Dean stood at the edge of the path. They were dancing. All three of them. Behind the cottage, under the stars, with music blaring from a boom box sitting on the back steps. As he watched his father, he saw the genetic source of his own athleticism. He’d seen Jack dance in videos as well as at a live concert he’d been forced to attend with his college teammates. But observing him like this was different. He remembered some lamebrained rock critic comparing Jack’s dancing with Mick Jagger’s, but Jack had none of that androgynous slink and strut. He was all power.
Riley, who should have been in bed, circled Jack, her movements clumsy, but filled with a puppy dog energy that would have made Dean smile if he hadn’t been so unhappy.
April danced barefoot. A long, gauzy skirt twisted around her hips. She arched her spine and lifted her hair. As her lips formed a sensuous pout, he saw the reckless, self-destructive mother of his childhood, enslaved by the gods of rock and roll.
Riley ran out of breath and collapsed in the grass next to the dog. Jack and April locked eyes. He answered her shimmy with some industrial grind. The porch light bounced off her bangles. They kicked it up, moving as if they’d been dancing together for years. April strutted, her lips forming small, moist pillows. Jack gave her a rocker’s sneer.
Dean wouldn’t have come here at all tonight if April hadn’t stopped answering his e-mails a few days ago. Now he was watching the people who’d conceived him get it on right before his eyes. What a perfect ending to a shit hole day. Courtney had been a clingy pain in the ass, and he’d been glad when the women had dragged her back to Nashville to shop. The guys had hung around for a while. For too long. Dean had needed to get to Blue, but by the time he reached Nita Garrison’s house, the windows were dark. He’d climbed the balcony anyway, but the doors were locked, and Blue’s bed lay empty on the other side of the glass panes. He felt a searing flash of pain before sanity returned. She wouldn’t leave until after Nita’s party on Saturday. Tomorrow he’d set things right, or as right as they could be.
Nothing had been the same since their Fourth of July hiking trip. Something had gone wrong in that goofy little sex game they’d played. At first, it had all been sexy fun, watching Blue’s comic attempts at pretending to be a terrorized female. But at the end, when they’d clung together, a well of tenderness had grown inside him, and something had shifted. Something he wasn’t ready to look at too closely.
Riley caught her second wind and joined the dancing again. Dean stood outside the pool of light. Separate from them. Just the way he wanted it.
Jack moved toward Riley, and she started showing off for him, rolling out her entire repertoire of eager, awkward moves. April grinned and danced away. Her skirt swirled. She cocked her head. Spun. And that was when she saw Dean.
With losing a beat, she held out her hand.
He stood immobile. She danced closer, moving her arm, luring him into their circle.
He felt frozen, dizzy, a prisoner of his DNA. The music, the dance drew him to a place he didn’t want to be. Those double helix strands of genetic matter imbedded inside him were a hereditary package he’d channeled into sports, but now those ladderlike structures wanted to draw him back to the source. To the dance.
His father jived.
His mother beckoned.
He turned away from them both and strode off to the farmhouse.
Jack laughed when April suddenly stopped dancing. “Look, Riley. We’re too much for her.”
Jack hadn’t seen Dean. April made herself smile. Jack and Riley were learning to have fun together, and she wouldn’t spoil it with her own sadness. “I’m thirsty,” she said. “I’ll get us something to drink.” When she reached the kitchen, she closed her eyes. It was pain she’d seen on Dean’s face, not contempt. He’d wanted to join them—she could feel it—but he hadn’t been able to take that first step.
She got busy pouring orange juice for herself and Riley. She couldn’t control Dean’s feelings, only her own. Let go and let God. She poured an iced tea for Jack. He’d want a beer, but he was out of luck. She hadn’t expected him to show up at the cottage tonight. She and Riley had been sitting in the backyard talking about boys and listening to an old Prince album when he’d appeared. Before she knew it, they were all dancing.
