Good Girl : An Enemies-to-Lovers, Roommate Romance (Alphahole Roommates Book 2), page 15
“Good. Sedgewick works at The Rift on weekends. If you call there you can tell him when you’ll get our stuff. I wouldn’t leave it in that warehouse for long.”
“Good idea. I’ll see about a storage locker.”
“He’ll probably move it for you for a case of beer.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“I gotta go. I’m not feelin’ so good. Gonna try and sleep a little.”
“Okay, Shane. Take those meds. Get better.”
“Yeah.” He looks off vacantly.
“Ask your lawyer to keep me posted on the court date. I really want to see you get well, Shane. And you can. I know you can. I believe it wholeheartedly. I’ll visit again as soon as I can.”
He kisses his fingers and touches the glass. I kiss mine and touch it, too. My chin quivers and I sniffle.
He puts the phone down and walks away.
I close my eyes and blow out a long breath.
I really, truly hope my brother can turn things around.
I really, truly hope he gets a good doctor and the right medicine, the right counseling.
As I leave, I phone my father. It’s a Saturday afternoon and I know what he’s doing. Dad’s doing what Dad does. He goes out to the driveway to tinker with or shine his old muscle car. Then he takes it for a drive and goes for a beer with a couple of his buddies who also have old muscle cars. And then he goes home, heats up a frozen dinner, and falls asleep watching sports with a beer on the TV tray and a burnt-out cigarette in the ashtray.
He answers.
“Yeah Jada? What now?”
Great. This is starting off positive…
I gulp. “Hi Dad. Shane is in jail. He went off the deep end and he’s done some stupid stuff, got hooked on some drugs while trying to deal with his mental illness. He is probably going into rehab and maybe in for psychiatric help. I’ll keep you posted on how the case goes. I just-”
“You callin’ for money for a lawyer?” Dad asks.
“No. I wasn’t going to ask for money for a lawyer, he’s got the public defender, but if you want to-”
“Naw. He’s made his bed. He can lie in it. This is why I pay taxes, so my fuckin’ loser of a son can get a shitty lawyer for free.”
I start to seethe. “Dad, you know, your son has a mental illness and now it’s spiraled into a drug dependency, but the mental illness is still there, too.”
“His problem is that the kicks in the ass he got didn’t work. That’s what his problem is.”
I can’t believe this. I should be able to believe it because this is who my father has been my whole life, but I still can’t fathom it.
“Never mind, Dad. Just… never mind.”
“You gonna ask if you can come home now?”
“Why? Would you let me? Knowing a week ago that you were fine for me to be homeless, you think I’m gonna ask again?”
“You wanna come home, you can come home,” he says. “As long as he doesn’t come with you. And watch it with that sass, little girl. Remember who you’re talkin’ to here.”
“No thanks. I’m good,” I hiss.
Silence.
Is my father actually speechless? Or did he hang up on me?
I strain to listen as I get to the bus stop in front of the jail. The bus is coming, I can see it stopped about a block away.
I hear background noise through the phone, so Dad hasn’t hung up. It’s time for me to do that, though.
“Bye Dad.”
“Yeah. Bye.” I hear the click.
I stuff my phone into my bag and get my bus ticket ready.
I feel depleted. Completely.
My belly is still raw from last night’s food poisoning, but I wasn’t about to miss this visit. I even got off the bus on the way here, thinking I was going to have more of what I dealt with last night and spent twenty minutes in a coffee shop bathroom where nothing happened but stomach pain before I walked the rest of the way.
I’m tired.
I’m sad.
I feel… lost. Alone.
I lean my head against the window on my way back home, or – home for now. No, not home, I’m still homeless, I just have a bed temporarily. I feel dizzy, panicked, and then that changes to reflective, about my life, my brother, my upbringing, about losing Joshua three years ago, about what I want from life.
My stomach rumbles again and this time, it feels like it’s hunger. It’s after five o’clock and I haven’t eaten today.
