swings in. It’s dark in here, which I guess is weird, now that I think about it. He must have guessed that I was on the other side of the door.
I shut my eyes for a mortified three seconds before turning on the lamp. “Hey.”
His eyes search mine, drop to scan my body, as if looking for injuries, then land on the pizza box, the coat, the six-pack.
He fiddles with something on the outside of the door. The jingling of my keys sends my humiliation into overdrive. “Here.” I don’t move when he holds them out to me, so he sets them in their place on my side table. “Might wanna hide those, instead of leaving them right there.”
“Sure.” I’m nodding, unsure if I can stop. “Okay.” We don’t worry much about keys where I’m from. I’m not sure Papa even has keys to the house’s front door. If he does, they haven’t been used in years. The lock probably won’t even turn.
“Can we talk for a second?” He’s holding my postcard and suddenly I feel silly.
I’m already shaking my head, making a face. “Oh. No. No, we don’t need to talk.”
“I think we do.”
Karl
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Her smile’s about as fake as they come. “You can go back to…” She flaps her mittened hands and I just want to grab them, hold them. Hold her. Doesn’t she have any idea how cute she is with all her hair and rainbows and soft-looking yarn?
“Harper.”
“Right.”
“She took off for yoga or pilates or whatever she does on Thursday nights.”
“Okay.” She’s biting that lower lip again and everything from last week breaks through the dam I’d managed to erect around it—the kiss, the hand-hold, that lip. When she glances up at me from under her unfashionably large eyebrows, I feel just the slightest bit better. Eye contact. One point. “How old is she?”
“Eighteen.”
Her “Oh,” is almost silent. With a sheepish look, she goes on. “She must think I’m different.”
I smile. “You are different.”
“Great.” Her annoyed puff tells me that she’s getting over the embarrassed thing. I’m relieved.
“It’s a good thing.” It’s tough to form the right words; partly because I’m not sure what I want to say to her. Despite insisting, I don’t really want to talk. If we could move on without acknowledging that this happened, I’d be good as gold. But that’s the old Karl talking. The kid who bottled things up, exploded, bottled, exploded. I’d be dead today if I hadn’t learned how to communicate. Dammit, being a better man is hard. Worth it, though. I have a whip smart daughter who means the world to me, a father I don’t hate anymore, an ex-wife who’s healthy and happy—without me. And a neighbor who looks at me like maybe I’m a man she admires. “That beer and pizza just for you? Or you planning to share?”
Her smile smacks into me like a goddamn wave and part of me’s proud. Like I earned that look. Like I put it there.
I bend for the box, hand it to her, and grab the six-pack. The way the beers have landed, they’ll probably blow when we open them. I follow her down the long, wide hall that’s the mirror image of mine, to the kitchen at the far end, waiting for her to turn on lights as she goes. Curiosity has me craning my neck to see the living room and dining room and the spaces beyond. They look almost empty, aside from rugs and cushions and big, funky tapestries on the walls. Everything’s colorful and huge. And it smells good. Grassy and fresh. I can never get my house to smell like anything aside from cleaning products or whatever I cooked that day.
The kitchen’s the opposite of the other rooms—it’s full of stuff. Bright, copper pots and bowls of eggs and seeds. Dried herbs hang from the ceiling, onions and garlic, too.
“This is awesome.”
“Really?” Another shy look from those big blue eyes. “Is your place like mine?”
I laugh. “Same floor plan. Well, the opposite. But it’s nothing like this.” I take in the budget appliances and makeshift work surfaces, modifying my initial reaction. It’s appealing because she’s filled it with things that seem alive, but underneath it’s been cobbled together. “Looking for counters?”
She shrugged, pulling plates out from behind a curtained set of rickety shelves. Someone would need to reinforce those before the weight of the dishes took the whole thing down.
I grab two beers. “You want one?”
At her nod, I lift my