She and Jack had always been a perfect match that way. They had the same style and energy. Under the spell of the music, she didn’t have to think about the folly of being fifty-two years old and still fascinated with Jack Patriot. The music shifted to a ballad. She carried the drinks outside and paused on the steps as Jack tried to pull Riley into a slow dance.
“But I don’t know how,” she protested.
“Stand on my feet.”
“I can’t do that! I’m too big. I’ll squish your toes.”
“A scrawny chicken like you? My toes will be just fine. Come on. Hop up.” He pulled her into his arms, and she gingerly placed her bare feet on top of his sneakers. She looked so small next to him. So pretty with her curly hair, bright eyes, and golden skin. April had fallen in love with her.
She sat down on the steps and watched. When she was a kid, she’d seen a girl her age dance like that with her father. April’s own father had treated her as an inconvenience, and she remembered locking herself in a bathroom stall so no one would see her cry. But she’d gotten even with him when she was older. She’d found all kinds of boys to give her the love he’d denied. One of them had been Jack Patriot.
Riley had a good sense of rhythm and finally felt confident enough to get off his feet and try the steps on her own. Jack kept it simple. At the end, he twirled her and told her she was a champ, leaving Riley looking giddy and proud. April served their drinks. When they finished, Jack announced it was past Riley’s bedtime and took her back to the farmhouse. April was too restless to go inside, so she brought out a blanket and lay down to watch the stars. Blue was planning to leave in four days, Dean in a week and a half, and she’d be going back to L.A. right after. Once she got there, she’d bury herself in work and draw strength from knowing she’d finally learned to keep her soul intact.
“Dean’s at the house with Riley,” that familiar whiskey-gravel voice said. “I didn’t abandon her.”
She looked up and saw Jack coming toward her across the grass. “I thought you’d turned in for the night.”
“I’m not that old.” He went to the boom box and sorted through the CDs lying on the step next to it. Lucinda Williams began singing “Like a Rose.” He returned to the blanket and reached down for her. “Dance with me.”
“Bad idea, Jack.”
“We’ve had some of our best times with bad ideas. Stop being such an old lady.”
She hated that—he’d known she would—and she came to her feet. “If you try to feel me up…”
His teeth flashed in a pirate’s grin, and he pulled her into his arms. “Mad Jack only feels ’em up if they’re under thirty. Although, since it’s dark…”
“Shut up and dance.”
He used to smell like sex and cigarettes. Now he smelled of oak, bergamot, and night. His body, too, felt different from the skinny boy’s build she remembered. He was still thin, but he’d picked up muscle. He’d also lost the gaunt look that had hollowed out his cheeks when he’d first arrived. Lucinda’s lyrics enfolded them. They drew closer until only a ribbon of air separated their bodies. Soon even that was gone. She looped her arms around his neck. He placed his around her waist. She let herself rest against him. He had a hard-on, but it was simply there. Imposing, but not demanding anything from her.
She let herself drift with the music. She was deeply aroused, floating in a slippery sea. He brushed the hair from her neck and buried his lips in the hollow under her ear. She turned her head and let him kiss her. It was a deep, sweet kiss, far more arousing than their long-ago drunken ones. When they finally separated, the question in his eyes cut through her dreamy state. She shook her head.
“Why?” he whispered, stroking her hair.
“I don’t do one-night stands anymore.”
“I promise it’ll be more than one night.” He caressed her temple with his thumb. “You have to wonder what it would be like.”
More than he could imagine. “I wonder about a lot of things that aren’t good for me.”
“Are you sure? We’re not kids.”
She pushed away. “I don’t put out for good-looking rockers anymore.”
“April…”
Her cell rang from the back step. Thank you, God. She moved to answer it.
“You’re not really going to pick that up, are you?” he said.
“I have to.” As she crossed to the step, she pressed the back of her hand to her lips, but she didn’t know if she was wiping away their kiss or sealing it in. “Hello?”
“April, it’s Ed.”
“Ed. I’ve been waiting for you to call.” She moved quickly inside.
