Chapter 14 #2
“I don’t need you to blow up my phone to tell me that.”
“Dude. Who spit in your beer?”
I stared out at the ring. It was a perfectly fine place to exercise a horse. Hot. But I couldn’t control the weather. “It’s too early for beer.”
“Maybe that’s your problem,” he drawled. I heard a woman in the background. “You need a vacation. You should take a week. In Texas.”
“I told you. I promised my dad–”
“Stop with the excuses. It’s not until the end of August. Five figures, man. For five fuckin’ days! This is the gig!”
Yeah, probably crossing a picket line and walking straight into a shitshow.
A feminine giggle filled the silence on his end, which irritated me. Magnified my lack of a social life. “You sound a little busy. Call me later.”
“I can multitask. Right, Baby?” Several affirmative sounds came from Ryan’s company.
“Why are you calling me?”
“I need my right-hand man.”
“Sounds like you have enough hands at the moment.”
“But these hands. Won’t. Be. In Texas.” With every pause came a grunt or groan telling me he was enjoying himself.
“Ryan, no amount of money would make me want to touch your junk.”
He laughed. “You haven’t heard the offer yet.”
“No.”
“Maybe you need someone to touch your junk?” At my silence, he went on. “Five days. Plus a few days driving. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Ryan.”
“Fuck, man, what can your dad do? You’re a grown-ass adult!”
“It’s not–” I exhaled, tired of this fight. “I’m trying to do the right thing.”
Ryan’s side went quiet for so long, I thought the call had dropped. Then he said, “Dude, you’re not housebroken, are you?”
“Bye, Ryan.”
“It’s a cage!”
“Yeah, I’m done.” I hung up, but his comment hit below the belt. Ryan and I, we’d been freedom seekers since we were kids. I scrubbed my hands down my face, aware of the pressure from all the things that kept piling on. Damnit, maybe Ryan was right. Maybe I needed to let off some steam.
The fresh, white paint failed to make Ava’s new apartment feel less like a cinderblock cell, what with its whopping novelty window by the front door and a dinky excuse for one in the bedroom.
The cheap furniture ate up all the space, and the concrete stairs to the second floor were definitely not kid-friendly.
What’s she paying for this?
I put a stack of boxes on the flimsy coffee table in the living room/dining room/kitchen. At least the air conditioning worked. “Where do you want to set up Nina’s bed?” I asked.
Ava came out of the single bedroom with Nina hot on her heels. She pursed her lips and looked around. “I don’t know. Lean the pieces against the wall for now.”
“Mama! I wanna go swimming!”
“Later, Crackerjack. We have to finish bringing our stuff in.”
The place made my head hurt. “Maybe I should take the bed home and store it for you.”
Ava ran her fingers through her ponytail, sweeping her eyes through the space again. She blew out all her air, and her shoulder sank like an inner tube at the end of summer. Ready for the off-season. “No. It’s fine. I’ll figure it out.”
Instead of arguing, I went out for another load. The place felt more crammed than the trailer. What was the point in moving? When I walked in with the last few boxes, Ava was leaning her elbows onto the breakfast counter, butt jutting into the alley kitchen behind her, tapping on her phone.
“I can’t thank you enough for your help,” she said. “I’m not sure how I would’ve done the dresser with those stairs.”
The handle jiggled when I closed the front door behind me. “No problem.” Frowning, I dug out my keys and used the multi-tool on my keychain to tighten the screws, but they spun in place. Stripped. Figures.
“What are you doing?”
“The handle is loose,” I answered. “I’m trying to fix it.”
“I can ask the super to do that.”
Based on the state of the complex, that wouldn’t accomplish much. “So, uh, the people at the ranch you’re gonna buy, are they your in-laws?” I don’t know what made me ask. Maybe I was wondering why she didn’t stay with them?
“No. Not technically. Jason was like the son Terry never had. So, that would make them my adopted family-in-law? Except, they’re not together, Kip and Terry.
” I could hear the clicks of each letter as she wrote something on her phone.
“Jason never knew his parents. That’s why he wanted a family so bad. ”
She had a kid, so of course she had a man in her past. Served me right for asking. I gave up on the handle. “Where are your folks?”
She straightened and started going through the kitchen cabinets. “My dad died in a tractor mishap when I was in high school. My mom left of a broken heart shortly after that.” She said it like you’d give directions to the nearest gas station.
“Left?” I asked.
“Died.”
