I start a load of laundry, and fold what’s in the dryer. I don’t know which shirt goes to which man, since they’re all big boys. So, I just make a neat pile of them and stack them on the kitchen table. The pile grows as the day goes on, and by the end of the afternoon, the house is still empty and quiet, and it’s clean from top to bottom. I didn’t clean any of their bedrooms, because that would be an invasion of their privacy, and my cleaning at all might be, now that I think of it. I bite my fingernails and look around. They won’t be mad, will they?
I go into the bathroom and look beneath the sink. There were cleaning supplies there the other day, and it could use refreshing. I lift a bucket of baby toys out of the way and then I stop. I shuffle through them. There are tiny boats, bath crayons, and a rubber ducky. I give it a squeeze and it goes flat, a hiss of air escaping it. Why do they have baby toys?
The curiosity is killing me. Do they have a little sister? They couldn’t possibly. Logan said he lived with four brothers the day I met him. He didn’t say anything about a sister. I put the bucket back under the sink, and keep cleaning.
The timer on the dryer goes off, and I fold the last load of laundry, blowing a lock of hair out of my eyes. I look toward the window, and see that the day is nearly gone. So much for busking in the subway. And Fridays are usually my best days, since people just got paid and they’re feeling generous. I have wasted the whole day cleaning Logan’s apartment, but I feel good about it. I put my hands on my h*ps and look around the room. I did a good job. I’ve mopped, and vacuumed, dusted, and put things away. Of course, I had to guess where a lot of stuff goes. The stuff I’m not sure about, I’ve been putting on the kitchen table with the stacked laundry.
I open a kitchen drawer and stumble back when I see that it’s full of condoms. Nothing but condoms. They’re in every shape, every size and every color. And every flavor, if the banana on the front of one is any indication. My face fills with heat. Why on earth do they have a drawer filled with condoms? I slam it shut, and walk away. It’s none of my business.
I carry the mop bucked toward the sink so that I can dump it. I pick it up, and just as I’m walking across the kitchen floor, the door of the apartment opens, and Logan walks through. Only he’s not alone. On his shoulders, there’s a blonde with two squiggly pony tails. He ducks to get through the door, and she giggles when he wiggles her feet and pretends to dump her off his shoulders.
He stops in front of the closed door and freezes when he sees me standing there. He must not have expected me to still be there. And I certainly didn’t expect for him to have a child. He starts toward me, one hand holding on to her feet tightly at the base of his neck. And the other reaches for me. But I’m so startled by the girl that the bucket of sudsy water slips from my hands.
“Stop!” I warn, because I don’t want him to slip with his daughter on his shoulders.
Logan
I’m so damn happy to see Kit that I want to run to her and pick her and spin her around. I wonder if she’d giggle like Hayley does when I jostle her. Probably not. I wasn’t sure Kit would still be here, and I was really worried she’d vanished when she didn’t come to see me at the tattoo parlor.
Water crashes over the toes of my boots, and Kit rushes to right the bucket. She slumps, looking down at the mess. But her dejection only lasts for a second. She gets herself together and rushes to the table, where there are piles of folded laundry and she grabs towels, throwing them down over the spill.
She’s saying something but I can’t read her lips. I walk toward her and she warns me to stop, holding up her hands. Her eyes dart to Hayley, and then back to my face, and she doesn’t look too happy with me. I set Hayley on the counter and put a cookie in her hands, and she settles there to watch us, her mouth full of chocolate chips. Hayley’s three, and she’s a cool kid.
I move the towels around with my boots, and Kit drops to her knees to mop up all the water. She pushes the towels around frantically, until it’s all cleaned up. Then she throws the wet towels in the mop bucket and starts a load of wash with them in it. She comes back to the kitchen and looks at Hayley, who’s still perched on the counter, happily munching on her cookie. Paul’s going to have my ass when he finds out I gave her chocolate, but I needed to entertain her for a second.
Kit blows her hair out her eyes with a frustrated breath and glares at me. “You’re home,” she says. Her hands are on her hips, and she’s not wearing any make up and her hair’s a mess and she has a line of dirt streaked across her forehead. But she’s never looked prettier.
