Growing and Kissing (2 page)

I looked up to his eyes again and saw that he was staring straight back down at me.
Why? Why is he doing that?
And that hand, the one so many people had ducked and cowered from, was still hovering next to my face.

I dropped my eyes and looked anywhere,
anywhere
but at his face, feeling my cheeks flare. I sifted through the graffiti, trying to find something readable amongst the years of overlapping tags, but it was just a multi-colored, tangled mess. It didn’t matter. As long as I wasn’t looking at
him.
Anything was safer than entertaining some stupid, dangerous fantasy about Sean O’Harra taking me and pushing me up against the wall and running those big hands over my—

Stop it.

And then I saw something that made my stomach do a complete somersault. Just behind him, resting against the wall of the elevator, was his hammer.

Some men are scary because they have a gun or a knife. Sean O’Harra was terrifying because he didn’t need either. They say that a lot of guys just drop their weapons and run, when they see him marching towards them.

It was a sledgehammer and it suited him. The wooden shaft—almost half my height—was worn and smoothly strong. The metal head was dull gray, chipped and scratched. Brutal...and yet strangely beautiful.

Sean O’Harra scared people. That was a fact and it was also his job: he scared people for a living. The local drug gangs hired him when they wanted a meth lab put out of business or a stolen package of coke retrieved. Sometimes, smashing the place up was the point and sometimes it was a byproduct of scaring people, but it always happened, one way or another. Everyone on our block knew someone who knew someone who’d been there when Sean smashed up the local biker bar because they’d started dealing where they shouldn’t, or when he hammered a guy’s Mercedes into a steel pancake because he owed money, or when he tore through a slimy politician’s house like a hurricane, reducing every stick of furniture to pieces smaller than your fist, because the guy had been hiring underage prostitutes. They said he’d done that last one just for fun.

There were other stories, too, different kinds of stories. Ones told by the glamorous sort of women I’m not, with their perfect hair and make-up. The ones who were too well off to live in our apartment block, but liked to slum it and be all
daring
by hanging out at the local bars. They’d giggle and tease each other about Sean O’Harra and joke about how they were going to jiggle their perfect tits in front of him that night. I’d glimpse them coming home with him, all sass and confidence, delighted at having landed a real-life bad boy. The next morning, I’d see them stumbling out of the elevator, clothes half-on and eyes glazed, all their giggles gone.

It scared me but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t excite me a little, too. Sean lived one floor below me and sometimes I’d lie awake in the early hours listening to the thumps and the groans and the breathless female cries that climbed higher and higher and always ended in wailing, frantic pleas.

But now, looking at that hammer, I was reminded of what he really was. Not just someone who worked for the drug gangs but someone they were scared of. He didn’t even have that slim vestige of loyalty and honor that came from belonging to one of them: people said he was loyal to whoever was paying him, and then only for as long as the money lasted. I wasn’t sure if that made him worse than the rest of them, or better because he didn’t believe in all that bullshit about
respect
that the dealers thought was so important. To him, it seemed to be just a job. But what sort of man chooses to earn his living scaring people?

Someone very, very different from me. Sean’s world was one utterly outside my own, a world of breaking rules and laws, of waking up to the cops banging on your door—everything I’d been raised to be terrified of. I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket. I might have to live surrounded by the gangs, but I keep as far away from it all as possible. Maybe that’s why I could feel that thread of heat pulsing and twisting like a glowing wire inside me. I’m so
good—
I’ve always been so good—that the idea of a guy like Sean O’Harra taking me and—

Stripping me.

Spreading me.

Destroying
me. Taking all my goodness and making me as dark and dirty as him—

I pressed my thighs together. I didn’t dare look at him again. What if he was looking at me? What if he could
tell?

I focused on the feel of the elevator clunking its way down through the floors.
God, I could feel the heat of him, so close in the little metal box. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed his hand finally descending...but, as it swung down, it came almost within touching range of my breast...then my hip...then my thigh. And I realized my whole body was tense, waiting for the brush of his fingers. I didn’t dare look up but, when I glanced carefully sideways, I could see the hazy reflection of him in the polished steel between the graffiti. And it looked as if he was staring down at me with such intensity every inch of my skin should have been bursting into flame. Sean O’Harra was looking at
me.

Stop it.
Like I’m the sort of woman he’d be into. I couldn’t be more
unlike
one of his conquests. They’re always blonde and tanned. I have hair the color of copper wire and my skin refuses to tan, even after years of living in California. I can stay out of the sun or I can burn. And my boobs are on the big side, making me awkwardly top-heavy and I don’t have time to wear anything but jeans and t-shirts or to spend hours on fancy make-up. I’m just a—

Well, basically I’m a mom. In every sense apart from the literal, genetic one. A sex-starved, slowly-going-insane mom who can’t go out on dates or bring guys back to my apartment.
That’s
why I was having crazy, fleeting fantasies about Sean O’Harra: because this brief interlude in the elevator was the closest I’d been to a man in months. That was the only reason.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

The elevator stopped. I heard the doors slide open behind me and I backed out, wheeled around, and
ran
before I could do anything stupid.

And I tried to ignore the itching between my shoulder blades, the feeling that he was watching me go.

***

Ten minutes later, I was sitting at an intersection, strumming my fingers on the wheel and willing the red light to change to green. There was nothing coming in either direction but I’m the sort of person who never,
ever
runs a red. I just know there’ll be a cop somewhere, hiding behind a billboard, ready to leap out and haul me off to jail.