Half an hour elapsed before she got off the phone. She went back out to bring in her things and was surprised to see Jack still there, lying on the blanket, looking at the stars. He lay with one knee bent and an arm crooked behind his head. She was much too glad to see he’d stayed.
He spoke without looking at her. “Tell me about him.”
She heard the stiffness in his voice and remembered his old, jealous eruptions. If she hadn’t given up playing games, she’d have told him to go to hell, but she sat on the blanket and let her skirt fall in soft folds around her knees. “Them.”
“How many?”
“Right now? Three.”
She steeled herself as he rolled to face her. But he didn’t attack. “They’re not lovers then.”
It was a statement, not a question. “How do you know that?”
“Because I do.”
“I have men calling me at all hours.”
“Why is that?”
She saw only curiosity. Either he didn’t care whom she kept company with, or he’d begun to understand the woman she’d become. She lay back on the blanket. “I’m a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. I’ve been in AA for years. I’m sponsoring three men and one woman right now, all in L.A. It’s not easy to be there for them long-distance, but they didn’t want to change sponsors.”
“I can understand why. I’m sure you’re very good at what you do.” He propped himself on his elbow so he was gazing down at her. “I’ve never completely gotten over you. You know that, don’t you?”
She had to call it the way she saw it, not the way she wanted it to be. “It’s not me you can’t get over. It’s your guilt about Dean.”
“I know the difference, and you’re the only woman I’ve never been able to forget.”
As she gazed into his eyes, he dropped his head and kissed her again. Her mouth grew soft and giving under his. But when she felt his hand slip between her legs, she remembered Jack’s feelings for her always began and ended in his pants. She rolled out from under him and stood up. “I meant what I said. I don’t do this anymore.”
“You expect me to believe you’ve given up sex?”
“Only with rockers.” She walked over to the step to turn off the music and gather up her things. “I’ve had three long-term relationships since I’ve been sober. A cop, a television producer, and the photographer who got me involved with Heart Gallery. All great guys, and none of them sang a note. Not even karaoke.”
Through the darkness, she saw his softly mocking smile as he rose to his feet. “Poor April. Depriving yourself of all that hot rocker love.”
“Respecting myself. Probably more than you’ve been doing.”
“I know this’ll disappoint you, April, but I stopped being a player years ago. I’ve gotten used to having real relationships.” He picked up the blanket and carried it over to her. “That’s the one thing you and I have never tried. Maybe it’s time we gave it a shot.”
She was so stunned she simply stared at him. He pressed the blanket into her hands, brushed her cheek with a kiss, and left her alone.
At seven the next morning, Dean pulled up behind Nita’s house. He hated knowing he’d hurt Blue yesterday. The only reason he’d shut her out was so he didn’t have to deal with everyone’s questions. How could he explain her to his friends when he couldn’t explain her to himself? He knew how to relate to women as friends or as lovers, but not as both.
A dove flew up from Nita’s birdbath as he made his way to her back door. He let himself in without knocking. Nita sat at the kitchen table in her big blond wig and a garish floral robe. “I’m calling the police,” she said, with more annoyance than anger. “I’m having you arrested for breaking and entering.”
He leaned down to scratch a comatose Tango behind the ears. “Can I have some coffee first?”
“It’s barely seven o’clock. You should have knocked.”
“Didn’t feel like it. Just like you don’t feel like knocking when you come to my house.”
“Liar. I always knock. And Blue is still asleep, so go away and don’t bother her.”
He filled two mugs with Nita’s inky coffee. “What’s she doing in bed this late?”
“I’m sure that’s not any of your business.” Her indignation finally bubbled to the surface, and she stabbed her index finger toward him, a magenta-painted bullet to his head. “You’re breaking her heart. And you don’t even care.”
“Blue’s mad, not heartbroken.” He sidestepped Tango. “Leave us alone for a while.”
Her chair squeaked as she pushed back from the table. “A word of advice, Mr. Hotshot. If I was you, I’d take a look at what she’s keeping under her bathroom sink.”
Ignoring her, he headed upstairs.
