Wait for It

I was this fucking close to banging my head on the steering wheel. Oh my God. It was too early for this. And if I was going to be totally honest with myself, noon would have been too early for this. Six in the evening would have been too early for this.

“I don’t have any friends.” Josh continued the same rant he’d been going on for the last small eternity about how unfair starting fifth grade at a new school was.

He’d been going at it for twenty minutes exactly. I’d been eyeing the clock.

They were twenty minutes I would never, ever get back.

Twenty minutes that seemed like they were going to span the next six months between this moment and my thirtieth birthday.

Twenty minutes that had me silently begging for patience. Or for the end. For anything to make him stop. Oh my God. I was crying invisible tears and sobbing silently.

I’d been dropping Josh and Lou off at school and daycare for a long time, and in that period, waking up before seven hadn’t gotten any easier. I doubted it ever would. My soul cried every morning when the alarm went off; then it cried even more when I had to keep after Josh to wake up, get out of bed, and get dressed. So listening to him complain for the hundredth time about the unfairness of starting all over again was too much to handle before lunchtime.

To be fair, a huge part of me could understand that having to make new friends sucked. But it was a better school than the one he’d been at before, and Josh—not counting this moment—was the kind of kid I was proud to be mine, who made friends easily. He got that from our side of the family. I’d give him a week before he had a new best friend, two weeks before someone invited him for a sleepover, and three weeks before he completely forgot he had ever complained in the first place. He adapted well. Both boys did.

But this, this was making it seem like I was ruining his life. At least that was what he was pretty much hinting at. Me destroying a ten-year-old’s life. I could cross that off my bucket list.

When his grandparents had dropped him off the night before after being gone for a week, and he’d already been in a terrible mood, I should have known what I’d be getting myself into.

“Who am I going to sit with at lunch? Who is going to let me borrow a pencil if I need one?” he pleaded out the question like a total drama queen. I wasn’t sure where the hell he’d picked that up from.

My real question was: why wouldn’t he have a pencil to begin with? I’d bought him a value pack and mechanical pencils.

I didn’t bother answering or asking about the pencil situation, because at this point, I thought he just wanted to hear himself talk, and anything I said wasn’t going to be helpful. Commentary was pointless, and frankly, I didn’t trust myself not to make a sarcastic comment that he would take the worst way possible because he was in a mood.

“Who am I going to talk to?” he kept going, undaunted by the silence. “Who am I going to invite to my birthday?”

Oh dear God, he was worrying about imaginary birthday parties already. How rude would it be if I turned on the radio loud enough to zone him out?

“Are you listening to me?” Josh asked in that whiney voice he usually spared me from.

I gritted my teeth and kept my face forward so that he wouldn’t see me glaring at him through the rearview mirror. “Yes, I’m listening to you.”

“No, you’re not.”

I sighed and gave the steering wheel a squeeze. “Yes, I am. I’m just not going to say anything because I know you’re not going to believe me when I tell you that you’re going to make friends, that everything is going to be fine, and when your birthday rolls around, you’ll have more than enough people to invite, J.” I kept my mouth shut about his non-pencil problem for both of our sakes. When he didn’t respond, I asked, “Am I right?”

He grumbled.

Just like my damn brother. “Look, I get it. I’ve hated starting at a new job where I didn’t know anyone, but you’re a Casillas. You’re cute, you’re smart, you’re nice, and you’re good at anything you want to be good at. You’ll be fine. You’ll both be fine. You’re amazing.”

More grumbling.

“Right, Louie?” I glanced into the rearview mirror to see the upcoming kindergartner in his booster seat, grinning and nodding.

“Yeah,” he replied, totally cheery.

Seriously, everything about that kid made me smile. Not that Josh didn’t, but not in the same way as Lou. “Are you worried about starting school?” I asked the little one. We’d talked about him starting kinder plenty of times in the past, and every single time, he had seemed stoked about it. There was no reason for me to think otherwise. My biggest worry had been that he might bawl his eyes out when I dropped him off, but Louie wasn’t really that type of kid. He’d loved daycare.

Ginny had warned me that I’d cry taking him to his first day, but there was no way I could or would break down in front of him. If I cried, he’d cry even if he had no idea why. And I’d be damned if that happened. When I’d taken his picture in front of the house a little while earlier, I may have had one little tear in my eye, but that was all I was willing to give up.

