“Um, I listened to the usual stuff,” I told her. “Like this”—I gestured toward the speaker—“or, you know, like you said, Breaking Benjamin, Staind, Marilyn Manson …”
“Well, of course. Because you were a badass,” she jabbed, reaching over to poke me in the side while her lips stretched into a teasing grin.
But I didn't smile back.
So much for safe.
“I wasn't a badass, Ray,” I argued, furrowing my brow. “I was bad. There's a difference.”
“You weren't that bad.” Her voice was quiet, hushed. Barely audible above Shaun Morgan's gruff, surly vocals.
“No, I was pretty fucking bad.” I mean, I had sold drugs to high school kids, for crying out loud.
“You might've done bad things,” she countered in a whisper, “but you were still a good person. I knew bad people, Soldier, and you weren't it. Not to me.”
I couldn't argue that, so I didn't.
Instead, I cleared my throat and said, “Anyway, um … but mostly, I listened to the stuff my grandparents' liked.”
Ray smiled. “Like what?”
“Oh, um … The Beatles and Van Morrison … Eric Clapton, Elton John, Tom Petty …”
“Oh, Grandpa likes Tom Petty,” Noah chimed in from the backseat. “Right, Mom?”
Ray's eyes met the rearview mirror. “He does. Tom Petty's one of his favorites.”
“It's, like, the soundtrack of my childhood,” I continued, thinking about those days on the dock, fishing with Grampa, or cooking in the kitchen with Gramma. The good days. The days of my childhood worth remembering and holding on to.
“I wish I could've met your grandparents,” Ray mused thoughtfully as she turned the car into Harold's parking lot.
“Yeah,” I replied as the old but familiar sting of grief struck swift and hard. “Me too.”
***
That afternoon, after going shopping and grabbing lunch, Noah and I carried the sixty-five-inch flat screen from Ray's car and up the steps to my house.
Ray, meanwhile, had gone back to her place to get dinner started. She was making white chicken chili—a meal that had quickly become a favorite of mine.
“Watch that,” I reminded Noah as he stepped over the rotted plank of wood. “I really need to fix that shit.”
“I can help,” he said as I fished my keys from my pocket while struggling to steady the underside of the big box on my forearm.
“I'll let you know when I get around to it.”
The door now unlocked, I pushed it open to Eleven's welcoming meows. Noah and I carried the television to the couch, where we propped it against the cushions until we were ready to put it up. It was already late, and we were both tired and hungry, but I told him he could help me put it up the next day.
“Can I feed Eleven?” he asked, wiping the sweat off his palms onto his khaki shorts.
“Yeah, sure. I'm just gonna jump in the shower real quick.”
After I’d spent so much time in Ray's hot car and hoisting around a heavy TV, the sweat stains beneath my pits were gnarly, and I could only imagine what the rest of me looked like … never mind the smell.
Later, after showering and putting on a fresh pair of clothes, I wandered into the hall, only to find Noah across the way in my bedroom, standing in the open doorway of my closet. My brow furrowed as I crossed the threshold. He wasn't one to snoop—or at least, he never had before.
“Hey, buddy,” I said slowly, making him aware of my presence. “Uh … whatcha doing?”
Startled, he turned on his heel. “O-oh! Um … sorry. I, um …” He swallowed and pointed to Eleven, sitting at his feet, licking his front paw. “Eleven ran in here, and I went after him, so, uh …”
“It's cool,” I said, dropping the towel in the hamper by the door. “Well, you wanna head back to—”
“What is that?”
“Huh?”
“That.”
Noah pointed to the top shelf of the closet. I followed with my eyes and spotted the only thing I had left of my childhood, then smiled.
“That, my friend, is a tackle box,” I said, raking my wet hair back against my head. “My grampa used to take me fishing a lot in the summer, and that's what he'd bring with us.”
Noah's stare turned melancholy as he nodded. “I've never been fishing.”
“No?”
He shook his head.
“Well, we're gonna have to change that. Maybe when school's out, you and I can go down to the water and see what kinda fish are out there.”
His smile lit up his whole face. “Really? You'd wanna do that?”
“Absolutely. I mean, as long as your mom is cool with it.”
That was all it took for him to take off running past Eleven, down the hall, and out the door, where I was sure he hopped over the rotted wooden step and up his porch stairs. I chuckled to myself as I bent over to pet Eleven between the ears, picturing Noah bursting through the door and begging his mom to let him go fishing, as if we were going right now, at six o'clock in the evening.
He reminded me of … well, me.
Running up the stairs to my room after Grampa had announced we were heading down to the dock for the day. Throwing on whatever clothes I could find, not caring if they were dirty or clean or even the right size.
I glanced at the old red box and smiled through the bittersweet ache. Because, as much as I missed the man who had raised me, it had been decades since I'd felt this close to him. And somehow, the idea of taking that old tackle box out to the water felt an awful lot like bringing him back to life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE BOGEYMAN RETURNS
I woke with a gruff sigh to a room still dark and a small, lithe hand running slow, lazy circuits along the waistband of my pants. My lips quirked into a half-dazed smile as my eyes closed to the softness of her fingertips, dipping playfully beneath the elastic.
“What are you doing?” I asked in a sleepy, teasing tone.
Ray's lips pressed to my shoulder as her hand traveled lower. “Waking you up, obviously.”
I smirked toward the ceiling. “But it's Sunday.”
“Yes”—she kissed across my chest, her fingertips grazing the base of my quick arousal—“it is.”
“I sleep in on Sundays.”
“Oh, so sorry.” Her hand was quick to leave my pants as she propped herself up on her elbow, looking down into my eyes with a feigned expression of apology. “Should I let you go back to sleep then?”
I snorted, rolling over and flipping her onto her back. “Well, I'm already up now. Might as well do something about it …”
“Are you sure? I mean, it only takes you, like, two seconds to fall asleep, so if you really want to sleep in …”
She accentuated the pout of her full bottom lip as my hand rounded her hip to dip between her open thighs, finding she'd already taken off her underwear. I groaned, sliding my fingers over her smooth, slick, delicate skin, and she bit her lip.
A sound not unlike a growl scraped along my throat as one finger easily slipped inside.
“God, how the hell are you already so wet?”
The lip trapped between her teeth was released then, followed by a hushed gasp. “I woke up like this,” she admitted.