Blue wasn’t entirely surprised to hear Dean talking to Nita downstairs. The sun streamed through the balcony doors as she finished zipping up her jeans. She hadn’t been able to deal with him coming over the railing, so she’d slept in the bedroom next to Nita’s. Now he intended to charm his way back into her good graces. Lots of luck.
As she sat on the side of the bed to pull on her sandals, he appeared in the doorway. Blond, hunky, irresistible. She yanked on a sandal strap. “I have a million errands to run before Nita’s party tomorrow, and I don’t want to do this now.”
He set a mug on her bedside table. “I know you’re pissed.”
Pissed was only one part of it, the part that wasn’t hiding secrets. “Later, Deanna. Real men avoid these kinds of discussions.”
“Cut the crap.” His field commander’s voice always took her aback. “Yesterday wasn’t personal. Not in the way you think.”
“It sure felt personal.”
“You think I was embarrassed to introduce you to my friends because of your crappy clothes and generally shitty disposition, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
She shot up from the side of the bed. “Don’t waste your breath. I’m not the kind of woman your friends expect Malibu Dean to hang with, and you didn’t want to field all the questions.”
“Do you really think I’m that small-minded?”
“No. I think you’re basically a gentleman, so you didn’t want to spell out that I’m only a buddy with sleeping privileges.”
“You’re more than a buddy, Blue. You’re one of the best friends I have.”
“Which makes me what? How about…a buddy!”
He shoved a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just want what’s between us to stay private.”
“Like all the other things in your life you want to stay private. Aren’t you starting to lose track?”
“You don’t have a clue what it’s like being a public person,” he shot back. “I have to be careful.”
She grabbed the coffee mug and snatched up her purse from the foot of her bed. “Translated, that means I’ve become another one of your dirty little secrets.”
“That’s a rotten thing to say.”
She couldn’t handle this now, not with a secret of her own. “I’m going to make this easy. Today’s Friday. Nita’s party is tomorrow. I have some loose ends to tie up around here on Sunday, but first thing Monday morning I’m taking off permanently for parts unknown.”
His expression grew thunderous. “This had better be more of your bullshit.”
“Why? Because I’m ending it instead of you?” All the emotions she didn’t want him to see—sadness, fear, pain—tried to break through her tough girl swagger, but she beat them back. “Life is good, Boo. I got a great deal on a rental car, and I bought a brand-new road atlas. You’ve been an amusing diversion, but it’s time for me to move on.”
She’d called a play he wasn’t expecting and his hands curled at his sides. “Apparently you need some time to grow up.” His words were so cold she half-expected a vapor cloud to form around his mouth. “We’ll settle this at Nita’s party tomorrow. Maybe by then you’ll be able to think like a rational human being.” He strode out of the room.
She sat back on the bed, foolishly wishing he’d taken her in his arms and begged forgiveness. Wished at the very least that he’d said something about the murals before he stormed off. He’d seen them by now. Yesterday, she’d found a hand-delivered envelope in Nita’s mailbox with a check that April had made out. That was it. No personal note. April and Dean had flawless taste. They hated them. She’d known they would. But somehow she’d hoped they wouldn’t.
Dean marched down the pink-carpeted hallway. As long as he concentrated on wringing Blue’s neck, he wouldn’t have to think about what a jerk he was being. He hated knowing he’d hurt her. She truly believed he’d been embarrassed to introduce her to his friends, but it wasn’t embarrassment. If the guys had taken the time to talk to her yesterday instead of treating her like a maid, they’d have fallen in love with her. But Dean didn’t want anyone—especially not his teammates—picking over something as personal as his affair with Blue when it was still so new. Hell, he hadn’t even known her for two months.
And now she was planning to leave him. He’d realized all along that he couldn’t count on her. But after the way he’d treated her yesterday, it wasn’t so simple to shift the blame.
He’d reached the landing when he remembered what Nita had said. The old woman loved to make trouble, but she also cared about Blue in her own twisted way. He turned around and went back upstairs.
