It wasn’t something I cared about back in their hometown. Kids were angsty as shit. Those who lost everyone they loved had every right to blast their moody rock music to make themselves feel seen.
But the city wasn’t the suburbs. And I didn’t want cops at the door.
At least the door was still unlocked when I stuck in my key. I’d tried to be firm about not wandering out and with basic safety precautions without scaring the shit out of the kids about city life.
It was just… different.
And they were very suburbanized kids. Doors unlocked, walking around with headphones on and music blasting, being completely unaware of their surroundings.
It was shit that I probably shouldn’t have even let fly in their hometowns, but definitely didn’t want to in the city.
My apartment was in a decent area, but on the walk back from Lorenzo’s, I’d passed two very mentally disturbed unhoused people. And maybe they weren’t violent, but you just never knew. You had to be careful. That was something I was trying to ease the kids into.
But not blasting the music when you lived in a building with a hundred other people? That didn’t need any easing.
Charlotte, the twelve-year-old, was sitting cross-legged on the couch, staring blankly at the thick book on her lap.
Every once in a while, she reminded me so much of her mother that it was hard to breathe.
My sister had been bookish too, always begging our mother to stop at the bookstore or library on the way home while I complained in the front seat that I didn’t want to go to either place again.
She always won.
And now, whenever Charlotte asked, she got to go to a bookstore.
She looked a lot like her mom at that age too. Kind of short with an average build, somewhat round face, full lips, golden eyes, and hair that seemed to flirt with the idea of being blonde without fully committing.
Seeing me, she looked up and let out a sigh that I couldn’t hear, but was so big that I could see it move through her body.
It told me everything I needed to know: that Liam had been blasting the music since the moment I walked out of the building a few hours ago.
Thank God it was still the middle of the work and school day. Or I was sure people would have been bitching already.
I walked down the hall to bang on the door to the room that had once been my bedroom.
The apartment wastechnicallyonly a two-bedroom. But it had a small office that I’d crammed my shit into so the kids couldhave the bigger bedrooms. I’d already downgraded their living space so much with the apartment that I didn’t want them to have to sacrifice on personal space.
I’d expected the kids to fight over the primary room, but to my relief, as soon as Charlotte looked out the window in the second bedroom to see that a pigeon colony lived on the roof of the building right next door, she declared that it was hers and that we would just have to find a way to make all her books fit.
That ‘way’ was a pile of boxes leaned up against her wall that I still had to build. But her books weren’t supposed to arrive for another two days, so I was hoping to find the time.
No matter how hard I pounded on Liam’s door, though, he couldn’t hear me over the music, so I let myself in.
He was lounging on his bed that he pressed up against the wall with the window so he could look down at the city.
He tossed a basketball up and down in the air, seemingly lost in his own world.
Where Charlotte reminded me of my sister, Liam reminded me a lot of the moody-ass teenager I’d once been. Full of angst and anger for no real reason. Though, in Liam’s case, he had more than enough shit to point to for not being a happy-go-lucky kid.
I wasn’t acknowledged, so I walked over to the stereo and shut it off, making Liam almost jump out of his skin.
“Hey. I was listening to that.”
“Yeah, so was the whole building.” I reached for the expensive headphones he’d gotten for his last birthday and tossed them to him. “I get you want to get the angst out, but in an apartment building, you gotta use headphones.”
“Yeah? Did you give that lecture to the couple in the room above us when they were fucking all night?”
“Language,” I snapped. I never thought I’d be a ‘language’ kind of adult. I had the mouth of a sailor myself. I had one athis age too. But I knew his mother hated it. Since her passing, he seemed to curse a lot more. I guess to get a rise out of me. “Look, I can’t tell other people what volume to be at, but I can tell you. Wear the headphones. I don’t want cops at my door.”
