“I wondered what happened with the last two, but now it makes so much sense,” she claimed. “They sucked.”
Maybe I cared less and less every day about him and his career and his mom. I hadn’t even thought about them in weeks. But…
I still got a real kick out of it.
Suckers.
*
Jackie stuck to her plan. Since school had just gotten back in session, she walked over to the shop afterward and rode home with me, so that we wouldn’t alert Amos that she was there. I snuck her in and out of the house. And we baked the two layers of cakes on pans she’d brought over from Clara’s, let them sit out and cool for an hour while she helped me work on a new puzzle. Then we’d decorated the cake to look like a massive Oreo with thick vanilla frosting between the layers and sprinkled cookie crumbs over it.
It looked amazing.
Jackie took about a thousand pictures of it.
And when the time came, she asked me quietly if I could carry it down the stairs for her the next day, and I agreed.
The next evening, I stood at the corner of the building and peeked as she walked over to the main house so slowly balancing that cake, you’d figure she was carrying something priceless. I only went back inside when Rhodes opened the door for her, smiling to myself. Hoping Amos loved it because Jackie had made it with so much effort and excitement.
He was a good kid. I was sure he would.
Speaking of…
We’d seen each other a few days ago, and he hadn’t said a word about his birthday coming up, but I’d stopped and got him a card anyway. I’d sneak it to him the next time we talked.
I was just beginning to sign it when someone knocked.
“Come in!” I hollered, figuring it was Jackie.
But the sound of heavier than normal footsteps had me freezing, and when I heard them on the landing, I turned around to find Rhodes there. Not Jackie or Amos.
We had seen each other since the day he’d found me at the trail. In passing. I’d waved at him from upstairs, he’d come in the other day while Amos and I had been in the garage and he’d checked out my elbows and hands, then sat through another half hour of his child singing. Very, very shyly but singing in front of us, which was a miracle in itself. I guessed he had been serious about the talent show he’d brought up around Yuki. Things had been… good.
And I had tried not to be confused over the little comments he’d dropped along the way.
Specifically him calling me the b-word.
And saying that thing about “who said I don’t like you?”
Now, he was standing there mere feet away from me in jeans, another T-shirt, and black slippers. But it was his wide eyes that interested me the most. “What the hell happened in here?” he asked, eyeing the clothes I had thrown all over the place and the shoes I had kicked off at opposite ends of the room. I was pretty sure he was standing about a foot away from a pair of panties too, to top it off.
I hadn’t cleaned up in… a while.
I grimaced when his gaze met mine. “The wind blew everything around?” I offered.
Rhodes blinked. The edges of his mouth tightened for a second before they were back to normal and he glanced up at the ceiling then looked back at me and said, in that dry, bossy voice, “Come on.”
“Where?”
“To the house,” he answered calmly, watching me with those intense gray eyes.
“Why?”
His eyebrows went up. “Do you always ask this many questions when someone’s trying to invite you somewhere?”
I thought about it and smiled. “No.”
The man tipped his head to the side, and his full mouth went flat. Was he trying to hide a smile behind that? His hands went to his hips. “Come to the house to get some pizza and cake, Buddy.”
I hesitated for a second. “Are you sure?”
His tightened mouth melted away, and he just looked at me. For a second. For two. Then he murmured, almost softly, “Yes, Aurora. I’m sure.”
I smiled. Maybe I should’ve asked if he was really sure, but I didn’t want him to take back the offer. So I held up a finger and said, “One minute. I was actually just in the middle of signing his birthday card.”
Rhodes dipped that cute, cleft chin before shifting his attention back to the disaster that was the garage apartment. It wasn’t that bad, but I’d been in his house enough to know our interpretations of “clean” were pretty different. I didn’t have a sink full of dishes or overflowing trash cans, but my clothes had slowly stopped finding their way to my suitcase at some point…