“So,” Zach says when his car belches to a stop outside the garage. “What shall we do today?”
One side of his lips is tilted up, his gray eyes warm and twinkling, and I lean over and slide my hand up, up his thigh.
“Oh,”he says, fully smiling now. “I can get behind that.”
“Oh my God,” I say, laughing, and lean over even more to kiss his neck.
“What? I didn’t mean it likethat,” he says, laughing too. He slides his seat back from the wheel and starts to pull me into his lap, and the idea of doing anything else butthatseems impossible.
And then there is a loud rap on the driver’s window.
Speaking just loudly enough for us to hear with the glass still up, Raj says, “What are we doing today?”
BEFORE
Mid-October
Life continues to be very cruel to us and then one day, about two weeks later, I’m sprawled out over my bed, surrounded by Spanish homework, with zero desire to tackle it. So I pick up my viola and am playing an elegy by Stravinsky, a deceptively slow-moving piece that is bittersweet and sounds like falling or watching a shadowy graveyard or the kind of heavy storm that rolls in cloud by cloud, when I get a call from At Home Movies.
“Hello?”
“Hey,baby.I got let go from Pizza Hut. Which, I’m told, means fired.”
“Kevin?” I ask after a moment of trying to place the voice.
“You know it, babe.”
In the background, I hear Zach yelling something.
“You got fired? What happened?” I ask.
“I called my boss a fox. I guess that’s not allowed,” he says dismissively.
“Oh my God,” I say, swallowing a laugh so as not to encourage him. “That’s terrible.”
“Eh,” Kevin replies, and I can picture him shrugging.
I am about to ask why he called—other than to tell me he got fired—when he says, “Zach says hi.”
“Say hi back,” I tell Kevin.
“She says hi,” I hear Kevin say. “Zach also says that friend of yours, the blond one, is a babe and would be perfect forme.”
“Kevin,” I hear Zach say, and then there’s some sort of scrambling, scratching sound. And then a slap that is followed by Kevin snort-laughing and continuing to slap what sounds like the counter.
“Oh God, sorry about that,” Zach says, sounding a bit out of breath.
“It’s okay. I can’t believe he got fired,” I say.
“Can’t you?” Zach deadpans, and I laugh.
“So, listen, my parents are going to Caldwell again, and I was supposed to watch Kevin until they get back tomorrow, but now he’sfired,so he’s goingwith them.”
“Okay,” I say, mimicking his tone, “that’sgood toknow.”
“No, no,” Zach says, and I can hear the smile in his voice, picture him bringing the phone closer to his mouth as he speaks. “They’re gone tillSaturday.With Kevin.”
Oooh.Now I’m catching on. “What about the store?”
