Marisol raised her eyebrows at her brother. “Tell me again about how the kids’ dancing was too sexy?” She fanned herself with her hand.
“Knock it off,” he chided her. “It was just a dance. And it was way tamer than what the teens were doing.”
“Sure.”
Fate conspired to keep Deck and me apart for the rest of the night. He got pulled into an extended emergency repair of one of the bleachers while Marisol and I navigated the drama when Shayna, the petite vixen at the center of the fight between Jayden and Tycho, showed up.
I appreciated the distance. It gave me a chance to consider my reaction to being held in Deck’s arms. He was the only man who’d ever inspired strong emotions in me, and it was becoming harder to deny that I wanted him. That I didn’t want to be careful. Not after all these years.
And it would need to be me to light the fuse. Because Deck had been talking himself out of his feelings for years. He might let his guard down and put an arm around me on the couch or ask me to dance—things he could dismiss because of our friendship and our history—but he’d never admit he wanted more unless I did first. For all Deck’s talk about being a live wire, he’d always been incredibly disciplined with his words, at least when it came to me. He’d only slipped once.
Baby.
Heart emoji.
Chapter twenty-five
Cori
Two days after the dance, I was still going back and forth in my mind about talking to Deck, trying to game-plan my approach.
Oh, hey, Deck, I know you went to jail for nearly beating to death the guy who almost raped me, and my drug addict brother with newly-diagnosed HIV is a big factor in both our lives, and you feel guilty about everything from your sister’s burns to Eliazar dying, and I’m traumatized from my mom being a sex worker and wondering all the time if my brother and I were going to get taken away, and I turned my back on my entire childhood and created a double life for myself in the corporate world, and I need to save the one place I loved growing up from financial ruin, and a month ago, we were barely speaking while prowling around a nasty drug house stepping over vomit looking for Johnny, and you still probably feel you’re bad for me, BUT I think we should start holding hands and going out to dinner and watching baseball gamesand stuff because I might be a little in love with you, and probably have been for basically my whole life, and, oh yeah, I think you love me too.
Even picturing the conversation made me nauseous.
It was a terrible time to upset our status quo. But for the first time in my life, I didn’t care. I wanted to do the messy, fucked-up thing. But not necessarily right this minute.
I felt like I could go slow acclimating myself to the idea first. It was enough for now to enjoy my rediscovered friendship with Deck and not rush into the next step.
Maybe I’d have a better answer when Deck came over later. I’d invited him to Sunday brunch with my friends, hoping it would make my brother feel more comfortable to have him there as a buffer.
A few minutes before Britta and Marcus were set to arrive, Johnny was still fumbling with the buttons of his polo shirt.
“You don’t have to wear that,” I said. “We aren’t formal or anything.”
“I wanna make a good impression on your fancy friends.”
He was nervous. Since leaving rehab a week ago, he’d been holed up in my house. He’d turned my guest bedroom into a hurricane of clothes, candy wrappers, and soda cans, plus his meds were in the hall bathroom cabinet, but other than that, it was like living with a ghost. I knew I needed to approach the subject of trying a different rehab, but Johnny barely seemed able to navigate the menu on my TV, let alone discuss options for his continued recovery.
At least he hadn’t relapsed, and it had been over a month since Deck and I pulled him out of the hell house. That was something.
Since I couldn’t coax Johnny outside, I’d decided to bring people who weren’t Deck and me to him. Britta and Marcus were a soft landing. I knew they’d be kind, and I wanted Johnny to see that he fit with the other pieces of my life.
“My friends aren’t fancy,” I insisted, pulling his hands from his collar. “They’re like me.”
Johnny’s forehead stretched. “Sorry, Sis. You fancy.”
“I am not!”
“Let’s examine the evidence, shall we?” He counted off on his fingers. “When we order takeout, you put it on plates instead of eating out of the boxes. You have spare toothbrushes for guests. Your fridge has one of those thingies to get ice and water. And you have a switch on the wall to make the shades go down over the windows.”
“Only the high ones I can’t reach!” I flicked him on the arm, pleased to feel a little meat under my fingers. “You have a low bar for what’s fancy.”
“What can I say? I grew up in a trailer park.” He grinned. I’d missed that smile.
“Well, you’ll love Britta and Marcus. Fancy or not. And they’ll love you.”
“And they know about…everything?”
