3. Luc
3
LUC
NOT THE BEST FIRST IMPRESSION
“ I hardly even saw her that first day.”
Hours after bringing her home, Billy becomes my permanent accessory. Where I once wore a chain around my neck, I now wear a baby. Her hair is wispy soft, her breath, milky sweet. Her bedroom smells of poop after a giant clean up became necessary. And now… the sun droops in the sky outside as I wander to the kitchen to make a fresh bottle.
Kari planned to breastfeed the baby.
She had the pump ready to go, just in case. The pads for leakage. The bras that unsnap and provide the perfect access.
She had all these plans for what she considered the perfect family and circumstances. And yet, those plans came crashing down at the intersection just near Dixie’s Ice Cream parlor.
“She was just a kid,” I tell Billy. “Seven years old. No way did I think of her in any way except for how I thought of your aunties.” I add formula powder to water, then one-handedly put the lid on the bottle. I make fast work of screwing it on, pinching the nipple so I can shake it. “That’s not to say that I thought she was a brat the way I sometimes thought of Britt, Laine, and Jess.”
I turn and lean against the counter, cradling the baby against my chest and shaking the bottle with my free hand.
“Those girls were little monsters. They were loud and silly and always fussing because they wanted our attention.” I drag my bottom lip between my teeth, making it sting, if only to steal my mind away from how my chest aches. “They were beautiful girls who knew they had older, adoring brothers always watching their backs. So they acted the part and made sure they always kept us on our toes. But not your mommy.”
I draw a deep breath until my chest grows. Until my lungs stretch and my throat hurts. Then I release it again, securing Billy against my heart. “She was always quiet, Bill. Always watchful. She idolized every move Marc made. Every single thing he did, she was nearby to watch. To catalog. But she never, ever complained. She refused to interfere or whine. She just wanted to be near him, and he…” I sniffle and shake my head. “He didn’t mind one bit. They weren’t like regular siblings. Daddy loves Aunty Jess and Laine with his whole heart. Always have. But back then, a sister was a sister, and most often, they’re annoying. But not Uncle Marc. Not Mommy. They had this whole new family with the Turners. They had security. Food on the table. A bed to sleep in at night. They were never gonna be kicked out or anything, but I swear, they were always on edge anyway. Especially Marc. Acted like it was just him and Kari against the whole world.”
“ Y ou don’t want to watch the girls’ track team?” I wander by the bleachers and shake my head at an eighth-grade Marc, who stares across the field, past twenty-something babes in tiny shorts and push-up bras. Because he’d rather watch the little-kid side of the school and his sweet baby sister who sits on a log and reads a Babysitters Club book, instead of playing hopscotch with the twins. “Dude. She’s fine!”
“She’s not fine.” He walks with his shoulders hunched. His hands in his pockets and his eyes, dark because of how his brows shadow them from above. “She’s having a rough time because some Becky-bitches aren’t being nice to her in class.”
“She’s not with the Becky-bitches right now. She’s with the twins. And they’re gonna sweep the floor with anyone who wants to disrespect her. You know that.”
“Kari’s not like the twins.” He meanders in her direction. He doesn’t storm across and save the day. He doesn’t intrude. But he watches the way a hawk watches its babies. “She’s not even gonna tell me half the time when something is bothering her. She takes it, like she thinks it’s her job to be the world’s fucking dumpster, accepting everyone else’s trash and carrying it on her own.”
“Did you ever stop to think you’re a tad… codependent?” I flash a wide grin when he turns, his eyes glacial and cutting. “She’s a big girl, Marc. She’s okay.”
“She’s not okay. She just won’t admit it. Not to me and not to the twins.”
“Hey, Marcus.” Sassy St James and her bee-eff-eff foreverrrrrr strut along the track, their hands on their hips and a rosy, red blush working along their chests after a solid run in the sun. Sassy only has eyes for me. She has since… I don’t even know. First or second grade, I guess.
Seems she found her hormones long before my sisters did. Thank fuck.
But Lauriana—her name, far more exotic than the person herself—smiles and searches for my best friend’s attention. She’s a preppy little blonde with big eyes, big lips, and an even bigger chest.
Nevertheless, Marc is the unattainable one. The silent, serious, broody guy all the girls swoon for because of his quiet mystique.
Not really a personality quirk I ever managed.
I’m the louder in our bunch. The one with the mouth and nary a filter. Sam is often introspective. Thoughtful. And Ang is… well, he’s abused.
