Chapter 8
WHEN HEATH MET UNWANTED FEELINGS
Heath
Four days after Hurricane Cricket arrived, I step outside for my normal morning coffee time.
I’m showered. I’m dressed. My eye still looks awful, but it feels better. I’ve checked my calendar and verified that today’s an easy day, mostly thanks to the ladies watching Lav for me again this morning.
We’re checking out a new paint-your-own-pottery place this afternoon after I finish up today’s outside project.
Cricket hasn’t left the apartment below me since the great kitchen incident on Saturday.
I’ve left food outside her door—mostly a large order she placed late Saturday afternoon that I picked up for her at Mabel’s request. She seems to be living on chips, meat sticks, sports drinks, and enough chocolate to cause a shortage in town.
Mabel and Samantha have regularly checked on her and brought healthier meals from the house.
Ginny hasn’t, because she’s on crutches for a bit.
I replaced the compressor in the fridge.
Water had pooled on the shelf under the egg carton, and it had disintegrated the minute Cricket pulled it out.
Wasn’t her fault.
But it also wasn’t surprising that it was her.
Lav, meanwhile, is now obsessed with dragons, which I understand is fully Cricket’s doing.
It’s odd to miss the meowing and be so fucking glad it’s over too.
That’s what I’m contemplating as I sip my coffee, solo today since Fluffy didn’t want to join me, when I hear my houseguest’s voice along with the normal bird and insect noises adding ambience to the cool dawn air.
My shoulders bunch.
Not because I’m irritated with Cricket.
Exactly.
More because I’m irritated for her.
She’s had a shit hand lately.
And I’m irritated for me that I’ve had a front-row seat to her shit hand when I’ve been trying so damn hard to avoid the drama now that my own has passed.
Fluffy meows at me from the cat door to the porch.
She’s stuck trying to join me.
“You’re a nuisance,” I whisper to her.
She whines and plops her front half down.
I couldn’t figure out why she was gaining so much weight until I found the half-eaten block of Velveeta in Lav’s room.
So many questions.
Where did Lav get a block of Velveeta?
How did she get it into her room without me seeing?
What else is hidden in there that the cat can sniff out and eat but I can’t?
I need a fucking break.
The whole damn property does.
“Thanks, Mom, but I really don’t think being Belle’s paralegal would be a good fit for me.”
I freeze as Cricket’s voice drifts up more clearly.
If I move to help the cat, Cricket will hear me.
If I don’t move to help the cat, Cricket will hear the cat.
And I shouldn’t eavesdrop on personal conversations, especially when it sounds like Cricket might be breathing fresh air for the first time in days, so I set my coffee aside and move to help the cat.
Cricket keeps talking like she doesn’t hear us.
“I know you’re trying to help, but—yes, I know it was embarrassing for you. I don’t know how many times you want me to say sorry before you believe me that it was an accident, but—”
She cuts herself off with a sigh so heavy that it adds an extra layer to the fog sitting in the valley this morning.
“Yes,” she murmurs. “I know… You’re right… Of course… Yes, I’m aware…”
“Get out, cat,” I whisper as I work on tugging Fluffy out of the cat door.
We’ve done this before, and I know pushing her back in won’t work any better.
I need to close the damn thing up.
Or install a bigger one.
Or get this new diet to work for her.
“Well, I’m not disappointing me,” Cricket suddenly says below me.
“No. No. Do you know what? I don’t fuc—freaking care that I’m a disappointment to you.
I’m not like Belle and Aurora. I don’t want to keep going to school forever to be a doctor or a lawyer or a professor.
I wanted to be a journalist. And the job market is hard right now, and it’s not like I’m asking you for money or a place to live or for you to find me a job.
I just want to be me. Is that so much to ask? ”
Fluffy and I stare at each other.
Her with the orange patch around her eye over the white fur of her face.
Me with a purple bruise around my eye over the white skin of my face.
My heart claws its way into my throat.
“Yes, I know.” Cricket’s voice has shifted, and the defeat in it sears my soul. “Of course you never mean to make me feel like a disappointment. It’s all in my head. I should see a therapist—no, Mom, I don’t want to be a therapist. I want—right… I know.”
Fluffy meows.
I give one last gentle tug, and she comes tumbling out on me with a yowl.
Cricket still doesn’t seem to hear us.
Must have earbuds in.
I wonder if she’s pacing. Or if she’s sitting on the porch swing down there. If her shoulders are slumped as much as the defeat in her voice suggests they would be.
Or maybe I need to quit thinking about her.
Realizing exactly how much she has in common with Ava.
Having old memories surface again that I don’t want.
Old feelings of inadequacy.
