Chapter 13 – Grace
Sometimes being an ice queen was exhausting. Piper not-so-subtly invited Dean over a lot, which meant I had to un-invite him a lot, and it was like a pencil stab in the side every time. Being the official party-pooper was a thankless job, and a lonely one.
Hearing him politely ignore her invitation tonight was more than I could take. So yes, this one time I backed her up and asked Dean to come hang out and have boxed macaroni and cheese with us. Although, by the time he got here, it would be inedible macaroni and cheese. There was a firm half-hour window for eating that stuff. Serve immediately or else.
My cooking skills expanded beyond kid staples, but sometimes it depended on my energy level. Tonight, I was in my pajama pants and messy bun era.
After Piper ate two huge bowls of mac and cheese, I got her showered and dressed right before the doorbell rang. In all our hurry, I hadn’t given a thought to freshening myself up. I ducked into the bathroom off of Piper’s room and checked. Yikes. The best I could do was wipe any traces of mascara from below my eyes and straighten out the bun holding my hair up. My lips were chapped. I needed chapstick. I should freshen my breath, too. I made a run for my room and almost ran over Piper. At the last second, I half leapt, half dodged around her like Barry Sanders avoiding a tackle.
“What are you doing, Mommy?”
“I’ll be right there. Tell him to wait. I’ll get the door in a minute.”
“Okay.”
I ran into my bathroom and gave myself the quickest makeover known to mankind. But not quick enough. Over the sound of my toothbrushing, I heard Piper letting in Dean. “Mom said to wait.”
Ack. I meant have him wait outside for us. I rinsed off my mouth and hurried out to find him holding Piper in his arms. She had her little face tucked against his, and I purposely focused only on her, and not the sweet picture they made together. Or at least I tried. I couldn’t blame her for smushing her cheek against his. He was freshly shaved again. He probably smelled delicious.
“Piper, you can’t reach the peephole. What if it wasn’t Dean when you opened it?”
Piper turned to me and jutted out her little lips in her signature grumpy know-it-all face. “I knew it was Dean because I yelled his name, and he yelled my name back.”
I met Dean’s eyes and he shrugged. “She’s pretty smart.”
“She is,” I admitted. He wasn’t just freshly shaved. He’d had a haircut, and his hair was playfully tousled rather than rebelliously overgrown, and I found I liked it both ways. He was wearing a thin white t-shirt and black jogger pants. Not the kind of jogger pants that sounded like tent material when you walked; no, his were buttery soft. They were probably what ninjas lounged in. Well, if ninjas had downtime.
Meanwhile, my cotton pajama pants had been washed so many times they could stand up without me in them. And now I wanted to throw the faded, stiff, ugly things away so no one would ever see me in them again. It didn’t help that I was still in my pleated, key-hole neck, silk blouse from work. Like the mullet of outfits, I was business on top, sad pajama party on bottom.
My eyes traveled back up to his hair. “You cut it.”
“Yeah, I finally found time for a haircut.”
There was an awkward lull after that. He put Piper down and stuck his hands in his pockets. I continued to stare at him. Once I’d allowed it, I couldn’t get myself to stop. I was thinking about kettlebells, wondering what he did with them to make his arms look like that.
I needed to say something, but I was not the type to easily fill in silence, even if this was the moment for it. I didn’t come up with jokes on the spot or make people feel welcome with just my presence. Dean and I didn’t “hang out” together. And the reason for that was me. He was around enough that even my daughter considered him one of her best-est friends. But not me.
My conversation with Jessica came back to me, hitting me over the head with the truth of it. “ You always talk about him like the two of you aren’t friends.” But it was worse than that. I thought about him as a non-friend, because being around him made me feel big things, and I didn’t do big feelings. Not anymore.
“So, um. Thanks for coming over,” I managed to eke out.
“Sure. Should I take my shoes off?”
I glanced down at his feet. He had on a pair of black leather flip flops that, like everything else he wore, looked expensive for reasons I couldn’t put a name on. I was not obsessive about taking shoes off in the house, but since he asked, I shrugged. “Sure.”
He toed them off and nudged them next to the door. And then looked back at me for what to do next. This was excruciating.