The bus will let me off by the Vietnamese Pho restaurant and then I can walk back to the condo from there.
***
When I get there, Austin’s asleep on the couch. He’s wearing a muscle shirt and basketball shorts and he’s got one knee cocked and an XBOX controller on his chest. There’s a half-drank bottle of Gatorade in front of him on the coffee table.
As quietly as I can, I begin unpacking the food.
He sits up and his eyes are on me.
I wince. “Sorry,” I say.
He scrubs his eyes with his palms and heads toward me, then scratches his belly under his shirt, making it ride up. Oh God, those abs.
I tear my gaze away and go back to pulling containers out of the plastic bag. There’s been a leak and soup is all over the counter now, so I start mopping it up with paper towel, feeling him stand over me, feeling my face get hot as he watches.
He’s close. Really close. The smell of the food mixed with the smell of him has me lightheaded – in a weird way. In a way that’s wrong. Because I’m feeling lust. I really need to stop lusting after this grouchy ogre I’m working for and sharing this apartment with. I don’t even like him. He definitely doesn’t like me.
But I guess you don’t have to like someone to find them physically attractive. At least most people don’t. I usually do. I’m usually way more about substance than this.
Ha. That’s funny, because Joshua was drop-dead gorgeous, too. All sorts of muscles. A great smile. Strong hands.
A lump forms in my throat at the thought of Josh, so I shake it off.
I guess I have a thing for gorgeous plus substance. And I have no idea what substance Austin is made of, other than anger.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of Josh’s death and I’m going to do something I always do. Visit his grave. Walk the park like he and I used to walk when we secretly dated. Have a picnic with a hot dog, orange soda, and warm spiced nuts in our old spot under the tree where he first kissed me after we had that same picnic.
“You want cash for this right now or you good for me to add it onto the tab for next week?”
“The tab is fine,” I mutter, scooping up my stuff to carry everything to my room.
But my hands are too full, so I can’t quite open my door. Ugh.
I squat to set my food down on the floor, but something goes catastrophically wrong and the lid falls off my soup, scalding my wrist, making me lose balance on everything in my arms and doesn’t my entire thing of soup fall? The soup sloshes down the hall, across the baseboard, all over my foot and it’s hot so it burns.
“Fuck!” I shout, yanking my foot back.
And then I fall down onto my ass and I’m bawling.
Like… really bawling.
18
Austin
I scoop her up and take her back into the kitchen, putting her on the island. She startles for a split second and then she stares at me, her already huge eyes bigger. She’s embarrassed. And having some sort of meltdown, and for some reason I don’t feel annoyed like I generally do when I see a girl cry.
Seeing that she’s scalded herself, without thinking I yank her shoe and sock off and in a few quick moves I’ve got ice wrapped up in a tea towel and cooling the burn on her skin.
She’s still crying, audibly, and I know this is about more than soup.
Her wrist is pink and wet, too, so I grab a wet paper towel and dab it on her wrist. She pulls her hand back and holds the paper towel herself, so I lean down and roll her jeans leg up into a cuff and examine her leg, then put the ice pack over the top of her foot.
A couple days ago, I’d probably have figured she was a drama queen with this, but something about her today, something about the way she came in, put stuff down, wouldn’t look at me, wasn’t throwing sass, and looked like the weight of the planet was on her small shoulders, it sparked something in me, something that’s making me react like this.
She’s got her hands over her face now and I’m holding the cloth to her ankle, so I swivel her sideways so that her feet are now on the island. I lay the ice-filled towel over her ankle and grab a roll of paper towel and head for the mess.
Yeah, if she were sensible about this, she’d have made two trips, but clearly the girl has a lot going on. And if I wasn’t an asshole making her spend all her time in her room, she wouldn’t have hurt herself trying to carry her food in there as fast as possible.
