Wait for It

My head was pounding a couple of days later.

I wanted to throw up. I didn’t get migraines often, but when they did come a knockin’, hell had to be paid. I woke up that morning with a throbbing sensation behind one eye and it had only gotten steadily worse as I drove the boys to school. I should have known what was happening. When a call from a restricted number popped up on my screen just as I pulled into the lot at work, the pain went to another level.

Fucking Anita again. I knew it was her.

Thinking about her usually left me with a headache, but with her recent visit and phone call today… it was so much worse. I was nauseous and my brain wanted to burst out of my skull.

By some miracle, I made it through my work day without throwing up or crawling under my station, thanks to over-the-counter migraine medication we kept in the break room for emergencies and so much coffee, my hand shook while I did a couple of trims. It was a miracle I hadn’t cut myself. My phone had rung twice more, once with Trip’s name flashing across the screen and the second with Dallas’s name. I hadn’t felt like dealing with their baseball business and didn’t bother answering, letting both calls go to voice mail. It was my turn to pick up the boys from school afterward. I didn’t need to look in the mirror to know that the discomfort from my migraine was written all over my face.

They were both sweet and watched me carefully as I drove back. I’m sure they caught on to me not feeling my best, but they didn’t comment. To put the topping on the cake of how sensitive they were, when we got home, Josh offered to make them a snack so I didn’t have to.

All I could manage to do was thank him and ruffle his hair.

Both of them, along with Mac, headed into the backyard to play who knows what at the same time the next dose of medication I’d taken started kicking in just enough so that the light coming through the windows didn’t make me feel like I was on the verge of dying.

So when a knock came from my front door, I was a little confused. My parents rarely came over without calling first, and the Larsens never came unannounced. No one else of my friends would come over without double-checking. Hardly anyone had the new address.

Looking through the peephole, I was more than a little surprised to see a familiar face on the other side instead of a Girl Scout or a Jehovah’s Witness.

“Hey,” I said hesitantly and more than a little weakly once I’d opened the door.

When I’d peeked through the peephole, Dallas had had just about the most pleasant expression on his face I had ever witnessed coming from him, but the second his gaze landed on me, that expression went straight into a frown. “What’s wrong with you?”

Was it that bad that someone who was just shy of being a complete stranger could tell there was something wrong with me? “I don’t feel well.”

His frown deepened, his gaze raking all over me again in a way that made me feel like he was making sure I didn’t have some contagious disease. “You look like hell.” Was I supposed to look like a beauty queen when my eyeball felt like it was about to abandon ship from my skull? “Migraine?”

I started to nod before remembering that would only make it worse. “Uh-huh. I don’t get them that often, but when I do….” Why was I telling him this? And why was he here? “Do you need something?” I asked a little more harshly than I intended for it to come out.

He ignored my question and tone. “When did you last take something?”

I shrugged; at least I think I shrugged. “A few hours ago.”

“Did you make dinner already?”

“No.” Honestly, I’d been thinking about making Josh call something in. I didn’t even want to bother with preheating the oven to stick a frozen lasagna in there.

Dallas glanced over his shoulder, hesitating when he faced forward again. His jaw jutted out for a moment. He let out a long breath through his nose, and then nodded, more to himself than to me, that was for sure. He rolled those massive shoulders of his and met my gaze, straight on. “I’ll close the door. Go lay down. I’ll take care of dinner,” he stated in that no-nonsense bossy way of his, like he wasn’t someone I’d met and hung out with a handful of times.

Who was this man and why was he doing this? The tiny head shake I did was more than enough to send bile creeping up the back of my throat. I couldn’t try and hide my cheeks puffing out as I kept the acid down. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to,” he said, still not breaking eye contact.

Was he using my own tactic against me?

I swallowed. “I’m sorry. Thank you for the offer, but we’ll be fine. Is there something you needed or can we just e-mail later?” Plus, since when had he ever come over to talk Tornado in person? Never. What else would he be coming over for?

To give him credit, he didn’t do much more than tip his face toward the sky and blow out a breath before shifting his attention back down to me, his facial features smooth and not amused. “Are you always this stubborn?”

I would have narrowed my eyes if it didn’t make my pain worse. So I told him the truth, mirroring his expression. “Yes. Is your real name really Dallas?”

That thick, dark eyebrow of his rose a half inch. “Yes.”

“Why did your parents name you that?” I asked even as my head gave another nauseating throb.

That eyebrow of his rose a quarter of an inch more than it already had. “My dad lost a bet on a football game, and it was either naming me Dallas or Cowboy.” He didn’t miss a beat and went ahead with going back to the original subject. “Let me help you.”

I would have gone with Dallas, too. I let the name thing go and waved my hand weakly. “You’ve done enough. I’m not trying to take advantage of you or cross some line. We’ll be all right,” I whispered, closing one eye when the pounding became even more concentrated.

Dallas was staring me down, but I didn’t care. His voice was so low I had to strain to hear it. “I get that you’re not trying to come on to me, now or ever, all right? Can we never bring that up again? I’m here. You’re not feeling well. Let me help.”

I closed both my eyes and frowned, wanting this conversation over with.

