doesn’t wake. I’m sure the emotional exhaustion has caught up with her, and I don’t know how late she stayed up the night before, watching her tablet.
She’s a little big to carry this way, cradled against my chest, but she’s so light, like she has hollow bird bones rather than the normal human kind. Or maybe I’m simply not used to holding children. I can’t remember the last time I did.
“Follow me,” Gavin says, his voice rough and his eyes flashing with some emotion I can’t name. I wish I could label it desire or affection, but like the rest of what lies between us, it’s much more layered and complicated than that.
He turns to the house, which up close looks even more like the stereotypical farmhouse in every old movie, painted white with a wide porch and complete with a creaky screen door. Gavin’s father holds the door open for us, reaching out a rough, tanned hand and brushes a strand of hair off Ella’s cheek as we pass. A smile spreading slow across his face. The move makes me quiver, as though his hand had touched me instead.
“Are you sure I can’t help?” Gavin asks as we reach the bottom of a set of stairs. “The bedrooms are up there.”
“She’s not so heavy,” I tell him, but he urges me to go ahead of him, placing a big hand on the lower part of my back.
My spine becomes a lit fuse, heat and energy zipping up each vertebra until even the roots of my hair feel electrified. I draw in a breath, trying to remind myself that this isn’t what it feels like, which is a warm domesticity with the guy I’ve liked for years.
His parents aren’t my in-laws. Ella isn’t my daughter. Gavin isn’t my boyfriend. And he certainly won’t be anything more.
So, don’t get any more ideas, I sternly rebuke my errant thoughts and mutinous body, which wants to pause on the stairs, relishing in Gavin’s touch.
Too soon, we’re at the top, and I’m breathless despite my insistence at carrying Ella. Gavin brushes by me, leading the way to a room toward the end of a hallway.
I have to bite back a smile as we enter. The whole room is an explosion of bright pinks and purples, clearly stuffed to the gills with new things that his mother has somehow found the time to buy in the hours while we drove. I can still see the tags on a lot of things.
I set Ella down carefully next to a furry pink body pillow that’s twice as long as she is, then back away, noting the pink and purple plaid curtains, the thick rug, which is a gray and pink chevron pattern. The closet door is slightly ajar, and I can see that it’s stuffed with clothes.
I turn to Gavin with an eyebrow raised. He shrugs sheepishly. “What can I say,” he whispers. “Mom is thrilled.”
“Clearly.”
We both pause before leaving, looking at the girl on the bed, her strawberry blonde hair fanned out over the pillow. She looks younger in sleep, sweeter. All the hard edges have rounded off, and she is just a lost eight-year-old girl. My chest is a flaming ball of emotion between Gavin’s mother and Ella. And Gavin, not that it’s any surprise what he does to my heart.
I follow him out of the room, closing the door softly behind me. His presence fills the hallway, not just the height of him, which suddenly looms so large, but something more. He reaches out, brushing his fingertips down the length of my arm until he’s squeezing my hand. The unexpected touch has me holding my breath, feeling like any minute I’m going to burst like an overripe tomato.
“Come on,” he says, tugging me gently. I follow him over the
groaning wood floors to another doorway, which he pushes open, indicating that I should go in. When he drops my hand, I resist the urge to snatch it back.
“This will be your room while we’re here,” he says, and I walk into what was clearly once Gavin’s bedroom. He clears his throat. “Don’t, um, look too closely at anything.”
Oh, the snooping I’m going to do later.
For now, I pretend to be a polite, decent human being and not one eroded by curiosity, and simply glance around at the framed football jersey on the wall, the array of photographs of a Gavin who must be closer to my age but looks like a baby somehow with his