Blue’s bathroom had pink walls, pink tile, and a shower curtain printed with dancing champagne bottles. A towel, still damp from her shower, hung crookedly on the towel bar. He knelt in front of the sink, opened the cupboard door, and stared at the cellophane-wrapped box sitting right in front.
He heard quick footsteps behind him. “What are you doing?” she said in a rush.
As his brain registered what he saw, the blood rushed from his head. He picked up the box and somehow made it to his feet.
“Leave that alone!” she cried.
“You said you were on the pill.”
“I am.”
They’d been using condoms, too. Except a couple of times…He looked at her. She stared back, all big eyes and pale white skin. He held up the pregnancy test kit. “I’m guessing this doesn’t belong to Nita.”
She tried to give him her mulish look but couldn’t carry it off. Her eyelashes swept her cheeks as she looked down. “A few weeks ago when I had food poisoning from Josie’s shrimp…I threw up my pill. I didn’t think anything about it.”
A freight train roared straight toward him. “Are you saying throwing up one pill could get you pregnant?”
“It’s possible, I guess. My period was due last week, and I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t getting it. Then I remembered what had happened with the pill.”
He twisted the box in his hands. The train screamed through the bones of his skull. “You haven’t opened it.”
“Tomorrow. I need to get through Nita’s party first.”
“No. No you don’t.” He pulled her the rest of the way into the bathroom and shut the door with the flat of his hand. His fingers felt numb. “Today. Right now.” He tore open the box.
Blue knew him well, and it didn’t take her long to see this was one fight she couldn’t win. “Wait in the hall,” she said.
“Not on your life.” He ripped open the box.
“I just went.”
“Go again.” His hands, usually so nimble, fumbled with the directions as he tried to unfold them.
“Turn around,” she said.
“Stop it, Blue. We’re getting this over with right now.”
Wordlessly, she took the box. He stood there watching her. Waiting. Finally, she got the job done.
The directions said to wait three minutes. He marked the time off with his Rolex. It had three dials, one of them a tachometer, but all he cared about was the slow sweep of the second hand. As it inched its way around, a dozen thoughts he couldn’t sort out—didn’t want to sort out—tumbled through his head.
“Isn’t the time up yet?” she finally said.
He was sweating. He blinked and nodded.
“You look,” she whispered.
He picked up the stick with clammy hands and studied it. Finally he raised his eyes and met hers. “You’re not pregnant.”
She nodded, expressionless. “Good. Now go away.”
Dean drove around for a couple of hours and ended up on a back road. He pulled the truck off to the side of the crumbling asphalt and got out. It wasn’t even ten o’clock. Today would be a scorcher. He heard the sound of moving water and followed it into the woods where he came to a creek. A rusted oil drum lay on its side in the water along with some old tires, bed springs, a smashed highway pylon, and some other junk. It didn’t seem right, people dumping their shit like this.
He waded in and began dragging it out. Before long, his sneakers were waterlogged, and he was covered in mud and grease. He slipped on some mossy rocks and got his shorts wet, but the cold water felt good. He wished mountains of litter clogged the creek so he could spend all day here, but before long, the water ran free again.
His world had caved in. As he climbed back in his truck, he couldn’t get a deep breath. He’d take a long walk when he reached the farm and straighten out his head. But he didn’t make it that far. Instead, he found himself turning into the narrow lane that led to the cottage.
The sound of the guitar drifted toward him as he got out of the truck. Jack sat in a kitchen chair on the porch, his bare ankles crossed on the railing, and the guitar cradled to his chest. He wore three-day stubble, a Virgin Records T-shirt, and black athletic shorts. Dean’s muddy socks had collapsed around his ankles, and his feet squished in their sneakers as he approached the porch. The familiar wariness shaded Jack’s eyes, but he kept playing. “You look like you lost a pig-wrestling contest.”
“Anybody else here?”
Jack strummed a couple of minor chords. “Riley’s riding her bike, and April’s gone for a run. They should be back soon.”
