“But…” I sniff the dinner in front of me. My mouth is watering. But I’m afraid to take a bite.
“But what?”
“But while I’m here, I think it’s best if you go on with life as normal.”
He looks around the room. “This is my normal life.” He points to his shin. “I’m injured, remember? No training for me. No football.” He makes a motion that encompasses his apartment. “This is my life.” He reaches over and squeezes my good hand. “I’m really glad you’re here. I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks.”
“Why?” I want to bite it back right away, but can’t.
He chokes on his food. “Why what?” he asks when he can finally get a breath.
“Why have you been trying to talk to me?”
“I missed you.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“Whose fault is that?”
I sigh. “Sam…”
He mocks me. “Peck…” He narrows his gaze at me. “What’s your real name? And how did you get the name Peck?”
“Emilio gave it to me,” I mutter.
I take a bite of the dinner he made and flavor bursts across my tongue. I have to fight to keep from moaning with the simple pleasure of it. “Oh, my gosh, this is amazing,” I say. I tap on the table with the fingertips of my bad hand.
He smiles and his cheeks go rosy. So he’s sensitive about food? “Glad you like it.”
“I don’t like it. I love it.” I take another bite. And another. It’s seriously one of the best dishes I have ever had. “Do you cook like this every day?” A girl can hope, right?
He shakes his head. “Only when I have someone to cook for.”
“God, if I lived here I’d never be able to keep the weight off.”
He grunts. “You could stand to gain a few pounds.”
I almost choke on my pasta. “That is so not funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny.” He shrugs. “I like curves.” He looks down at my thighs and licks his lips. “I like your curves a lot.”
“Stop teasing.” My heart thumps in my chest like a drum. “If your brothers heard you say that, you’d never live it down.”
“My brothers know what kind of girl turns me on.”
He looks very serious. But he can’t be, can he?
“Is this why you’ve ignored me? Because you think it’s not possible for me to like you as much as I do?” He blows a breath out through his lips, almost like a razzberry. “That’s some seriously fucked up reasoning, there.” He gets up with his plate and hops to the counter, where he loads it into the dishwasher. Then he leans over and kisses my forehead as he passes by me. He goes to the fridge and takes out a bag of something.
He fits a tip to the end of the bag, and starts to draw circles on the tops of something on the countertop. He’s engrossed in his task.
“Why me?” I ask him.
He looks up at me, but only for a second. He goes quickly back to his icing. “Why not you?”
“I’m not like them,” I point out.
“Thank God for that,” he murmurs.
“No, I mean I’m not at all like them.”
“Who’s the them we’re talking about? Cheerleaders?”
“Well…yeah.” I look down and am immediately mortified to find that I’ve completely cleaned my plate.
“I dated the cheerleader because she was nice. Not because she was petite. Personally, I’d whole lot rather kiss a chick your size.”
I drop my fork and it clatters loudly onto the plate. Did he really just talk about my height? Right in front of me?
“I don’t have to wrench my neck to kiss you. Short petite chicks make big guys like me feel like Neanderthals. I always worry I’m going to break them.”
Whereas with me, he’d have to worry about the opposite.
“I want a girl I can hold on to. With a rear end, and tits.” His face goes rosy again. “But that’s just me.”
I’m trying to process his comments. “Rear end and tits,” I whisper to myself.
“Rear end and tits,” he says again. “Why are you so surprised?”
“It’s just…not…what I’m used to.”
“What does Peck stand for?” he asks again. He’s totally engrossed in his task. But I can tell he’s listening intently.
“Woodpecker.” I can remember the day I got the name like it was yesterday. “I was twelve, and I lived in a group home.”
“How come?”
I shrug. I wish I knew. “My mother wasn’t capable of being a parent. Her rights were terminated.”
“And Emilio and Marta were looking to adopt?”
I laugh at the thought of that. “God, no. Melio got caught with pot in his car.” I snicker when Sam drops his bag of icing. “He had to do community service, so they sent him to the group home. Marta came with him, to keep him out of trouble. She came into our room, while he went to talk to a group of boys.
“She came and sat on the edge of my bed and asked me about my doll. I had been given a doll by Mrs. Derricks, my school counselor. It was the first present I’d gotten in a really long time.” I slip further into the memory and my lips tip up in an unbidden grin. “She asked me the doll’s name. And that was before I learned to sign, so I couldn’t communicate with her. But she didn’t mind my silence.”