6. Lori #2
He tips his hat at me on his way past and is back under the hood of a truck that doesn't need him before the conversation can stretch any further.
"There's gonna be a baby up there too come spring," Tina murmurs to Junie. "Lord. Lord! The whole world is having babies!"
Then she turns to me and she slides Junie into my arms and steps back.
"You're a natural at it."
"I am not."
"You are,” she insists.
"I have only been doing this for about two weeks."
"Two weeks is enough."
Junie's eyes are open, fixed on my face with the unblinking solemnity of a baby who decides that I'm her preferred wallpaper. Something turns over under my ribs.
That night, the house settles into a quiet I am not used to.
I'm awake at 4 a.m. the next day from a dream about a naked firefighter that I'm not going to examine, because if I examine it, I will not be able to stay under said firefighter's roof and pretend that I’m not affected.
The house is dead-still. I can hear the refrigerator cycle on, the tick of cooling wood, the low sound of a neighbor's heifer half a mile down the road. Junie is asleep, last fed at three, good for another hour or two if I’m lucky.
My mouth is dry. My skin feels two sizes too tight.
There's a low, stupid heat sitting under my sternum that water is not going to address, but I am going to try water anyway because the alternative is lying in that bed and finishing the dream with my fingers.
I pad down the hall in what I sleep in, because nobody is supposed to see me sleep.
Sleep shorts that ride significantly higher than what I wear.
A thin and low camisole the color of a well loved dishrag, no bra, because at 4 a.m., a bra is a hate crime.
Hair loose down my back. Bare feet on cold boards.
The kitchen is dark except for the porch light coming through the window over the sink, gold-blue and quiet.
I'm two steps in when I realize I'm not alone.
Carson is at the counter.
Shirtless.
Joggers slung low across his hipbones, the cut of him on full display from the navel down.
Abs like a man who does this job for eight years and never misses a mandatory fitness check.
A chest built to carry a person out of a burning house.
A dark line of hair below the waistband that drags my eye further south than I have any right at 4 a.m. The porch light catches the slope of his shoulder, the side of his throat, the worn leather ring on his right hand, the half-empty glass of water sweating against his palm.
I go still, thinking he catches me.
But he’s looking at me, too.
I watch his eyes drag down the length of me, once.
The dark mess of my hair. The sleep is still on my face.
The camisole gone half-translucent in the half-dark.
The soft fullness of me, unmistakable through it, the points where my body is responding to the cold, and his gaze stops there longer.
His eyes travel lower, along the long, bare line of my legs from my indecent shorts.
I feel his stare under my skin like a caress.
Something tightens in his jaw. Something else tightens lower, and his joggers are not built to hide it, and I look away on instinct because I am not going to survive seeing it twice.
A low ache rolls up the backs of my thighs and settles behind my hipbones. My pulse jumps in the hollow of my throat where I know he can see it.
"Can't sleep," he says. Voice rough with the hour, lower than his daytime voice by half an octave. I have to swallow before I can produce a sound back.
"Water." I sound like a siren tempting a firefighter. He never tells me his age, but I see from his ID when he leaves it on the kitchen counter that he is thirty-one.
Six years worth of experience ahead of me. In everything.
I take the steps toward the sink. He shifts to the side without taking his eyes off me.
The cabinet I need is, of course, directly behind him.
To reach a glass I have to come within a foot of his chest, and his heat finds me before I do.
I lift my arm. The hem of my camisole rides up an inch.
I feel his attention on that inch. I take the glass down and fill it at the tap.
We are so close to each other.
His breath is even. Too even. I can feel the heat coming off his chest at my shoulder. The line of his bare forearm a quarter inch from mine. The air between us, warming and pulling tight, and one of us is going to break this with a single inch in the wrong direction.
The corner of his mouth tips up. The dimple comes out, slow, unhurried, showing up in his own kitchen at 4 a.m. "Don't know you slept in those."
My face goes hot. I look at the glass instead of at him because I have lost the ability to do both. "Don't know you sleep in those."