“Nope,” he replied in that happy five-year-old voice that made me want to snuggle him until the end of time.

“See, J? Lou’s not worried. You shouldn’t be either.” In the rearview mirror, Josh’s head drooped before falling to the side to rest against the glass window. But it was the huge sigh that came out of such a young body that really got me. “What is it?” I asked.

He shook his head a little.

“Tell me what’s really wrong.”

“Nothing.”

“You know I’m not going to drop it until you tell me. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” he insisted.

I sighed. “J, you can tell me anything.”

With his forehead to the glass, he pressed his mouth to it, steam fogging up the area around his lips. “I was thinking about Dad, okay? He always took me to school the first day.”

Fuck. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Last year, he’d gotten pretty grumpy about starting the school year then too. Only it hadn’t been this bad. Of course, I missed Drigo, too. But I didn’t tell Josh, no matter how much I needed to sometimes. “You know he would tell you—”

“There’s no crying in baseball,” he finished off for me with a sigh.

Rodrigo had been firm and tough, but he’d loved his kids, and there wasn’t a single thing he didn’t think they could do. But he’d been that way with everyone he loved, including me. A knot formed in my throat and had me trying to clear it as discreetly as possible.

Was I doing the right thing with Josh? Or was I being too tough on him? I didn’t know, and the indecision burrowed a notch straight into my heart. It was moments like these that reminded me I had no idea what the hell I was doing, much less what the end result would be when they grew up, and that was terrifying.

“Your new school is going to be great. Trust me, J.” When he didn’t say anything, I turned to look at him over my shoulder. “You trust me, don’t you?”

And just like that, he was back to being a pain in the ass. He rolled his eyes. “Duh.”

“Duh my ass—butt. I’m going to drop you off at the pound on the way home.”

“Oooh,” Louie cooed, forever an instigator.

“Shut up, Lou,” Josh snapped.

“No, thank you.”

“Oh my God, both of you be quiet,” I joked. “Let’s play the quiet game.”

“Let’s not,” Josh replied. “Have you found me a new Select team?”

Damn it. I slid a look to the side window, suddenly feeling guilty that I still hadn’t even started looking for a new baseball team for him. Once upon a time, I would have lied to him and said that I had but that wasn’t the kind of relationship I wanted to have with the boys. So I told him the truth. “No, but I will.”

I didn’t have to turn around to sense the accusation in his gaze, but he didn’t make me feel bad over it. “Okay.”

None of us said anything else as I pulled up to the curb at the school and put the car into park. Both boys sat there, looking at me expectantly, making me feel like a shepherd to my sheep.

A shepherd who didn’t always know the right direction to go.

I could only try my best and hope it was good enough. Then again, wasn’t that the story to everyone’s lives? “Everything is going to be okay. I promise.”

* * *

“Miss Lopez!”

I shut the car door with my hip later that day, with what felt like fifty pounds of grocery bags hanging off my wrists. Louie was already at the front door of our house, the two smallest bags from our shopping trip in each of his hands. While I usually tried to avoid taking them to the grocery store, the trip had been inevitable. The salon wasn’t scheduled to open until the next day, and I was partially thankful that I’d been able to pick them up their first day of school. Considering that even Louie hadn’t looked like school had been everything he might have hoped it would be, grocery shopping had gone well; I’d only had to threaten the boys twice. Josh paused halfway to his brother with full hands too, a frown growing on his face as he looked around.

“Miss Lopez!” the frail voice called out again, barely heard, from somewhere close but not that close. I didn’t think anything of it as I stepped toward them, watching as Josh’s gaze narrowed in on something behind me.

“I think she’s talking to you,” he suggested, his eyes staying locked on whatever it was he was looking at.

Me? Miss Lopez? It was my turn to frown. I glanced over my shoulder to find why he would assume that. The instant I spotted the faded pink housedress at the edge of the porch of the pretty yellow house across the street, I forced myself to suppress a groan.

Was the old woman calling me Miss Lopez?

She waved a frail hand, confirming my worst guess.

She was. She really, really was.

“Who’s Miss Lopez?” Louie asked.

