Chapter 14 #2
“Well…okay, yeah, I did. But that was just to stretch my shoulder out, not because I was?—”
“—snuggling,” Parker fills in stoutly. “So, he’s your boyfriend.”
I close my eyes, and try to think of a way to argue with someone who’s at the age where he thinks he knows everything. We were not snuggling, even though the size of the couch—and the size of Jack—made it a tight fit and we were pressed a little closer than we might have preferred.
Or maybe closer would have been preferred, Victoria puts in, her voice whispering what I’d already been thinking for myself.
“Parks, you can’t just assume you know what other people prefer. Jack might not like boys like that. It might make him uncomfortable if you said he was my boyfriend.”
Parker frowns at me, shirt discarded on the bed and all pretense about folding washing dropped .
“Well…Jack likes you,” he says. “He gets really red when you talk to him. And he laughs at all your jokes, even when they’re really stupid.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I repeat, choosing to ignore that crack about my jokes. I tell phenomenal jokes.
“Fine,” Parker agrees, although he does so in a tone that heavily implies he’s only agreeing with me to end the conversation. “But he should be. I like him, and we could all live together like Nico and Anthony and Drou do. Jack and I could play Minecraft, like, every single night.”
Perfect. Not only do I have a boyfriend, but apparently I have one who’s committed enough to move in. Wedding bells are clearly on the horizon.
“Parker,” I mutter, exhaling heavily.
A timid knock interrupts what was surely going to be another five minutes of fruitless arguing. Parker’s eyes light up, and he pushes past me to run to the door. Oh look, your boyfriend is here , my sister adds happily, deciding now is the perfect time to hop back into the conversation.
Following the trail Parker blazed into the family room, I watch as Jack carefully removes his shoes and places them next to mine by the door.
His washing bag is leaned against the wall, and likely contains not only dirty clothes, but a book as well.
Jack is never without one. Parker stands next to him, jabbering excitedly.
His dark brown hair contrasts sharply with the red of Jack’s, and he looks freakishly small when Jack straightens back up.
He catches sight of me and smiles. He also blushes, which I’m sure Parker will assume means we’re in love.
“Hey, Bluey,” I greet him, and watch as the smile grows at the use of the nickname. He looks good, wearing a hideously brown long-sleeved shirt that nonetheless makes his amber eyes and freckles glow. I obviously have good taste in fake boyfriends.
“Hi. Thanks for letting me come over,” he says, the way he does every single time he does washing here.
“Anytime, bud,” I tell him, the same way I reply every Saturday.
He smiles, and my stomach takes a slow dive down to my toes.
I’ve always liked him—how could I not?—but now…
Now, with one stray comment from a kid, the what-ifs don’t seem half as fanciful as they did before.
We could be boyfriends. There is not a single thing holding us back from that.
Steps tentative, as though even now he’s waiting for me to tell him he can’t, Jack carries his washing bag over to the laundry.
Parker trails after, yapping away. Deciding that now is probably the time to catch up on my own scary to-do list, I head down the hall to my bedroom, intending to hang up the clothes that have been gathering wrinkles on a chair for the last week.
I push all thoughts of Jack to the back of my mind.
Having made the decision to just get it done, it takes only ten minutes to put them up.
That finished, I listen for the soft conversational sounds coming from the kitchen—Jack’s voice a low rumble; Parker’s high-pitched and youthful.
Figuring that they’re occupied enough not to miss me, I heave a deep sigh and duck into my bathroom for a long-overdue clean.
I’m standing in the bath, scrubbing the wall of the shower and patting myself on the back for being cleaner than Parker, when I hear my name being called.
“Back here!” I yell, kneeling down to begin attacking the lower tiles. My eyes are watering slightly from the smell of the cleaning solution, but now that I’ve started, I want to finish.
“What are you doing?” Parker asks, walking into the bathroom and attempting to get a grasp of the obvious. I glance over to see Jack hovering behind him, face crimson as though embarrassed to be in my bedroom. I sit back on my heels and tug off the rubber gloves.
“I figured I’d clean since you two were doing washing,” I tell Parker, who looks a little guilty at the reminder of what he’s avoiding.
“I’ll clean the kitchen,” Jack offers, which earns him an incredulous look from both me and Parker.
“That’s not necessary—” I start.