And she came in here carrying a giant bag of food and bought herself a small order, me a large one of soup and she’s probably not feeling great either today after last night’s food poisoning.
She sits there sniffling while I clean the mess off the floor. I look over at her. She’s holding the cloth to her ankle now and staring at me with her lips pulled tight, her big eyes filled with sadness.
“I’m… I’m sorry.” Her gaze darts away.
“It’s okay,” I say, shrugging casually while bringing the bundle of wet paper towels over with the empty Styrofoam and dropping them all in the sink for now.
I reach down and gently take the makeshift ice pack. Her skin is just pink. No blistering yet.
“You okay?” I ask.
She nods, not looking at me.
“Want ice for your wrist?”
She shakes her head. “It’s okay.”
I place the ice bundle over her ankle again, then rescue the food that hasn’t toppled out of its containers outside her room. More rice paper noodle rolls and an order of spring rolls. Half an order, because some fell out and wound up in the sink with the paper towels.
I set them down on the island beside her, lean over and pull two bowls out of the cupboard and split up the large soup she bought for me. I then open the next container with the noodles and meat and split it between the two bowls before I set the container filled with the sprouts, lime, mint, and other toppings in between and then open the fridge.
“What do you want to drink?” I ask.
When she doesn’t answer me, I look over my shoulder at her and she looks confused.
“Beer?” I ask.
“Ginger ale, please,” she replies softly.
I grab one for me, too. Normally I’d have a beer with takeout like this, but not tonight; my gut isn’t up for it.
I move our food around to the other side of the island and gesture. She stares at me blankly and without thinking, I lift her by her hips and set her on one of the stools.
She bristles and looks at me like she’s never seen me before.
I grab spoons and set them down before I sit on the stool beside her. We’re close, only a foot apart. And it feels too close, too awkward, so I scoot over to the third barstool and slide my food over.
She lifts her spoon and hesitates before blowing on the soup in front of her.
I grab one of the fresh rolls and dunk it in my peanut sauce and then grab the remote and switch the TV over from the Xbox to television. It’s a sitcom I’ve never seen, but something with a laugh track feels like a good idea. Haven’t heard laughing in a while. I set the remote down and continue eating.
The food is good. Very good, actually.
“Good call on this food. This is what my belly needs,” I say.
I’ll definitely want to order from this place again. I look over, about to ask her where it’s from, about to say something, make some sort of conversation, but she’s sitting rigidly, staring at her still-steaming bowl.
She must catch me looking because she finally speaks.
“Sorry about the meltdown. I had a really hard day and that was just… the straw I guess.”
“I get it,” I say. “I had a day like that the day we met.”
“I was the straw,” she says softly.
“Something like that.”
“Yeah,” she says quietly.
And I find I want to hear more of her voice in that tone, that soft tone instead of the angry, sassy one she’s mostly been giving me, the tone I’ve bought myself with how I’ve been with her.
I sigh.
I feel like an asshole. But I also feel like it’s a good idea to keep my distance.
Because this girl is just the kind of girl I would go for – especially when she’s like this. Quiet, A little shy. She’s pretty. Rockin’ body, but she’s wholesome-looking. Great skin, shiny hair, and she smells good. Plus there’s something about her eyes that’s disarming.
And I don’t need that right now.
For one, I’ve got a steaming shit pile on my plate.
For two, I don’t even live in this city. I’ll be back in California as soon as humanly possible and I already know what it’s like thinking you’re gonna start something with a girl that lives somewhere else.
And besides, Jada’s not likely to forgive me for the way I’ve been acting anyway, even if I did try to change the nature of our relationship, which I have zero plans to do.
I decide I’ll eat the rest of my food later, so I can end this awkward meal.
“I’m full. Thanks for grabbing that.” I stand up.
“You’re welcome,” she whispers. “Thanks for sharing yours with me when I spilled mine.”
“I’ll clean up so you can rest your sore foot.”