I blew a raspberry, torn between being irritated at being called just about the most Latino last name possible and wanting to be a good neighbor, even though I had no clue what she could possibly wanted. “I guess I am, buddy,” I said, lifting up the hand that had the least amount of groceries on it and waving at the old woman.

She gestured with that bone-thin hand to come over.

The problem with trying to teach two small humans how to be a good person was that you had to set a good example for them. All. The. Time. They ate everything up. Learned every word and body language that you taught them. I’d learned the hard way over the years just how sponge-like their minds were. When Josh was a baby, he’d picked up on “shit” like a duck to water; he’d used it all the time for any reason. He’d knock over a toy: “Shit.” He’d trip: “Shit.” Rodrigo and I had thought it was hilarious. Everyone else? Not so much.

So, trying to teach them good manners required me to rise above the instincts to want to groan when something frustrated or annoyed me. Instead, I winked at the boys before looking back at our new neighbor and yelling, “One minute!”

She waved her hand in response.

“Come on, guys, lets put up the groceries and go see what the”—I almost said old lady and just barely caught the words before they came out—“neighbor needs.”

Louie shrugged with that signature bright smile on his face and Josh groaned. “Do I have to?”

I nudged him with my elbow as I walked by him. “Yes.”

Out of the corner of my eye, his head lolled back. “I can’t wait? I won’t open the door for anybody.”

He was already starting with not wanting to go places with me. It made my heart hurt. But I told him over my shoulder, even as I unlock the door, “Nope.” Once I got him started on staying home alone, there would be no going back. I knew it, and I was going to cling to him being a little boy as long as possible, damn it.

He groaned, loud, and I caught Louie’s gaze. I winked at him and he winked back… with both eyes.

“I need my bodyguards, Joshy Poo,” I said, pushing the door open and waving my youngest one inside the house.

Said “Joshy Poo” blew out his own raspberry as he passed by me into the house, only slightly stomping his feet. He didn’t say anything else as we unpacked the things that needed to go into the refrigerator and left everything else on the counter for later. We crossed the street, with Josh dragging his feet behind him and Louie holding my hand, and found the door to the yellow house closed.

I tipped my head toward it. “Goo, knock.”

Louie didn’t need to be told twice. He did it and then took two steps over to stand by me. Josh was almost directly behind us. It took a minute, but the door swung slowly open, a poof of white hair appearing in the crack for a moment before it went wide. “You came,” the woman said, her milky blue eyes going from the boys to me and back again.

I smiled at her, my hand going to pet the dark blond head at my hip almost distractedly. “What can we help you with, ma’am?”

The woman took a step into the house, letting me get a good look at the pale pink dress she had on with snap buttons going down the middle. Those thin, very white hands seemed to shake at her sides, a tale of her age. Her lined mouth pulled up at the corners just a little. “You cut hair?”

I forgot I had given her my business card. “I do.”

“Would ya mind givin’ me a little snip? I was supposed to have an appointment, but my grandson has been too busy to take me,” she explained, swallowing, bringing attention to the wrinkled, loose skin at her throat. “I’m startin’ to look like a hippy.”

I usually got pretty annoyed with people when they first found out I was a hair stylist and wanted preferential treatment: a free haircut, some kind of at-home service, a discount—or worse, when they expected me to drop everything to take care of them. You didn’t ask a doctor to give you a free check-up. Why would someone think that my time wasn’t as valuable as anyone else’s?

But…

I didn’t need to look at the trembling, heavily veined hands at Miss Pearl’s sides or her cloud of thin white hair to know there was no way I could possibly tell this woman I wouldn’t do what she was asking of me, much less charge her. Not just because she was my neighbor, but because she was old and her grandkid was supposed to take her to get a haircut and hadn’t. I had loved the hell out of my grandparents when I was a kid, especially my grandmother. I had a soft spot for all of my older clients; I charged them less than I did everyone else.

Ginny had long ago stopped asking why I gave them discounts, but I’m sure she understood. Sure, it was unfair to give some people a discount, but the way I looked at it, life wasn’t fair sometimes, and if you were going to cry about an elderly person paying less than you, you needed to get a life.

And this elderly, judgmental lady… I gave Louie’s shoulder a squeeze. “Okay. I have time right now if you’d like me to do it.”

