Page 19 of Back for Seconds

“Go.” I shooed him toward the door. “You’re gonna be late.”

“Aight.” He laughed, lifting the cup in a salute. “I’ll see you.”

He was halfway across my living room when it hit me. I didn’t want him to go.

Not yet.

“Hey, Joey?” The words left my mouth before I could stop them.

He turned back to me. “Yeah?”

I folded my arms over my chest and tightened my grip. The sun was low in the sky, ready to set, big streams of light falling in through my curtainless windows, falling over his face and casting his features in a butter-yellow glow. “Text me.”

His mouth quirked. “Will do.”

I gave him a curt nod, then spun around on my socked feet, sliding out of the room before he could catch the panic in my eyes.

Chapter 7 Joey

Ten years.

Ten long years had passed since I’d stepped foot into 319 Venus Avenue, but somehow—whether it was a trick of my mind or maybe this thing that kept happening with my body every time I thought of Nonna—the air still smelled like home. Like the fireplace had just been lit with cold firewood, and my dad had just set up a miniature blue fern Christmas tree, and my mom had turned on the rice cooker.

If I’d closed my eyes, I would have heard my brothers playing Xbox down the hall, arguing over the one controller, calling each other every combination of five-letter insults they could think of—and Isaac, still a baby, cooing and mewing along to the rhythm of their voices. I would have heard Nonna cracking walnuts in the kitchen, yammering on the phone in Neapolitan dialect—or maybe even in her limited Spanish—alternately laughing and yelling in a confounding explosion of noise. I would have heard my father’s soft cries as he ran a hand up and down the exposed brick wall in the back bedroom, saying goodbye to our home and his mother.

June was watching me with a look in her eyes that said, I know what you’re thinking. She did that a lot; I had a feeling June prided herself on knowing outcomes before they revealed themselves, on being able to predict how people would react.

You have no idea, I wanted to tell her. You have no idea what sort of weird-ass X-Files shit is happening right now.

That damn buzzing had started again. In my fingers, in my chest.

She had done a little twirl in the middle of the room, exhaustion pulling at her features. She flashed me another sad smile, soft circles etched under her eyes. Her long black hair pulled back from her face into a clip. But when the sunlight cut through the bay window and fell across her profile, over her full lips, turning her ink-black hair into a shining kaleidoscope of deep, rich browns, I wanted to wrap my arms around her, pull her against my chest. Tell her it would be ok, because she was safe in this house. And even more insanely, I wanted to tell her she was safe with me. A stranger. A strange man.

A flutter passed through my chest and a cool breeze over the back of my neck, then the buzzing stopped, and I was snapped, almost violently, back into the moment—back into the real moment. The smells were gone. And this was just another Evergreen beach house.

The walls were painted the most uninspired shade of baby-puke gray I’d ever seen. There was almost no furniture—except for a pretty cool couch—and no artwork. But thankfully, whoever had owned the house hadn’t painted over the fireplace’s shining oak mantle and pale face brick. They’d left the knotted pine hardwood floors. No one had torn down the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen, making the first-floor cozy and inviting.

Clearly, someone—June, I guess—had been making attempts at decorating. But either their heart just wasn’t in it or they didn’t know where to start. Easy. I could fix that.

We’d always kept our couch pushed into the bay window growing up, that way everyone got to sit in the blaze of the fireplace, which was against the lefthand wall. Then, naturally, the room could be divided into a living space and a dining space. It took me a few minutes to move everything around—the bookshelf, the TV, the couch. Then I uncovered some floating shelves and nails that had been abandoned behind the couch. She had all the pieces, I just couldn’t figure out why she’d given up.

When she saw the room, her face lit up—pink springing into her cheeks, eyes flickering with warm interest.

I’d tried to play it cool. I willed myself to be normal about this. I wanted to tell her everything about this house—like how my dad had refinished the fireplaces. And see that back bedroom? My two older brothers and I had all shared it, three horrible smelling boys in one little matchbox room. And that dent in the wall? That was from the time my grandmother had thrown a remote at the TV, aiming for Dick Cheney, and missed horribly.

I knew if I told June about every scratch and dent in every room, she would listen. She would care. She’d ask a million questions and chew on her lip while she listened to me. And I’d walk away even more confused. Why was I so fucking attracted to this woman? Her sexiness was undeniable. But there were plenty of beautiful, smart, mean women in New Jersey.

Was it her proximity to my past—to what felt like the last time I was really happy?

I had to play it cool. Slow down my breath, my pulse, my racing thoughts that were all seemingly trying to keep time with the buzzing in my chest.

I played it cool, alright.

So cool, when she told me to text her, I forgot to ask for her number.

***

Joey: hey June it’s Joey I forgot to ask for your number so I had to do some retcon. If u hear about some big guy shaking down old ladies, do not be alarmed