He sighed. “I know what it’s like for a single mom to get a migraine every once in a while. If you want to call mine and make sure I’m not shitting you, you can.”

I didn’t have the energy or the willpower to contemplate his words. I opened my eyes. Who the hell used their mom as a reference anyway?

The way he was looking at me was like he was blowing out a breath of exasperation in his head. “Take a picture of my driver’s license and send it to somebody if it makes you feel better,” he suggested calmly.

I didn’t think he was some kind of crazy pervert. Not at all. Mostly, I was worried about making things weird between us. He claimed to have accepted that I wasn’t trying to put the moves on him, which was good because it was the truth. He was nice to look at, his body even more so, but so were plenty of men.

“I can call in a few pizzas and sit with your boys for a while.” He raised those thick, brown eyebrows when I didn’t immediately scream my gratitude.

“It’s—” I started to say before Dallas cut me off.

“Look, I came over to tell you face-to-face that we’re scaling back the tournaments we’re doing and the practices. I tried calling you, but you didn’t answer or call back.”

Tournaments. Fuck. I didn’t even care about baseball or even continuing to live right then. All I heard was “pizzas” and “sit with the boys.” A wave of nausea and pain suddenly hit me right behind the eyeballs.

“Fine.” I felt so crappy I backed up, eyed him again, then went inside like an obedient puppy and headed straight into the living room. Dallas followed after me. I headed over to the couch, fully aware that this semi-strange man was in my house, about to figure out dinner for the boys.

Was this a mistake?

I watched from the couch as my neighbor disappeared out the back door of the kitchen and faintly heard the deepest reaches of his voice in the air, even though I couldn’t actually process what exactly he was saying.

When he didn’t come back in after twenty minutes, I sat up and peeked through the opened door from the kitchen into the backyard. Josh and Louie were about fifteen feet away from him, forming a triangle. Mac was lying on the grass, watching the three of them lazily. When a baseball flew from Dallas’s side to Josh’s, I couldn’t help but smile before plopping back down on the couch, letting out a silent prayer that this migraine would go away soon.

The clock on the wall kept me informed as twenty more minutes passed, and then ten more on top of that.

The sound of the door being opened warned me that someone was coming in before Josh and Louie’s arguing confirmed it was them. Dallas followed after the two, the door creaking shut right before a knock sounded at the front door.

“I got it,” my neighbor said, touching one hand to the top of Louie’s head as he passed him up and headed in the direction of the knock, crossing in front of the turned off television.

“He got pizza,” Josh offered up before plopping down on the recliner perpendicular to the big couch I was on. “Meat supreme.”

I didn’t even have the energy to stick my tongue out at him. Hell, all I wanted was to disappear into my room, but I wasn’t about to leave Josh and Lou alone with a man I didn’t know that well. My parents were definitely never finding out about this. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you not liking pineapple.”

“On a pizza?”

He and his brother said it at the same time just like they did every other time we argued about pizza toppings—which was every time. “Gross.”

“Your faces are gross.” Maybe I wasn’t feeling bad enough not to argue with them.

“No, just Josh’s,” Louie chimed in, making me snort. He was too young to have the kind of comebacks he did, but from time to time, he surprised me with them and I loved it.

Sure enough, Josh elbowed Lou and the younger one elbowed him right back. Dallas closed the door and appeared with three boxes, stacked from the biggest at the bottom to the smallest at the top. He set them on the coffee table and gestured toward the boys.

“Little man, can you get some plates and napkins?”

Lou nodded and got up, heading toward the kitchen. By the time he came back with a stack of paper plates and a roll of paper towels, Dallas had spread the pizza boxes out, opening one box after the other, showing that he had ordered an extra-extra-large pizza… and that one of the boys had tattled and told him how much I loved Hawaiian pizzas because the medium sized box had one inside. The last box was filled with chicken wings.

Passing out the plates, our neighbor didn’t even ask as he went straight for the pineapple and ham pizza, using his fingers to pull up two small slices and setting them on the plate Louie handed him, then passing it over. “Ladies first.”

“Thank you,” I said in a weak voice I hated.

“Lou, what do you wanna eat?” he asked my littlest.

He pointed at the meat pizza and then jabbed a finger at the hot wings. “One.” I held up a finger at him, squinting with one eye, and he added, “Please.”

Dallas’s eyebrow went up at the please, but he scooped up a slice and set it on the plate. His hand hovered over the container of hot wings before he asked, “These are spicy. Can you handle it?”

I could only blame myself for the shit that came out of Louie’s mouth next. I really could. Because I said the same thing in front of him a dozen times in the past. “I’m Mexican. Yeah.”

Those hazel eyes swung in my direction, wide and completely fucking amused. “All right, buddy. If you say so.” And just like that, he picked up the leg of what was probably the smallest wing in the box and set it on the plate with the slice.

“Josh, you?” he asked.

Three minutes later, the four of us were sitting around the table, stuffing our faces. I swore the cheese had some kind of magical healing ingredient that made my head stop hurting at least while I was eating. Josh chowed down three slices total and two more wings before throwing himself back on the floor and groaning. Lou wasn’t a big eater, but he picked at enough of his food. I wasn’t sure how much Dallas ate, but it seemed like a lot; I had no idea where all that food went. There wasn’t a hint of bloating or a pooch anywhere.