“Wow. That’s a lot.”
She shrugged, tapping more into her phone.
So, she knew what it felt like, too. I studied her as she moved, a woman on a mission through her new kitchen. Not sure what I was looking for. A stray tear? A shudder? Could someone actually die of a broken heart?
I wandered across the living room to stand opposite the bar from her. “Well, you met my dad, the uptight retired architect.”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe he designed his house! Five out of five stars.”
My mouth curved with a wave of pride for that centerfold kitchen. It beat the hell out of the bite-sized cubby Ava stood in now. White laminate counters weren’t nearly as sexy as black stone. Shit. That sounded housebroken.
Ava’s phone blared on the counter between us. She glanced at the screen, frowned, then answered it. “Hello?” Half a breath later, “Oh, my God! Stop calling me!” Another pause. “Not unless you’re retracting your client's offer?”
This ass-wipe again?
“I’m blocking this number.” She swiped out of the end-call screen and to the recent call log.
“Mr. Mercedes is still bothering you?”
“Not for long. There. Blocked.”
“He’ll probably call from a different number,” I told her.
“Then I’ll block that one, too.”
This reeked of bad news. I didn’t like it. If I’d known, I would’ve fought harder to keep Ava at my dad’s place. “You could change your number.”
She replied with a half-assed laugh. “That seems a little excessive.”
“The guy’s been harassing you. What’s he gonna do when he can’t get through?”
She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at me. “You sound like you speak from experience?”
“I don’t need experience. It’s common sense. The man has no boundaries.”
“He’s a wimp, Eli. He’s not going to do anything.”
“It’s the wimps that fight dirty.”
She held my stare, and a long challenge filled the silence. But neither of us won because Nina appeared in the living room in a ruffled swimsuit, goggles, and bright red flip-flops. Nothing like a cute kid to break a moment. But something about her get-up looked off.
“Mama, I’m ready!”
Ava set down her phone and sighed. “Not like that, you’re not.”
“Pool! I wanna go to the pool!”
“Your suit is on backwards.”
“No, it’s not!”
“Let me fix it.” She ushered Nina down the hall, leaving me in the living room/dining room, staring at her deserted phone.
What was his aim? He wanted her ranch? And her relationship with Terry was keeping him from getting it?
Out on the road, I’d seen people go homicidal over less.
I pushed off the counter and back to the front door to test the deadbolt.
It took effort to slide into place, but it worked.
The window had a lock, the screen appeared intact, but a scrap of wood in the track wouldn’t hurt.
Maybe I had something in the back of my truck?
I was just about to run down and check when Nina came bolting out of the bedroom with a mischievous giggle, and hid behind my legs.
“Nina!” Ava called from down the micro-hall. “Ponytail!”
I twisted to get a look at the kid. Her swimsuit faced the right direction, but her hair looked like one of those before-pictures in a hair ad. “The sooner she gets your hair fixed,” I said, “the sooner we can go swimming. I might even teach you the cannonball.”
Her eyes lit up.
Ava wandered into the living room holding a bright pink hairbrush, but she headed straight to a stack of boxes. “Where did I put the towels?”
She pried the top one open, then strained as she shifted it to access the one below it. Nina followed like my little shadow as I moved in to help search the stack.
“Thanks.” She paused, shook her head, glanced at me, then trailed her eyes down to the little face that peeked out from behind my knee. “What am I thinking? Nina, we can’t swim yet. I have to go to the store. We have nothing for dinner.”
The kid whined behind me. Ava seemed so … all over the place. I’d assumed she was like the binders we’d made, neat and organized. But in that moment, she looked more like the box.
“You know,” I leaned in close until my mouth was right at her ear, and whispered, “this is exactly what pizza delivery was made for.”
The kid must’ve heard because she jumped up and down, making her little flip-flops squeak. “Pizza! Pizza! I want pizza!”
Ava’s expression borderlined desperate when she turned to look over her shoulder at me, putting her lips that much closer to mine. “I suppose I already owe you dinner.”
I grinned, inches from her face. “You did see my note.” Her eyes flicked to my mouth, and my blood went south for the winter. “I’ll take a meat-lovers with stuffed crust.”
From that close, I could see her pulse thrumming in her neck. “A-Anything else?”
Recognizing a nice kitchen didn’t make me housebroken. I was just picking up on the things Ava liked. And in that moment, I think she liked me being that close. “And maybe a salad, for good measure.”