chapter
Nineteen
He took a left, and after a few more turns, I recognized the area where we’d eaten lunch after the visit to Tuli’s studio.
Sheila Anderson had been overjoyed with her artistic fix to my brother’s debacle, and she’d acknowledged both the gifted rising artist and her “marvelous home builder” in a lavish multipage spread of the house that began on the cover of a local luxury magazine. Daddy had been triumphant. Leo had not. It had been a monumental effort not to HA! HA! straight to his insufferable face.
Isaac pulled into a parking lot and circled around to enter an underground garage where he had an assigned spot. A key fob accessed an elevator bank. When we entered a posh, gently lit hallway on the upper floor, he said, “I’ll need to take the dog out, but it shouldn’t take long.”
The dog?
My mother couldn’t leave Jack alone in the house all day, or he’d gnaw through a table leg, ingest the corner of a bedroom door, or chew half a loveseat into downy confetti. He had a variety of monogrammed dog beds throughout the house, a mechanized food bowl, a water bowl fountain, and as many toys as I had as a child, but if left alone for more than an hour he became an anguished cyclone of distress, bent on total destruction.
I steeled myself for a dejected, crated dog—Jack’s fate after the loveseat’s untimely slaughter—and the inevitable jumping, barking, and licking following its release from captivity. Luckily for Jack, my mother was seldom away from the house for very long. Isaac’s poor dog would be home alone for multiple hours per week.
The apartment extended, long and narrow, to wall-to-wall windows at the opposite end, through which the luminous skyline of downtown was visible. The ceiling was high and industrial, with imprinted concrete and exposed pipes curving just below, painted to maintain a cohesive look. Music played softly from somewhere inside, mixed with faint echoes of cars and patrons of restaurants and bars on the street below. I heard a joyful whine just before a canine face appeared from one of the doorways along the right.
“Hey, boy,” Isaac said, tapping his thigh. Nails clicked across the wood floors toward us, and he leaned to intercept his dog, which had a retriever’s build and chocolate-brown fur, light with age around the brows and muzzle.
“Pete, sit,” Isaac said, reaching to grab a leash from the coatrack mounted on the wall.
Spotting me, Pete sat. Head angled, he sized me up, maintaining eye contact as I stood there, wrapped head to toe in the now-dampish blanket, but he didn’t move from his appointed spot.
“Can I pet him?” I asked.
“Sure.” Isaac discarded his costume’s cowl and cape on a small table, clicked the leash into place, and said, “Up.”
Pete stood.
I smiled and offered a hand to be smelled. “Hi, Pete. You’re such a handsome boy.” He took a polite sniff, long tail wagging slowly, and looked to Isaac for reassurance or permission, I wasn’t sure which.
“This is Erin,” Isaac said, as though Pete might reply, “How do you do, Erin?”
Pete nuzzled his soft head into my hand and stared into my eyes as though soul-searching.
“How old is he? You’ve had him a while, I guess.”
Isaac cleared his throat. “The vet says he’s between ten and eleven. I adopted him about a year ago. His owner had passed on, and he was dropped at the shelter.”
As I scratched behind his fluffy ears, I looked at Pete’s sweet face, incapable of reflecting on his fate if Isaac hadn’t come along. “That’s terrible.” I was positive Mom would haunt the unholy hell out of us if she died and we abandoned Jack at a shelter.
“Make yourself at home. There’s bottled water in the fridge. I’ll make some coffee when we get back from the dog run.” Pete’s ears perked at the final two words and he faced the door, tail wagging eagerly.
When the door snicked closed behind them, I was alone in Isaac Maat’s home.
I removed my grimy shoes and dropped them into the lidded garbage can in his utility room. The pale taupe ballerina flats in my car often rescued my feet from my more hostile stilettos at the end of a day. I would wear those to drive home after Isaac dropped me at my car.
At the doorway where Pete had emerged, tall, solid pocket doors were pushed wide to reveal a bedroom, softly lit by sconces on either side of the bed. I had eschewed the use of the haunted house’s porta potties, so I had a perfectly reasonable excuse to walk through Isaac’s bedroom to the bathroom. While there, I scrubbed the melted, smeared cosmetics from my face and used the folding toothbrush in my bag with a bit of Isaac’s cinnamon toothpaste.
