hadn’t exactly been friendly at the karaoke party. Her beautiful smile was reserved for the select few: Stuart; Roy Clarke; Roy Clarke’s wife, Wendy—she seemed to like her a lot. Peaches had gotten the brush-off—the vague smile, the cursory nod. Well, she was only the school nurse, after all.
“Will you be needing a bag today?”
“No, no bag,” Peaches said, and carried the pie out of the store. A green taxi raced up Court Street. She could have sworn she saw Liam’s friend Ryan with a tiger painted on his bare chest in a poster in the advertising box atop the taxi’s roof. The word SUBLIME was stamped in purple above his head.
She was half an hour early. Stuart Little’s place was only three blocks away. If she wandered the streets nearby, she’d risk bumping into him. She decided to walk down to Congress, over toward the water, and then circle back up Kane.
The sun was low and the sky was streaked with violets and pinks. Peaches carried her pie down the hill and across Hicks Street. Van Voorhees Park was just ahead, more a large playground with slides, monkey bars, and swings than an actual park. The younger grades at Liam’s school had their end-of-the-year picnic here because there were sprinklers and enough benches for the parents and teachers to sit down. Last year, Peaches had had an awkward conversation with the mother of a third grader. She wanted advice on how to make her daughter “cool.” She worried her kid would suffer in middle school because she liked hats and refused to wear denim.
“My husband likes hats,” Peaches told her. “And he doesn’t own a single pair of jeans.”
There were two teenagers on the big-kid swings, a boy and a girl, kissing. Peaches looked away and then looked back again. She’d washed those gray pants over the weekend, that blue NASA T-shirt. It was Liam with Roy Clarke’s daughter, Shy. They weren’t kissing normally, either. They were really going at it and sort of licking each other. Peaches ducked behind a tree. The pie trembled in her hands. She didn’t like to spy, but she’d never seen Liam with a girl before.
“Grrr,” she heard Liam growl. Then he licked the girl’s neck.
“You are so high!” the girl squealed. She was wearing the type of jumpsuit gas station attendants wear. It was pretty cool.
“Grrrr,” Liam growled again. The girl pushed him away and he fell on the ground.
“Holy shit!” he exclaimed. “Get down here and look up at the sky!”
Peaches watched them for a moment, lying on their backs, side by side. She didn’t want to interrupt. They were teenagers, having fun. And Liam seemed cooler to her now. He was high and with a girl and not worrying about preparing for his AP Calculus test or picking his pimples. Was she a bad mother for feeling this way? At least he wasn’t home, wondering where his mother was, resenting her for not being there to fix him dinner. She slipped away and back up the hill, unnoticed.
* * *
Stuart had only just convinced Ted to take an early bath and put on his red plaid pajamas when the doorbell rang. Mandy was on the bed, painting her nails. A ham and mushroom quiche was in the oven. She’d already made garlic bread and kale Caesar salad. Tonight’s box was from Grandma’s House—stolen from the power-walking, knit-their-own-sweaters, two-woman couple across the street—and she was pretty sure it was going to be her favorite so far.
“Who’s that?” Mandy asked without looking up from her nails.
“I’ll go down and check,” Stuart said, and dashed out into the hallway.
Bitches got me jumpin’, I’m in distress
Balls are shrinking, got to clean up this mess!
The lyrics shouted themselves in Stuart’s head as he opened the wood-framed glass doors at the top of the stoop. A Blind Mice pin featuring a picture of Stuart’s mouse-tattooed fist was stuck to the collar of Peaches’ leather jacket and she was holding a pie.
She handed him the pie and pointed to the pin. “The mystery is gone. I decided to completely geek out on you. I’ve had this pin since sophomore year in college.”
Stuart knew he was supposed to feel flattered. Instead, he was simply bummed out. Why had she chosen to reveal her great, longtime fandom at this particular moment in time? To render herself harmless? To show him that she’d always loved him? To somehow align herself with him and Mandy? Her intentions weren’t clear. But then