Some people had all the luck.

“Your head hurting any less?” he asked from his spot on the floor in front of the television, alongside the coffee table. He’d thrown a hand back to hold his weight up, his facial expression lazy and pleased like only pizza was capable of giving someone.

With my clean, pizza grease-free hand, I flipped the palm up and down. “Better than before eating.” I smiled at him. “Thank you. Let me know how much I owe you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” was the no-nonsense answer that came out of his mouth.

I knew when my battles were pointless and when I had a chance, and in this case, there was no use in wasting my energy. Plus, I just didn’t feel like arguing. I could pay him back later. “Thank you again then.”

Before I had a chance to remind the boys what manners were, they piped up, one after the other, filling me with a stupid amount of pride. “Thank you, Mr. Dallas.”

The older man gave them a look too. “I told you, you can call me Dallas.”

* * *

“Mr. Dallas is nice,” Louie commented hours later as he climbed into bed.

“He is, isn’t he?” I asked, plopping down on the corner of the mattress. My headache had eased enough to at least be able to do this one thing for my boy.

“Yeah.” He pulled his sheets up to his neck as he settled in. “Josh hit the ball over the fence and he didn’t even get mad. He told him not to say he was sorry because he didn’t do nothing wrong.”

“‘Anything’ wrong, Lou. But that was pretty nice of him to say that.” As I got older, I realized more and more the things I found attractive. Like patience and kindness. When I was younger—and a hell of a lot dumber—I’d always gravitated toward hot guys with nice cars. Now, there were things like credit scores to worry about, employment histories, and personality traits that couldn’t be picked up over dinner and drinks.

“He said our fence was messed up and we needed to fix it.”

I winced and nodded, adding the fence to the dozen other things that I needed to repair around the house at some point. “I know.”

“You gonna tell Abuelito?”

I winked at him. “I don’t want to, but maybe you, me, and Josh can fix it. What do you think?”

Those baby-soft features fell instantly. “Maybe Abuelito can help.”

“Why? You don’t think we can do it?” To be honest, I wasn’t positive we could either, but what example would I be setting if I constantly asked my dad to do things?

From the words that came out of Louie’s mouth next, I had already set a bad example. He looked me right in the eye and said, very seriously, “Remember my bed?”

I shut my mouth and changed the subject. “All right, what do you want to hear tonight?” I asked, using my hands to tuck the sheets in, starting at around his feet, close to my hip.

He made a thoughtful “hmm” sound. “A new one.” Thank God he let the bed thing go.

“You want to hear a new one?” I asked, still tucking him in, glancing back and forth between what I was doing and his face above the covers.

“Yes.” I drew out the look I gave him until he added. “Please. I’m sorry, I forget.”

“It’s okay.” I drew my finger up the sole of his foot through the sheet, knowing it was going to make him flail and mess up the cocoon I’d been working on. “A new story, then. Hmm.” Despite having a lifetime of memories of Rodrigo, some days it was hard to remember things about him that Lou hadn’t heard a million times before.

When I had first found out my brother died, the minutes that ticked by after my dad broke the news seemed to have lasted a million years. The memory of sitting on my bed afterward, my soul a dimension away, was one I could never forget. We had all fallen apart. Every single one of us. I hadn’t slept in bed with my parents since I’d been a little kid, but I could remember physically forcing myself to go back to my room after I’d stood at their closed door for who knows how long, wanting comfort that they weren’t ready to provide.

It wasn’t until I saw the boys a day or so later, when I realized that Mandy was in no place to do anything for them, that I had made myself shed and bury as much of my grief as I could—at least in front of them. Just thinking about her and all the signs she’d given us about how she was dealing, made guilt flood every nook inside of my soul. But it was done. We had all been to blame, and I didn’t want Josh or Lou to ever forget her.

“You want to hear a funny one or… maybe one with your mom?”

I almost missed Lou’s wince—it happened every time I brought up his mom, but it only made me do it more.

“A funny one,” he said, not surprisingly.

I raised my eyebrows and smiled, letting it go. “One time, your dad and I were driving back to El Paso to visit Abuelita and Abuelito, right? Josh hadn’t been born yet. We had stopped to eat somewhere and the food was really crappy, Lou. I mean, both of us had stomachaches about halfway through eating, but we made ourselves finish it. Anyway, we left the restaurant and kept driving because we didn’t want to spend the night somewhere… and your dad starts telling me how he’s going to poop himself. He kept saying how much his stomach was hurting, how bad it was, and how he thought he was going to have a baby.”

Lou’s little-boy laugh egged me on.

“Once he started threatening me that he was going to poop in the car, I finally pulled the car into the first gas station I could find and he ran inside.” I could picture the memory so clearly in my head, I started laughing. “He had his hands behind his butt like he was trying to hold it in.” By that point, there were tears in both of our eyes, and it was really hard to get the rest of the story out. “My stomach was still hurting but not that much. It had to be thirty minutes later, your dad comes back out of the gas station, sweating. He’s soaked in it, Lou. No lie. He was covered in sweat. He gets into the car and I’m looking at him, and realize he didn’t have any socks on. So I asked him, what happened to your socks? And he says ‘There wasn’t any toilet paper in the restroom.’”