I left the room more slowly than I’d entered it, fingers trailing across surfaces. A velvety plaid duvet, haphazardly tossed over the bed, matched the colors of Pete’s fur—by design, I’d guess. The smooth chestnut dresser displayed neatly arranged stacks of architecture and urban-planning books across its top, beneath a wall-mounted flat-screen.
There was one framed photo on the night table of a young boy and his parents, dressed for church or some semiformal event. Isaac, who couldn’t have been out of grade school with his say-cheese grin, full cheeks, and a bow tie only a parent could have chosen, was nevertheless recognizable. His father’s lean build and facial structure was so like present-day Isaac that I could have mistaken them for each other if not for the medium Afro and clean-shaven face. His mother, hair swept into a twisted updo and makeup on point, shared only her son’s arched brows. Her face was less angled—rounder, softer. Against her sleeveless pink blouse and a classic A-line skirt, high-waisted and powder blue, her skin was darker than husband and son. Her hand rested on Isaac’s shoulder; her husband’s arm encircled them both.
I moved to the kitchen and took a bottle of water from the fridge. The walls of the open living/dining area—three times my height—were bare but for another television. The music I’d heard was playing through a sound bar beneath it. His sectional leather sofa was Pete-toned; I sensed a theme. Still huddled inside my borrowed blanket, I walked to the window and stared at the skyline in the distance. A bark echoed from below, and I looked down to see a man and dog approaching the building from the dog run on the other side of the lot.
Even without Pete alongside him, I’d have recognized Isaac’s walk—posture balanced and straight but not inflexible, bearing confident without the sort of conceited strut Joshua Swearingen displayed. Just before he and Pete vanished under the entry overhang, Isaac turned his face up and looked at the window where I stood watching him. I didn’t know if he could see me from eight floors below.
I perched on a barstool instead of the sofa to wait for him because my clothes were still damp. By the expression he wore when he came around the corner—brows lifted, eyes widened, mouth tensed—I could have sworn he believed I might not be there.
“Hi,” I said, wondering if I saw relief or resignation in his eyes just before he passed behind me.
He dropped a small stack of mail atop the closed laptop on his built-in desk. “Hi.” At the island’s sink, he filled the coffeepot.
“Are you still wet?” he asked, lifting his gaze to the startled face I fought to bring under control, lips pursed tight to stifle a juvenile That’s what he said.
He turned quickly to make the coffee, or to hide his discomposure from having read my mind. “In the breeze outside, I noticed that my clothes aren’t dry yet and thought maybe yours weren’t either,” he explained.
“Mine are still damp too.” I was chastised but still struggling to subdue a giggle.
“I can lend you a T-shirt. Most of my sweats are too big—but something with a drawstring might work.” He clicked the coffeemaker on. “C’mon. Let’s see what I’ve got.”
I followed him to his bedroom, marveling at how odd this was on the face of it, and how much odder it was that it didn’t feel odd. He opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a dark red tee with blue lettering: PENN QUAKERS.
“Quakers?” Taking the shirt, I bit my lip.
“Don’t throw shade on my school now. Your mascot is a cow.”
I gasped and laughed. “Heresy! It’s a big scary cow with long pointy horns.”
“Aiight, girl—if you say so.” He searched through neatly rolled sweatpants. “Here we go. Matching drawstring drawers.”
The sweats were blue with a red Penn crest on the front. Both were soft and would feel like heaven after spending the past several hours spent soggy and chilled.
“Thank you.” Our eyes connected. We were standing in his bedroom, alone, and he’d just spoken to me in the playful tone he’d used with Tuli. A tone that meant I was worming my way behind his wall of Erin-aversion.
My one-track brain screamed, KISS. HIM.
I screamed back, He’s my BOSS. I can’t just KISS him.
He looked down at my bare feet. “I don’t recall your being this short, comparably. I guess I’ve never stood next to you without your everyday high-rise footwear on.”
“You’re still wearing superhero boots. So we don’t really know our relative heights.”
He sat on the bed, crossed one foot onto the opposite knee, and began picking at the black laces. “Why don’t you get out of those wet clothes—I mean, get into the dry ones.” He nodded toward the bathroom, lips in that fixed line I recognized. He was determined to keep from flirting, even when it was inadvertently done. “Once you’re out, I’m going to shower off, if you don’t mind. I know I promised you coffee.”