“Are you guys heading out to Piper’s Lane this weekend?” Lauriana asks. She knows she has tits. In fact, she knows she was the first in her entire grade to fill out. So she juts her chest forward and searches desperately for Mr. Mystico’s attention. “My brother is racing,” she simpers. “He said he could get us beer if we wanna come along.”
Dun, dun, dun . Wipeout!
“Her brother is out supplying his kid sister with booze,” Marc rumbles, turning his back on Sassy and Lauriana and meandering Kari’s direction. “Meanwhile, I won’t be buying mine alcohol until she’s fifty.”
“You’re a bit overprotective though, Macchio.” I leave the girls in our wake and match his steps, my shoulder brushing his as we walk. “It’s all fun and games to love your sister, bro. But you’ve gotta cut the cord and live at some point.”
“I will.” He slows near the end of the bleachers, tilting his head to get a look at his sister. “When Becky-bitches aren’t making her hate herself every time your sisters aren’t within listening range. Hey, Kari!” He frames his mouth with his hands and shouts loud enough to get both sides of the school’s attention. Little kids skip rope on the elementary side. Others play tips, and giggle about… whatever little kids giggle about. But they all skid to a stop when his shout echoes the fifty yards from where we are to where his sister is. “Hey!” He lifts his hand in the air and waves.
I drop mine in my pockets and look over our shoulders to the track girls. Then to the bleachers, to every other person in our school—except Sam and Ang—who watch on.
I’m not a shy guy. Not really. But hell if the back of my neck doesn’t warm because my best friend is shouting at a bunch of little kids.
“You okay?” Lifting a thumb in the air, he wiggles it up, for I’m good , and down, for come kick these bitches’ asses. Kari, of course, gives him a thumbs up and looks back down at her book.
“See?” I clap his shoulder and smile when Jess and Laine laugh. At us. At Kari. At this entire spectacle. “She’s fine.”
“She’s not fine.” But he lowers his hand and digs it into his pocket. Turning on his heels, he meets my slow stride and drops his head. “She says things to make me feel better.”
“Because she loves you. She wants you to worry less.”
“Telling me she’s okay when she’s not, doesn’t make me worry less. It just means I can’t trust her to be honest when something is bothering her. She’s a fuckin’ martyr who will lie and say whatever she thinks I want to hear.”
“She’s a good girl. And you both have severe codependency issues after a highly traumatic period in your life.” I flash a wicked, playful grin as we approach Sassy and Lauriana again. But Sassy isn’t staying back this time. She saunters forward and ducks under my shoulder, wrapping her arm across my back and hitching her thumb in the belt loop of my jeans. “Hey there.” I lower my nose to the crown of her head and take a long whiff.
I’m not sure why I do that.
I have never, ever, no matter who snuggles into my side, found a girl whose scent makes me smile. But I continue to try anyway. It’s a bit like Cinderella’s shoe, maybe. Someday, I’ll find the right one. But in the meantime, I’ll keep sniffing.
I’m not a creep, I swear.
“ Y our mom says I’m a creep.” I rock in the chair in Billy’s nursery and watch as she guzzles milk to the bottom of her stomach. She drinks too fast. Too greedy. Which is why she gets chronic stomach aches and explosive poo. But I’ll be damned if I tell her to stop.
My job is to spoil her. To make her happy. To give her anything she wants.
No fucking chance I’m gonna tell her how to eat.
“She laughs about it,” I whisper, as the streetlights outside flicker to life. We’re on the very edge of town. The outskirts, where there are probably three lights in a three-mile radius. But one of those lights sits near the end of our driveway, providing a beacon for us to come home to.
It was a sign, Kari said, a few years back when I showed her the home we bought—the slightly dilapidated ranch that needed paint before the old coat dissolved and the whole house fell apart.
“But sometimes, Daddy does this creepy, old man laugh,” I continue. “I do it to get a rise out of her. And it works.” I drop my head back against the chair and study Billy’s long, long lashes. “Daddy loves it most when he can make Mommy laugh. She doesn’t do it often enough. Like Uncle Marc, she’s too serious for her own good. So it’s my job, my obligation,” I press, “to make Mommy smile.”
“ W atch this!” I hold my board at the top of the halfpipe on the outdated side of town, where a skate park was once funded by the town council, and kids were given somewhere to hang out that didn’t include robbing Jonah’s store or racing around in the street and causing accidents.