Josh muttered something behind me.

The old woman’s smile was so bright that I felt bad for groaning when I had realized she wanted me to cross the street to go talk to her. “I wouldn’t be putting you out?”

“No. It’s no problem. I have shears at home. Let me go grab them and come back,” I said.

* * *

“Don’t cut too much.”

“That’s too much.”

“Could you go a little shorter?”

“My beautician doesn’t usually do it like that. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

I should have known after her first comment that the haircut wasn’t going to go as easily as I would have liked. There were two different types of customers in my profession: the kind that let you do whatever the hell you wanted, and the kind that nitpicked every single strand of hair. I used up all of my patience on the boys most of the time, so I loved the customers that genuinely didn’t care. I felt like I had a good idea with what worked best for people’s faces, and I would never give someone a haircut that needed a lot of maintenance if they didn’t have time for it, unless they begged.

But I kept my mouth shut and a smile on my face as I listened to my elderly neighbor and tried to cut her hair the way she wanted.

“Where do you usually get your hair done?” I asked as I worked my way around her, being extra careful around her paper-thin skin with the super-sharp edges of the shears. The last thing I wanted or needed was to accidentally cut her.

“Molly’s,” she replied.

On the floor a few feet away, Louie was lying on his belly with a notebook he was drawing in while Miss Pearl’s ancient cat sniffed his shoes, and Josh had a handheld game system in front of his face. He’d asked me again if he could stay home, and I’d told him the same thing I had originally. I wasn’t sure why he was in such a grumpy mood today, but I wasn’t going to worry about it too much. He had his days. I couldn’t blame him; I did too.

“Do you know where that’s at?” Miss Pearl asked after she rattled off side streets that weren’t familiar.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Oh? You’re not from here?”

My chest ached for a moment. An image of Rodrigo filled my head briefly, and I swallowed. “No. I’m from El Paso. I lived in Fort Worth for a few years and San Antonio for a little bit before moving here.”

“Divorced?” she blatantly asked.

And that was why I loved old people. They didn’t give a single shit about how their questions could make you feel. She had already asked if I had a husband last time; now she went in for clarification. “No.”

The “oh” out of her mouth was just about the most disapproving thing I’d ever heard, and it took me a minute to realize how she was going to take it.

But I didn’t care about what she was assuming. There was nothing wrong with being a single, unmarried mom. Or in my case, a single, unmarried aunt.

I wasn’t imagining the sneer that came over the elderly woman’s face. I also didn’t miss the apprehensive expression that Louie shot our way. That kid was the most emotionally intuitive person I’d ever met and always had been. Where Josh understood my moods like he had some kind of emo-location, it was only with me. Lou was something else.

“Well,” she hummed. “Me and my George were together for fifty-eight years before he kicked the bucket—”

I coughed.

“My sons knew what they were doin’, too. They married good girls. Their kids…” She literally went “harrumph” and rolled her eyes as she thought about her grandkids. “But my girls, neither one of them had a man for longer than a few years atta time. Not that I blame them. My girls are pains in the you-know-what. All I’m tryin’ to say is that you’re better off not having a man than having a lousy one. You got your own house with your boys, so you can’t be doin’ too bad.”

And just like that, I went back to snipping away. Maybe this lady wasn’t so bad after all. “You’re right. You are better off being alone than with someone who doesn’t make you happy.” I’d learned that shit the hard way.

“You got a pretty face. I’m sure you’ll find somebody someday that doesn’t mind you havin’ kids.”

And I retracted my statement on how she wasn’t so bad for a second or two.

She was really old, and she pretty much got a free pass for most things, but I wasn’t used to brutal honesty by someone so new in my life. My parents and best friend were usually honest with me about everything, regardless of whether it would hurt me or not, but they’d had years to reach that level of trust. Sure, I knew some men might run screaming the other way if they met someone with two kids, but it wasn’t like I wanted to date some twenty-one-year-old whose greatest commitment was paying for his own Netflix plan. My imaginary future boyfriend might have kids of his own, and that would be okay. I didn’t know if I would have the energy or patience to date someone who didn’t know how to act around two boys. As long as my imaginary boyfriend wasn’t in love with anyone else, I wouldn’t care he’d been in a long-term relationship before me. Better that than him having slept around with a thousand women.