“I’m sure I can find a mug. Also, you’re home. You should be able to relax and do whatever feels good.” I had no anti-seduction qualms. If he wanted to take what I said as legitimate flirting, I was prepared to encourage him.
Attention on the tightly laced boot, he didn’t respond.
I shut the door to the bathroom and stared into the mirror as I dropped the blanket to the floor and peeled every piece of damp clothing from my body, which had altered since my actual cheerleading years. Eating disorders had been common among the squads, freshmen to varsity, a fact that my adult self looked back on in horror. I had been rail-thin; my genes decreed it. No cheer coach or team captain or cheer mom had ever mentioned, oh-so-casually, that I might want to lay off the potato chips, sweetie, though I’d heard it done.
Gaining curves and becoming women is biologically natural; cisgender girls should be able to celebrate those changes. Instead, we went hungry all day, only to binge eat whatever was handy once our bodies—certain we were starving to death—demanded food. Meanwhile, articles in print and online warned against the deadly sins of stress eating or developing bulimia while cleverly placed ads featured photoshopped models no one could ever be, not even the models themselves.
At almost twenty-three, I was finally rocking curves of my own. I would not be my mother, submitting to anesthesia and knives and needles in an effort to preserve my adolescent body. This was the first moment I knew it, and the acknowledgment of that resolution made me feel powerful—and reckless. A precarious combination for a woman standing naked in her hot boss’s bathroom.
I pulled on the sweatpants, which were so loose and long on me that I laughed out loud. I yanked the strings tight and tied them so the waistband would sit above my hips and stay there. I rolled the bottom of each leg until my feet extended enough to walk without sliding. The cottony-soft T-shirt slid over my head and fell to my thighs. I chuckled again at the Quakers inscription while removing the oversized bow from my head and allowing my hair to fall around my shoulders and down my back.
Running my fingers through the tangled waves, I tried to view myself as Isaac might. But I couldn’t. I had no idea what he thought—or what he would think—of me. Not in my polished, professional form; not in this unembellished, shapeless configuration.
Sitting in the same spot at the end of the bed, boots now off, Isaac turned toward the doorway when I opened the door. Pete, who’d been receiving a head rub, rested his head on his master’s knee and emitted a soft whine when the hand on his head stilled.
Isaac stared, his expression poker-face blank but his eyes reflecting the light from the brighter room behind me. He cleared his throat. “Heard you laughing in there,” he said, gaze flicking to my chest and back. “Disparaging my school again, Ms. McIntyre?”
His sliding gaze was a weightless caress. A tenuous breath across my skin.
“I plead the fifth, Mr. Maat.”
“Fair enough.” He stood and took his own fresh T-shirt and sweatpants from the dresser top. “If you’re hungry when I get out, I make a mean omelet. Or flapjacks.”
My mouth watered and despite or because of the earlier barf session, my stomach emitted a yawning growl. “I guess I’m hungry.”
“Preference?”
I am hungry for all the things, I thought. And not all of them are food. “Either.”
“Cool. Be right out.” He disappeared into the bathroom and the shower switched on.
I looked at Pete. He stared back.
“I want your master,” I whispered.
He angled his head one way and then the other.
“Do you have any wise-old-doggy advice for how I can either get over myself or under him? Because this unreciprocated-crush thing is kinda grim.” Pete whined in response. “You’re right. I did bring it on myself.” He burrowed his head under my palm and leaned against my leg, his tail thumping the dresser in rhythmic commiseration.
I settled into the corner of the sectional with Pete and checked my phone while waiting for Isaac to reappear. Ten minutes later, he emerged in a T-shirt and sweats combination similar to what I’d borrowed, but on him, everything fit. Perfectly. I was well acquainted with how he looked in suits and dress shirts and a full-on Batman costume. But this was something else. The knitted fabric hugged and accentuated muscular quads and shoulders. Sculpted biceps bulged from the short sleeves of his white T-shirt.
“Erin?”
“What? Huh?” Oh damn. My brain had shut down. Obviously.
“What sounds good?”
I batted several debauched responses away. “Whatever sounds good to you.”