Lou was laughing so hard he’d rolled onto his side, clutching his stomach.

“You like that one, huh?” I was smiling huge at him busting a gut.

He just kept huffing out, “Oh my gosh” over and over again, a true testament of my mom’s influence on him.

“His birthday was a month later, and I got him a roll of toilet paper and a bunch of socks.”

“Grandpa showed me a movie of Christmas, and you gave Daddy socks and he threw them at you,” he said between these great big chuffs.

I nodded. “He made me promise never to say anything about it again, so I didn’t. I just kept giving him socks.”

“You’re good, Tia.”

“I know, huh?”

He nodded, his face flushed pink and happy. Even happy, he said, “I miss him.”

“Me too, Lou. Very, very much,” I said softly, feeling a bitter ball in my throat as I smiled. Tears stung the back of my eyes, but by some miracle I kept them in. I wanted this to be a happy thing between us. I could cry later.

The little boy blinked sleepily up at the ceiling with a dreamy sigh. “I wanna be a policeman like him when I’m old like you.”

His comment made my heart ache so bad I couldn’t even focus on how he’d referred to me as being old. “You can be whatever you want to be,” I told him. “Your dad wouldn’t care as long as you always did a good job.”

“Because he loved me?”

He was going to be the death of me, this little kid. “Because he loved you,” I promised. I gulped and hoped and prayed that he couldn’t see the struggle written all over my face. Tucking the covers in around him faster than ever, I leaned over my favorite five-year-old on the planet and kissed his forehead, earning a kiss on my cheek in return. “I love you, poo-poo face. Sleep good.”

“I love you too, poo-poo face,” he said as I made my way toward his door, thinking about his words and grinning even as a tiny piece of my heart broke off.

“Tia, you can buy me socks if you want,” Louie added just as I made it to his door.

Maybe if I’d been expecting it, his offer wouldn’t have felt like a battering ram to my sternum followed by a nuclear bomb being detonated where my heart used to exist.

My legs went weak. Grief and something close to misery boxed in my throat, and with a strength I didn’t think I had in me, I turned to look at him without letting the tears burst like Niagara Falls out of my eyes and nodded. Goose bumps broke out over my arms. “I think your dad would like that. Goodnight, Lulu.”

“Night, dudu,” he called out as I mostly closed the door behind me, biting my lip and swallowing, swallowing, swallowing hard.

I pressed my back against the wall next to his door.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

My nose started burning. My eyes began watering, and I gasped for air, for strength, for anything that could get me through the pain slicing through everything that made me, me.

How did it never get easier to know that life was unfair?

How did it never hurt any less to know I would never see someone I loved again? Why did it have to be my brother? He hadn’t been perfect, but he’d been mine. He’d loved me even when I got on his nerves.

Why?

I hadn’t moved a single inch when I heard Josh peep up, “Aunt Di.”

Fuck.

“You’re ready for bed?” My voice sounded cracked and splintered even in my own ears as I made my way to his room.

“Yeah,” he replied, the sounds of the bed creaking, confirming his statement.

Wiping at my eyes with the back of my hand and then pulling up my shirt to dab at them, I did the same to my nose and took a deep, calming breath, which probably didn’t do anything because I was three seconds away from bawling. But I couldn’t put off seeing Josh before he fell asleep. It was one of the last few things he still let me get away with every so often.

When I had myself about 10 percent under control, I forced a smile and stuck my head through the doorway. Sure enough, on the mattress was Josh and right alongside him was my third boy, Mac, with his head on his paws, one eye on me at the door. His tail swished right by Josh’s face.

“What story did you tell Lou?” he asked immediately, like he knew it had killed me inside. He probably did know.

“I told him the story about your dad and socks.”

A small smile crossed his lips. “I know that one.”

“You do?” I asked as I went around the edge of his bed to sit on the opposite side of where Mac was. I reached across to put one hand on the dog and another on Josh. If he already knew I was upset, there was no point in me hiding it.

“Yeah. He told me about it.”

I raised an eyebrow, slightly surprised.

Josh lazily raised a shoulder, those brown eyes gazing right into my own. “I had to use one of his socks one day when we went to the park,” he explained, his ears turning pink.

Those all too familiar tears stung the back of my eyes. He’d told Josh about it at least. Given him another memory I didn’t have to. “I’ve had to flip my underwear inside out a couple of times. No big deal. It happens.”

He gave me a horrified look that immediately had me frowning. “Gross!”

“What? I didn’t say it was gross you had to wipe your butt with a dirty sock!”

“That’s different!” he claimed, gagging.

“How is that different?” I asked, reminded of how many times I’d had this back and forth sort-of arguing with Rodrigo.

He was still choking and gagging. “Because! You’re a girl!”

That had me rolling my eyes. “Oh God. Shut up. It’s normal. It doesn’t make it gross because I’m a girl and you’re not. I’d rather be a girl than a boy.” I poked him. “Girls rule, boys drool.”

He shook and shivered, still supposedly traumatized, and I only rolled my eyes more.

