Everett’s gaze moved down the screen, and he flicked it with his index finger. “This is interesting,” he said, which wasn’t very true but I was glad if it helped him. “It’s not my child.”
“What? What child?” I had a flashback to the first time he’d walked into Jannie’s bar, when I thought that he’d hit kids with his car because I hadn’t understood him. “What do you mean?” I asked cautiously.
“My wife—the woman who will soon be my ex-wife—had a son,” he said. “He’s four years old.”
“Oh.” I was still confused, but I’d been feeling that way ever since I’d found the notice from the water department on my front door yesterday. “Does your ex-wife live in Michigan? Is that why her son might go to school here?” I remembered how beautiful she was when I’d seen her pictures and the clip from her movie. I was sure that I would have noticed her around, but my sister always did say that I was clueless.
“No, they’re near Los Angeles. I’m trying to get custody of him,” he said.
“He doesn’t have a father?”
“His father died and Eris, my wife—my ex-wife—is a terrible mother. Don’t repeat that,” he said immediately. “Please don’t. Badmouthing her only hurts my case.”
“I won’t. Also, I don’t know her, anyone else in California, or anyone who would know anyone there. Are you very close to him?”
“I never got the chance to know him very well,” he answered. “Eris and I dated long-distance for a few months and we weren’t married for very long.”
“But even so, you really loved her. You fell apart when she dumped you,” I pointed out.
“I shouldn’t have gotten so worked up about it except yeah, I really did think that I loved her. I thought she loved me, too.”He stopped and looked down at my phone again. “You just got a text.”
I grabbed the phone, because it could have been from my mother—but it was only Willow, reminding me to pick up the eye cream that she wanted. I wasn’t going to since it was expensive and now we suddenly had only one income, unless Mom came back. I wrote to her again now.
“How do you know if someone blocked you?” I asked Everett.
“Eris didn’t block me. She likes to send pictures of the men she’s with, which is great for my custody case.”
“That’s good. I meant to say, how would I know if someone blocked me?”
“Oh. Is it your boyfriend?”
“No, it’s my mother. This morning, she walked out on my sister and me, so I’m trying to contact her to make sure that she’s definitely not coming back because I’m going have to sell her stuff and figure out how to pay all the arrears on our utilities.”
Everett seemed shocked. “This morning? Your mother walked out on you this morning?” I nodded but he shook his head. “Was that your sister at the football game? How old are you two?”
“Yes, that was my sister Willow, and she’s twenty. I’m almost twenty-two so we’re not minors. It’s not as if my mother did anything illegal if she did leave for real, for keeps. The problem is that I found out we owe a lot of money, and it’s hard to dealwith it all because everything is in her name. Including the house.”
“You’re extremely calm,” he said, and he stared at me suspiciously. “Are you being serious? Did this actually happen?”
“Yes. I better go,” I told him. When he had texted me for the first time, I had gotten way too excited because I’d envisioned a possible romance, but that was ridiculous and there was no time for that now anyway. “Did you get everything you wanted from me?”
“I…” He stopped. “I guess that I did.”
“I hope your custody dispute works out for the best for the little boy,” I said. “I need to leave because I have a lot to take care of. I probably won’t even go to classes tonight because there’s so much. It’s all on me.”
He nodded. I waited, but he didn’t say anything else, so I did leave. Maybe I would see him around town but maybe not. And I had so much on my mind that I probably wouldn’t even think about Everett Ford, not ever again.
Chapter 3
When life seemed hard and you felt like you were running to outpace the steamroller coming up fast behind you, there was only one thing to do: dream it away.
I pulled my blankets under my chin and pictured my new apartment, which would be in a building downtown where I’d heard that some of the real Woodsmen lived. You knew it was nice if they were there, and in fact, I decided that there was a doorman and the parking garage was heated. My place was on the top floor, the whole floor, so that I could see Lake Michigan in one direction and the rolling country that turned into farmland and forest in the other. Everything in it was new and functional, and I lived there by myself. No roommates. No family.
Tonight, I would be having a party with all my old friends from high school and also my boyfriend. It was a little hard to picture his face…well, I knew that he had a dimple, just one in his leftcheek and you could only see it when he smiled, and he had soft brown eyes. I also knew that he was tall and very strong, and handsome in a way that grew on you, like the more you looked at him, the better he seemed to look. I could definitely imagine his arms around me and how he buried his face against my neck, tickling me. He didn’t mind doing that in front of other people because he was happy for them to see how much he loved me. He—
“Zoey! What the hell?” Willow reached across the bed and pinched my arm. “I can hear you giggling. Will you stop?”
The problem was, it was difficult to daydream your life away. People were always doing things like pinching you, and there was also the problem of having to get up and get ready for work. I did that, and then my sister and I had a brief conversation about what she was supposed to do that day.