Then again, I wasn’t planning on dating any time soon. I was doing fine on my own. My hand kept me company just fine, and I’d swapped out my shower sprayer for a handheld one. I was never without company unless I wanted to be, which was the case more often than not lately when I was tired, aka all the time.

I happened to look up and see Josh sitting in the living room staring over at us, his face way too interested. These guys were so nosey. I made sure his gaze met mine, and I gave him a wide-eyed look so that he wouldn’t be so obvious about eavesdropping.

“Your babies’ daddy, is he in the picture?” the older woman blatantly asked.

I told her the truth. “No.”

The “huh” that came out of her mouth was a little too suspicious, and I really didn’t feel like bringing up my brother since she already assumed Josh and Lou had ripped through my birth canal. “I’m just about done. Do you want to look at your hair in the mirror?”

One pale hand went up at her side. “There’s a little mirror in my bathroom. Will you bring it? It’ll take me half the day to get in there and back.”

I squeezed my lips together so that I wouldn’t smile. “Sure. Where’s your bathroom?”

Miss Pearl pointed at the hall connecting to the kitchen. “First door.”

I gently touched her shoulder as I walked around and headed down the hall. The walls were painted a pale, pale pink and were lined near the ceiling with a strip of flowered wallpaper. I caught a few pictures frames mounted to the wall, but I didn’t want to be nosey since I knew she could see me. I ducked into the doorway, finding a small full bathroom with an elevated toilet seat decked out with handles and a clean looking bathtub with a long metal bar bracketed to the wall. Sure enough, over the toilet with a shelf behind it was a fairly large handheld mirror like the one I had at work.

I was only slightly nervous when I handed her the mirror and let her take in the front of her haircut. She moved her chin from side to side and handed it back to me. “Half an inch too short, but you did better than the grumpy bat who’s been cutting my hair. That darn woman tried giving me a mullet,” she claimed.

“I think you dodged a bullet with the mullet,” I joked.

She let out a tiny snort. “You’re telling me. How much do I owe you?”

Like every time I dealt with someone much older than me, an image of my grandmother flashed through my head for a brief moment. I sighed and smiled, resigned. “You don’t owe me anything.” Chances were, she was probably on social security. There was no way she was getting very much money, and she was my neighbor. There was also no way her hair grew fast enough for it to be a burden on my schedule. There were only a certain number of people whose hair I cut that got it for free, and one more wouldn’t be the difference between arthritis and… not arthritis. “It’s a neighborly discount,” I let her know.

Her eyes narrowed in a way that was pretty creepy. “Don’t insult me. I can give you the twelve dollars I usually pay,” she argued.

Her offer only made me want to give her a hug. “Please don’t insult me,” I said gently, trying to sound playful. “I’m not going to charge you anything.”

She let out this exaggerated, long sigh that told me I’d won.

“Point me in the direction of your broom, please.”

She did, and five minutes later, I had managed to sweep up the hair and use her handheld vacuum to pick up the fine clippings left behind. Noticing that I was wrapping up the haircut, Josh and Louie were standing in the living room… staring at the old woman. And the old woman was staring back at them. I was 99 percent sure none of them blinked.

“I’m hungry,” Louie finally said, keeping that blue-eyed gaze on our neighbor.

Packing my shears back into their case, I picked up my keys and raised my eyebrows at him, but he still had his attention on the woman. “We can start on dinner in a minute.” I walked toward them and smiled at our neighbor, who had, at least, stopped staring back. “We should get going before you can start hearing their stomachs grumbling. Let me know if you need anything, okay, Miss Pearl?”

She nodded, her eyes meeting mine before shifting back to Louie for a moment. “I will. Thank you for the ‘do.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I have your number on my freezer,” she let me know as if I hadn’t seen it when I’d first gone into her kitchen. “Y’all ever need something, you let me know.”

“That’s really nice of you, thank you. Same goes for you.” I nudged Josh who had moved to stand next to me. Oh dear God, his mouth was cracked, his eyes narrowed as he took in the woman who was older than his grandparents. “It was nice seeing you.” I poked at Josh again.

“Bye, miss,” he kind of mumbled, still dazzled and lost in his trance.