I nod. The knees of Kit’s jeans are wet, and her shirt’s damp now, too. “What have you been doing?” I ask. I look around. The apartment is clean. And I don’t just mean “straighten it up because Grandma’s coming over” clean. I mean spotlessly clean. Like showroom floor clean. But better. It smells nice. And it looks nice. And she’s here. God, I’m so happy she’s here.
She shrugs. “How was your day?” she asks. Her gaze zips between me and Hayley. Hayley’s making a mess, but I don’t care.
“Better, now,” I admit. I feel like someone took a weight off my chest when I walked into the room and saw her here. I reach for Kit, and squeeze her to me, kissing her on the forehead. She scrunches up her face, and pushes back from me, her gaze jumping to Hayley again.
“Who’s that?” she asks warily.
I wet a kitchen towel and wipe Hayley’s mouth and hands clean. She hasn’t gotten it on her dress yet, but I know it’ll happen any second. Her mother will shit a brick if we send her back with dirty clothes. I tickle Hayley’s tummy and she giggles, her belly clenching as she arches into my hands. “This is Hayley.”
Hayley looks a little confused, and I pick her up, putting her on my hip. She wraps around me, and one hand covers my mouth. I kiss her palm and make noises at her. She wiggles in my grasp. She’s probably confused about the noises coming out of my mouth. I’ve never talked in front of her before.
“How old is she?”
“How old are you Hayley?” I ask her, jostling her on my hip.
She holds up three fingers.
“Three?” Kit says, like she’s amazed. “Such a big girl.” Kit looks at me. “Does she talk?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. Her lips are really hard to read, so I don’t know if she talks or if she’s just making noises. She knows how to sign simple words like food, milk, bath, water, and other things she needs. She and I do pretty well together. Most of it is just me trying to figure out what she needs, but Hayley doesn’t seem to mind. “She might.”
Kit bends down to her level and asks, “Do you talk?” Kit smiles and she’s so damn pretty making faces at Hayley that I want to kiss her. I grab Kit quickly around the waist and jerk her into my side with a hand on her hip, and she laughs, looking up at me. I kiss her on the forehead and Hayley bats the side of my face with her open palm. “I don’t think she likes that,” Kit says, backing away from me.
“She’ll have to get used to it.” Kit’s eyes meet mine, and then they skitter away.
“She’s adorable,” she says, but she’s not looking in my eyes. We’ll have to talk about that later.
“What happened to the apartment?” I ask, a grin tugging at my lips. She looks unsure of herself as she brushes her hair back from her face. That streak of dirt is still across her forehead and I reach out to wipe it away with my thumb.
She wrings her hands together and doesn’t look me in the eye. “I did a little cleaning.”
I take her chin in my hand and tip her face up to mine. “I’m glad you’re still here.”“You’re not mad, are you?” she asks. She bites her bottom lip.
“That you’re here?” I ask softly. “I’m f**king ecstatic.”
She scowls and looks at Hayley. “Language,” she says. “And I meant about the cleaning. I started it this morning and… well… I couldn’t stop.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“I know,” she says with a shrug. “I wanted to. And I sort of feel like I owe you guys for letting me stay here.”
“You don’t owe us anything,” I try to explain. I tug her to me again. I like the feel of this girl in my arms so much more than I should. “I like having you here.”
She smiles up at me, and then Hayley starts to jump in my arms. She’s excited, and reaches over my shoulder. I look back and Paul’s coming in the door. She gets so excited to see Paul.
Kit starts smiling beside me, and then she grins, and air escapes her in one big relaxed breath. I’m not sure what that’s about.
“You met Hayley, I see,” Paul says to Kit. She nods as Paul takes her from me. “See, Hayley,” he says to his daughter, “now you won’t be the only girl in the house.” He dances around in a circle with her. I’m reading his lips, because it’s really hard to sign when your hands are full of baby. I can’t see what he says when he dances around in a circle, but whatever it is makes Kit smile.
