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Jude jumped up, his concerned gaze flitting between Lenny and me. “All good?”
Lenny gave him a thumbs-up, then turned to Tony and his wife. “Thanks for letting me play with Pico.”
Tony smiled at him. “Any time.”
Emilia got up and hugged Lenny. “You’re always welcome here,carissimo.”
She hugged me next. “Leave your number so we can call you next time he comes here. And it’ll get easier.” She chuckled, releasing me. “My boys are still adding to my gray hair.”
They had four boys, and I’d met them all. They were loud, had no filter, and liked to push their mom to the edge of sanity even though they were all in their late twenties and living on their own.
After Lenny patted Pico one last time, we left.
Jude put Lenny’s bike in the trunk, tying the lid down with some rope he found on the floor of my car. It was too small to fit anything bigger than a shopping bag, and we drove with the back half open.
He’d been my rock tonight, holding it together for both of us. And I was beginning to realize that keeping myself cut off from everyone wasn’t doing myself or my brother any favors. Everyone needed a person they could rely on. And if Jude kept insisting on being that person, I might just take him up on the offer.
* * *
“Lenny, you’re going to be late for school.”
I was rushing around our apartment, brushing my teeth while picking up Lenny’s schoolbooks and pens. I put lunch money in the little zipper on the side of his bag and closed it up, setting it next to the door.
“I’m not going. I’m sick.” He didn’t sound sick, even though his statement was followed by a pathetic-sounding cough.
The last few days had been an exercise of patience. Lenny had been moody, and I’d been tense.
Looking for a lawyer we could afford had been an impossible task. And the more time went by, the more desperate I became. If I couldn’t get Mom off our backs soon, we’d have to disappear. Even if that was the last thing I wanted to do to Lenny.
I rinsed my mouth out in the bathroom and dropped the toothbrush in its cup before pushing his door open. I put my head through the opening, refusing to set foot in his room. Last time I did, I’d stepped on something unidentifiable but squishy. “What’s wrong with you? Do you have a test today?”
“No test.” He was still buried under the blankets, his head turned away from me. “Just not feeling well.”
“Do you have a fever?”
“Don’t think so.”
Leaving him to brood on his own was the worst idea, but I had to go to work, and if he didn’t get up and out the door in the next ten minutes, I’d be late. “How about I drive you to school?”
That would definitely make me late. But at least it meant he’d go to school. I also couldn’t afford for him to miss days when Mom was breathing down my neck. She’d use anything she could against me.
“I said I’m not going.”
Pinching my eyes closed and praying for patience, I pushed the door open a little wider. “It’s not really a choice. Unless you feel like you’re dying, you have to go to school.”
He grumbled something under his breath but didn’t get up. He wasn’t usually this grumpy. I worried there was something else going on.
Braving the hazardous floor, I haltingly stepped inside, placing my foot between an empty wrapper and a dirty T-shirt. Once I’d made my way to his bed, I sat down, putting my hand on his shoulder. “Did something happen?”
“Nothing happened.”
Leaning over him to see his face and be better able to read him, I patted his shoulder. “Then why don’t you want to go?”
“Because.”
I studied his tightly drawn face. “Tell me right now, or I’ll call the school and raise hell.”
He knew it wasn’t an empty threat. And I knew something had happened for him to act this way. I’d known him his whole life. Had raised him.