I made my eyes go wide at Louie who had at least managed to catch on to us leaving. “Bye, lady,” he added, shyly.

Lady. God.

I smiled at Miss Pearl and waved the boys toward the door, trying to ask myself where I’d gone wrong with them. Staring. Calling our neighbor “lady.” My mom would be horrified. We filed out, and I made sure to lock the bottom lock on the door before closing it behind me. We made it to the street before Louie did it. “How old is she? A hundred?” he asked, completely curious, without the smallest hint of smart-ass in his tone.

If he hadn’t been holding my dominant hand, I would have smacked myself in the forehead. “Louie!”

“Don’t be dumb. She’s like ninety-five, right, Aunt Di?” Josh butted in.

Oh my God. “I don’t know. Probably, but you’re not supposed to ask that kind of stuff, guys. Jes—Sheesh.”

“Why?” they both asked at the same time.

We made it to the other side of the street before I answered, “Because… it’s not very nice to say she’s ninety-five or a hundred.”

“But why?” That was Louie working alone that time.

I hated when they asked me things I really didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t want to lie either, which just made it that much more complicated. “Because… I don’t know. It’s just not. Some people are sensitive about their age.”

Louie’s little shoulders shrugged up against my leg as he pulled me along the lawn… the lawn that needed to have gotten mowed weeks ago. I had to quit putting it off. “But that’s good she’s old,” he explained his reasoning. “She’s lasted longer than all her other friends. She said her Georgie died. She won.”

It never ceased to amaze me how much they both really absorbed. And it scared me. And reminded me why I had to watch everything I said around them. “Outliving your friends isn’t a competition, you little turds,” I said to them as we walked up the steps toward the front door.

“It’s not?”

Why did they sound so surprised? “No. It’s sad. I mean, it’s good she’s lived for so long, but just….” It was times like these I wished I had Rodrigo around so I could make him deal with answering these kinds of things. What the hell was I supposed to say to them? “Look, it just isn’t nice to say she’s a hundred, or that it’s good all of her friends aren’t around anymore.” Before they could make another comment I had no idea how to respond to, I asked, “Whose turn is it to help me with dinner?”

All the silence needed was crickets in the background.

Mac barked from inside the house like he was volunteering.

I ruffled their hair. “Both of you are going to help? It’s my lucky day.”

It was right then that the loud grumble of a truck warned us of its approach coming down the street. All three of us turned to spot a deep red monster of a Ford pickup making its way closer. I could spy two ladders mounted to a frame around it. In the driver seat was my real, actual neighbor—the hunky one with manners. I raised my palm when he passed by, giving us a view of ladders, equipment, and tools I wasn’t familiar with in the bed of the truck. I was pretty sure he lifted a few fingers in our direction as he pulled into the garage.

What I also noticed in that moment was that red car from the day before was parked on the street in front of my neighbor’s house again. What I also saw was the driver side door opening as we continued making our way toward the house.

Lou went up on his tiptoes, craning his neck toward the house. “Is that the man who was fighting?”

I didn’t lie to him. “No.”

“Who?”

I glanced down at Josh’s tone. “It happened last week. Lou heard someone fighting, and it was the neighbor’s brother,” I had to explain.

The ten-year-old turned his head to pin me with this expression that was beyond his years, like he knew what I was trying to hide. Or maybe he could guess what I had done.

I didn’t need or want him worrying, so I kicked him in the butt, immediately shoving my neighbor’s business aside. “Come on. Let’s get started on dinner before we have to put Mac on the grill.”

“Gross!” Lou gagged.

I swear I loved messing with him. There was something about being young and innocent and gullible that I loved, and to be fair, I used to do the same thing to Josh before he’d gotten old enough to realize I was usually full of shit. The boys had just gone inside the house when my phone started ringing. It was my best friend, Van.

“Diana” was the first thing out of her mouth. “I’m dying,” the too familiar voice on the other end moaned.

I snorted, locking the front door behind me as I held the phone up to my face with my shoulder. “You’re pregnant. You’re not dying.”

“But it feels like I am,” the person who rarely ever complained whined. We’d been best friends our entire lives, and I could only count on one hand the number of times I’d heard her grumble about something that wasn’t her family. I’d had the title of being the whiner in our epic love affair that had survived more shit than I was willing to remember right then.

