Austin had once taken me to that party in Chesapeake Manor, where all the officers’ kids were partying. He told me that everyone our age was drinking, that I should just relax. Then he passed out in one of the bedrooms with some girl from a high school across town and I was forced to sleep there, surrounded by loud, rowdy, belligerent boys. That’s when one of them, the one who called me “Austin’s sister” and had too deep a voice for a high school kid, swore I had a crush on him and shoved his tongue down my throat—repeatedly. Until I started crying and he got “weirded out.”
Funny how my telling him to stop, my constant “No, no, no, please no!” didn’t do it. Nope, it was the salty, hot tears streaming down my face that finally got him to go away. I guess he didn’t like the way they tasted. Eventually I fell asleep on a couch listening to some war video game being played in the other room. Austin never apologized the next morning. He never asked how I had slept or where. He just kissed that random girl on the cheek and made a joke that she and I both laughed at, and then we Ubered home like nothing ever happened. Our dad yelled at me, not at him, and we both got grounded for a week, but three days in, Austin got to hang out with his friends, and since I didn’t have any, I was stuck there.
I clicked on Austin’s profile and thought about calling him again, but then Elodie opened the front door and surprised me. I hadn’t even realized I was on my front porch.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
My house is small: when you go through the front door, you’re already in the living room. That’s one of the things I like about it, the way it’s all cozy and warm, everything there waiting for me. No surprises, except the faulty electrical work that I still haven’t been able to fix correctly. The lights and TV were on when I got home that night, the room filled with the voice of Olivia Pope. And there was Elodie, standing at the door, greeting me with a nervous smile. Something was up.
I hadn’t known Elodie that long, but I felt I knew her better than I knew the father who I’d lived with for a lifetime. We met at work on her first day hired. I found her in the cleaning supplies closet, crying because a client had yelled at her when the massage oil she used was too hot. We didn’t have much in common, other than being the same age. And even that, well, I felt older somehow. I looked older, too. Elodie had this youthful air around her, a forever teenager, especially when she smiled. And when she was nervous or sad, she looked about sixteen. Maybe younger? That brought out the protector in me. I didn’t have a choice but to grow up fast. Even at twenty, I barely remember a time when I was free of adult thoughts and worries.
Elodie tried her best to be the perfect young Army wife, but she was already at the center of so many petty rumors. The wives in Phillip’s platoon made little jokes about her accent and called her a “mail-order bride,” despite the reality that tons of soldiers met their wives online. I’m sure my client Stewart had some stats on that, too—about how many members of the military met their spouses on social media.
That didn’t seem to matter to these women who entertained themselves by belittling Elodie. That’s how a lot of military installations were—everyone bickering and jostling for position. Elodie’s neighbors were snarky assholes who spent their days selling pyramid schemes on Facebook and bullying her over her grass being an inch too long. That’s not an exaggeration. I was with her once when the “mayor” of her housing department pulled up, tires screeching, and scolded Elodie for letting her grass grow half an inch too long.
Yes, the “mayor” measured.
No, she didn’t have anything better to do.
That’s why Elodie preferred to spend her nights on my couch, or next to me in my bed, depending on where she fell asleep. I got the feeling she liked the couch the most. She didn’t wake up asking for her mom or Phillip when she was on the couch.
I planned on asking Elodie about the guy, Kael, I had met earlier. Obviously, she knew him—but how? She didn’t have many friends, as far as I was aware, and she didn’t spend much time socializing.
While I was looking at my phone for a text from my brother, hoping for one—not surprisingly, there was nothing from him—Elodie walked to the couch, sat down, and tucked her feet under her. Her petite body was changing, her belly starting to swell. I wondered where the baby would sleep in my little house. The thought made me equal parts excited and terrified.
Elodie’s favorite American show at the moment was Scandal. She was binge-watching it for the first time, and while it was on, she was completely checked out. I wished I could find something that I loved as much, to distract my mind from its constant flow of thought.
“What season are you on now?” I asked, watching her spring up again.
“Two,” she said softly, as she moved toward the kitchen.
She was being so quiet. I pulled my shoes off, and it wasn’t until I dropped one on the floor and something moved in my peripheral vision that I realized another person was in my house.
A noise, a little like a shriek, flew from my mouth when I saw him. He was staring at me, the one-syllable client. He was sitting in my chair—the dark pink, used-to-be-red one that my nana gave my mom before I was born. I always loved it, and because it had sat in my dad’s storage unit after my mom left, I decided it was mine to take. She left it, and us, and the chair was a tiny victory for me.
“Um, hey?” I said when my heart stopped doing little flips from the aftershock of surprise. How did I not see a whole human in my living room?
“How was work?” Elodie asked, looking at the TV while her fingers picked at the fabric on her frayed shorts, and then back at me.
“Good . . .”
I stared at this Kael guy and he stared back at me. When I would recall this later, the first time he was inside my house, the memory would linger in my thoughts, changing from a burning pain to pure bliss and back—again and again and again. But when it happened in real life, it happened fast. Before he was anything to me—before he was everything—he was just a quiet stranger with a blank face and distant eyes. There was something inscrutable about him, something so closed that I couldn’t even begin to read him. He hated peppermint oil and hadn’t wanted me to touch his legs during his treatment—those were the only clues I had about who he was. He stared at me for a few seconds, then looked away and stared at the wall for so long that I almost wanted to count the seconds until he blinked.
I smelled the popcorn right before the popping sound started. “I’m making popcorn,” Elodie announced. She was nervous. What was going on here? Were they having a movie night? Netflix and chill? The whole situation was weird. He was fucking weird.
“Okay . . .” I excused myself. “I’m going to take a shower. Have to be at my dad’s at seven.”
I walked down the hallway. Elodie followed, chewing on her bottom lip.
“Well?” I asked.
“He arrived home last night. He was with my Phillip.” Her voice was low, and I could tell she was gearing herself up to ask me something. My mom was like this, too, when she wanted something.
“Can he stay here for a day until he can get a hold of his . . .” She trailed off, stopping for a second. “Until he can get into his place. Sorry to ask like this, I—”