Chapter 4 Ronan
Four
Ronan
I dragged the rake through the weeds as Shiloh started back for the house.
I snuck a final glance as if to convince myself a girl like that was fucking real and not a mirage or an Egyptian queen in the flesh.
Hundreds of black braids fell around the light-brown skin of her shoulders that glowed in the late-afternoon sun, that light glinting off the bracelets and rings she’d probably made herself.
Christ, she was beautiful, her dark eyes soft but sharp with intelligence. And guarded. She didn’t give anything away for free. You had to earn this girl’s time and trust…and would probably feel like a fucking king if you did.
My stupid heart stopped as she glanced back at me. Our eyes met, sparking a jolt to my chest. We both looked away quickly, and she disappeared into the house, her dress sliding like water over her body.
I hacked at the ground mercilessly.
“Fuck my life.”
I didn’t need this torture. The house, the yard, the goddamn lemonade. It was already too much. And now Shiloh…
Forget her. No more conversations or asking personal shit. No more nothing.
Because nothing was what I had to offer a girl like that.
I finished up for the afternoon and grabbed my old fleece-lined denim jacket from the back of the patio chair. The scent of fresh-baked cookies hit me before I even touched the screen door.
“Ms. Barrera?” I called. The old lady was mostly blind. I didn’t want to scare her.
“In here, darling.”
I stepped inside, making sure to wipe my boots on the porch mat first so my footprints wouldn’t dirty their floors. A plate of chocolate chip cookies was cooling on the kitchen counter.
My stomach growled, and so did that old hunger that went deeper than flesh and bone.
The Barrera household was a goddamn buffet.
Cozy and warm and crammed with photos and antique furniture, glass cabinets of old-lady knickknacks, and trees made out of wires and beads.
Traces of homecooked meals lingered in the air.
The entire place felt like a kind of wealth I’d never known or understood.
Not in money but in every other thing that mattered.
It was hard to believe this house—this home—and my crappy, empty apartment existed in the same town.
Ms. Barrera sat knitting with the two gray cats curled next to her on the couch. Shiloh was nowhere to be seen, thank God. I stank with sweat and needed to get the fuck out of there.
“How is it out there? Not too hot, I hope.”
“No, ma’am.”
“You met my great-granddaughter?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I hope she didn’t give you a hard time.”
“No, she’s…fine.”
She’s a work of art.
“Good. She can be rather direct.”
Which I liked. Too much. There was a lot about Shiloh I liked too much.
I cleared my throat and pulled a second folded paper from my pocket. “This is the supply list. I called around to a bunch of places to make sure you got the best prices.”
I handed it to her and quickly backed off.
“Aren’t you a doll? My eyes aren’t what they used to be, but I trust this is just right. I’ll have Shiloh place the order today.”
“Yep. Same time tomorrow?”
“Nonsense. Tomorrow is Saturday. The weekends are for fun, though I wish someone would tell that to my great-granddaughter.” Her eyes widened with a sudden thought. “Shiloh tells me you’re in her senior class at Central.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“There’s a party tomorrow night with one of your classmates. A real rager, I hear.”
I coughed. “Okay.”
“Wouldn’t it be marvelous if you and Shiloh attended together? You could get to know your classmates and get Shi out of that garage.” She beamed in my direction. “What do you think, darling?”
The woman had to be more blind than I thought if she wanted me to take her granddaughter anywhere.
“I don’t think so, Ms. Barrera.”
“Please. Call me Bibi.” She smiled into her knitting. “Too bad. I just figured since you go to the same school and all.” She chuckled. “Shiloh worried you were a cold-blooded killer.”
I stiffened, Chouder’s words coming back. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Bibi sensed a shift in the air and looked up, finding me with her hazy brown eyes. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, dear. Shiloh would screech to hear me meddle in her affairs.” She smiled gently. “There are fresh cookies on the counter. Please help yourself before you go.”
For a second, I thought about Maryann Greer’s twin girls in the apartment below mine. Kids loved cookies. But there was no way in hell I was going to take anything out of this house. I already felt like an invader, barging in their perfect home and sullying it with my presence.
“No, thanks. I should go.”
“Suit yourself, but next time, I’ll insist. See you Monday, darling.”
“Yep.”
I went out, closing the door behind me. Closing it on Ms. Barrera’s mothering smile and her “darlings” and her great-granddaughter who was the most beautiful goddamn thing I’d seen in so many ugly years.
She’s a cathedral while I’m a broken-down strip mall.
