Chapter 15
Macie
It's been a good day, I realize around noon when Nicole lays down for a nap. I take the moment to go into the bathroom and clean myself up a little. We made cookies, and then had a finger painting project. She's one of the sweetest little girls I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.
I hate that she hasn't had her mother in her life, because she's such a good kid. Squaring my shoulders, I look at myself in the mirror. Yesterday all I'd seen were the remnants of the attack. Today? Darren has given me new marks to look at.
I have love bites on my neck, and beard burn on various parts of my body. I'll wear all of these with pride. At least they slightly distract from the bruising on my face.
I'm finishing up brushing my teeth and doing my morning skincare when someone comes through the front door. "Mom are you here? Tried calling you and figured since you didn't pick up you're here."
I don't know who this is, but I'm assuming it's Darren's sister, Ella. I've never met her, but I've seen her around town. Quickly, I finish up in the bathroom, and go out. "Hey, Nic is napping," I say quietly.
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" She puts her hand on her chest and then looks at me with a sharp gaze. "Are you her babysitter?"
"I guess you could call me that, today. I'm Macie, you must be Ella."
She gives me a small smile. "I am, how do you know me?"
"I've been friends with Darren for a while and he's talked about you."
"Funny," she tilts her head to the side. "He's never told me about you. Who are you and what are you doing in my brother's house with my niece?"
Quickly I fill her in on the fact that I work with Molly, and that I met Darren at the Lean To. I gloss over the situation with Gerald, and keep it at a short few minutes. "So I'm staying here until we can figure out what's going to happen with him."
"Looks like you're enjoying yourself." The smirk that spreads across her face says that she can see the beard burn and love bite, and she knows exactly what we've been doing.
"He's got an eight pack," I defend myself.
She laughs loudly. "I feel ya, girl. He's my brother so I don't see it, but I've heard it almost my entire life."
"He loves tacos," Ella says as we stand at the stove a few hours later. "And honestly, so do I, so I vote for that for dinner."
"Tacos it is." I pull out the ground beef from the fridge, and Ella starts digging through the cabinets like she knows where everything is. Which I guess she does, and I find myself wishing that I knew where everything was.
"Seasoning's in the second drawer, not the first. Darren keeps rearranging things and it drives me insane every single time I come over." She finds the packet, tosses it onto the counter next to me. "So how long have you actually known my brother?"
"A few months. I work with Molly, like I said. Sometimes after work, we’d go over to the Lean To, and he'd come in after shift sometimes, too.
We saw each other a few times." I crumble the beef into the pan, turn the heat on beneath it.
"We got to talking eventually. Then we’d dance every time we saw each other. "
"That sounds about right. He likes to keep his pleasure away from Nicole after what happened with her mom." She grabs a knife and starts chopping tomatoes without me even asking. "But he must like you because he’s asked you to stay here."
"This wasn't exactly normal circumstances."
"No, I guess it wasn't." Her voice softens, and I can tell she's thinking about everything I told her earlier, the short version I gave her about Gerald and needing somewhere safe to stay. "I'm glad he's got someone right now. He doesn't let a lot of people in since Nic's mom left."
I don't know what to say to that, so I just keep stirring the beef, watching it brown, letting the work fill the silence instead of my own voice. Ella doesn't push, just keeps chopping, and after a minute she starts humming something under her breath, off-key and happy.
"You want lettuce shredded or just torn?" she asks.
"Shredded's fine."
We fall into an easy rhythm after that, her pulling out plates and shells while I finish the meat, both of us moving around each other in the kitchen like we've done this before. It's strange how comfortable it feels, considering I met her a handful of hours ago.
Nicole wakes up from her nap right as I'm draining the grease from the pan, and I hear her door open before she comes barreling down the hallway, hair sticking up on one side from where she slept on it wrong.
"Aunt Ella!" She launches herself at her aunt's legs, and Ella scoops her right up, peppering her face with kisses until Nicole's giggling too hard to breathe.
"Hey, munchkin. You have a good nap?"
"Uh huh. Macie and me painted." She points toward the fridge, where her handprint painting from earlier is hanging crooked under a magnet.
"I saw that. It's beautiful." Ella sets her back down, and Nicole runs straight to my legs instead, wrapping her arms around my knee like she's been doing it her whole life instead of just the last few days.
"Are you staying?" Nicole asks, but it sounds all jumbled up.
