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What always saved me from those emotional hurricanes was having a safe place – usually my grandfather’s arms – to see the storm through. He didn’t insult me with platitudes and promises he couldn’t keep. He’d let me get it out, chuck me under the chin, and send me on my way.
“Whatever you’ve lost, is gone. But you’re still here, and you deserve to be happy.” I repeat one of my favorite meditations in a soothing cadence. He’s just a kid, but so was I the first time I heard it.
His sobs soften. But his hold on me, doesn’t. Pity squeezes my heart. My family isn’t perfect, but I’ve never not had a place to go when I was this low.
We lay there silent, the buzz and hum of the appliances and overhead lights mingling with our breaths and heartbeats.
After a few minutes, his arms slacken and a half sigh, half snore confirms that he’s fallen asleep.
I press a kiss to the top of his head and close my eyes as the familiar scent of Johnson’s baby shampoo assails me. Oh God, he’s so young.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I remember Weston.
Shit. I stifle a groan and chew the inside of my lip while I consider the child asleep in my arms. I need to figure out who he is and how to get him back to school.
The time I’d set aside to get some of my work done ahead of Weston’s arrival is gone. I may be brazen enough to sneak him in here, but I’m not crazy. This work has to get done and on time, too.
I reach for my phone, moving gingerly to not wake him and read Weston’s text.
“OMW”
I make a snap decision and type back a response.
“Not alone. Can’t meet. Sorry! Call you 2morrow.”
His reply comes right away, “Cool. L8r”.
It stings my pride that he didn’t even pretend to care. The scowl forming on my face softens when I look down at the sleeping, bruised face pressed to my chest. Weston can wait a few days, but I’m not sure that he can.
I manage to lift and carry him into the bakery’s restaurant. I lay him on one of the plush sofas, rush back to the workroom, and grab the pashmina in my bag to drape over him. It covers him completely and makes him look impossibly vulnerable. I need to know who hurt him. When he wakes up, I’ll coax it out of him with some milk and scones.
Then, I’m going to make sure the person who did this and the adults who let it happen make things right for him.
I engage the deadbolt so he can’t leave through the front door. Then, I get back to work.
The butter I’d taken out has softened too much to be used in my scone recipe, so I pop it into the freezer. I set a timer for twenty minutes, pop in my Love Jones soundtrack CD and get to work zesting lemons and ginger. I’m only on the second lemon when the sound of shattering glass from the restaurant splinters my focus.
I drop everything, grab the chef’s knife off the wall, and run. Images of him bleeding, or in the clutches of whatever villain broke that glass make me dizzy with fear.
With my arm raised to strike, I take a fortifying breath and burst through the swinging doors with a primal scream that nearly chokes me when I take in the scene.
He’s gone. An entire pane of glass is missing from the store front window. And one of the small silver footstools my mother handpicked lays sprawled on the sidewalk in a sea of fractured glass.
What an idiot I am. I bet he wasn’t even really asleep.
I run to the window, stick my head out of the gaping hole he made and look each way down the deserted street. He could have gone anywhere, and I don’t have time to go looking for him now.
I need a really good story that explains how that window got broken. Otherwise, my whole plan is shot to hell and I can forget this sliver of freedom I carved out. I glower at the yawning hole in the glass and curse the little delinquent and my irrational instinct to protect him. As angry as I am with him, it’s clear that the kid has enough problems without adding Owen Wilde to them.
That little shit may have escaped my grandfather's wrath, but he won’t escape mine.
I Want To Fight
Regan
"Come on, gimme a kiss, Regan. You used to like it, remember?” Billy, aka Mr. Boring Enough to Make my Mother Happy, leans across the center console of my car with his eyes closed.
I roll my eyes skyward and lean as far away as the small interior of my Ford Mustang will allow. I don’t remember if I liked kissing him or not, and I have no intention of refreshing my memory.