As if to prove it, I walked to the Cliffside complex.
The cement block of apartments looked even poorer after the Barrera household.
My own place was like a bad joke. I’d scrubbed it clean when I first moved in, but the grime of poverty and solitude infiltrated every corner. I tried to imagine Shiloh here.
Not going to happen. Ever. And you know it.
Yeah, I knew that.
Uncle Nelson had hung a box for maintenance requests outside my door. “For when you’re playing school and someone needs you,” he’d said with an eye roll. The tenants all had my cell number too, for emergencies. But the box was empty and my cell phone quiet.
I fired up a frozen dinner and scrolled my phone while I ate, waiting for the night to be over. Around seven o’clock, the door banged shut downstairs. Maryann Greer’s daughters squealed and laughed, tearing around while she started dinner.
They deserved a house like the Barreras’. Warm and safe with chocolate chip cookies from a decent oven, not delivered by the weirdo who lived upstairs.
They’re making the best of it.
I showered, changed into boxer shorts and an undershirt, and lay down on the lumpy futon in the bedroom that smelled like old piss and tried to make the best of it.
***
The next afternoon, I fixed a nasty clog in 2C’s toilet, and then the rest of the day and night unrolled in front of me like an endless stretch of hours with nothing to fill them.
The old hollow hunger had started to hit me when I remembered the shack.
Unless Miller was there, I’d still be alone, but it was a better kind of alone. Cleaner.
I hit the convenience store for lighter fluid and beer. The young guy behind the counter didn’t card me. The tattoos helped, but I didn’t look eighteen anyway. I didn’t feel eighteen. When my dad picked up that baseball bat, he beat my childhood out of me too.
Miller showed up at the shack an hour after I did, carrying a banged-up guitar case. He sat down on a small boulder in front of the firepit and laid the case over his lap.
“I caught Chet fucking with it,” he said, answering my look. “I’ll have to bring it everywhere from now on. Here. To school. Fucking asshole.”
My skin grew hot at the thought of his mom’s lowlife boyfriend messing with that guitar.
I remembered what Shiloh had said about Miller needing his hands to play.
To make something of himself. There wasn’t much I was good for.
No talents or special skills. But Miller was fucking smart, and he thought about what he said before he said it.
I nearly asked him to play and handed him a beer instead.
We shot the shit for a few minutes, and then I caught him taking in my tattoos the way Shiloh had. Except when she did it, there’d been more than curiosity there. I felt it wherever her brown eyes landed on my skin, had noticed her lips parting just a little…
Cut it out.
I buried thoughts of Shiloh and told Miller my story. I said the words that tasted like blood. But the shack was a place where you could be yourself, no matter how fucked up.
Still, I waited for Miller to decide I must be too much of a psycho to hang out with anymore, but he let it be and said nothing. What could he say anyway? Nothing that would change what happened. Nothing I could do either. My chance to stop my dad had passed, and I’d never get it back.
When I returned from gathering more driftwood for the fire, Miller was messing with his guitar.
“It’s about time,” I said.
“I don’t play much for people.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t know. Besides, you don’t want to hear the shit I’ve been writing.”
I dumped the wood over the smoldering remains of the first fire I’d lit. “How the fuck do you know that?”
“What kind of music do you listen to?”
“Heavy stuff. Melvins. Tool.”
“Yeah, what I play is not that. Mostly, I’ve been writing songs for a girl.”
“A girl.” I popped another beer and handed it over. “Now I really feel bad that you can’t get drunk.”
“Amen,” he said, and we clinked beer bottles. Thanks to his diabetes, Miller was stuck with a two-beer maximum.
“What’s the story?” I asked.
“You’ll just call me a pussy, tell me to fuck someone else and get over it.”
“Yeah, maybe I will.”
He laughed, but it collapsed into a sigh. “It’s hopeless is what it is. She’s perfect and rich, and I’m a poor bastard without a working pancreas.”
I snorted a laugh.
“Her name is Violet,” Miller said, his eyes on the fire. “When I was thirteen, I passed out in her backyard, pissed myself, and woke up in the hospital to see her sitting there, looking like a mess. Crying over me. Because she cared, you know?”
I didn’t know. I’d never had a girl cry over me. Couldn’t imagine it.
“That was the moment I knew she was it for me. Always.” Miller’s voice turned bitter. “And the same day we swore a blood oath to stay friends. Violet’s idea.” He took off his beanie and ran a hand through his brown hair. “So there you go.”