“Go to bed.”

“I am,” he played around.

I grinned at him and he grinned right back. “I love you, J.”

“Love you too.”

I kissed his cheek and got a half-assed one in return. On the way out, I gave Mac a kiss and got a lick to my cheek that made me feel just a little better. Just a little. But not enough.

Sometimes I felt like a traitor for how much I loved them. Like I shouldn’t, because they weren’t supposed to be mine to begin with. Like I shouldn’t think they made my life better when the only reason they were mine, lighting my life up, was because of something awful.

My heart hurt. It ached. Throbbed. It was heavier than it’d been in a long time. Tears and some kind of shitty bodily fluids filled my nose and eyes and throat, and for a brief second, I thought about going into my closet to cry. That was the usual place I went to bawl my eyes out, ever since I’d been a kid. But the fact was, this house was old and my closet was too small. Just being inside with this weight made me claustrophobic. The kitchen, living room, dining room, and laundry wouldn’t work either.

Before I knew it, I found myself outside, closing the front door behind me as I sucked in huge gulps of breath that battled my lingering headache for attention. Silent tears—the worst ones—poured out of my eyes as my throat seemed to swell to twice its size. I plopped down on the first step, the palm of my hand going toward my forehead instantly, and I curled into myself as if trying to keep this pain from flaring to power. My nose burned and it was hard to breathe, but the tears kept right on coming.

Life was unfair and it always had been. It was nothing personal. I knew that. I’d seen that mentioned in the pamphlets I’d read on grief after Drigo died. But knowing all that didn’t help for shit.

Grief never got any easier. I never missed my brother any less. Part of me accepted that nothing would ever fill the void his death had left in my life or the boys or my parents or even the Larsens.

Snot poured out of my nostrils like it was on tap, and I didn’t make a single sound or bother cleaning myself up.

He’d had two kids, a wife, a house, and a job he’d enjoyed. He’d only been thirty-two when he’d died. Thirty-two. In less than three years, I’d be thirty-two. I still felt like I had my entire life ahead of me. He had to have thought the same thing.

But he hadn’t had years left. One minute he was there, and the next he wasn’t. Just like that.

God, I missed his stupid jokes and his bossiness and stubbornness so much. I missed how much he gave me shit and never let me live anything down. He’d been more than my brother. More than my friend. More than the person who taught me to drive and helped me pay for cosmetology school. He’d taught me so much about everything. And the things he taught me the best came after he’d died.

Only he could manage that.

I would gladly go back to being a selfish, self-centered idiot with awful taste in men if I could only have him back.

I missed him. So. Fucking. Much.

“You all right?” a voice carried itself over, damn near scaring the shit out of me.

Without wiping my face or nose, I looked up, confused and totally caught off guard that someone had walked up without me noticing. My chest was puffing in soundless whimpers and my throat constricted. Yet I shook my head at Dallas who was standing at the bottom of the steps leading up to my deck and told him the truth. “Not really.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” His tone was so soft that it seemed to reach deeper than his concern and presence did. “I didn’t know somebody could cry and not make a noise.” The frown on his serious face deepened as his eyes scanned over me. That notch between his eyebrows was back again.

My sniffle in response was watery and a total mess, and without realizing I was doing it, I had my bottom lip sucked into my mouth like that would help stop me from crying even more. It wasn’t really helping when tears kept streaming down my eyes and cheeks, falling off my jaw no matter how much my brain told my tear ducts to quit it.

“Your head still hurt?” he asked in that eggshell-like voice.

I shrugged, wiping at the wet places on my skin. It did hurt, but it didn’t hurt worse than my heart right then.

“Something happen with the boys?”

I shook my head again, still too afraid to use words because I was sure I’d cry my eyes out in front of this man, and I didn’t really want that to happen.

He glanced over his shoulder again, that big hand of his going to the back of his neck before he faced me again with a sigh. “If there’s something you wanna talk about…” He scrubbed at the side of his cheek, awkward or resigned or both or neither; I couldn’t blame him—I didn’t want to feel this way. Not now, not ever, and especially not with witnesses who had thought so badly of me in the beginning. “I can keep my mouth shut,” he finally got out, making me look up at him. A small smile crossed that hard face of his, so unexpected I didn’t know how to handle it.

Tell him? This near complete stranger? I was supposed to say words and sentences to him that I couldn’t even share with my parents? How could I even begin to describe the worst thing that had ever happened to me? How did you explain that your brother died, and that the next thing you knew, your life was going up into flames, and you didn’t know how to put out the fire because the smoke from it was so thick you couldn’t see two feet in front of you?

I wasn’t some closed-off person who didn’t know how to share her feelings, but this was different. Way different than having someone overhear me arguing with my mom. I could come back from her words. I was scared I’d never be able to come back from the Rodrigo-sized gap my brother had left me with.

“I’m not… I’m not….” I couldn’t get the words out. They were jumbled and messy, and I couldn’t unscramble them in one breath. I wheezed. “I—I hate this. I’m not trying to get a pity party or attention or anything—”

My neighbor dropped his head back, the long line of his lightly bearded throat bobbed. “I told you earlier, I know,” he was still talking low. “I thought we agreed to put it behind us?”

