I let myself out of the house, slamming the door shut behind me.
Out over the ocean, clouds billowed, growing tall and dark in the late afternoon sky. Looked the way I felt, those clouds did. Lightning illuminated the east.
A voice came from the end of the porch. “Hey, Evie.”
I let out a little scream. “What are you doing here, Buddy?” Yellow hibiscus flowers on the bushes behind him bobbed in the breeze.
He sat on the porch swing, his long legs looking grasshopper-like when he tucked them under the swing. The chains cried out. Wah. Wah. Wah.
“Just came to see you,” he said. He patted the swing. “Come sit over here.”
“What is it about people in this neighborhood? Popping out of here and there. Always surprising me.” I stayed by the door, the AC swirling outside. “I got homework.”
“The first day?”
“Yes.” Almost true. I had self-inflicted homework so I didn’t get behind in any of my classes. Plus, there was the homework of picking out what to wear tomorrow.
Buddy smiled that cute smile of his.
“I saved you a place,” he said.
Tell me who can sit next to a good-looking boy with gorgeous cheekbones and squinty eyes when she’s just found out her momma had married a man who had been married before? A man who was one of three things, none of them that becoming.
Sure, Momma had been married before herself. But my daddy died when I just learning to walk. Stroke. No one had any idea it was coming.
JimDaddy was a man worse than that super-old actor Alex Baldman in that show Child Actors and Their Parents. My stepfather—who had mentioned maybe adopting me—wouldn’t even speak to his own flesh-and-blood daughter, Tommie. Why not? His. Own. Flesh. And. Blood. How could this be possible?
We Messengers talk till you wish we’d shut up.
JimDaddy, it seemed, cut off his loved ones. Right at the knees. But didn’t get the back door fixed so they couldn’t sneak in our house.
So who could sit next to a pretty boy when all this was racing through her brain? I could.
I stomped across the front porch, past the concrete planters filled with petunias that Momma had planted at the beginning of summer, running my fingertips along the porch railing. Then I stood in front of Buddy, my arms folded across my chest.
He patted the wooden slats next to him.
Darn that squinty-eyed smile!
“Right here,” he whispered, then opened his hands to me.
I took his hands in my own.
I was a backstabber to women all over the world.
I sat next to Buddy, not even waiting for him to tighten his arm around me, just resting my head against his chest and closing my eyes to the trouble I was sure would come that evening.