“I’m with friends… We’ve been over this, Mom. I can’t—oh. Hi, Dad… No, I’m not trying to disrespect Mom, I just need—”
Weird swishing noises drift up from the basement patio below.
Weird noises that sound like—
“What?” Cricket says louder, then she makes more staticky noises with her mouth.
I’d bet a hundred grand I don’t have that’s what she’s doing.
“I’m break—wrong—signal—swoosh cack swooooo kick kick kick—call back—”
And then all goes silent.
All except for one loud, anguished sob.
Just one.
“You don’t need them, Cricket,” I hear her say. “They’re bigger dicks than the rhinestone dick on your shirt, and they don’t deserve you.”
Fucking heart.
It’s cracking in two.
All for a woman I don’t want living in my house for reasons that I still can’t fully articulate.
But this is what happens here at Makepeace Cellars.
Women arrive at their lowest.
And they leave at their strongest.
This life here?
It’s not about me. I could leave anytime.
But these women are what Lav needs.
And so I need to do my part too.
I glare at the cat. “Stay,” I say.
She swishes her tail disobediently, and I know I’ll find her stuck again when I get back up here.
But that’s the cat’s problem.
My problem is opening the gate to the stairs that lead down to the basement patio and making myself walk down them.
Cricket’s sitting on the porch swing, head dropped into her hands, breathing unevenly.
“This seat taken?” I ask.
She bolts to her feet, and her phone clatters to the concrete below. “No. No, it’s—” She pauses, removes her wireless earbuds from her ears, then pockets them. “I’ll go back inside. Sorry. Didn’t know you were out here.”
Just enough light spills out from the sliding glass door into the apartment to illuminate her.
It’s instinctive to take stock, and fuck.
She’s a goddamn disaster.
Her hair’s in a bun on top of her head, but it looks more like a rat’s nest than a purposeful bun. If Lav’s hair looked like that, it’d take me an hour to work through it.
Or longer.
She’s wearing the pink rhinestone dick shirt, definitely no bra, and pants that might be a skirt except for the improbability that Cricket would wear a skirt given her recent wardrobe malfunctions.
And she’s looking at me like she’s a wounded animal.
Or possibly like she’s afraid she’s about to turn me into one again.
“Sit,” I say to her. “You don’t have to go inside.”
“No, I—I really shouldn’t be around people. Especially single parents. The porch might fall down on us and then Lavender would be a full orphan and I—I couldn’t handle the guilt.”
“Rebuilt the porch myself last summer. It’s solid.”
She eyes me.
“You have coffee yet?” I ask her.
She shakes her head.
I offer my cup.
The lust in her eyes as she stares at it—my dick actually twitches.
This is not how I want to start my day.
“Not poisoned,” I tell her. “Take it.”
“Thank you,” she whispers. “I—I ran out yesterday.”
“Headed over to the house later. I’ll bring you more.”
“You don’t have to do that. I can—” She stops herself as her eyes get shiny. “Actually, I don’t think I can. Thank you.”
Fuck, I hate this. “The day I moved Ava and Lavender here, I backed my car into the side of the house. That side.” I point to the side near the garage. “Mabel didn’t say a word. Just had it patched up within three days.”
“You had a lot going on.” She takes a small sip, and her shoulders visibly drop and her chin lifts and a soft mm emanates from her throat.
And my fucking broken dick twitches again.
I sit on the swing. “Samantha and Olivia got here a few months after we did. Two or three days in, they tried to open their bedroom window. Didn’t know it was painted shut.
Olivia broke it. Whole window fell off the house.
Cut herself too. First time I had to do a patch job on anyone here outside my own family. ”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“If they haven’t told you themselves yet, they probably don’t think you’re ready to hear it.”
“But you think I am.” She sips my coffee again, looks down at it, then looks at me. “Or I’m taking up too much space here and you want me to leave.”
Yes, I fucking want her to leave.
I like my space, and she might be in a separate apartment, but I can sense her.
Every. Single. Fucking. Minute.
It’s that vibe.
But I shake my head at her. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want or need.”
“I’d kick me out,” she whispers as she lowers herself onto the swing too, leaving a wide gap between us that makes me think she’s squishing herself against the other armrest.
“Would you? Or do you just think someone should since your parents would?”
She sucks in a heavy breath. "They wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t they?”
She falls silent, staring at the coffee.
“Not judging,” I say. “You. Not judging you. Them—maybe.”
“You heard that.”
“Fluffy and I weren’t quiet up there. Thought you could hear us.”
“Stupid earbuds. I—sorry. Sorry. I should’ve stayed inside.”
Fuck. Fucking fuckity fuck fuck fuck.