I sniffled.

Dallas sighed again as he dropped his chin, meeting my gaze with those hazel-green eyes. “You gotta stop crying,” my neighbor said in a gentle voice that broke the camel’s back.

I wanted to tell him “okay,” but I couldn’t even manage to get that one single word out from how much I was hiccupping, unable to catch my breath.

“I’m no snitch.”

He wasn’t a snitch. My chest was puffing with those deadly, restrained, silent tears, and even though a gigantic part of me wanted to tell him I was fine, or at least that I would be fine, and explain it was no big deal, my big mouth went for it as my crying went straight to weeping—gasping breaths, shaking shoulders, a headache that went straight to pounding. “He wants me to give him socks.”

There was a pause and a “What?” in that rumbled voice that got mostly buried beneath my tears and gasps.

It probably didn’t even come out of my mouth correctly, but I answered, “Louie told me I could give him socks from now on.” I didn’t want to believe I was wailing, but it was probably pretty damn close to it.

Through the tears blurring my eyes, Dallas’s lips parted and his face went pale. “You can’t… you can’t afford to buy him socks?”

I put a hand over my heart like that would help the ache pounding away. “No. I can.” I wiped at my face as I hiccupped and noticed him closing his mouth. “I used to give my brother socks, and now Louie wants me to give him socks since I can’t… I can’t… give them to my brother anymore.”

There was a pause and then, “This isn’t about the socks?”

He didn’t even know. How could he know? It wasn’t about the fucking socks. At least not totally. It was about everything. About life and death, and white and black and gray. It was about having to be tough when you weren’t used to it. About having to grow when you’d thought you were done growing. In the back of my head, I knew what I’d said didn’t make any damn sense. But how could I explain? How could I begin to tell him that I had lost a part of myself with my brother’s death, and I was trying so hard to keep what I had left together with duct tape and paper clips?

“I miss….” My throat hurt, and I swore my entire chest ached. I couldn’t get the words out. Or maybe I just didn’t want to. I rarely talked about Rodrigo to anyone except Van, but Van was different. She was my sister from another mister. With a cracked tone that could embarrass me later on, I blurted out what I could never say to my mom and dad, to this man who lived across the street from me. “My brother died, and I miss him so much.” My voice cracked; it felt like my soul did the same all over again. I rubbed my palm over my mouth, like it would erase the pain those words gave me. “I miss him so, so much.”

“I’m sorry. I had no idea,” came Dallas’s soft reply.

“It’s hard… hard for me to talk about.” I shrugged and rubbed my lips again, feeling this crushing weight of heartache and mourning.

How could this hurt so much after so long still?

For some reason, I kept on unloading in front of my neighbor. “I have to tell Louie stories because he doesn’t remember him well anymore. I’m pretty sure Josh doesn’t either. And they’re stuck with me. Me. He left them to me.” I rushed out before another half-gallon of tears streamed out of my eyes uncontrollably. I hadn’t believed it after Mandy, and I still couldn’t. They had chosen me, of all the people in the world. “What was he thinking? I don’t know what I’m doing. What if I fuck up more than I already have?”

I didn’t take into consideration that he didn’t even know I had a brother, much less know anything about him. He wouldn’t understand why I missed him so much. How could he?

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered steadily. His gaze was zeroed in on me like he didn’t know what to do or say. His forehead was lined, his eyes pinched, his mouth slightly parted. He was stuck, and I mean, what was there to say or do? I was unloading on him and crying, and I didn’t even know his middle name.

“I’m sorry.” I wiped at my face futilely again. “It’s been a long day and you’ve already been so much nicer than you needed to. I’m so sorry. This is Louie’s and his damn sock’s fault.”

He seemed to study me, some emotion I couldn’t completely comprehend tightening the area around his eyes and the skin along his jaw. “The boys… both of them… are your brother’s?”

I nodded, sniffling, not even slightly regretting getting all of that out.

His expression only changed for a brief moment, too quick for me to really process it, and then he frowned. He opened his mouth wider and closed it. His hand went up to the back of his neck and he cupped it. Lines appeared at his forehead. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, blinking before the words burst out of his mouth. “What the hell are you apologizing for? You’re upset and you miss your brother.”

I was too shocked to even nod.

In the blink of an eye, he was looking at me like I was crazy. “You’re still a kid raising two other kids, and you care enough to worry about what kind of people you’re raising them to be. None of that sounds unreasonable to me.”

I tipped my face back and fanned at my eyes, trying my freaking hardest to get the crying under control. I gurgled some kind of noise that said I heard him.

Minutes passed with the only sound between us being me making noises. I didn’t want to look at my neighbor, so I didn’t. Eventually, after however long it could have been, he sat on the second step, so close the side of his arm bumped into my lower leg. “How long has it been?”

“Two years,” I croaked, still waving my hand back and forth. Crying usually made me feel better, but in this case, I wasn’t so sure if that was the case. “The longest two years of my life.”

The breath of air he let out through his mouth had me eyeing him. He had his chin tipped up. A car drove by. “I was Josh’s age, I guess, when my dad died, and I still miss him every day. You can get over a lot of shit in two years, but I don’t think anybody would argue that’s long enough to make losing your brother any more bearable,” he informed me in that cool voice that was almost sweet. “Anybody that tells you otherwise has never lost anything or anybody that mattered.”

