Like he couldn’t leave fast enough.
The door closed behind him and I heard his bike start up just as Rebel came meandering back down the hallway, carrying a duck, a bunny and two bears in her arms.
I wondered if she thought one of them was an alligator.
* * *
“Auntie Mel is here!” my best friend announced a few hours later as she came through my front door. “And I brought Rebel a taco!”
“She’s not supposed to be eating that crap!” I called back as I rinsed out our soup dishes and glanced at Reb, who was sitting in her high chair clapping her hands merrily.
“Hey—no junk food is your deal, not mine,” Mel argued, setting a paper-wrapped soft taco on Reb’s messy tray. “I also brought c-a-n-d-y.”
“At least she’s in her high chair and not on my couch this time,” I mumbled, turning away as Reb reached inside the paper and pulled out some shredded lettuce with her fingers.
“Exactly,” Mel countered, moving over to my side and leaning against the cupboard. “I got it with no cheese—since you’re not doing dairy anymore.”
“I’ve got a half-gallon of milk in the fridge if you want it,” I said quietly, glancing over my shoulder. “I’m going to have to throw it out.”
“Is cutting out dairy actually helping?” she asked, laughing as Reb started pulling apart her tortilla.
“Not yet, but this is the last step before I have to cut out gluten. You know what a pain in the ass that’ll be? Pray that cutting dairy works.”
Mel nodded.
Reb was healthy. She didn’t have the heart problems that a lot of people with Down syndrome dealt with, and we were lucky that we’d caught her eyesight problems early. But she had eczema on her torso and thighs that just wouldn’t go away, no matter what we tried. It was scaly and rough and it itched, and trying to stop an almost two year old from scratching when something itched was practically impossible. Rebel would scratch at her skin until it bled, leaving her open to infection.
Doctors were finding that sometimes eczema was a symptom of a food allergy, so we’d been going down a list, cutting things out for a while to see if it helped. Milk was the current item on the list.
“So what happened last night after I left?” Mel asked, grabbing a rag and wiping down the counter.
“Oh, you mean after you abandoned me?”
“Come on, you were fine with Will.”
“Yeah, I was. He brought me home and stayed the night.”
“What!” Mel yelled, her head whipping toward me.
“We didn’t do anything,” I grumbled. “We watched a movie and fell asleep.”
“Good grief,” Mel grumbled. “You had that hot guy here all night and you didn’t bang him?”
“No, I didn’t bang him,” I hissed, glancing over at Reb. “We were on our way to . . . something this morning, but then my dad showed up with Rebel.”
“What did Will do?”
#p#分页标题#e#
“He was cool.” I finished rinsing the dishes and dried my hands. “But he took off right after. How was your night?”
“Rocky is nuts in bed,” Mel said, waggling her eyebrows up and down. “I think I had like five orgasms.”
“Nuh uh,” I argued.
“Oh, yeah. Dude knows exactly what he’s doing. I’m lucky I can walk.”
“Are you going to see him again?” I asked, watching as her lips quirked up in a small smile.
“Probably not,” she answered, shaking her head. “We didn’t even exchange phone numbers.”
“What? Seriously?” I went to Rebel, who was no longer eating, but smearing her taco into the soup left at the edges of her tray.
“It’s fine,” she assured me. “We both knew what it was going in—I’ve got no complaints.”
“You’re nuts. I couldn’t do that.”
“Obviously, since Will was here all night and you didn’t do anything. Did you exchange numbers?”
“No,” I replied, realizing it as soon as she mentioned it. We hadn’t exchanged numbers or even mentioned seeing each other again. I lifted Reb from her seat and carried her toward the bathroom. “Come on, she needs a bath.”
I set Reb in the tub, stripped her down and turned on the water as Mel came to stand in the doorway.
“He seemed really into you,” she said, fiddling with the lotions and creams on the countertop.
“I don’t know,” I replied, shaking my head. “We’re a lot to take on, you know? It’s not just me.”
“If that’s his issue, he’s a douchecanoe.”