Piper chose that moment to dance between us in her hip-shaking version of a pop song we’d been listening to in the car a lot. “When the slide’s here, I don’t do fears. Baby, no tents. WATCH ME. Can’t! Chance the night away, uh-huh.” She wasn’t even paying any attention to us, too preoccupied with the origami bird she’d picked up from the couch and the music in her head. She suddenly ran out of the room, probably in search of the bird’s match. Lately, Piper had been obsessed with having everything in pairs.
Dean rubbed the back of his neck, trying not to laugh. “Is her hearing okay?”
“She can hear a candy wrapper opening from a mile away. Butchering lyrics is a Rob thing. You wouldn’t think that would be genetic, but it totally is.”
“Huh.”
“Yep.”
And now we were back to awkward silence.
“Are you hungry?” I finally asked. We could not keep standing at the door like this was normal.
“A little. I’m fine, though.”
I almost offered to make him something after I put Piper to bed, but that was assuming he would stay that long. “Feel free to find something to eat. I’m gonna go change my…um…outfit.”
“Deciding which half?” Dean asked, gesturing to the mismatch.
I raised my chin, refusing to be embarrassed, even though I was dying inside. “Yes, actually.”
“I think it all looks good.”
“Shut up.” I jogged down the hall, realizing his teasing was the only thing that ever got me out of my own way when it came to talking to him. Did he know that? He probably did. How mortifying.
I changed both my top and bottom, deciding on a pair of black yoga pants and a long-sleeved, light blue t-shirt that was comfortable without being either too boxy or too form-fitting. Since he was barefoot, I’d stick with that, too.
When I came out, I found Dean and Piper sitting at the counter eating chocolate pudding cups they must have scavenged from the pantry. No surprise, Piper was talking his ear off. Her little legs swung back and forth under the stool she was sitting on.
“I’m going to a pancake birthday breakfast for my friend Lucy tomorrow. And I get to stay at her house after because my mom is going hiking. Lucy and I are setting up a lemonade stand and giving away lemonade for free. Her trees in the backyard have so many lemons. Like…” Piper stretched her arms out as far as she could. “…this many.”
“That’s a lot of lemons.”
“Yeah. And she’s been begging to do a lemonade stand forever, and I told her she should ask for it as a birthday present, and it totally worked. Her mom said yes.”
“Why are you giving away the lemonade?” Dean asked her.
“Well, people can give us money if they want, but Lucy’s mom said it will all go to… um… sharity?”
“Charity?”
“Yeah. That. She’ll make us a sign. The extra lemons we pick and the lemonade money will go to the food bankery.”
Dean didn’t correct her on that one. He just smiled. “That sounds like a pretty good day.”
Piper’s responding sigh sounded so grown up. “I can’t wait.” She looked behind her and spotted me listening from the doorway. “Want a chocolate pudding, Mom?”
“No, I’m okay.”
Dean swiveled in his stool and took a long pull on a spoonful of chocolate pudding, keeping his eyes on me. This had to be the lowest form of flirting—playing with food.
I raised my eyebrows. “Enjoying that?”
“Immensely.”
Now that I knew he did things like that to provoke me into talking to him, it strangely didn’t bother me as much.
“I hear you’re going hiking on Saturday. When did you decide that?” he asked.
It was a valid question. My “solid maybe” comment had come less than an hour ago. “Piper and her friend Lucy have had this in the works for a while. The hiking thing I decided today when I checked into the app.”
I’d met Molly, the mom of Piper’s little friend, while chaperoning the petting zoo field trip where three kids had their shirts half-eaten by hungry goats. We’d been friends ever since. She was constantly telling me I needed to get out more and she’d help if that day ever came. I was finally taking her up on it. Molly was one of those rare people who didn’t need all the details of my life. She just knew I needed one.
“So, you decided around noon.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Yeah. Around noon. It’s a little shady that you know that.”
“You should go hiking with her,” Piper so helpfully added.
“I should.” Dean grinned at me. “I like hiking.”
“So does Mom.”