I’d never heard truer words spoken.

“It isn’t long enough. Not even close to being long enough,” I agreed. “Are you ever just… okay with it? Is that what’s supposed to happen? Does it get easier?” I asked him, not expecting an answer and not getting one either. “I forget sometimes that I can’t call him and tell him something funny my mom said, or ask him to come and fix something stupid I did that I don’t want my dad finding out about.” How many times had I faced that reality? I hiccupped, missing him so much more by the second.

My throat started hurting, and I wasn’t sure whether the liquid coming down over my lip was snot or tears. Frankly, I didn’t care. “I’m never going to get to see him again or mess with him again. He’s never going to shove my face into my birthday cake again or give me birthday licks. He was an asshole, but he was my asshole brother. And I want him back.” The tears started flooding out of me all over again, my chest knotting itself up.

“Assholes or not, they’re still your family.”

I couldn’t stop crying. “I know. I had him for twenty-seven years and the boys didn’t even get a dime of that with him. It’s not fair. I don’t want them to grow up with daddy issues, when I know my brother would have killed me so he’d have more time with them. And you know what? I would have been okay with that. If something happened to me, it would have been different.” I wiped at my face again. “This is so fucking unfair for Josh and Lou and my parents. It’s bullshit. It’s just fucking bullshit.”

He turned to look at me over his shoulder, the yellow lights of the deck lighting up the side of his strong jaw and straight, long nose. “I’m not saying it isn’t bullshit. It is. I don’t know why somebody lives and somebody else dies, but it happens and nothing you do can change that. You can’t feel guilty for being here and him not. That isn’t the way it works.”

I let out this moan at his words, shaking my head.

“Diana,” he said in that sensitive tone that seemed so foreign on his scratchy vocal chords. “I’ve seen you with them enough. You don’t… it doesn’t look like they’re not yours. It’s clear as day to me that those boys love you like you’re more than their aunt. A blind man could see that. They wouldn’t love you if you weren’t doing shit right. That’s gotta mean something, bullshit or not. You got this job to do and nothing is going to take it away from you. At least you’re killing it. I don’t know your brother, but if he’s somewhere looking down right now, at least he knows he made the right choice leaving them to you. You can’t hide what you have with them.”

There was something in his words and tone that eased just a little of the pain cracking my heart open. Just a little. I sniffled and thought about that undying loyalty the three of us shared with each other. Maybe the situation that brought us together sucked, but I loved them more than I’d ever loved anything doubled and tripled. “They really do love me. But they always have.”

His shrug made it seem like he’d just solved some great mystery. “I don’t got any kids, but I got a lot of friends who do, and if it makes you feel better, I don’t think any of them have a fucking clue what they’re doing half the time anyway. My mom sure as hell didn’t.”

I wasn’t sure I really believed that, but I didn’t feel like arguing.

“Your brother left them to you in his will?”

I nodded and slowly leaned forward to wrap my arms around my shins, my chin going to my knees. I’d accepted that trying to keep my face dry was pointless. “Yeah. It was in his and his wife’s will. If anything ever happened to the both of them, I’d be their guardian, not my parents or the other set of grandparents. Me. Those idiots. I never even had a dog before them.” Thinking back on the months after Rodrigo passed weren’t something I liked reminiscing on, especially not when I thought about Mandy, too. What had started off with me taking the boys for a little while because she’d been out of her mind had become the last permanent thing the boys had.

He nodded, still watching me with those curious eyes that weren’t filled with hesitation for once. What happened to their mom? I could sense him asking me with his silence.

I answered him back with my own silence. There are some things you couldn’t say with words.

He stared at me for a minute before something inside of him said I get it. “I think that says it all right there,” he finally chimed in. “If you’re telling me he loved his kids enough to give you the ax if he could have, he wouldn’t have left them to you if he didn’t think you could handle it.”

No, it was Mandy who should have had them, not me. But it did end up being me, and like he’d said, there was nothing I could do to change what was already done. “Well yeah. No one’s going to love them like I do. I’m the best of the worst.” I could say that. It was the truth. I’d pulled myself out of the hole I’d been in for them when other people hadn’t been able to, and it had only been because of that love for those two boys who had stolen my heart before they’d even been born, that I’d managed.

His jaw moved and he asked, “They have more family, don’t they? I thought I’d seen their grandparents too.”

“They have another aunt, who’s great, but…” I thought of their aunt and shook my head. “I probably would have taken her to court if she’d gotten them. Knowing the boys, they would have run away to come live with me. I’m their favorite.” Saying the words out loud, this truth that I knew to the root of who I was, it made me feel better. Because it wasn’t a lie. It was something I believed and had always believed, even if I forgot about it sometimes. Who the hell else would do a better job than me? Their other aunt? In her fucking dreams. The Larsens were the best, but couldn’t handle them all the time. They were in their early seventies; they’d had their girls late in life. And my parents… they were everything good parents should be, even with their strict shit, but they’d never been the same after Rodrigo’s death. That was something I’d never admitted to anyone, not even my best friend, and chances were I never would.