Dean hadn’t come to see them. He stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Blue and I aren’t engaged. I picked her up outside Denver two months ago.”
“April told me. Too bad. I like her a lot. She makes me laugh.”
Dean rubbed some caked mud from between his knuckles. “I saw Blue this morning. A couple of hours ago.” Now his stomach was giving him trouble, and he tried to suck in some more air. “She thought she might be pregnant.”
Jack stopped playing. “Is she?”
A bird called out from the tin roof. Dean shook his head. “No.”
“Congratulations.”
He stuck his hands in his clammy pockets then pulled them out again. “These pregnancy tests people buy…You have to—Maybe you already know this. You have to wait three minutes to get the results.”
“Okay.”
“The thing is…That three minutes while I was waiting…I had—I had all these thoughts running through my head.”
“I guess that’s understandable.”
The steps creaked as Dean came up onto the edge of the porch. “Things like how I’d go about setting up medical care for Blue. Whether I trusted my attorney to handle child support or if I should have my agent do it. How to keep it out of the papers. You know the drill.”
Jack rose and leaned the guitar against the chair. “A panic reaction. I remember the symptoms.”
“Yeah, well, when you had your panic reaction, you were—what?—twenty-four? I’m thirty-one.”
“I was twenty-three, but the bottom line’s the same. If you weren’t planning to marry Blue, you had to come up with a plan.”
“It’s not the same thing. April was crazy. Blue’s not. She’s one of the sanest people I know.” He meant to stop there but couldn’t. “She said I’ve turned her into another one of my dirty little secrets.”
“People who haven’t lived in the spotlight don’t understand.”
“That’s what I told her.” He rubbed his stomach where it was burning. “But those three minutes…Everything I was thinking. The plan I was coming up with…The lawyer, the child support—”
“All kinds of shit runs through your head at a time like that. Forget about it.”
“How am I supposed to do that? Like father, like son, right?”
Dean felt as though he’d ripped himself open, but Jack sneered. “Don’t bring yourself down to my level. I’ve seen you with Riley. If Blue had been pregnant, there’s no way you’d have turned your back on your kid. You’d have been right there for him while he was growing up.”
Dean should have let it go, but his knees bent, and he found himself sitting on the step. “Why did you do it, Jack?”
“Why the hell do you think?” Jack bristled with derision. “I could candy coat it for you, but the bottom line is that I didn’t know how to deal with April, and I didn’t want to be bothered with you. I was a rock star, baby. An American icon. Too busy giving interviews and letting everybody kiss my ass. I’d have had to grow up to be a father, and where was the fun in that?”
Dean dropped his hands between his knees and picked at the paint flaking on the step. “But it changed, didn’t it?”
“Never.”
He came to his feet. “Don’t bullshit me. I remember those father-and-son get-togethers when I was fourteen, fifteen. You trying to figure out how to make up for all those lost years and me spitting in your eye.”
Jack grabbed the guitar. “Look, I’m working on a song here. Just because you finally decided you want to dig up old garbage doesn’t mean I have to grab a shovel, too.”
“Just tell me this. If you had to do it all over again…”
“I can’t do it over, so let it go.”
“But if you could…”
“If I had to do it again, I’d have taken you away from her!” he said fiercely. “How’s that? And once I had you, I’d have figured out how to be a father. Fortunately for you, that didn’t happen because, from where I stand, you turned out just fine on your own. Any man would be proud to have you for a son. Now, are you satisfied or do we have to fucking hug?”
The knots in Dean’s stomach finally eased. He could breathe again.
Jack dropped the guitar to his side. “You can’t make peace with me until you make peace with your mother. She deserves it.”
Dean stubbed the muddy toe of his sneaker against the stair tread. “It’s not that easy.”
“It’s easier than holding on to so much pain.”
Dean turned away and headed back to his truck.
