Chapter 13 #2
“Are you done yet? And where the hell are my car keys?”
Yeah, this Oliver has no qualms marching into the women’s restroom to get me as I’m washing my hands.
This man is not the same man my sister was engaged to.
You know that song with the line about how the singer can’t answer the phone since she’s deceased?
That’s what it’s like looking at Oliver.
Outwardly, he has the same hazel eyes and the same shortish haircut and the same normal lips and the same ears that stick out a little too much on the sides, but everything else about him—from the more chiseled jaw to the attitude to the way he talks to me to the way he carries himself—everything else is like he’s a different man.
It’s like he found his spine and now uses it regularly, and it’s making me wonder how else he’s changed.
I shake my hands off, then pull the keys out of the bag where I’ve also hidden my burner phone inside the wadded-up dress from last night and dangle them between my fingers. “My former life of crime is gonna help me make sure you don’t leave without me.”
He growls something softly to himself, snatches the keys, and gives me the move your ass glare.
“Are you hungry?” I ask him. “I could go for some fried fish. It’s great road trip food.”
He does that thing where his chest expands as he draws a long breath through his quivering nostrils, then slides another glare at me.
Maybe he’s hangry.
We haven’t had much to eat today. A coffee and a protein bar apiece.
Food’s a good idea.
A very good idea.
And then I’m convincing him to get off the road.
We stroll out of the store, and a tiny human being yells at us from a table set up in the sunshine beside the exit.
“Hey! Hey, mister and miss! I’m selling discount cards to raise money for my gymnastics club so that we can get new equipment and be a lot safer when we fall on our heads!
Will you support me not getting brain damage so maybe I can find the cure for cancer one day and also be a gymnast? ”
I barely tuck in a laugh.
I’ve seen some small humans selling stuff for their clubs and teams before, but this—this is a next-level sales pitch.
“We can’t not—” I start to say to Oliver, but I cut myself off.
Because everything about Oliver Cumberland has shifted, and he’s not growly, and he’s not glaring, and he’s not radiating barely suppressed fury.
He’s switching directions to approach the little girl with the red pigtails who can’t be more than six years old, with his shoulders more relaxed than they’ve been at any moment since I woke up in his car last night.
He squats in front of her while the adult with her watches both of us.
“What’s your favorite part of gymnastics?” he asks her.
This isn’t grumpiest-of-the-grumpy Oliver.
But it’s not pushover Oliver either.
This is—this is mature Oliver.
Confident Oliver.
Aware Oliver.
“I like the uneven bars because I can swing for hours and hours,” she tells him. “But when I fall, it hurts.”
He nods gravely. “It hurts when I fall too. How much money do you need to raise for better equipment?”
“Ten seventy thousand million dollars,” she replies.
He smiles.
Oliver.
Oliver Cumberland.
Smiling at a little girl.
Fuck.
Fuuuuuuuuck.
“We’re trying to raise five thousand,” the woman I assume is the kid’s mom says.
“That’s a lot of money,” Oliver says to the little girl.
“Good thing I’m cute,” she replies.
His entire face relaxes into an even broader smile.
And then he does something even worse.
He pulls out his wallet and empties it into their donation jar. “Hope that helps.”
The mom’s eyes go huge.
Like, I don’t think I could open my eyes that wide if I tried.
Understandable.
He must’ve had thirty or forty hundred-dollar bills tucked into his wallet. It was so thick it barely folded.
“Is that seventy-eleventy bajillion dollars?” the little girl asks.
“Definitely not that much.”
“Here. Here, take a discount card,” the mom stutters, shoving a plastic card at us while the little girl starts telling Oliver about a time when she fell off the balance beam.
If I were a good be-a-normal-person coach, I’d dive in and say thank you and take the plastic card and hustle Oliver away.
But I’m a little too stuck on the way he’s smiling softly at the little girl, listening to her story about the time she did three cartwheels in a row like it’s the most important thing in the world.
“Take two.” The mom shoves the cards at me, and I shake myself back to reality.
To a reality where these two are going to tell their friends about the man who dropped three or four thousand dollars into their donation jar.
I take the cards, then poke Oliver. “Hey, M-dub-O, we’re gonna be late for my brother’s birthday party, and you know how much he’ll be a pill about it.”
I get a hairy eyeball of irritation at the use of his old nickname—I deserve that eyeball, because I know that’s what his bullies called him in high school, which makes it about the best way I know to irritate him into moving.
And it works.
He rises and nods to the little girl. “Keep practicing and you’ll fall less.”
“Thank you,” her mom says, still clearly a little lost for words.
He nods, and then tucks his hands in his pockets, puts his head down, and turns and heads back into the parking lot.
I jog after him.
“Shut. The hell. Up,” he mutters.
I squeeze my hands into fists.
Not to keep from punching him since I haven’t said a single solitary word.
No, it’s to keep from hugging him.
It’s absolutely nothing to him to donate a few thousand dollars here and there. It’s like pennies to him.
Less than pennies.
But watching him smile at a little kid, watching him pause for them—it’s shaken something loose inside me that I much prefer to not have shooken loose.
What’s the word for a fuckup bigger than a fuckup?
Because I think that’s exactly what I’ve gotten myself into.