Piper was on a roll. Soon she’d be offering up more of my secrets, my likes, my plans, or my time. All in the pursuit of making Dean happy. I walked over and wiped chocolate pudding off her face with my thumb. “It’s almost time for bed, kiddo. Are you done with that?”
“Almost.” She peeled the lid off all the way and licked it clean, leaving more chocolate pudding on the end of her nose. “Can we play a game with Dean first?”
“Yeah, we can do that. What game?”
She scrunched up her face, thinking. “Twister?”
Dean’s eyes met mine before I could think better of it, and I blushed. I blushed so hard I had to clear my throat before I gave Piper a calm no. My embarrassment was the most embarrassing thing ever, because it told him I was picturing us playing Twister together. I was never looking at him again.
“What about Chutes and Ladders?” I asked her, knowing she’d say yes. She loved that game.
“Alright. But no cheating.”
I crossed my heart. What she didn’t see was that I was crossing my fingers behind my back at the same time. “Okay, no cheating. ”
Piper put her hands on her hips. “For reals?”
“What? I play to win.”
“I know, you big cheater.” Piper turned to Dean. “You have to keep her from cheating.”
“I’ll do my best.” Once she ran off to get the game out of the cupboard, he leaned over to me. “Why would you cheat at Chutes and Ladders?”
“Clearly, you’ve never played.” I still wasn’t looking at him. My fingernails were the most interesting things ever. “If you don’t cheat, the game goes on forever. The trick is to be good at it.”
“If she knows about it, you can’t be that good.”
“She doesn’t know I cheat on her turns as well. It’s never a surprise who wins. It’s all carefully planned. When, how, who.” Piper came back in, cutting off my speech early, which was a great thing, because I was sounding a little bit like a murderer at the end of a who-done-it-mystery confessing all.
It didn’t take Dean long to figure out why I cheated at this game. After sliding down three chutes, he was suddenly all ladders, and Piper was giving him stink-face.
“You’re cheating, Dean.”
“He must not be very good at hiding it,” I quipped.
Dean reached over and pinched my side, using a lot more stealth than when he moved his game piece extra steps. I poked him in the ribs and got caught by Piper. She gave me the look I always gave her when she tried to hide her peas in her mashed potatoes.
“Be nice, Mom.”
“I’ll try.” I glanced up at the clock, calculating how long to let the game go before orchestrating a win. This was the most interesting part of the game for me, which was pretty sad. Maybe we should have chosen something more entertaining for Dean’s sake, but if he was bored, he hid it well. Another thing he was better at than me. I’d been told I needed to work on my happy-to-be-here face. I believed it .
Dean stopped cheating and immediately sailed down a chute into never-going-to-win-land. At a minute to eight p.m., Piper beat me by a small margin, just as I predicted.
“See, your cheating didn’t even work, Mom.” She sounded so smug.
I hugged her. “Congratulations, kid. You have a big day tomorrow with the birthday breakfast and the lemonade stand. It’s bedtime.”
Piper opened her mouth to protest, and a big yawn came out. She wrapped her arms around me tighter. “Okay. I’ll go to bed. Can I stay up late tomorrow?”
“For sure.”
I didn’t think of the ramifications of putting her to bed on time until Dean was leaning in her doorway after she’d brushed her teeth, and I was tucking her in. I hadn’t had a man over after Piper was asleep in… oh… ever. I’d thought he would excuse himself and go home after Chutes and Ladders, but he didn’t, and I didn’t hint at him needing to, and now it felt like Irish step dancers were doing a jig across the bottom of my stomach.
I’d sensed this coming for a while now, this dare that Dean dangled in front of me. I dare you to like me back . I dare you to let me make a move. I dare you to let me in.
It was a strange setup for a friendship. Maybe it wasn’t all my fault we weren’t really friends. Yes, I was nervous around him, but he made it worse with the way he looked at me.
“Five songs?” Piper asked, clutching the soft ducky she always slept with. She smoothed down the fluff at the top of the stuffed animal’s head and kissed it.
“Sure, Piper-doll. Five songs.” I could feel Dean’s attention on us. Like we were interesting zoo animals to him. Well then, I’d start with “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” By the time we got through all the barnyard animals, he’d wish he’d never shown an interest in our singing.