He left his muddy sneakers and socks on the porch. As usual, no one had remembered to lock the front door. Inside, the house was cool and quiet. A basket in the foyer held his shoes. His caps hung on the coatrack. Next to the brass tray where he tossed his keys and spare change was a photograph of him when he’d been eight or nine. A bony, bare chest; knobby knees sticking out below his shorts; a football helmet engulfing his small head. April had taken it one summer when they’d lived in Venice Beach. His childhood photographs had popped up all over the house, pictures he didn’t even remember.
Last night, Riley had tried to drag him in to see Blue’s murals, but he’d wanted to see them for the first time with Blue, and he’d refused. Now, he turned away from the dining room without looking in and wandered into the living room. The deep-seated couches were a perfect fit for his long frame, and the television had been positioned so he could watch game film without light reflecting on the screen. The sheets of precisely cut glass protecting the wooden coffee table made drink coasters unnecessary. Drawers held whatever he might need: books, remote controls, nail clippers. Upstairs, none of the beds had footboards, and the bathroom counters were higher than normal. The showers were spacious, and extra-long towel racks held the oversize bath sheets he preferred. April had done it all.
The echoes of her drunken sobs whispered in his ears. “Don’t be mad at me, baby. It’ll get better. I promise. Tell me you love me, baby. If you tell me you love me, I promise I won’t drink anymore.”
The woman who’d tried to suffocate him with her twisted, erratic love could never have created this oasis that had become his home.
Today had been too much. He needed time to come to terms with all these muddled feelings, except he’d had years, and what good had it done him? Through the French doors, he saw April entering the screen porch from outside. He and Jack had built that porch, but she’d conceived of it: the high ceiling, the arched windows, the slate floor that was cool on even the hottest day.
She braced the heels of her hands in the small of her back to cool down from her run. Her body glistened with sweat. She wore black shorts, a bright blue racerback top, and she’d pulled her hair into a twisted ponytail far more stylish than Blue’s haphazard arrangement.
He needed to get into the shower. He needed to be by himself. He needed to talk to Blue, who understood everything. Instead, he pushed the handle on the French doors and quietly stepped out onto the porch.
The temperature had already hit the mid-eighties, but the tiles were cool against his bare feet. April had her back to him. He’d moved the chairs last night when he’d hosed down the porch, and she was pushing them under the table again. He walked over to the CD player that sat on a black wrought-iron baker’s rack. He didn’t bother to check which of April’s albums was in the changer. If it belonged to his mother, it would be right. He hit the button.
April whirled around as music blared from the small speakers. Her lips parted in surprise. She took in his muddy appearance and started to say something, but he spoke first. “Do you want to dance?”
She stared at him. Agonizing seconds ticked by. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he began to move to the beat. His feet, his hips, his shoulders. She stood frozen. He held out his hand, but his mother—this woman who lived to dance when ordinary mortals could only walk—his mother had forgotten how to move.
“You can do it,” he whispered.
She drew an unsteady breath, the sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. Then she arched her spine, lifted her arms, and gave herself up to the music.
They danced until sweat dripped from their bodies. From rock to hip-hop, they showed off their moves, each trying to outdo the other. Strands of hair stuck to April’s neck, and muddy streaks trickled down his bare legs onto the tiles. As they danced, he remembered this wasn’t the first time. They’d danced when he was a kid. She’d pull him away from video games or TV, sometimes even from his breakfast if she’d gotten in late. He’d forgotten there were good times, too.
Right in the middle of a song, the music abruptly snapped off. A crow squawked in the silence. They turned to see a cranky Riley standing by the silent CD player, her hands on her hips. “It’s too loud!”
“Hey, turn that back on,” April said.
“What are you guys doing? It’s lunchtime, not dance time.”
“Any time is dance time,” Dean said. “What do you think, April? Should we let baby sister dance with us?”
April stuck her nose in the air. “I doubt she could keep up.”
“I can keep up,” Riley said. “But I want to eat lunch. And you guys smell.”
Dean gave April a shrug. “She can’t keep up.”
Riley’s forehead wrinkled in outrage. “Who says?”
Dean and April stared at her. Riley glowered back. Then she snapped the music back on, and they all danced together.