“S-s-s-sorry,” I stutter again, shaking myself as I step backward. “Sorry,” I repeat, steadier. “I should—”
“Milo?” Mrs. Welch inquires, still somewhat dazed. “It is Milo, isn’t it? How do I…” Her question trails off. “How are…If you’re…”
I stop, turning to her daughter to ask permission, or seek explanation—I’m not sure. She doesn’t return my stare, her sullen but equally surprised expression stuck on Mrs. Welch.
“Mom?” She reaches out, gently putting her hand on her mother’s arm. “Mom, do you recognize him?”
Mrs. Welch’s bottom lip trembles, quickly glancing toward her daughter and me. “I don’t understand. I…I don’t understand. I don’t—” She grows restless, her hands turning to fists at her sides as she begins to cry. “How? But today is—” She turns herattention fully onto her daughter, visibly heartbroken. “Did you just call me Mom?”
“It’s okay….” Not-Lucy rubs her mother’s arm, bunching up her sleeve. “It’s all right.”
“I was a student of hers,” I say, unsure as to what I’ve done so wrong, but sorry all the same. “I…Is she…Did something—”
“I think you should go,” she says softly, turning toward me. And it’s tragic thatthisis the first smile this gorgeous stranger bestows on me. An apologetic, sad, thin line. A request and dismissal.
“Right, of course,” I say, continuing to watch them as I begin backing away slowly. Once not-Lucy turns her attention back toward her mother, I break into a jog toward the van.
Throwing myself into the front seat, I close the door behind me and press the side of my head into the wheel, waiting for Nads to look away from her phone and toward me.
“Thank you…” Nadia holds out her left hand, her eyes still glued to the phone. She turns, slowly, lowering the phone into her lap as she realizes I’ve returned empty-handed. “Huh?” Her glare narrows as I sit up, pushing my head back while running both hands through my hair.
“They were closed,” I answer, catching my breath.
She clearly doesn’t believe me, the way she drags her sunglasses down her nose, stares at me over the top of them, and says, “Then what took you so long?”
“I met the neighbors.” Ahalf-truth. I grab the keys off the dash and start the ignition. I close my eyes when I turn the key, then lean down to kiss the steering wheel when Bertha manages to start for me. “Thank you,” I whisper to her.
“You’re so fucking weird.” Nadia drops her feet from the dash as we take off down the road and pushes her sunglasses back up. “And you still owe me.”
Four
Milo
I’d need daysto process whatever happened back at the gas station with Mrs. Welch and her daughter, but I only had about two minutes before Nadia and I pulled into Nik’s driveway. We’re greeted by haphazardly discarded children’s bikes strewn all over the long, winding entry, flattened soccer balls, broken kites, and every other type of outdoor toy Sef and Nik have given their seventy-two children to, seemingly, destroy.
Okay; they have only five kids. But five is a lot of fucking kids for a thirty-year-old to have. Oranyone,for that matter.
Nadia throws her sunglasses onto the dash. Then she begins rolling her window down to greet her public as we round the corner toward a two-story traditional brick home with a family of seven on the porch awaiting our arrival.
Scratch that, there’s eight of them up there. Nik’s best friend, business partner, and our pseudo-sibling since elementary school, Aleks, is on the porch too, holding one of my nieces up so she can see over the railing.
I honk the horn three times in a row and Nadia matches every one with a curse word. “Fuck, shit, fuck.” Each word is followed by a uniquely panicked expression, sinking farther into her seat as if she wants to disappear inside of the pleather fabric.
“What’s wrong?” I laugh, pulling around the side of the house.
She nearly rips Bertha’s overhead visor off when she slides the small rectangular mirror open. “I didn’t…I wasn’t—” She rubs her finger under her bottom lash line, attempting to wipe a trace of black makeup clean. “Fuuuck.” She wets her finger with her tongue before pressing it to her eye’s inner crease.
“Oh,” I say, looking toward the porch where Aleks fixes his hair nervously. “When was the last time you saw him?” I ask, trying to mask my obvious curiosity under false indifference.
“When’s the last time someone punched you in the teeth?” Nadia turns toward me, blinking so innocently in contrast to her seething words that it makes my skin crawl.
“Sothisis why you wanted cigarettes, then? Boy drama?”
“Shut up, Milo,” she says, slamming the visor closed. “Leave it alone.”
“It’s Aleks….” I look past her, putting the car into park. “He saw you after you cut yourself pageboy bangs in the eighth grade, it cannot get worse than that.”
She stares into the depths of my soul through widened eyes. “Seriously, drop it.”
