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“What is your deal?” She opened her driver’s side door like it was the one she was mad at. “She’s three! Do you realize how stupid you seem picking on a kid?”
“I’m not picking on her. She spoke to me first.”
She laughed incredulously, hand flying to her stomach to hold it. “Because you were standing there staring at us. You’ve been doing that ever since you moved in last week!”
Had I?
My neck and face had never felt so hot before. I was equal parts mad as hell and embarrassed. This foolish confrontation was my fault. Why the fuck didn’t I just let it be? Why did the girl and her mom crawl up under my skin and take up residence in my head?
Breathing in and out, I attempted to find patience. When I realized that I’d become a hopeless shithead, I exhaled loudly and then muttered, “What miserable luck finding out the demon is your neighbor?”
“You stole my chips!” Lucy screamed from the rear of the car.
“Lucy!” her mom hissed. “Why does she keep saying that?” Her gaze briefly landed on her daughter before snapping on me. “Did you really steal her chips?”
I scratched my jaw and stood there for a moment. She had that aura about her… There was something about mothers—even young ones—that made you twitch when guilty. “She dropped them.” There. That was all I would ever admit. “So I picked them up when she did.” Okay, apparently it wasn’t.
“He hissed at me, mommy!”
Ah, fuck.
“Oh, my gosh.” She blew out irritably. “You really took my daughter’s chips. And you hissed at her. What the fudge is wrong with you?”
Fudge?
When she put it like that, I didn’t know what to say. I knew I was an ass. At the time, it had even been a little funny to me. But when someone else had that angry, frightened glance pointed toward me… Someone that didn’t even know me… Wow, what was my problem?
I picked a fight with a kid.
I’d never done that. The last time I spoke to a kid was at my younger cousin’s birthday three years ago. I only went out of obligation, but as soon as I got there I realized why I didn’t do those things. An hour later I was gone.
Despite my tendency to be a jerk, I wanted to believe I was a decent guy. I just didn’t care much for kids and wanted none of my own.
“Just stop staring, and for heaven’s sake, stop talking to my daughter,” she snapped as she got in her car. I didn’t get to say anything else. Her car sped off within a minute after she got in it.
I rubbed my temples, but it didn’t ease the tension.
I should have ignored the kid and gone into my house. I should have stopped trying to decode them like they were some unsolved mystery on a crime show. This little quarrel had been my fault when normally I was a guy that went about ignoring anything that got on my damn nerves.
With a long, drawn-out groan, I hung my head and finally walked inside.
_______
I saw Lucy and her mother almost every day the following week going to or from work. Lucy’s mom was no longer avoiding my eyes when she saw me. Instead, she made it her duty to scowl in my direction. Lucy had that same glower down pat. Angry expressions, however, didn’t suit them.
Despite the bags beneath her eyes and the exhausted smile she gave Lucy, the woman didn’t appear much older than eighteen. The messy bun didn’t help. It only made her look drained. When they were around, their presence drew me in. Maybe it was guilt making me search for them every time I went out the door.
Kids were too coddled and spoiled. They were often bratty and rude like Lucy. But I should have known better. That was a truth I’d only acknowledge to myself. Sadly, the awareness boiled over into my hours at the parlor, and Wendy took notice.
“What’s been your deal all week?” she finally asked on Saturday evening.
Grunting, I focused on the small cross tattoo I was working on along the curve of a left breast. When I said nothing, she added, “Not going to tell me?”
“On Monday, I got into a spat with this kid and her mom and somehow, I’ve been feeling shitty about it all week.”
She clucked her tongue and laughed. “Uh-oh. What did you do?”
“You into single moms?” Lance asked from his chair. From where I sat I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was giving a woman a neck tattoo. “That’s surprising. You don’t seem like the kid type.”