"I don't, usually." His voice low.
His eyes do the line of me again, slower this time, an unhurried inventory — shoulder, throat, the dip of the camisole, the place where the cotton is doing me no favors, the bare strip of stomach above the shorts, the curve of my hip, the inside of my thigh I'm pretending I cannot feel him looking at, and back up to my mouth.
He lets the silence sit. Then he tips his head a fraction, the smile still loose at the corner of his mouth.
"I don't usually wear anything."
My face goes red. I feel it climb up my neck, bloom across my cheeks, settle in my ears like a sunburn. My knees go traitorous. The glass is the only solid thing in the world. I lift it to my mouth so my hands don’t reach for his waistband and almost choke on the water.
The baby starts to fuss. I am never more grateful for a sound in my life. I take it as my cue to exit without saying anything.
He laughs softly as I walk away. It reminds me of when we first meet.
I make myself walk back down the hall like a woman who does not just get undressed by a man's eyes at his own kitchen sink. I close the guest-room door behind me and check on Junie. False alarm. She’s as quiet as when I leave her.
I lean against the door and slide down it until I'm on the floor with my knees up and my forehead pressed against them.
My body is humming like a struck wire.
I cannot breathe right for the next hour. I lie in the dark with one arm thrown across my face and do not let myself put a single word on what I just see.
The next morning, the air between us is thick, but we pretend nothing happens.
Tina shows up at 11 p.m. with a bassinet for Junie — the one they use for Cadie, she says — and a smile that does not age a day in sixty years.
"Diner shift today?" she asks.
"I pick one up. Jason needs the hand." And I needed the distraction.
"Then hand her here."
She holds out her arms. Junie is in mine.
She is just fed, is half asleep, and doing that thing babies do where their mouths work a slow rhythm on the memory of the bottle.
I open my mouth to say Tina, I can manage, the way I say it for twenty-five years to landlords and shift managers and to my own mom and sister. The reflex is so old it wears a groove.
Tina doesn’t push or say more. She just holds her arms out and waits, patiently, with no judgment in her face.
I look at the baby in my arms. I look at Tina's hands.
If I refuse, I turn down a shift. I fall further behind on a rent I do not actually owe because the man whose roof I'm under will not take a dime from me, and instead, flashes me dimples and more at 4 a.m. in his kitchen.
I think about my mother. About the quiet, ruthless competence with which she taught me, my whole childhood, to never owe a single soul a thing.
I open my mouth, close it, and open it again.
Junie starts to fuss.
"Okay," I say. Steady. I make myself say the next words because somewhere behind my ribs, I realize I want to hear myself do it. “Sure. Thank you."
It is the smallest sentence I ever say out loud, and it nearly closes my throat on its way out.
Tina lifts Junie out of my arms, no fumble. Settles her against her chest. Doesn't make a fuss of it. Doesn't say good girl or that wasn't so hard or any of the awful things a lesser woman would say.
She just gives me a small nod.
"Go on. I've got her and Cadie."
I get my apron and my keys.
I drive Jason's truck to the diner, shifting gears every so often just to do something with my hands, because if I think about what I just do I'm going to pull over and call Tina to take it back. The whole morning feels half-dreamed as it is.
My shift carries on as if there is no baby dropped on my porch. Coffee and pie, the bell over the door, Jason in the back arguing with the fryer, a trucker who tips in quarters.
It is 6:30 p.m. when I pull back up the gravel drive. The porch light is on.
As I go inside, I hear the dishwasher running. Tina is asleep on the couch, Cadie asleep in her lap. The television is on low volume.
I check the guest room with my purse still over my shoulder and my apron still tied at my waist.
Junie is in her bassinet, one fist curled by her mouth.
Tina wakes up as I walk back into the living room. She eases Cadie's head off her lap, slides out from under her, and pulls a throw blanket up to her chin.
She smiles at me and leaves without saying a word.
I stand in the doorway of the guest room for a while, then sit down on the edge of the bed.
I expect the quiet to feel like rest.
It does not.