A one-time infusion of cash was spent here, I guess. But no one factored in a maintenance budget. No one comes out here to check on the facilities. What is probably supposed to be lawn is just dirt. What is supposed to be smooth concrete slopes are now cracked and graffitied.
But they work for a group of kids who have no other options.
Not yet, anyway. But we’ll build our own eventually. At the Turners’ house, since they have the room and Mrs. Turner isn’t likely to strangle us for it .
“Marc!” I cup my mouth and shout to drag his attention from the girls.
Not, like, girls our age who might think to come out here to flirt and play. But the girls , as in Kari, Britt, Laine, and Jess. Because wherever we go, they like to follow.
“Hey!” I bend and grab a rock from the top of the pipe, then lob it the thirty feet that separate us, gritting my teeth and thanking the gods when it lands in the dirt and doesn’t hit anyone I love.
Maybe I don’t want to hang with our sisters all the time. But fuck, I wouldn’t dump them, I won’t hurt them, and I sure as fuck won’t let someone else bring them pain.
The rock thuds against the ground, spitting up plumes of dirt and drawing Marcus’ focus. Then he turns on his heels, shielding his eyes with the span of his palm as the sun begins to set behind me. “What?”
“I call this the Luca Lenaghan Classic.” I drop into the pipe while I’ve got his attention—not only his, but the girls’, too—and zoom across to the coping on the other side. Shifting my feet and grinning as wind blows through hair I’ve grown out shaggy over the summer, I snap a frontside one-eighty before switching into a nollie. My board slams down onto the steel coping, the noise a ricocheting blow that echoes from here to… well, probably back to town. But I land my move and turn to ride the board’s momentum back the way I came. “Fuckin’ nailed it!”
“That’s not a Luca Classic.” Shaking his head, Ang pushes away from an old, splintered wooden bench, the rough lengths of timber snagging his jeans as he steps away. But he’s smiling today. His hair, longer than mine, is tied back, and the black eye we all pretend we don’t see is fading.
His daddy’ll give him a new one before the week is out.
But today… today he’s smiling.
He tosses his board onto the pipe and steps on, a smooth transition as he zooms by me and winks for the girls who wander closer to watch. “That was a Nose Blunt Stall, stupid. Stop acting like you’re world class.”
“Oh!” I laugh. “My bad. You want the real Luca Special?”
“I thought it was Luca Classic?” Marcus grumbles. Always too serious. Too cranky. “Your story isn’t even lining up, bro.”
“Here. Let me show you.” I step off my board and jog to the top of the pipe, my shirt flapping as the breeze finally picks up and my skin prickles under the bite of the sun. I set my beloved skateboard on the coping—the board, second only to the drum kit I finally saved up enough for—then I place my foot in the center and send up my prayers.
Because this is gonna hurt .
Reaching up, I swipe the sweat from my brow as another summer day melts us where we stand, and Marc and I stare down the barrel of another school year. The twins watch me like I hung the moon and the stars. Their blonde hair, whipped back in high ponytails. The exact same height on their heads. The same colored elastic. The same wispy bits falling out the back.
They’re not the kinds of twins who match their outfits and accessories, so it’s not like we can’t tell them apart. But fuck, their faces are identical. Their mannerisms. Their smiles.
And the way they think I’m the funniest fucker on this planet.
I draw a deep breath and side-eye a smug Brittany—she knows what’s coming. Then a shy Kari, her eyes trained on my feet and her hand clutched around a book.
The others, I think, will give us a run for our money in a few more years. They’ll want to party. To talk to boys and dress in such a way that gives the rest of us a coronary.
But not Kari.
She’d sooner spend her Friday and Saturday nights with a book.
“Let’s go already!” Britt sets her hands on her head, her black hair a magnet for the summer sun. “Show us the Luca Special, then take us to Dixie’s. I want ice cream.”
“Yeah!” Laine’s eyes widen with hunger. “I want to go to Dixie’s, too.”
“Don’t hurt yourself, Luca.” Kari sets her foot on the edge of the halfpipe and inches closer. It’s not like she knows what the Luca Classic is. Shit, three minutes ago, it didn’t even exist. But she has a brain in her head and more common sense than the other three combined. Her eyes glitter with concern. And warning. Challenge.
Because she has fire beneath the silence she shows her brother.
“No one is filming you, Luca. Hurting yourself for laughs isn’t smart.”
“Really, though? Laughter is good for us.” I send up my prayers and lift my bracing foot from the edge of the coping. And of course, my shitty placement and off-balance footing has the board sprinting away, one leg stretching one way, and the other, another. My stomach drops out my ass, then gravity takes hold and cruelly slams me to the concrete.
