Out of Nowhere(26)

I woke up twisted in the covers with a wicked headache and a very disgruntled cat half buried under the blanket, her fur mussed.

Now, my stomach is tight and my breathing is jerky. I think maybe I really should’ve listened to Pop and gotten stitches, too, because the cut on my hand is throbbing with every heartbeat. I made it worse holding the weights yesterday—tore it open and slapped a bandage on it so I didn’t have to look. I press on Shelby’s scratches through the rough flannel of my shirt to remind me they’re there. To remind me that anything can turn on you in a second. Mostly, I’m just glad for the distraction of the workshop. Another day alone in my house and I don’t know what the fuck I would’ve done.

Before I even get inside, Rafe is striding toward me across the parking lot.

“Hey,” he says, and he seems genuinely glad to see me.

“Morning.” My voice comes out as a croak, and Rafe leans closer.

“What’s going on?”

“Not much.”

“You look like shit.”

“Wow, thanks, dude. You really know how to brighten a guy’s day.”

Rafe steps closer, crowding me against the Beretta. “Are you sick?”

“Nah, I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep too well.”

“What happened to your hand?” He takes my right wrist in his hand like he has every fucking right in the world to touch me, and what is that about?

“Oh, you know. Occupational hazard.” I clear my throat. “So, I brought this guy.” I thump the roof of the Beretta.

Rafe grabs my left hand where it rests on the roof of the car. “Another occupational hazard?”

He’s looking at Shelby’s scratches. Then he starts to trace them up from my hand to my arm and I pull away.

“Colin. Are you okay to do this right now?” He puts his hands on my shoulders and it feels strangely good to have all that warm attention focused on me. Different than Brian grilling me.

“Yeah, course.”

“The kids are really excited, so if you’re not up to giving it your full attention, I don’t want to bring them out here.”

And damn, that stings. Of course he’s not concerned about me. He’s worried that I’m going to hurt his kids like I hurt everyone else I fucking come in contact with.

“No, man, I’m fine, really. I’ll be good. Scout’s honor.” I hold up a salute. Rafe frowns, looking me over. I slug him in the shoulder. “Dude, no worries. It’ll be great. Get the kids.”

His eyes are fixed on the smile I’ve plastered on my face, and he raises an eyebrow like he’s going to call me on it but then just claps me on the back and goes inside, leaving me to set up my tools and search out his lingering smell.

“Yo, yo, yo, Colin,” Carlos says, the first one out the door. “How’s it hanging, my man?” He tries to execute a complicated handshake, but since I don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to do, we just kind of end up flopping our hands against each other’s.

“How’s it going?” I ask, and Carlos grins at me, like he thought I might ignore him or something.

“Oh, you know, you know, not bad.”

It’s still a few minutes before eleven, so the kids are chatting and goofing off. DeShawn is back, polite and quiet, wearing all white again, and so are the twins—Sammi and Tynesha, I correct myself. Pretty girl isn’t back—guess she wasn’t impressed with me—but the rest are, and there are a few new kids who Rafe introduces. I forget their names immediately, as usual.

“Hey, Ricky,” I say, waving to her even though she barely seems to notice I’m there.

“Hi,” she says, flicking her eyes to me for a second, then looking away.

Last out of the gate is the kid in all black who was into Harry Potter. Rafe called him Anders. He’s clutching his violin case in hand. When he gets closer, the first thing I notice is that his expression looks different than it did last week. Then he looked… I dunno… sweet and happy, even if he was shy. Now, his expression is shuttered, distant, like he’s thinking hard about something. And if he reminded me of Daniel before, with his dreaminess and his little-kid enthusiasm for some weird book, now I can see it quite clearly.

Today, he looks like Daniel did after kids at school started picking on him—after we started teasing him more, moving from the typical brother ribbing to giving him shit because we thought it was girly that he wanted us to read to him and would sometimes absently pull on our mother’s too-large robe if he got cold. But most of all, after he realized that he didn’t have anything in common with us anymore.