Kit points a finger at Paul and smiles. “She’s yours?” she asks.
Paul looks from me to her. “You’re not trying to use my daughter to score with chicks again, are you?” Paul asks, punching me in the shoulder. “I can’t let him take her to the grocery store. He gets too much attention from the ladies.”
Paul looks around the apartment and grins. “What the f**k happened here?” he asks.
Kit scowls at him, too. “Language,” she says, looking toward Hayley. She’s smiling now, though, and she looks like she’s taking deep breaths, which she wasn’t doing when I first walked into the house.
“Who cleaned?” Paul asked. He wipes a spot on Hayley’s cheek with his thumb and says, “And who gave you chocolate?” He scowls at me. I shrug my shoulders and grin.
Kit cleaned up. I pull her into my side, and she wraps an arm around my waist, lays one hand on my chest, and looks up at me. Isn’t she amazing?
Paul looks from me to her and back again, sticks his finger down his throat like he’s going to hurl and walks away with Hayley toward his bedroom. He looks back at me long enough to say, “You’re going to be late for work if you don’t hurry.” He looks down at Hayley. “Tell Uncle Logan he’s going to be late.” He shows her the sign for late and she does it. She’s adorable when she signs. They disappear into his bedroom and I look down at Kit. I bend my head and touch my lips to hers. I don’t want to pull back, but I do have to hurry. “I have to go out,” I say.
Her brows raise, and she looks wary. “Out?” she says.
I nod. “I have to work tonight. Do you want to go with me?”
She looks down at her wet shirt, and brushes a lock of hair from her forehead. “I haven’t even had a shower today.”
“How quickly can you get ready?” I ask, looking at my watch. I have thirty minutes before I have to be there.
Emily
Warm water sluices over my body, and I force myself to hurry up. Logan is probably dancing from foot to foot in the living room waiting for me so he won’t be late for work. Apparently, he’s a bouncer at some club around the corner on Friday nights. And he wants me to go with him.
I hear the door to the bathroom open and I freeze. “Matt?” I call. He’s the only one who might come into the bathroom with me, and that’s only if he’s sick.
I open the bath curtain an inch and look out. Logan is standing there, looking at me. He changed clothes, and now he’s wearing a pair of jeans, his boots, and a blue t shirt that says “Bounce(r)” on the front of it. It strains across his broad shoulders. His eyes are a startling shade of blue against the azure shirt, and he looks at my face as I poke my nose through the curtain. My hair is full of suds, and soap is burning one of my eyes. “Is something wrong?” I ask.
He shakes his head and smiles at me. He doesn’t say anything else, but he stands there with one shoulder against the wall with his arms crossed. “I have a question,” he finally says.
I lean back and wash the soap from my face and hair, and then poke my head back through, blowing water from my lips. “Ask it,” I say.
“It bothered you when you thought Hayley was mine,” he says. His face doesn’t change. He’s still appraising me closely. But he’s not leering, or trying to look at my na**d body. He’s totally respectful, just like always.
It did bother me when I thought Hayley might be his. They have the same deep blue eyes, and their hair color is similar. And he was so familiar with her. But then she’s called Paul Daddy, and everything was suddenly all right. I know he can’t read my lips unless I stick my head out of the shower. “What makes you say that?” I ask.
He snorts. “I read people every day, all day, and I have to tell how they feel by the way they hold themselves, rather than the inflections in their voices. And something tells me that you didn’t like thinking that Hayley was mine.”
He looks closely at me, and I know he’s still appraising my reactions.
“Either you don’t like kids, or you didn’t like the idea of me having a kid.” He shuffles his feet. “I just wanted to tell you that I might not be able to hear, but I’m fully capable of taking care of a child. If I wasn’t, Paul wouldn’t leave her with me.”
He heaves a sigh, and then he turns to walk out of the door. I call his name, but he doesn’t hear me. So, I jump out of the shower and grab for the towel, letting it fall open in front of me, but I don’t have time to wrap it around me. I clutch it to my chest, and grab his arm. He turns back toward me, one eyebrow rising as he looks at me.