I pound the ground with the weight of a one-ton anvil sitting on my shoulders, the back of my head rapping against the ground and the oxygen in my lungs, vacating like, dickhead, you don’t need it anyway !
The twins squeal out in delight as I roll down the pipe, a lifeless sack of potatoes as my limbs fold, one over the other. My board skitters away, taking its own journey to wherever, while an unimpressed Sam, Marcus, and Angelo stand over me. Their arms folded. Their faces, matching.
Triple the scowls.
Triple the flattened lips.
But my pain is worth it, because Britt, Laine, and Jess cackle, leaning on each other as they laugh and heave for fresh air.
Best of all, Kari smirks. It’s just a small upturn of her lips, and when our gazes meet, a roll of her eyes. She’s mature beyond her years, and the good old Tom and Jerry humor left her long ago. But when my board rolls back down the pipe, slamming into the base of my spine and reignites the other girls’ glee, Kari’s smile grows fractionally larger.
“That,” I wheeze, reaching around and rubbing my back, “is the Luca Classic.”
“You’re so dumb.” Sam grabs my hand and yanks me to my feet. He keeps hold of me as I sway and search for balance. His laughter, muted, but existent. Then he slaps my back and pretends it’s to dislodge the dust from my shirt. “Class clowns rarely turn out to be president, Lenaghan.”
“I don’t wanna be president anyway.” I rub my backside and limp across the pipe, bending to pick up my board before it thinks I don’t love it anymore. “I wanna be drummer for the Foo Fighters.”
“Foo already have a drummer,” Angelo chides. “And he’s better than you.”
“Then I wanna be drummer for our band. Which,” I hug the board to my chest and turn back to my friends. My family. “Still needs a name. We got a gig coming up soon, and we still don’t have a name for people to talk about.”
“We don’t need a name.” Sam jogs across the width of the pipe and swoops down to scoop up his board, then he turns back, but looks down at the pile of skates that’ve been dumped. “You girls need to pick these up. We’re not carrying them all back for you today.”
“But they’re too heavy,” Jess complains. From laughter to whining, she looks across at me like she thinks I’ll save the day. “It’s too hot, and we have such a long way to walk. We can’t carry them, too.”
“I’ll carry yours, Kari.” Marc snags the purple pair my sisters gifted her last summer, tying the laces together to create a handle that he can swing over his shoulder. Then he strides across and grabs a backpack filled with half-empty water bottles and the trash left behind after we ate the sandwiches and snacks Mrs. Turner packed for our day in the sun. He loads himself up—skates, skateboard, bag—then he turns back and extends his hand for the book she holds, too.
Because Kari is a protected species, and there’s no one on this planet, nothing , that could get between Marcus Macchio and the duty he has declared for himself as far as his sister is concerned.
“Fine.” My ass still smarts, and now I have a mystery ache in the depths of my left elbow. But I follow Marc’s lead and tie the laces on the skates so I can carry the damn things and my sisters can remain the passenger princesses they’ve decided they get to be. I set my board on the ground and roll my eyes, because Jess and Laine know exactly how to get their own way. Jess sits on the very front of the board, folding her long legs up into an impossible pretzel and taking up as little space as possible, then Laine follows, piggybacking her twin so I have two, tiny blondes sitting on a single board and a backache pending.
“Here.” Angelo takes the twins’ skates and slings them over his shoulder. “Since you gotta push.”
“I don’t know why we bring you out here,” I grumble, bending at Laine’s back and using her shoulders as handles. Then I push across the smooth concrete and onto the hard-packed dirt so my friends and I create a convoy of high schoolers and their little sisters.
Well. Except Ang… he doesn’t have any sisters.
“It’s not cool for us to hang out with little kids, ya know?” I give Laine’s shoulder a teasing squeeze until she squeals. “I could be hanging out with Sassy St James right now.”
“Sassy St James is nasty,” Kari mumbles, drawing a lifted brow of surprise from Marcus as he holds her hand and helps her onto his board. He only has the one freeloader, so Kari gets to stand and take a free ride while Marcus makes gentle, subtle adjustments with his foot. “Sassy’s always coming over to our side of the school to pick on Maybel.”
Stunned, my nose wrinkles in confusion. “Who the hell is Maybel? And who names their kid Maybel anyway?”
