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“What do you—” I stopped mid-sentence as I stuck my head out and saw inside the apartment. Pointy little jacks had been spilled in front of the door like a booby trap. Something shiny was on the floor just in front of them, presumably oil to cause an unsuspecting intruder to slip into the jacks.
“Did he…” Luca started.
“Yeah,” I said. “Booby traps. But we just need to find him and ask him where his dad is. He only had a few minutes, and I’m pretty sure three grown adults can manage not to step on some toys and oil.”
“Yeah,” Luca said. He took one step forward through the doorway and his head bent backwards. A bizarre shimmer of light stretched out on either side of him as a sticky noise rang out. I didn’t realize what I was seeing until a moment later when Luca was clawing cellophane wrapping off his face.
His long, lanky arms pinwheeled and he doubled over, consumed by sheer panic. For some reason, he was doing a whole lot of wild flailing and absolutely no calm pulling of the wrapping off his face.
“Fuck,” he gasped.
Lindsey walked up to him, let him flail a little longer as she gave me a sometimes I wonder what I see in this man, look, and peeled the plastic off his head.
Luca was wide-eyed with his fists up like he was ready to punch the next thing he saw.
“Easy, Rambo,” Lindsey said. “And watch your language. There’s a kid in the apartment.”
We weaved our way past the oil, jacks, a tupperware bowl of flour that sat on top of a partially opened door, and over the string tightly pulled at ankle-level between the door to the back hallway where Ben’s bedroom was. As we got closer to the restroom, we could hear a woman in the restroom grunting and grumbling to herself about something.
“Ma’am?” I called through the door.
There was a sharp intake of breath. “Who are you?”
“I’m looking for Jack or Ben.”
“Ben who?”
“Ben the kid you are probably supposed to be watching?” I tried
Before she could answer, Ben jumped out from his bedroom with another tupperware of flour in one hand and a bottle of vegetable oil in the other. He flung both in our direction.
I saw the slowly spreading mist of white creep toward us and the zigzagging strings of oil leaping through the air. Luca took the brunt of both, but Lindsey and I were also hit in the back.
This was not how I expected my dramatic “take me back” moment to go.43JackI was losing my mind. There wasn’t any other way around it. One minute, I’d found myself flying to Florida unexpectedly to… what? Have a quick conversation and eat a sandwich at Nola’s restaurant? Then I’d managed to get out of there without doing anything too stupid, like asking her to come back with me.
And now it had hardly been twenty-four hours and I’d asked the old woman down the hall to watch Ben so I could pace outside with my phone in my hand, trying to think of what I could say if I called her. Hell, I’d nearly bought another pair of plane tickets a few minutes ago and flown Ben and I back to Florida.
It was time to face the facts.
If doing the “right” thing was going to be an all-consuming task that turned me into a neurotic mess, then it wasn’t the right thing anymore.
The fact was that I wanted Nola too badly. I wanted that slice of perfect she’d given me back. Those nights where I held her on the couch and watched a movie with the boys in their tent. Or more the mornings like the one when I’d convinced her to let me make her French toast and she’d told me what a terrible cook I was.
I’d been too preoccupied with being afraid to enjoy it in the moment. Now all I could do was look back and kick myself for letting it all slip by. For forcing it to.
My phone buzzed as a text came through from Miss Betty. “Some people are here for you. There’s a mess.”
I frowned at the message. What the hell did that mean?
I’d been pacing back and forth in the alley between my building and the bank beside it when the text came through. It was only a minute or two before I’d made it inside and up the stairs to my apartment.
I took one step inside the already-open door and my foot didn’t stop like it should have. It slid forward on something slick and I landed hard on several spikey, hard toys.
A low, gasping groan escaped me. All the wind in my lungs was gone, and I briefly forgot how to breathe.
My vision went a little blurry with definitely not tears, and then I saw Nola and two other people leaning down over me, trying to help me up. For some reason they were spattered with Jackson Pollock style daubs of white flour.
