Everything in Between (16 page)

“This is really nice.” Zae cupped CJ’s face and drew him in for a kiss on the cheek.

“Ew!” he winced. “Your breath smells like wet gym socks.”

“Thanks. Just for that, you get to do the dishes when Chef Kish finishes cooking.”

Grumbling under his breath, CJ left the table and started for the stairs to the basement.

Without turning around, Zae said, “I want your homework finished before you get on that Xbox.”

CJ made a U-turn at the top of the stairs and headed for his bedroom, still grumbling.

“You’re a real taskmaster, Prof. Richardson,” Chip said. He joined Zae with his own plate, sitting opposite her. Unbidden, he drizzled warm maple syrup over her pancakes. “Is that enough?”

“It’s perfect.” Zae picked up her knife and fork, but instead of tucking into her own meal, she watched Chip. Sitting in her sunlit breakfast nook with him seemed so natural. Too natural. “Did CJ let you in?”

“No, I used my key,” Chip answered through a hearty bite of his food. He laughed a little at Zae’s expression of shock. “CJ answered the door. He said I could do a load or two of laundry.”

“CJ doesn’t pay the water bill around here.”

“He’s the man of the house, sort of.”

Zae quieted. “I suppose he is.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know. It’s fine.”

Chip busied his mouth with eating to avoid any further awkward remarks.

“You didn’t have to cook for us,” Zae told him.

“I wanted to. I like to cook.”

“Really?”

He shrugged and used a corner of his toast to mop up syrup and egg yolk. “I’m only good at a few things, but what I do, I do well.”

“Do you cook for all your girlfriends?” Zae wanted to suck back the question no sooner than the words left her mouth.

“Are you my girlfriend?”

“How much laundry did you put in the washer?”

“Why?”

“Because I can hear the washer strolling across the basement floor.”

They darted from their chairs, Zae leading the race for the laundry room. She opened the door to find the washer waddling from side to side, the canister creaking and groaning from the lopsided load. It clanked to a stop when Zae opened the lid.

“I’m so sorry about this,” Chip said. He redistributed the towels and jeans inside the washer. “I’m more used to Gian and Cinder’s equipment. But ever since they got married, I feel like I’m in the way when I go over there to do laundry. I know they don’t mind having me around, but with all the remodeling they’re doing to set up a nursery and enlarging Cinder’s home office, I figure the last thing they need is me hanging around waiting for my duds to dry.”

Chip’s explanation blended into the background noise along with the quiet hum of the dryer and the comical chugging of the restarted washer. Zae stood over Chip’s military-issue laundry sack. It sat open at her feet, upchucking its contents. Zae held one of Chip’s dress shirts to her nose.

One of the things she missed most about her late husband was his scent. He’d been gone so long, Zae couldn’t call up the memory of it anymore. She knew she’d never recall it again, now that Chip’s scent infused her. Wonderfully masculine and warm, his scent brought to mind sunshine and body heat, laughter and…dimples?

She shoved the plain white button-down back into the laundry bag.

Dimples don’t have a smell,
she chastised herself.
Neither does laughter.
She turned to see Chip curiously staring at her.
But if they did,
Zae thought,
they would smell just like Chip.

“What’s going on with you?” he asked, crossing the spotless cement floor to take her by her shoulders. “You seem funny.”

“I woke up with a headache,” she said softly. “That’s all.”

He touched his lips to her forehead, but abruptly drew away. “You’re on fire. Do you have a thermometer in the house?”

“It’s upstairs.”

Chip followed her back upstairs and settled her on the family room sofa, insisting on getting the thermometer himself. Obedient for the first time in their relationship, she allowed him to take her temperature and then dose her with acetaminophen when the digital readout flashed over 102 degrees.

After getting CJ to bring him a blanket, Chip tucked it around Zae, making her comfortable on the sofa. He sat beside her and handed her the remote for the widescreen television mounted on the wall above her fireplace.

“You can go home now,” Zae said half-heartedly. “I’ll be fine after I get some rest.”

Chip took the remote from her. He zapped the television on and guided Zae’s head to his lap. “What do you want to watch?” he asked, flipping through the channels.

“You walking out the door. I don’t need you to babysit me.”

“Why can’t you accept someone else taking care of you?”

“Because people aren’t always there when you need them.”

Chip had known Zae long enough to see through her abrasive toughness. For so long, she’d had to be mother and father to her children. Colin’s life insurance had paid off the house and provided for the kids’ high school and college educations, but no insurance covered Father-Daughter dances, anniversaries, birthdays and the other events that left the sting of Colin’s absence so much more keen.

Insurance didn’t cover loneliness. Zae had been the one person her children could depend on for everything, from taking care of them when they were sick to helping with homework and chauffeuring them to their activities. But who could Zae depend on when she needed someone to lean on? Her friends offered help, sometimes forcing it on her when she refused it, but as far as Chip knew, she’d never actually asked anyone for help. The independence he so admired in her was also one of her most frustrating qualities. But with her allowing him to stroke his fingers through her hair, he decided to take a risk.

“Only a fool turns down help when it’s offered.”

She rolled over, turning her face to his belly. “I’d be a fool to accept your kind of help.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it comes with a price. It’s not entirely selfless. You want something from me.”

“You’re right,” he said with a guilty smile.

“I’m always right,” she sighed. “It’s the curse of my existence, but I’ve learned to use my power for good instead of evil.”

“There’s dried snot crusted on your nostril. There’s a hair stuck in it.”

She abruptly sat up and snatched a tissue from the box on one of the oak end tables. Chip snickered, and she struck at him. He raised a knee to ward off the ineffectual blow.

“Is it gone?” She showed him her face.