I held up a finger when Louie tipped his head toward the kitchen as if asking if I was going to get started on dinner or not. “Well, nobody told you to get pregnant with the Hulk’s baby. What did you expect? He’s probably going to come out the size of a toddler.”

The laugh that burst out of her made me laugh too. This fierce feeling of missing her reminded me it had been months since we’d last seen each other. “Shut up.”

“You can’t avoid the truth forever.” Her husband was huge. I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t expect her unborn baby to be a giant too.

“Ugh.” A long sigh came through the receiver in resignation. “I don’t know what I was thinking—”

“You weren’t thinking.”

She ignored me. “We’re never having another one. I can’t sleep. I have to pee every two minutes. I’m the size of Mars—”

“The last time I saw you”—which had been two months ago—“you were the size of Mars. The baby is probably the size of Mars now. I’d probably say you’re about the size of Uranus.”

She ignored me again. “Everything makes me cry and I itch. I itch so bad.”

“Do I… want to know where you’re itching?”

“Nasty. My stomach. Aiden’s been rubbing coconut oil on me every hour he’s here.”

I tried to imagine her six-foot-five-inch, Hercules-sized husband doing that to Van, but my imagination wasn’t that great. “Is he doing okay?” I asked, knowing off our past conversations that while he’d been over the moon with her pregnancy, he’d also turned into mother hen supreme. It made me feel better knowing that she wasn’t living in a different state all by herself with no one else for support. Some people in life got lucky and found someone great, the rest of us either took a long time… or not ever.

“He’s worried I’m going to fall down the stairs when he isn’t around, and he’s talking about getting a one-story house so that I can put him out of his misery.”

“You know you can come stay with us if you want.”

She made a noise.

“I’m just offering, bitch. If you don’t want to be alone when he starts traveling more for games, you can stay here as long as you need. Louie doesn’t sleep in his room half the time anyway, and we have a one-story house. You could sleep with me if you really wanted to. It’ll be like we’re fourteen all over again.”

She sighed. “I would. I really would, but I couldn’t leave Aiden.”

And I couldn’t leave the boys for longer than a couple of weeks, but she knew that. Well, she also knew I couldn’t not work for that long, too.

“Maybe you can get one of those I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up—”

Vanessa let out another loud laugh. “You jerk.”

“What? You could.”

There was a pause. “I don’t even know why I bother with you half the time.”

“Because you love me?”

“I don’t know why.”

“Tia,” Louie hissed, rubbing his belly like he was seriously starving.

“Hey, Lou and Josh are making it seem like they haven’t eaten all day. I’m scared they might start nibbling on my hand soon. Let me feed them, and I’ll call you back, okay?”

Van didn’t miss a beat. “Sure, Di. Give them a hug from me and call me back whenever. I’m on the couch, and I’m not going anywhere except the bathroom.”

“Okay. I won’t call Parks and Wildlife to let them know there’s a beached whale—”

“Goddammit, Diana—”

I laughed. “Love you. I’ll call you back. Bye!”

“Vanny has a whale?” Lou asked.

I tugged on his earlobe. “God, you’re nosey. No, she’s having a baby, remember? And I told her she is a whale right now.”

He made a funny face. “That’s not nice.”

“No, it’s not, but she knows I’m playing. Come on then and grab an onion and celery for me.”

“Celery?” He scrunched up his face.

I repeated myself, getting a nod from him before he turned to get what I asked of him.

I had just started slipping my phone back into my pocket when it started ringing again. I had no idea that in about two minutes, I would be calling myself an idiot for not looking at the screen before I hit the answer button without looking. My muscles had the placement memorized, so I didn’t have to. “Did you fall over already?” I joked.

“Diana?” the female voice came over the phone. The voice sounded familiar. “Don’t hang up—”

And just like a slap to the face, I realized why it was familiar. Smiling at Louie, I said in a bright voice, “You have the wrong number.” And I hung up even as my heart started going double-time.

She had called me maybe once over the last two years—once—and this was the second time she’d called in less than two weeks. I wanted to wonder why she would be calling now of all times, but I knew why. The why was probably in the living room setting up his Xbox for a game.