We engaged in a brief but intense staring game, and I would have paid good money to know what he was thinking.
“Omelets it is.” He turned to remove ingredients from his fridge, bowls and pans and utensils from drawers and cabinets.
I got up and moved toward the kitchen. “Can I help?”
“You sit.” He gestured to a barstool with a spatula, and I obeyed. “I think you’ve had enough excitement for one night.”
He had no idea how wrong he was, though he bit his lip and concentrated on the task before him, too late to stop that phrase—enough excitement—from dangling like a mischievous dare between us.
“So you’re an only child?” I asked. At his confused frown, I pointed toward his bedroom. “The photo on your night table.”
His forehead relaxed. “Oh. Yes.”
“I wouldn’t wish my brothers into nonexistence, but I envy you that a little bit.”
He angled a brow, dubious. “You didn’t get sufficient attention as a child?”
“I got my share by being the only girl, but their attention was always divided, never focused, and it usually went to whichever of us was the biggest whiny-ass, or most successful, or fucking up the most. Believe it or not, I was rarely the most of any of those things.”
He chopped vegetables, beat eggs, grated cheese, and didn’t respond beyond the teeniest almost-smile that ever existed.
“Do your parents live nearby?”
He turned away to pour the egg mixture in a heated, buttered pan. “They died in a freak car accident not long after that photo was taken. A tire blew on a semi and the driver lost control briefly. They were one lane over. Wrong place, wrong time.” That he had related this story countless times over the years was evident in his impassive recounting of it.
I considered the photo from that tragic angle and my heart squeezed. “Please forget my thoughtless only child bullshit. Jesus. You were so young. I’m sorry, Isaac.”
“You didn’t know.” He was silent for several minutes, and I rested my chin in my hand, watching him cook. “I think I get what you mean about focused attention. I’d had that kind of attention for ten years. Took it for granted. Never had to compete for it. But then I was part of a new family unit, and as much as they loved me, the focus was gone.”
Comprehension dawned. “Your cousin—the one who worked her way through college—you lived with her family, after?”
“Yeah. My aunt and uncle took me in.” He slid a plate in front of me; a fluffy omelet, fat with sautéed peppers and mushrooms, oozed melted cheese. “Don’t eat more than you feel like eating.”
“I feel fine now, I promise. And this smells delicious.” I picked up my fork and ate a small bite to test my stomach. It gurgled happily, and I gave a pleased sigh. “When we run away from home, you’ll do the cooking.”
He slid an omelet onto his plate and then stared, brow arched, waiting for further explanation of that weird statement.
“Um. That was a game Pax and I used to play. When we were little, before he discovered girls. He would say, ‘When we run away from home, you have to wash all the underwear.’ And I would say, ‘When we run away from home, you have to eat all the celery.’ I hated celery. Like really, seriously, hated it.”
“Enough to consent to washing all the underwear?”
“I was five; he was nine. I was easily manipulated.”
He leaned onto the counter across from me to eat. “I take it you hate to cook?”
“No. But our assigned duties also recognized alleged strengths. Like, we had plans for making money on the streets: he would play the guitar and I would sing.”
The almost-smile returned. “Now I’ll have to hear you sing.”
I finished a bite, shaking my head. “Oh no. I’m a terrible singer. The worst. Trust me, you’d be sorry. We thought way more highly of our ‘talents’ than deserved. Pax could only play two chords. Even Auto-Tune wouldn’t have saved us.”
This confession was rewarded with the laugh that made my heart stutter. “I guess it’s a good thing you two never had to survive on the mean streets.”
“We would have been arrested for disturbing the peace, or starved to death.”
By the time I finished eating, I was so tired I could barely help dry the dishes. After reading a text from Rhys aloud, letting us know Mindi was still asleep and he wasn’t going to wake her, Isaac laid his phone on the counter and said, “I’m getting you a pillow and a fresh blanket. No way you’re driving all the way home tonight.” He wore a slight scowl, and his arms were crossed as though he expected an argument and was prepared to dispute it.
I knew that if I tried to drive home, I’d likely end up in a ditch, or worse. I was a danger to myself and others. “Yes, sir,” I said, giving a smartass salute.
His shoulders lowered a fraction of an inch, and with a ghost of a smirk at the edge of his mouth, he nodded, mollified.