Chip took a fresh tissue and licked it. He cleaned her face, then held the tissue to her nose so she could blow it.

“Even covered in snot with your eyes all red-rimmed and runny, your hair looking like possums are nesting in it—”

“Hey!”

“—you’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Chip finished. “Anywhere. Ever.”

The bare emotion powering his simple declaration turned her bones to jelly. His words spoke to the very heart of her, leaving her believing that in that moment, no other man or woman ever existed, as if love were reinvented every time they were together.

“What is it you think I want from you?” Chip asked.

“Me.”

Chip directed her head back to his lap, and he combed her hair with his fingers. “You’ve got blue highlights,” he told her.

“Only in certain light.”

Her slurred words let Chip know that sleep was near. “Would you mind if I brushed your hair?”

Zae nestled more comfortably on his lap, wrapping an arm around his knees and drawing her own up closer to her body. Other than a good foot massage, there was nothing she liked more than having her hair brushed. “CJ!” she hollered, startling Chip. “Bring me the brush on my dresser!”

A long moment passed before CJ’s footsteps sounded above, followed soon after by his appearance, still in his pajamas, in the family room. She reached for the hairbrush, and CJ gave it to him.

“What are you guys watching?” CJ asked, glancing at the television.

“Some movie about zombies that rig a presidential election,” Chip answered.

“I wanted to see this.” CJ sat at his mother’s feet and pulled the blanket over his legs.

“Is your homework finished?” Zae asked sleepily.

“Just about. I only have to read ‘The Black Cat’ and define a few vocabulary words.”

Brushing Zae’s hair, Chip said, “That’s a Poe story, right?”

Eyes on the movie, CJ nodded.

“I kinda liked that one,” Chip said. “Lots of symbolism in it.”

“I like how he named the cat Pluto,” CJ said.

“Yeah? Why?”

“Because Pluto is the Greek god of the underworld. That’s where ancient Greeks thought you go when you die. Pluto in ‘The Black Cat’ is a big-time warning of death,” CJ said.

“I didn’t learn that until I was in high school, and here you are in the sixth grade dissecting great literature,” Chip replied. “What did you think about the first few lines of the story, where the narrator keeps saying he’s not crazy?”

“It made me think he must be crazy,” CJ said.

Zae listened to her son discuss Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” with Chip, the only man who’d ever volunteered to brush her hair. When sleep finally took her, Zae surrendered completely, flanked by two of the people she loved most, in the comfort of her family room.

* * *.

Chip set his sack of clean and folded laundry inside the front door. He closed the door behind him and stood there, surveying his entire apartment. The bedroom and bath were their own rooms off the main space, which served as living room, dining room and kitchen.

Kitchenette
, Chip reminded himself, remembering how that word had seemed an enticing selling point when he’d first been shown the apartment. The apartment was supposed to have been a pit stop on his way to a more permanent, or at least a roomier, living situation. Nearly eight years after moving in, he was almost exactly where he’d been when he’d first arrived in Webster Groves—sleeping on a mattress on the floor and using bed sheets for curtains.

CJ was more of a man of the house than Chip. The kid slept in a real bed, which put him one up on Chip.

Zae treated him like a man, but examining how he lived, he clearly saw why she didn’t quite treat him like an adult. Ramen noodle cups lined his kitchenette counter and pizza boxes were stacked knee-high beside his trash can. He was a college student and lived like one.

His entire apartment could likely fit in Zae’s master bathroom. Her Labor Day barbeques were major events, and her redwood deck was the perfect place to comfortably feed and entertain up to fifty guests. Chip’s last party had been a last-minute gathering of Sheng Li coaches, and he’d served lukewarm beer and brats prepared on the toy-sized hibachi nestled in a corner of his balcony. If a three-by-six foot wrought iron overhang attached to his kitchen window could be called a balcony.

His living room table was a piece of laminate board set atop two milk crates. His bookcase was made of boards he’d stacked on top of bricks. He grabbed his laundry and hauled the bag to his bedroom, a sight that left him even more dispirited.

He’d never hesitated to bring women home to spend the night in a room bereft of any furniture other than the mattress on the floor. He hadn’t really cared what those women thought of his place. The mere thought of Zae seeing his bedroom mortified him.

He set his laundry bag on the floor of his closet, the very place the clothes would go once he’d worn them. Zae didn’t use her floors to hold dirty laundry, and from this moment on, Chip resolved to do better. To be better.

Zae deserved nothing less.

He pulled his cell phone from his back pocket and called Gian. “Hey,” he said after Gian answered the phone, “could I get Pio’s phone number? I need the name of a good realtor.”

“Mr. Kish, Professor Richardson, thank you for taking the time to meet with me this afternoon.” Hirsch Sheppard, the dean of Missouri University, cleared his throat. His bald pate glowed bright pink in the subdued lighting of the conference room. Sitting at one end of the long, dark wood table, his secretary to his right and the dean of student affairs to his left, he looked as if he’d rather be anyplace other than facing Chip and Zae at the opposite end of the table.

Zae issued a long, exaggerated sigh. “You didn’t exactly give me a choice. Your message said you had an urgent matter to discuss.”

“I’m not exactly sure why I was called here today,” Chip said. “I got your message when I was in class this morning. Today’s the last class, and I’d rather not be missing it.”

“Then we’ll make this quick,” snapped Birgitte Todd, the dean of student affairs. “Mrs. Richardson—”

“Professor Richardson,” Zae corrected. From experience, Zae knew that any meeting involving Birgitte was not going to be pleasant. The 60-year-old career administrator looked like a constipated pigeon, and she seemed to delight in controversy, the more lurid the better.