When I Need You (Need You #4)(44)

Then Calder returned to being my animated boy. "And then when Alicia and I went for a walk? Guess what? Two kids from the other building asked if I wanted to play!"

"That is pretty cool. Did you catch their names?" Their parents' names? What apartment they lived in? If their parents were paying attention to them or if they were just letting them run free?



       
         
       
        

"Nicolai. He's in second grade. And Andrew is in first grade." He paused. "So can I play with them?"

"We'll see."

"That always means no," he said, defeated.

Then the timer dinged, I headed to the kitchen and he followed me. "I want to help make the sauce."

"You're serious about mixing peanut butter and mustard together?" Sounded unbelievably gross.

"Yeah. But on Chopped you can add other stuff to make it taste better."

I handed him the dinner plates and had a sudden brainstorm. "At my favorite Thai restaurant there's a dish called sesame noodles and it tastes like peanut butter and soy sauce mixed together. So we could add soy sauce to it."

That set him to bouncing again.

"Careful with the plates, boy-o." I took out all the ingredients.

Calder dragged the step stool into the kitchen and we whisked everything together-with the least bit of mustard I could get away with, lots of soy sauce and a pinch of sugar.

"Okay, Chef Michaels, give it a taste."

He dipped the spoon in and didn't immediately make the yuck face. "Hey, it's good!"

"So I don't need to get out the ranch or the ketchup for the fish sticks?"

"Huh-uh. I'm gonna dip my chips in it too."

The sauce had turned out better than I'd expected. And Calder ate every last bit on his plate for a change. Go figure.

After that we drifted into our nighttime routine, readying his backpack and his bag for dance class. Preparing everything the night before saved us from butting heads first thing in the morning.

Calder took a long bath with his toys, allowing me to clean up the kitchen before I scrubbed his hair. Then it was jammies and reading time.

I was about to shut the door when Calder sat up in bed. "Mommy. Wait. You didn't tell me your favorite part of the day."

The quieter, settle-down time of day with him, where all the chaos and disappointment of the day vanished, filled me with peace and joy like nothing else. But he'd deemed that answer boring since I said it every time, so I said, "You first."

"Making the Chopped sauce. That was awesome . . . sauce." He giggled.

Hearing him giggle was a close second to the best part of every day. "That was my favorite part too."

"Can we do it again sometime?"

"Absolutely. Sweet dreams, my sweet boy. I love you."

"Love you too, Mommy."

Right after I sat down, my mom called. I spent half an hour filling her in on the camp situation. Then I brought up the random e-mail I'd gotten earlier today from the owner of a private cheer club about setting up a meeting with me. The oddest part? The club had been the biggest rival to the club I'd competed with, the next town over from where I'd grown up. Even from the preliminary e-mails, it sounded as if they wanted to offer me a job. Which excited my mom because Calder and I would have to move out of the Cities and closer to them. Then Mom got Dad on the phone and he promised if I made the move, he'd give me land of my own to build a house on. My parents tended to take a whispered suggestion or even a germ of an idea and blow it completely out of proportion. 

That was all way, way too much for me to think about in one day. After I ended the call, I cursed my tendency to overshare with my parents-but they were the only people in my life I trusted and could talk to.

Jensen's voice echoed in my head. "Who do you talk to when things are weighing on your mind? I hate the thought of you dealing with everything alone."

It wasn't like I had a choice.

Maybe I'd talk to him about the cheer club thing.

So I held out hope that Jensen would drop by. But when I hadn't heard his distinctive knock by eleven o'clock, I went to bed.

• • •


I hadn't heard from Jensen all week.

Which I considered a bad sign. He hadn't gotten the funding or the space from LCCO to revive the camp and he was too embarrassed to face me with the truth. So he avoided me.

I found myself more annoyed with him than disappointed. Maybe I'd congratulated myself a little too much on my ability not to fall for a player's promises.

I'd refrained from giving Calder the bad news. The last week of regular dance classes for the school year had already put him in a melancholy mood. I'd found part-time summer day care that had a hip-hop class once a week as well as an art class. I planned on putting down the hefty deposit on Monday after I got paid.