightstand and gearing up to be even more ridiculous. “She’s lifting shit for your ungrateful ass, and she just got a pedicure yesterday!”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not complaining. I’m very grateful for both of you,” I say by rote, knowing it’s the quickest way to nip their spiral in the bud.
“I was just wondering if we could focus the energy a little more internally until we’re fully inside my apartment to keep from upsetting my new neighbors? ”
“Your new neighbor is Julia,” my dad points out brusquely. “And she’s known us her whole damn life. I don’t think she’s motherfluffing surprised by any of it.” Raising his voice and canting his head, he asks her directly. “Are you, Jules?”
“No!” she yells back from across the hall, where her mom and dad have the enviable ability to be quiet.
I sigh. “She’s just saying that because she’s scared of you.”
“Scared? Of me?” He turns fully toward the door this time. “You’re not scared of me, are you, Julia?”
“No, sir!” she yells back.
“But I am,” Kline, her dad and my dad’s involuntary best friend/current enemy, adds. “And Ace is right. You’re louder than hell right now.”
“Oh, whoops,” my dad says, seemingly taking Mr. Brooks’s word over my own.
“I’ll take it down a notch.” This level of compliance is in no way normal, but since the rift, and my five hours of begging him to make it right, he’s been making an effort to be a less pointy version of the thorn in Kline Brooks’s side.
Even amid the display of my worthlessness in the behavior-influencing department, I’m thankful he’s at least taking that seriously.
“Hey, Kline!” my dad calls out.
“Yeah?” The response is more of a grumble than anything else from within Julia’s apartment, but still, Kline Brooks is speaking words—okay, one word—to my father, and that’s progress.
“Do you love me again yet?”
“No.”
“Okay, buddy!” my dad calls back and swipes a bead of sweat from his forehead with his hand. “But I want you to know that I love you very fluffing much!”
“Thatch?” Kline tosses out, still not even bothering to peek his head out of Julia’s open door.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
“Okay, buddy.” My dad is smiling for some strange reason, and when he meets my eyes and sees the way my eyebrows are furrowed together, he just claps a hand to my back. “Relax, son. That, right there, was a bridge being built over a gap.”
I have no idea what or why or how he thinks being told to shut up is in any way a good thing, but I don’t fight it. I don’t have the energy.
“I’m going to head back down and get one of the kitchen boxes,” I announce. “Those and the bed frame are all that’s left, I think.”
“Good,” my mom says, flopping down on the couch. “I think you two can handle that while I relax, then.”
I don’t complain. Not only is it not worth it, but in less than an hour, if I keep working diligently, my parents will go home, as will Julia’s, and we’ll officially be alone and living across the hall from each other for our sophomore year of college.
I’ll be perfectly poised to move on to the next phase of my plan, in which I am at a whim’s notice for anything she may need. I will be a safety net. I will be a tool. I will be a confidant. I will be anything she fucking wants me to be and, maybe, some things she doesn’t know she needs yet.
I’m still hatching the specifics, but I’ve spent the last two days since we got home from Aunt Paula and Uncle Brad’s lake house hypothesizing scenarios in which I could be useful. A broken air conditioner? A fire? An emotional emergency?
I will be more than just the man of the hour—I will be the man of every hour.
My dad hip checks me as he heads for the door, and just after he steps out into the hall, Julia peeks her head inside. “Hey, Ace, do you have the stuff you got for my apartment up here yet? Or should my dad and I run down and get it?”
“I’ll bring it up,” I offer quickly, only to be cut off by my mother.
She groans as she climbs from the couch, stealing my thunder right out from underneath me. “I’ll get your stuff, Jules. Ace, go down and help your father with your own shit so I can get the hell out of here and home to a bath.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I agree through clenched teeth as I head for the door. Julia waits there, patting me on the shoulder as I pass her by. I turn to meet her eyes just one more time, but she has her phone out instead and is smiling down at it while her fingers fly over the screen keyboard.
“Scottie?” I ask hopefully—foolishly.
“Drew,” she corrects, not even looking up from the screen. “He’s thinking about coming over tonight after we get all settled.”
“Great,” I say through unshed tears.
I don’t know if my tone is different or if she’s just done with her message, but she looks up right before I turn to walk away and tucks her phone into her pocket, shrugging. “I told him I’ll see how I’m feeling. I don’t know. Might just wanna have the first night to myself.”
While a fist pump would make the victory sweeter, I withhold the urge. “For sure,” I agree simply, acting way cooler than I feel.
“Ace!” my dad yells from the elevator as soon as the doors open. “What the fluff are you doing? Stop fluffing around and come help me carry your shit!”
I laugh and smile at Julia before jogging away. I jump into the elevator my dad just departed before it closes and watch with a renewed sense of drive as Julia lingers in the hall, watching me go.
Maybe, just maybe, that stolen kiss a few nights ago got me somewhere after all.