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Nita maneuvered her into making lunch, but first Blue had to clean up the kitchen. As she dried off the last of the pans, a silver Ram truck pulled up in the alley behind the house. She watched Dean get out and retrieve the bike she’d left by the back door. He threw it in the rear of the truck, then turned to the window where she was standing and tipped his cowboy hat.
First Jack heard the music, and then he saw April. It was dark, just past ten o’clock, and she sat on the cottage’s sagging front porch underneath a crooked metal light fixture, painting her toenails. The years evaporated. In her clingy black top and pink shorts, she looked so much like the twenty-year-old he remembered that he forgot to watch where he was going and tripped on a tree root inside the broken-down picket fence.
April looked up. And immediately looked back down again. He’d been rotten to her last night, and she hadn’t forgotten.
All day he’d witnessed her relentless efficiency as she’d directed the house painters who’d finally straggled in, argued with a plumber, supervised the unloading of a truckload of furniture, and pointedly avoided him. Only the men’s gazes following her were familiar.
He stopped at the foot of the wooden steps and tilted his head toward the raucous music. She’d perched on an old Adirondack chair with her foot propped on the seat. “What are you listening to?” he said.
“Skullhead Julie.” She kept her attention firmly fixed on her toes.
“Who’s that?”
“An alternative group out of L.A.” Her long, jagged hair fell over her face as she reached back to lower the volume. Most women her age had cut their hair, but she’d never followed trends. When everyone else had worn the Farrah flip, April had adopted a brutal geometric cut that had showcased those amazing blue eyes and made her the center of attention.
“You were always the first to spot new talent,” he said.
“I don’t really keep up anymore.”
“I doubt that.”
She blew on her toes, another excuse to freeze him out. “If you came to get Riley, you’re about an hour too late. She got tired and fell asleep in the second bedroom.”
He’d barely seen Riley today. All morning, she’d followed April around, and in the afternoon, she’d gone off with Dean on a purple bike he’d pulled from the bed of his new truck. When they’d gotten back, she’d been red-faced and sweaty, but she’d also been happy. He should have been the one to buy her a bike, but he hadn’t thought of it.
April shoved the brush into the bottle. “I’m surprised it took you so long to get over here. I could have been spiking her milk with uppers or filling her head with stories of your seedy past.”
“Now you’re being petulant.” He propped his foot on the bottom step. “I was a real prick last night. I came over to apologize.”
“Go ahead.”
“I thought that’s what I just did.”
“Think again.”
He deserved everything she was throwing out and more, but he couldn’t hold back a smile as he stepped up to the edge of the porch. “You want me to grovel?”
“For starters.”
“I would, but I don’t know how. Too many years of having everybody kiss my ass.”
“Try.”
“How about I begin by admitting you were right,” he said. “I have no idea what I’m doing with her. That makes me feel stupid and guilty, and since I don’t know how to deal with either one, I took it out on you.”
“Promising. Now say the rest.”
“Give me a hint.”
“You’re scared out of your mind, and you need my help this week.”
“Yeah, that, too.” Despite her pugnacity, he knew he’d hurt her. Lately he seemed to be hurting a lot of people. He gazed out toward the woods where the fireflies were beginning to show off. Peeling paint scraped his elbow as he leaned against one of the porch’s candlestick posts. “I’d give anything for a cigarette right now.”
She dropped one foot and pulled the other up. “I don’t miss cigarettes so much. Or drugs, for that matter. For me, it’s alcohol. Scary to think about living the rest of your life without a glass of wine or a margarita.”
“Maybe you could handle it now.”
“I’m an addict,” she said with an honesty that unsettled him. “I can’t ever drink again.”