“My foot’s fine, Austin,” she says softly, still not looking at me. “It doesn’t hurt that much. I can clean up.”
“All right.”
And I want to ask her what happened today. Because it looks like she could use an ear.
But I don’t bother. It’s not a good idea to spend any more time around this girl than necessary. I don’t need her story, no more than I already have. I don’t need her soft voice in my ear making me want to get closer, making me want to hear more of it, making me want to solve any problems she has.
I’m ready to head to the bedroom so she can eat in peace, but the phone on the wall by the door rings. The intercom.
Why would that be ringing?
Not Sienna.
I pick up.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Carmichael? This is Andrew, in the lobby. Your sister is here for you.”
“Does she have red hair?”
“No. Dark hair. An infant wearing a monkey hat and a little boy with her.”
I hear a little voice.
“A little boy wearing a dinosaur hat,” he amends.
Obviously, Braeden isn’t about to be upstaged by a monkey hat.
“Oh. Send her up,” I say. “Thanks.”
Adele.
I look at Jada who’s still got most of her meal to finish.
“You have company coming? I’ll just…” She swivels, about to get off the stool.
“No, don’t worry. Eat. It’s just my sister.” I wave and open the door and stare out into the hallway.
I wait there until Adele gets off the elevator, the baby in a carrier on her front and a giant wheeled suitcase in one hand, Braeden holding onto her other hand. She gives me a huge smile.
A security guy is behind her, carrying a fold-up stroller and Adele’s diaper bag.
My big sister is a sight for sore eyes.
Braeden squeals and runs for me. “Unco Auz!” I squat and catch him.
He’s three and this little guy means everything to me. Seeing him, smelling the hair on his head, I already feel a little more like myself.
My sister gets to me. “Surprise! I’m here for two days only. Just enough time to try to cheer up my baby brother.” She wraps her free arm around me, and I kiss her forehead, unable to hug her properly with the baby against her chest.
The door guy leans the stroller against the wall by the apartment door and hands me the diaper bag as he gives us a nod. Adele passes him a twenty. “Thank you so much. You’re a lifesaver.”
He thanks her and gives me a nod before glancing in my apartment, frowning, and going back to the elevator.
I look down at the fabric monkey-clad head poking out of the baby carrier. Lilly is now old enough to coo and giggle and sit up by herself and she’s a sight for sore eyes, too. She rouses and looks cranky immediately. Her little lips puff out in a massive pout and she begins wailing.
“Get in, get in,” I wave Adele in, grabbing the baby stroller, ushering them inside.
Jada has a perfect view of the whole exchange. She’s at the island looking at us and biting her thumbnail, looking like she’s trying to hide that she’s been crying with a smile.
“Oh, Jada! Hello again!” Adele greets. “Could you do me a huge favor and…” Adele throws her jacket off and starts undoing the wrap thing she’s got around herself. “I’m dying to pee. Can you hold her for me?”
Jada hops down off the stool and comes straight over, arms out, ready to take Lilly.
“I have to pee, too!” Braeden announces. “Hi! I’m Braeden. Are you my unco’s girlfriend? I didn’t saw you at the wedding. Why do you only have one shoe on?”
“No, I’m… I work here. But I know who you are. I see your face all the time!”
“You do? How?”
Jada jerks her thumb backwards to the wall in the living room of framed photos my brother took. He’s got lots of framed portraits of Braeden and Lilly here and in San Diego. Aiden is good with the camera and he takes mostly pictures of people, managing to capture them at the perfect candid moments. If he didn’t go into business, he’d have been great as a professional photographer.
“Oh. That’s me! Like at home!” He heads to the wall to look closer at the portraits. Oh wow!” Now Braeden is looking out the window. “We’re high up! Way, way high up!”
“We sure are,” Jada says, her voice going funny, making me look at her to see what that’s about.
She leans down and pulls her other shoe off, then her sock and carries both shoes and the socks to her bedroom door. She opens the door and tosses them inside.