“She’s really nice,” Kari shrugs. “And shy. She’s two years younger than Sassy, and Sassy is a giant jerk who could only win a fight against someone smaller than her.”
“Tell us how you really feel,” Marcus chuckles. “Anyone else at school bothering you? Because we could slide on over to your side and take care of things.”
“Yeah,” I laugh. “Nice one, Marcus. Let’s beat on a bunch of fourth-grade girls and remain normal, respectable citizens.”
“We take care of business,” Britt declares. Like the others, she hitches a ride on Sam’s board, and while he does all the work, she checks her nails and smirks. “No one comes near us, because we’re too scary for the basic girls.”
“The basic girls.” I snort. Pretty sure they’re called basic bitches. But I guess it’s not cool to say that at her age. “You girls aren’t creating conflict, are you?” I lean around and check my sisters’ expressions. One pair of bright blue, then a second pair. Both of whom smile like they’re innocent of all wrongdoing. “It’s kinda my job to keep you in school. Not getting expelled because you can’t stop fighting people.”
“That would be so cool, though, right?”
I glance across at Britt’s awed expression.
“Cool to get expelled? No! That would be bad.”
“No,” she snickers. “I mean, it would be cool to fight someone. Like, pow pow ,” she shadow boxes and punches the air. She risks unbalancing her board and slamming onto the road. But she was practically born on a skateboard. Her ability to balance is next level. “I’ve never punched anyone with my fists before.”
“And you won’t.” Sam nudges the board to the right and leads us back toward town. “Good girls don’t get into fistfights, Brat. They don’t need to hit people to communicate.”
But of course, she cocks her arm back, balls her fist, and smashes her brother’s shoulder as snotty laughter escapes the depths of her throat. “Ow!” She giggles and stumbles off the board, almost tripping on her dusty and worn converse high tops. And all the while, Sam continues to walk. “That hurt!”
“Serves you right.” He steps onto his board and grins. “Don’t hit me, Brat, and you won’t hurt yourself.”
“Your shoulder is like rock!” She dashes across and jumps onto Ang’s board. Uninvited. Without warning. Without permission. She takes his board and sails off ahead of our group, so her laughter echoes in the breeze. “I’m telling Mom you hit me,” she calls out. “She won’t let you have dessert.”
“You all saw what actually happened, right?” Sam skips off his board and flips it up until he catches it in his arms. Then he hugs it to his chest and walks shoulder to shoulder with me. “You saw she hit me?”
“I saw nothing.” I push the twins forward and make a show of bringing my hands up to cover my eyes. “Isn’t that how things are with these girls? We see nothing. We hear nothing. And we get them out of trouble when shit is going down.”
“Not Kari,” Marc declares. “She does nothing wrong. Therefore, she doesn’t need saving. ”
“I wanna learn the Nose Blunt trick.” She twists on her board and searches first, Marc’s eyes, then mine. “I stay out of trouble and give no one any reason to worry. But I want to learn the better tricks on the halfpipe.”
“You’re doing great with the moves you know, Kar.” Marcus spins his sister back, rebalancing the board when her movements throw it off course. “You’ve got the ollie and the nollie.”
“I know how to turn a board,” she drawls. I hear the exasperation in her voice. But I sure as shit notice the way she doesn’t show her brother the eye roll. “Good for me.”
“You can also kick turn.”
“I’m a pro at turning. I’m the next Tony Hawk.”
I look down at my shirt and grin because I’m pretty sure ninety-eight percent of all the shirts I own have some variation of Hawk licensing attached to it. The rest of them have Dominic Broadbent on them— world famous drummer .
“I can teach you the Luca Special,” I offer, bringing my focus back up and feeling absolutely no remorse when sweat dribbles off the tip of my nose and falls onto Laine’s ponytail. That’s what you get when you’re being lazy. “It’s super easy. I got it right the first time.”
Snickering, Kari turns back and shakes her head. “You’re a bit dumb, Luca Lenaghan. Hurting yourself for comedy is immature.”
“ Immature .” I swipe my forehead on the arm of my shirt and ignore the ache brewing deep in my back. “Am I the dummy for falling. Or are you the dummies for thinking it was funny?”
“You,” everyone decides at once. Then Marcus shoots me a glare. “You’re the idiot. And don’t let me catch you teaching my sister the Luca Classic. If you put her in a situation where she breaks her skull, I’ll break yours to match.”
“So aggressive.” Taunting, I chuckle and put more effort into my pushing. “Let’s get to Dixie’s. It’s hot as fuck out here today.”