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I nodded, saving her the need to explain. I’d been so preoccupied with making sure I could trust her with Ben that I hadn’t even stopped to think how it might feel for her. What kind of big sister would bring her little brother to a strange man’s house in an area she wasn’t familiar with?
Trust goes both ways, dumbass.
I gestured for her to come in, which seemed to provoke a breath of relief from her.
“This place is beautiful,” she said tightly. Her hands were clutched in front of her waist around a sweater she was squeezing like a life jacket. “You live here?” She blinked, shaking her head. “Sorry. I mean, obviously you—”
“This is where Ben likes to draw,” I said, leading her through the living room toward the small bonus room lined with windows where we stored all his art supplies. Ben’s hand stopped working on the picture when Nola and I entered the room.
“Wow,” she said, moving toward him and crouching with her hands on her thighs. “You know I used to love drawing when I was younger. At some point I got out of the habit.”
“What do you like to draw?” Ben asked.
I leaned against the wall, watching them with interest. Ben didn’t usually say even that much to strangers, and I felt a cautious rush of optimism to hear him talk to her.
“Girly stuff,” Nola admitted, sliding a paper over to herself and grabbing a purple crayon. “Like this…” She went quiet for a few moments and swirled the crayon around, bringing a twisting vine and a delicate little flower to life.
Ben studied her work, then tapped the vine. “This kind of flower has thorns.”
With a touch of amusement, I wondered when I’d need to teach him that most pretty things did.
Nola’s head pulled back slightly and she raised her eyebrows at him. “You’re really observant, aren’t you? That’s probably why you’re such a good artist. A real artist notices things other people don’t. Like you ask the average person to draw an ant and they don’t even know how many legs they have, but I bet—”
“Six,” he said with a guilty little smile.
Nola laughed. “Wow.” She turned her head towards me. “He’s incredible.”
Ben was smiling to himself, and for the first time in what felt like weeks, I found myself grinning along with them.
Nola continued testing Ben as his smile and self-satisfaction ballooned.
“How many toes does an elephant have on each foot?”
“Five. But the back feet only have four toenails.”
“But I bet you couldn’t draw the bottom of an elephant’s foot, could you?”
Ben scrunched up his face and pushed the paper he’d been working on out of the way. He slid another in front of himself and started scribbling with determination. Nola stole a look at me and we both seemed to catch ourselves smiling at the same time.
I cleared my throat suddenly. “I’m going to grab a drink. Do you want anything?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll come back to check your work in a couple minutes, Ben. And this better be one of those four nail feet, because I want to see if you know which one doesn’t have a nail.”
She followed me to the kitchen where she pulled out a barstool and sat down. “Did I do something wrong?”
“What?” I asked. I’d pulled a bag of coffee grounds out of the cabinet and set it down between us. “No.” I shook my head. “No, you’re doing well.”
I hadn’t realized how tight she’d been until she relaxed a little, sinking into the counter as she rested on her elbows. “He’s adorable, by the way.”
So are you. I turned my back to make the coffee, but also so I could close my eyes and wince. I could feel where this was going, and I needed to put a stop to it as soon as possible. I just needed to stop thinking of her as a woman. Maybe if I imagined she was some sort of precision-built machine, I’d be able to stop worrying I was going to try to sleep with her.
I chanced a look over my shoulder and found her chewing her nail while twirling one of those orange-red braids with her other hand.
No. The robot approach wasn’t going to work, either.
“How do you like it?” I asked once I’d poured her cup of coffee.
She met my eyes, looking startled. “Um, I—”
I realized I wasn’t actually holding the coffee. In fact, I’d just turned toward her, planted both palms on the counter, and demanded to know how she liked it in a gruff voice.
“Your coffee, I mean.”
Nola’s cheeks went bright red. “Like a child,” she said, laughing at herself. “A lot of sugar and a lot of cream. If it tastes like a dessert that met coffee at a conference once a long time ago, then we’re good.”
