“Tit for tat, huh?” My eyes start to travel down her body on their own accord. She tisks and wags a finger, so I have to pull my focus back to her face. “Hit me. What do you want to know now?”
Shelley taps her chin dramatically, which causes a little bit of sauce to rub off on her face.
“Oh, you have…” I reach out to take it off with my thumb, but she’s starting to ask her question, so her mouth is open, and somehow my finger brushes her tongue. “Sorry. I was trying to do, uh…that.” I quickly wipe the smudge of red sauce. Her eyes lock with mine, and she holds my wrist and brings my thumb back to her lips so she can suck it clean. I think my brain has short-circuited.
“Wouldn’t want to waste it now, would we?” She turns and picks up her second wing, adding the next sauce like nothing happened.
Like I’m not sitting here realizing I’m falling in love with my best friend’s little sister.
I clear my throat to remove the lump now lodged in it and say, “You were about to ask me something?”
“Oh, right. I was thinking. I still don’t know much about your life before North Bay. Tell me everything. What was little Jordan like before he was a big, bad baseball player?”
“While I appreciate the sentiment, let’s refrain from saying the words ‘bad baseball player’ in the same sentence as my name. That has to be bad luck.”
“Ah, finally. The superstitious side everyone is always telling me about makes an appearance. Okay. Let’s go withbig, strong baseball player,” she corrects herself. “Does that work for you?”
“Much better, thank you.” I nod. “I’m from Baltimore. Just outside the city. It’s not a terribly original story. Single mom. She tried, but my mom is not what I would call naturally maternal. She did what she could to support us, so she wasn’t around a lot. My dad wasn’t around either, but that was for a different reason. He was locked up when I was pretty young. He got out for a while, but then was in and out of prison for stuff like parole violations. Last I heard, he was in again.” I take a sip of the milk before going on. “He was nice enough the few times I got to hang out with him. We would watch TV together if he was there. I remember he liked the Ninja Turtles. But I hardly know the guy, if I’m being honest.” I sigh. Maybe I should feel more toward my old man, one way or another, but I don’t. “My mom tried her best, but motherhood was more than she bargained for. Once I was old enough to be on my own, she seemed relieved to be rid of the burden.”
Shelley listens to me intently, the hot sauce bottle in her hand suspended in mid-air.
“I remember when Danielle gave you that Ninja Turtle last year. I could tell it meant something to you, but I wasn’t sure why. You could never be a burden, Jordan.”
I shrug, not wanting to dwell on unpleasant memories. “That sounds like something the Carvers would say. My high school coach and his wife really stepped up for me.”
“Can you tell me about them?” she asks, setting down the bottle.
“When I met Coach Carver, my mom and I were having a rough go of it. By then my dad was locked up for the long haul. My mom and I bounced around a lot between relatives and subsidized housing. Sometimes Coach would bring clothes to practice and tell me they were hand-me-downs his son had outgrown. He’d ask if I could do him a favor and take them off his hands. I think the Carvers bought them new for me, though, because everything was always in really good condition, and once or twice the tags were still attached. They had me over to their house for dinner a lot.”
“Mrs. Carver is the one who taught you how to cook, right?”
“Yep. I call her Ms. Ruth. And that’s pretty much my entire life story. Now you.” I reach for the medium bottle and put a dab on my next wing.
“You already know my story. You’ve met all the key players. The truth is, when school is in session, I don’t have much of a life outside of it.”
“That makes sense. Law school must be hard.”
“It’s a lot of work,” she admits.
“Understandable. But if we’re really doing tit for tat here, you’re going to need to give me more than ‘law school is work.’ I showed you my frayed edges. Now I get to see a little bit more of yours.”
“You’ve already seen those, and yet you’re still here,” Shelley muses.
“Not all of them. I know you’re still angry with your brother. Can you tell me more of that story? I’ve only heard it from him.”
“Well, Mike’s story is my story, too, in a way. Addiction affects the whole family. We had the whole white picket fence thing down pat, right up until we didn’t. I got dragged along forthe ride while my brother did his best to tear the Miller family apart.”
It’s hard to hear her talk about Mike this way. I didn’t know him then, but I see how hard he works now, not only to better himself, but to help other people do the same. But I keep my thoughts to myself and only offer a sympathetic hum.
“I know it wasn’t intentional,” she assures me. “Addiction is a real disease. I shouldn’t complain. My sisters and I always had what we needed.” The way her face pinches tells me she feels guilty about this after what I just shared about my home life.
“It’s okay to complain, Shelley. If it still hurts, it sounds like you didn’t actually have what you needed.”
She lets out a long, slow breath. “My job was to lay low and not cause any trouble. I ran track and got good grades. Tried to stay out of everyone’s way. It wasn’t hard because no one was paying attention anyway. When you have a sibling in crisis, all the resources are thrown that way, and you get whatever scraps of attention are left.”
“So, you were taking care of yourself and your sisters?” I prompt. From what I know of the Millers, it’s hard to imagine there was a time when their parents weren’t doting on all their daughters.
“I mean, not totally,” she says, taking another bite. “Mmm. I think this sauce might be my favorite. It’s spicy but sweet, and you can actually taste the peach flavor.” When I nod my agreement, she continues her story. “My parents are good people. They were just…preoccupied. There were a lot of times I was the one making sure we all brushed our teeth or got up for school on time. I would sign Mandy and Maddy’s homework folders or heat up canned ravioli for dinner. I was the only one of us old enough to drive, so I took them to their sports practices. I was the one doing our laundry.”
