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He put the little turtle down as a faint buzzing sound came from his pocket. He pulled out his phone and checked the screen, and I saw that it said Mom.
“If it were anyone else, I’d ignore the call, but do you mind?” he asked.
“Of course I don’t mind. Answer it.”
I picked up Bruce Lee the turtle, smiling as I turned it over in my hands.
“Hey, Ma,” he answered his phone politely. “Oh, shit. You’re kidding me. I think I could. Listen, go to the main switch by the water heater and pull it toward you, okay? It’ll turn off water to the whole house. Ma, give me just a second, all right?”
He put the phone down, pressing the mute button on the call.
“Apparently the nozzle on my mother’s shower just broke,” he said. “She says the water is, and I quote, ‘just spewing out uncontrollably,’ and she has no clue how to fix it.”
“Oh Christ,” I said. “That happened to me once in LA.”
“It’s an easy fix for me, but I need to go help her with it,” he said.
“The end of your shift is technically in twenty minutes,” I said, shrugging. “You’re free to go.”
“But do you feel safe?” he asked, furrowing his brow. “I know my shift is ending, but after earlier today, I don’t want to just leave you. And if you go home, we still have no idea who that guy in the SUV was, and I sure as hell don’t trust that balcony yet—”
As he spoke, I realized that since the moment I’d mentioned the end of his shift, a thread of worry had been creeping back into me. He was right. I didn’t exactly feel safe in the house alone yet, even though logically I knew I’d have to spend time there on my own at some point in the near future.
I reached for my beer, tossing back the rest of it. “Where does your mom live?”
He cocked his head to one side. “She’s about twenty minutes from here, out past Melletson farm. Why?”
My ears perked up. “Melletson farm,” I said. “That’s what used to be the MHR farm, where my grandpa worked when he was a teenager. I want to see that part of town.”
“It’s not too far.”
I shrugged one shoulder. “I’ll come along, then,” I said. “I mean, if you don’t mind.”
He snorted. “You don’t have to come wait around while I fix a shower, Theo.”
“Not exactly like I have anything else going on. And half of the reason I came here was to explore my grandpa’s old stomping grounds. I want to see what it’s like out by Melletson farm.”
The truth was that I would have gone anywhere with Roman. I wanted to learn more about his world, to see what life was really like here, for a normal person.
I envied his life. And the idea of being swept up in his world felt like the best vacation from my own life I could imagine. Even if it was increasingly hard not to admit I wanted him to kiss me again—kiss me like he had on that night, so passionate and caring and intense.
“You are amazing. I hope you know that,” he said quietly before turning off the mute button on his phone. “Hey, Ma. I’ll be there in twenty. Get the main water line shut off, okay?”
9
Roman
I rapped on the front door of Mom’s house, knowing that the doorbell had long since been broken.
“Coming!” I heard her voice call out from somewhere inside.
“Every time I come over I mean to fix that thing,” I told Theo, gesturing at the doorbell. Already, I was second-guessing bringing him over here to the house I’d grown up in. Having him here made me notice every little detail that was out of place, from the doorbell to the weeds that needed to be pulled in the small front lawn.
“This street is absolutely adorable,” Theo said, glancing down as we waited for Mom to come out.
It was a quaint little street full of small, suburban houses. Since I was a kid, all of the trees had grown in and were now mature, and they formed a mottled canopy of leaves all the way down the street. Even from my preliminary internet searching about Theo, I knew that he’d come from money, even before he was ever a famous actor. His parents had been entrepreneurs in Los Angeles, and I was pretty sure he’d lived in Beverly Hills as a child.
I wondered if he’d ever been in a house like this.
“Thank the Lord above you’re here, Turtle,” Mom said to me, swinging open the door without even looking forward. She didn’t notice Theo behind me, immediately turning back to scurry off toward the bathroom. “This thing is a nightmare! How many screws does a damn shower handle need? I managed to get one out, but another is stripped, and I just have no clue how to get it out.”