The thing was there were plenty of things in life you couldn’t escape, including the stupidest thing someone you loved very much did.

“Tia, the trash is full.”

Hopefully, my smile didn’t look as fake as it felt and Louie wasn’t paying enough attention to me to notice it was. The second to last person who needed to know who just called was Louie. “I’ll change it real quick then. Wash that for me, would you, Goo?” I asked, already heading toward the trash can as a ball of dread formed in my belly. He wasn’t big enough to lift the bag out of the can; we’d learned that the hard way, so I didn’t mind being the person in charge of taking it out.

I shoved the phone call aside until later when I was in bed, alone without anyone to see me freaking out.

In no time, I took the bag out and replaced it with a new one, carrying the old one out the kitchen door to dump it in the big trash can outside. I had seriously just taken the first step down toward the trash cans when I heard, “—take your ass and go.”

Say what?

I stopped in place, fully aware that my fence was only a four-foot-tall chain-link one that anyone on the street could see through. A female voice hollered, “You’re a piece of fucking shit, Dallas!”

Dallas as in my neighbor? Was it the lady in the red car out there talking?

“You’re not telling me something you haven’t called me a thousand times before,” the male voice drawled in a loose laugh that somehow didn’t really sound very carefree at all. Jesus. How loud were they talking that I could hear their conversation so clearly?

The curse word that exploded through the air had me raising my eyebrows as I stood there with my bag. Carefully, I made my way down the steps from the kitchen door to the yard and paused by the trash cans, mere feet from the fence that would let me look at my neighbor’s house. Setting the bag down, I let my curiosity get the best of me as I tiptoed over the grass to the corner of the fence and tried to take a peek, convincing myself they wouldn’t see me in the shadows.

The man apparently named or nicknamed Dallas was standing on the porch, and the woman was on the sidewalk, leaning forward in a confrontational gesture. I tried to squint to see them better, but it didn’t help.

“I wouldn’t call you that if you didn’t act like one,” the woman shouted.

The man with the short hair seemed to look up at the sky—or the ceiling of his deck, if you wanted to get technical—and shook his head. His hands went up to palm his forehead. “Just tell me what the hell you came all the way here for, would you?”

“I’m trying to!”

“Get to the fucking point then!” he boomed back like an explosion, whatever control he had disappearing.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t think it was okay for a man to yell at a woman like that, but they were standing far apart and the woman was yelling like a damn crazy person, too. Her pitch was all shrieks and squeaks.

“I’ve been calling you over and over again—”

“Why the fuck would you expect me to answer?” he barked back. “I haven’t heard from you or seen you in three years. We agreed to go through our lawyers, remember that?”

To be fair, I had no idea what was going on and who was really at fault, but he had a point. If I hadn’t spoken to someone in so long, I more than likely wouldn’t answer the phone either.

But lawyers?

Lawyers, yelling at each other, his wedding ring… was this his wife? I’d been in enough relationships to know you didn’t yell at another person with so much hatred unless you’d slept with them at some point.

“Why would you see me? I told you before you left I was done,” the woman yelled back with so much emotion in her voice, I actually started to feel guilty for eavesdropping.

“Trust me, I knew you were done—not like you ever really started anything to begin with,” the man replied.

Yeah. Definitely his wife. Why else would they have lawyers and go so long without talking to each other?

And why would he still be wearing his ring after so long?

“What are you doing?”

I jumped and turned to glance at Louie who was standing on the other side of the screen door, looking at me. “Nothing,” I told him, taking the two steps over to open the trash can and put the bag inside like he hadn’t just caught me eavesdropping.

He waited until I was on the first step to ask, “You were listening to them, huh?”

“Me?” I made my eyes go wide as I opened the door and stepped inside as he backed up to give me room. “No. I’m not nosey.”

Louie scoffed. This five-year-old literally scoffed at me.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “You think I’m nosey?”

Louie had already gone through his lying phase as a toddler, and even if he hadn’t, he knew I didn’t like it, and he didn’t like to hurt anyone’s feelings. Especially mine. But what he said next left me trying to figure out whether I should high-five him or be scared at how manipulative and sneaky he could be. He walked over to me and leaned against my leg with that beaming smile of his. “Wanna hug?”