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I give a short nod and say, “Thank you for inviting me,” and turn toward the front door only to be met with a bowl of cut watermelon.
“Oh, Zach, you came! Take this outside for me, will you?” Mrs. Moore shoves the fruit into my stomach and lets go, forcing me to take it.
Or maybe she thought I was going to grab it and didn’t realize I was intending to leave. Either way, I’m left with a fruit bowl in my hands.
She waves her fingers toward the deck. “Go on now. Leka, sweetheart, could you come here and look at something? The bulb on the front porch has burned out. We should change it before it gets dark.”
Mr. Moore lets his wife drag him away, but he casts a stern glare over his shoulder. Don’t fuck it up, it says.
Uncertainly, I stand in the now empty kitchen. Does not fucking it up mean I should leave or stay? The back door slides open and a wave of kids crashes through.
“Mom! Dad! We broke the table,” Beckett cries. She races across the tile floor, coming to a halt when she sees me. “Zach. Finally! I thought you weren’t coming.”
My heart thuds against my ribcage at her welcoming smile. She has her hair pulled back with some kind of floral bandana that would probably look ridiculous on anyone else. A see-through yellow shirt covers her arms and shoulders and falls to the top of her thighs. I try not to look at her bare legs. I try very, very hard.
“Yeah,” I croak, “here.”
I don’t have good verbal skills around Beckett Moore. My mind goes south whenever I’m within shouting distance. Get it together, boy. Her brother’s five feet away and her dad’s in the other room. Both would squash you like a bug.
It’d take two of them to get one hand on me and by then I’d have her out the door and in my car, retorts the smartass side.
My smartass side is all brawn, no brains. “Here,” I say and start to offer the bowl of fruit and get the hell out of Dodge, but my retreat is stymied again.
“What happened?” queries Mr. Moore, striding back into the kitchen.
“We broke the umbrella off the table,” Beckett answers.
We all turn to see the yellow sunbrella lying forlornly on its side. One white, thin metal rod is poking up past the cover it’s supposed to hold in place. I brace for an explosion. If we were home, my dad would be screaming by now.
“Thing needed to be replaced last year,” Mr. Moore says. “I probably have some tape to hold it in place for now. Be right back.”
He disappears out the side door. The latch barely catches before Mindy, a short-haired girl with legs like spindles, cries out. “Your dad is so hot, Beck.”
“So hot. Like, if I had daddy issues, he’d be the first person I’d apply to fix them,” murmurs her friend Sarah, who swings her heavy blonde hair over one shoulder to better display her huge rack.
“You do have daddy issues,” Sam supplies. Sam’s the starting guard on the All Star Shooters basketball team.
“Sam. Stop.” Mindy slaps Sam playfully on the shoulder.
“What?” Sam protests. “She announced it when Kincaid was role playing as the psychologist in Mrs. P’s society and behavioral issues class.”
“He has a point,” Sarah concedes. “I do have daddy issues and I’d be happy to enact my destructive behaviors all over the Moore men.”
“Can we not?” Beckett replies, her dark, gorgeous eyes rolling upward to the ceiling. “He’s my dad and he’s married.”
“Happily,” Kincaid adds.
“Sorry. I’ll try to contain my thirst,” Mindy says, but her grin implies the opposite.
“I’m happy to offer my services,” Sam offers. “I can slap an ass with the best of them.” He swats the air with the flat of his hand.
Beckett shudders. My fingers tighten around the bowl, ready to crash the plastic against the side of Sam’s face.
As if sensing my impending implosion, Kincaid grabs the bowl from my hands and gives it to his sister. “Let’s hold off on any sex shows while we’re standing in my mom’s kitchen,” he orders. “I’m going to take Zach up to change.”
“Great. See you outside,” Beckett chirps, and all thoughts of leaving dissolve like ice cream in July.
“See you outside,” I echo and follow her to the deck.
A hand hauls me back. “Swim trunks,” Kincaid reminds me.
My cheeks grow hot and I duck my head so Beck’s brother can’t read every lecherous thought I have in my head. “Yeah, lead the way.”
As I’m tracking Kincaid out of the kitchen and across the dining room to the stairs, I hear someone comment, “Your parents are so chill. Mine would’ve had a cow and a half if we broke a table.”
“Mr. Moore wouldn’t hurt a flea,” a guy proclaims.