My neighbor made a small sound that could have meant a dozen different things. What I noticed was that this hard, rough man seemed to lose the tightness that lived at his shoulders. He met my gaze and I didn’t move it.

I smiled at him, probably the ugliest smile in the history of smiles, and he returned it faintly.

“Thank you for saying those things and making me feel better,” I sniffled.

He shrugged like what he’d done was no big deal.

“I appreciate it.”

“All I did was sit here.” Dallas raised those shoulders again. Easy. “We all go through shit for our family that we wouldn’t do for anybody else.”

“That’s for damn sure,” I mumbled, catching on to the hook he’d thrown out and holding on because I’m nosey like that and knew little to nothing about this man who was a male figure in Josh’s life. “You let your brother live with you. I’m sure you know.” His brother seemed like an asshole.

Dallas shook his head and turned his attention on something across the street, the muscles in his shoulders and along his neck bunching. “My brother’s been a stupid piece of shit for so long he doesn’t remember how not to be one. The only reason I haven’t kicked him out is because I’m the only one he’s got left. Our mom’s had it with him. Nana’s had it with him. If I give up on him too….” He cleared his throat and glanced at me over his shoulder. His eyes were so full of some kind of imaginary weight, only I, who had the same burden, could see it. I felt like I understood. “I won’t. It doesn’t matter.”

Goose bumps rose along my arms. Family was family, and maybe this man had been an idiot before, but we understood that heavy burden. “I haven’t seen him in a while, here or at practice.”

“Me neither.”

I glanced at him. “You think he’s okay?”

“Yeah. He’s pissed off at me, nothing unusual.”

And I thought my brother had been an asshole. I hesitated and wiped at my face again with the back of my hand. “Can I ask you something?”

“I don’t know,” was his immediate response, making me sit up a little straighter.

“You don’t know what?”

“I don’t know what the hell he got into a fight over that day you helped him. He wouldn’t tell me. A couple of the guys in the club—”

Was he talking about the motorcycle club Trip was in?

“—said they heard he was fooling around with a married woman, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was about, just that it was over and that that shit wouldn’t happen again,” he explained, back to that cool voice I’d heard come out of him before tonight.

“Oh.” Well. That wasn’t where I thought that explanation was going. Over this conversation about his brother and my brother, I laid my cheek on my knee and told him, “I’m sorry about your dad, by the way. I see how much Josh and Louie hurt from it, and it’s nothing any kid should ever have to go through. I can barely get through it.”

“He’d been sick for a while,” he said almost clinically, calmly, like he’d had years to deal with it and could somehow say those words without losing his shit. “My dad’s best friend and some uncles were there for me a lot after his death. It made a huge difference in my life. I got through it because of them and my mom. As long as you’re there for them, they’ll be fine. Believe me.”

We both just sat there in silence for a while, caught up in the night, in the absence of bugs and the close semblance of quiet that was possible in a neighborhood in a major city. Slowly my grief for my brother went back to that low-level hum that never completely left but became manageable.

“Thanks for putting Josh on the team,” I finally got out for the first time.

Dallas sat forward, that lean, muscular upper body curling over his knees as his gaze cut to my direction. “I didn’t put him on the team. He earned it,” he explained.

I eyed my neighbor as I wiped the last traces of tears from my face and sniffed. “He was the best one who tried out.”

Dallas look at me for a moment, his hand going up to the back of his neck as he did it, and with a twist of his mouth, he smiled for the second time, closed-mouth and everything. He didn’t agree or disagree. Wuss.

“It’s the truth.”

His smile curved and grew, and I would swear on my life, his cheeks went a little pink. It made me grin even as my eyes felt bloated from crying so much. I hated pity parties; I didn’t know how to deal with them.

“You know it. I know it. It’s fine. You’re trying not to play favorites. I get it.” This deep chuckle, so perfect for his voice, finally sprung out of him, and it made me sniffle one last time. Before I could stop myself, I said what I’d wanted to say to him for a while now. “You know it’s bullshit you suspended me from going to a practice.”

The chuckle grew into a laugh. “You’re still hung up on that?”

Somewhere in my conscience, I noted again that he had a really good laugh. Deep from his chest. Honest. He was still a prick for what he’d done before our truce, despite how nice he’d been to me today, but I could see myself forgiving him for it a lot faster than I would have without.

“You instigated it, and I can’t play favorites. You said it.” He chuckled for a moment before lowering his voice. “I haven’t seen that car from the other day again, by the way.”

The other…? Oh. Anita. Shit. “Me neither. I don’t think she’ll show up again. She’s probably the reason why I got a migraine today to begin with. Thanks for keeping an eye out though.”

“Sure.” With that, he stood, brushing the back of his shorts with his palms. I made myself keep my eyes on his face. “You’re gonna be fine.”

“I’m gonna be fine,” I confirmed and then used his words on him. “Thanks for… everything.” I wondered if he’d remember that term we’d used when we met for the second time.

He must have because a smile grew out of his laugh. “Yeah, you got it.” His hands went to his pockets suddenly. “I came over to see if I’d left my wallet. Mind if I take a look?”