"I sure am. We're having tacos."
"Yay!" Nicole starts spinning in a circle, arms out, the way toddlers do when they're excited and don't quite know what to do with all that energy. I finish setting the taco meat into a bowl, and when I turn back around, she's still spinning, giggling every time she gets dizzy enough to stumble.
"You want to dance instead of spin?" I ask her, wiping my hands on the dish towel.
"Dance!" She grabs my hands, tugging me away from the counter, and I let her pull me into the open space by the kitchen table.
Ella laughs, leaning against the counter with her arms crossed. "Oh, this should be good."
There's no music playing, but that doesn't stop Nicole from swaying her hips back and forth, so I match her, swinging her little hands side to side while she giggles up at me.
She lets go to spin again, and I clap along, and somewhere in the middle of it I start humming a tune, something upbeat with no real words, just enough to give her a rhythm to move to.
"Spin me!" she demands, and I take both her hands again, turning in a slow circle while she squeals, feet stumbling over themselves trying to keep up.
I haven't laughed this hard in longer than I can remember.
Not the kind that comes out polite or forced, but the kind that just bubbles up out of nowhere because a two-year-old's joy is the most contagious thing in the world.
Ella's laughing too, phone out now, clearly recording the whole thing for blackmail material later.
The back door opens while Nicole's mid-spin, and I don't notice at first, too busy trying to catch her before she topples over from dizziness.
"Welcome home, big bro!" Ella calls out, phone still angled toward us. "Macie and I have had such a good day!"
I finally look up, catching Darren standing in the doorway, still in his uniform, keys in one hand, and the look on his face stops me cold.
It's not annoyance, and it's not even surprise exactly.
It's something softer than that, something that looks almost like he's not sure he's allowed to be happy about what he’s seeing.
Nicole comes to a stumbling stop, then goes running straight for him. "Daddy! Macie was dancing with me!"
He catches her, swings her up onto his hip like she weighs nothing, but his eyes stay locked on me the whole time, taking in the kitchen, the smell of taco meat, his sister leaning against the counter with a shit-eating grin, and me standing in the middle of his kitchen floor with my hair falling out of its ponytail.
"Son of a bitch," he says quietly, scoffing.
"Language," Ella singsongs, nodding toward Nicole.
"Sorry, sorry." He presses a kiss to Nicole's temple, but he's still looking at me, and there's something in his expression I can't quite name, something that makes my chest go tight and warm. Is this what I’ve wanted my entire life? "I just wasn't expecting to come home to this."
"To what? Dinner?" Ella smirks, clearly enjoying every second of this.
"To my kitchen looking like a home instead of just a house." His voice drops lower on the last word, and it's not meant for Ella at all, it's meant for me, and I feel it as if it’s a physical touch.
"We made tacos," Nicole announces, patting his cheek to bring his attention back to her. "And I danced with Macie."
"I saw that, baby girl. You looked like you were having a lot of fun." He sets her back down, and she runs off toward the table where Ella's already setting out plates, leaving the two of us standing there in the space she left behind.
"Good day?" he asks, stepping closer, close enough that I catch the mix of his cologne and whatever he had for lunch clinging to his uniform.
"A really good day." I reach up, straightening his collar without really thinking about it. "Your sister's great, by the way. She walked in on and immediately interrogated me like she’s the cop in the family."
He laughs, the sound low and warm. "Sounds about right. She's protective."
"I noticed."
"Good." He leans down, pressing a kiss to my forehead, lingering there a second longer than necessary. "Somebody around here should be, besides me."
"Are you two gonna eat or just stand there making sex eyes at each other all night?" Ella calls from the table, and Nicole giggles like she understands exactly what her aunt means, even though she can't possibly.
"Coming," I call back, but Darren catches my hand before I can walk away, pulling me back for one more kiss, quick this time, but no less meaningful than the first.
"Thank you," he murmurs against my lips.
"For what?"
"For all of this." He shakes his head like he's trying to find better words and can't quite push them past his throat. "I'll explain later. Right now I'm starving, and apparently my daughter's been dancing without me."
We head to the table together, and Ella's already got Nicole settled into her booster seat, taco shells lined up and waiting.
Darren pulls out my chair before he sits down himself, and under the table his hand finds my knee, resting there through the entire meal like he doesn't ever want to stop touching me.