Why was he in the elevator?

It had been niggling at me ever since I got into my car. The elevator had been on the way down and Sean lived on the ninth floor, one below me. So why had he been passing the tenth? There were only two more floors above mine...had he been visiting someone? I’d never heard of him making social calls before. Unless he’d been all the way up on the roof.

What would he be doing on the roof?

The light finally changed and I roared across the silent intersection. I was going to be late and I knew it. I shouldn’t have run home to change after finishing my shift at the garden store, but I hadn’t wanted to show up at the school in a dirt-covered apron.

The view didn’t do anything to improve my stress levels: nothing but concrete, bleached sickly white by the sun. It was only April but the temperature was already in the seventies. I was really,
really
going to have to find the money to get the car’s air conditioning fixed before summer.

I hate Los Angeles. When my folks first moved us here, they seduced us with stories of beaches and palm trees, movie stars and endless sunshine. But that was
before
. Before I had to move us from the modest but comfortable house to the crappy apartment we now inhabit, with its graffiti and cracking plaster and people like Sean O’Harra as our neighbors. Before it all went wrong.

Before it was just the two of us.

I pulled up in front of Kayley’s school, swinging around manicured flower beds and slotting my wreck of a car between the gleaming SUVs the other parents drove. It’s a public school but it’s one of the best and the sole reason I chose our crappy apartment—it was the only place I could afford that qualified Kayley to keep going to this school. I like the place, even if I feel like a charity case next to the other parents. I like the fact it doesn’t feel like a fortress and the fact it has flowers outside. It’s a paltry amount of greenery, really, but it’s better than the endless concrete I see everywhere else. Sometimes, when I’m picking up Kayley from school and the wind blows the scent of the flowers just right, I can kid myself that I’m back in Vermont.

I raced up the steps and straight over to the reception window. I could see Kayley through the glass, sitting swinging her legs, and tapping out messages to her classmates on her phone. “Hi,” I said breathlessly. “I’m here for Kayley. Kayley Willowby.”

The woman peered at me owlishly. “You’re her...mom?” she asked uncertainly. Kayley is fourteen. I’m twenty-two.

“Her sister. Louise.”

“Give me a minute.”

I understand they have to check. I’m glad they’re careful, really. And I get that it’s an unusual situation. But waiting while she brought up Kayley’s school record on her computer and checked I really was her legal guardian and allowed to take her out of school felt like it took a half hour.

Then Kayley was running towards me, five feet four of blonde curls and energy. Thank God she got my mom’s looks and not the pale skin and red hair I got from our dad. Unlike me, she fits right in in LA. She threw herself into my arms, talking at eighty-three miles an hour about Darren, the cute boy in her math class, and the band he’s formed.

And suddenly, life was bearable. It was as if I could breathe for the first time all day. I didn’t care about being late, or poor, or being trapped in this concrete hell. I squeezed her close, close enough that she rolled her eyes and muttered that I was embarrassing her.

As long as I had my sister, I was okay.

“C’mon,” I told her, my voice muffled by her hair. “We’ve got to go.” And I hauled on her hand, hurrying her towards the door.

“I claim music!”

I sighed. That was our rule: whoever said it first got to choose the music. That meant a half hour of listening to British punk rock from the eighties. Why couldn’t she be into boy bands like any other teenager? But I didn’t care too much. Even though I didn’t like pulling her out of school, even though the appointment was worrying me, it was good just to spend time together.

Minutes later, we were sitting in traffic with her babbling happily and me trying to figure out whether we’d make it on time. I don’t know if it’s because of the age gap, but we don’t really argue.
Ever.
Even before our folks died. I’ve always been the serious, studious one and she’s always been the fun-loving risk taker. We complement each other.

“I think I could be one of his dancers,” said Kayley. She had her feet up on the dash and was touching up her toenails. “Or at least a back-up dancer. But I think I need to go more...
dark.”

“You are
not
getting anything pierced,” I said automatically.

“Maybe an eyebrow.”

“No!”

“Nose?”

“No!
You’re perfect the way you are.”

She crossed her arms and mock-scowled at me. But she
was
perfect. Smarter than me and more daring, too—not that that’s difficult. And bouncing with energy.

Well...until recently.

A month ago, I’d started to have to tumble her out of bed just to wake her up. At first, I’d figured it was just teenage moodiness, but then the school started to complain about her falling asleep during lessons. Sometimes, like now, she seemed to be her old, energetic self, but sometimes she just seemed to slump. And the bruises. She would say they were from hockey at school, but lately it looked like she’d fallen down the stairs. When she’d started losing weight, I took her to the physician.
Hormones,
he’d said.
Probably a thyroid issue.
And he’d made us this appointment to have some tests run.

“Will it hurt?” asked Kayley.

“Nope,” I told her confidently. My stomach tightened at the thought of anyone stabbing her with a needle, but I didn’t want her to get scared.

“Liar,” she said.

Dammit.
She always could see straight through me. How do other moms do it? Maybe it’s because we were sisters for so long before I moved into the mom role—we’re too connected for me to lie convincingly.

***

At the hospital, I filled out about a thousand forms and Kayley chattered away happily to the male nurse taking blood from her arm. At first, I thought she was doing it to distract herself. It was only when she mentioned for the third time that I was single that I realized she was trying to match make us.

“Stop that!” I muttered when he turned away.