“Are we going to clean today?” Parker asks in disbelief, apparently floored that the apartment doesn’t actually do that itself.
“You and I are, but Jack is going to relax and read his book,” I tell him, trying not to laugh when he tips his head back and groans.
“No, I’ll help!” Jack tells me, stepping into the bathroom and rubbing a hand over where his blush has crawled down his neck. “It’ll be fun, and we’ll get everything done quicker if we all work together.”
Parker’s jaw drops, and this time I don’t manage to bite back a laugh. He looks horrified. Before he can offer to join Jack, I point at him.
“Washing,” I instruct. “Put it all away in the right spots, and then you’re free.”
Grumbling, he leaves me and Jack alone in the bathroom. It suddenly feels a great deal smaller than it did before, with Jack’s wide shoulders and long legs taking up the space. It’s not lost on me that I’m also kneeling right now, which puts his waist directly in my line of sight.
“You really don’t have to join the cleaning party,” I tell him, looking resolutely at his eyes .
“I don’t mind helping out—I want to.” He shrugs, giving me a closed-mouth, somewhat shy, smile.
“Well, I’m in no position to turn down help. Have a crack at it. Supplies are in the hall closet—help yourself. I’ll finish up here and join you, okay?”
Thirty minutes later, with my bathroom rubbish clutched in one hand, I head down to Parker’s room to check the progress of washing and his own bathroom. I clean it twice a week, yet somehow it seems to resist staying that way.
“I’m doing it,” Parker says, the moment I walk through the door, shaking a pair of jeans at me and scowling. I cuff him on the head as I walk by.
“Thanks, little man.” The bathroom isn’t bad enough to warrant special attention, so I add his rubbish to mine and decide the rest of the apartment is in more need than this. I turn to Parker. “You want to vacuum in here, once you get that all hung up?”
He brightens. The kid loves to vacuum.
“Okay,” he agrees, haphazardly folding the jeans he’s holding and shoving them into the dresser. I watch them disappear, and am reminded of yet another thing I’ve forgotten to get done.
“We need to get you some new clothes,” I tell him. He shrugs, unconcerned that all of his pants are capris at this point.
Leaving him to the adolescent hell of being made to do chores, I head into the kitchen, bringing a waft of cleaning solution with me.
Jack is seated on the floor, legs crossed, with the contents of the pantry spread around him.
The clear bins I’d purchased in a fit of organizational madness are laid out in an orderly row.
He’s even rustled up a roll of masking tape and Sharpie for labeling .
“Damn, Jacko, look at you,” I say, impressed. He tips his head back to look at me, looming above him, and grins. My fingers prickle with the awareness of how easy it would be to slide them into his hair. I pick up the nearest bin, labeled “cookies.”
“I figured you could put that one on the top shelf,” he jokes carefully, grinning when I laugh. Taking a seat next to him, I rub my hands together.
“All right. Let’s organize the shit out of this.”
Cracking open the container of Oreo cookies in case we need sustenance, we get to work.
Seated together on the floor, knees bumping and arms brushing as we reach across one another, I find myself enjoying the task far more than I would have had I been forced to do it alone.
We don’t talk much beyond the occasional joke about expiration dates, or a laugh about how stale is too stale for a bag of chips.
Jack is so relaxed there’s not even a hint of a blush on his cheeks—nothing but pale skin and a party of freckles.
“I think these are still good,” he says, rolling down the top of a bag of potato chips. “They’re a little stale, but you could have them with dip and you wouldn’t even notice.”
“Or let the ten-year-old eat them.” Standing up, knees protesting after having been in that position for too long, I grab two of the bins and bring them to the pantry. “He ate a moldy piece of bread last week, before I noticed.”
Jack laughs, joining me and handing off the bins as I put them on the shelves. We stand back to admire our handiwork, shoulder to shoulder. When I glance at him, my stomach dives gracefully to my toes. He’s so sweet.
Ask him out , Victoria urges. I look away. I could ask him out. I could do it right now and ensure the pleasure of his company here on more days than just Saturday. I could spend time with him that didn’t involve washing.
“I’m going to tackle the refrigerator next,” he tells me, sounding unduly excited. Looks like I’m not the only one who was bit with the cleaning bug.
“You’ll need a rubbish bag,” I tell him dryly, thinking of the likely abysmal state of the expiration dates in there.