Completing the Pass (4 page)

“Which provides them incentive to leave the place sparkling clean so we have to spend less time between tenants, and also to talk us up among their friends as a good place to live. Nice one.”

“I have my moments.” She swiped a finger over a stack of textbooks and grimaced at the decade or more of dust that came away. “Gross.”

“What's gross?”

“Nothing, sorry.” Rubbing her finger on her jeans, she did a slow turn. “I'll be here for a bit longer than I thought, Jess.”

She winced as her friend launched into a colorful, unique-expletive-laced rant. Holding the phone down by her hip, she looked up as the doorbell rang. They weren't expecting company, were they?

“Hey, Jess?” she said, still not holding the phone completely to her ear. “I have to go, dinner's on the table in a minute. Talk to you soon!”

She hung up before Jess could give her more shit, then turned her phone on Do Not Disturb. For a bit, she'd be a good girl and keep from checking it every four minutes while around her mother.

When she walked back into the kitchen, she stared agog at the amount of food her mother had laid out on the counter. “Mom? Mom! Who the hell is eating all of this?”

No answer.

She wandered back through the dining room, and noticed two more place settings than she'd first set out.

No.
Noooooo
no no.

Her worst fears were confirmed when she heard his self-satisfied voice from behind her. “Hey, Carri.”

***

Josh spent most of dinner rotating between relief that Herb was home and on the mend—physically, anyway—and reveling in the daggers Carri was shooting his way.

“So,” Gail said, sitting beside him, “Carrington. How long will you be in the area this trip?”

“Uh . . .” She paused in the act of scooping more mashed potatoes onto her plate. The last fluffy chunk landed with a plop on the already formed pile. A few flecks of the white stuff flew out and landed on her dark shirt.

Josh bit back a laugh. Grace was not her middle name.

“I'm not sure, really. It's sort of up in the air.”

“Carri's agreed to stay with Herb for a while when I go back to work, starting tomorrow.” Maeve laid a hand on Herb's arm and beamed at Carri, who looked vaguely ill. “Isn't that amazing?”

“It is,” Gail agreed. “And Josh, you have all this free time on your hands until you start back up with training camp. You should take Carri around, show her the area again. It's probably changed so much since she was here last.”

Maeve nodded emphatically.

Carri rolled her eyes across the table.

“Mom, I doubt that's how Carri wants to spend her vacation. Plus, she'll be hanging with Herb, am I right?” Josh asked the older man. Herb's eyes tracked over to him, but they'd dimmed from a few moments ago. What had happened? Had he said something wrong? Herb been doing so well up to now, keeping up with the conversation, not struggling . . .

“Herb,” Maeve said gently. “Wouldn't it be nice if Carri and Josh spent some time together?”

“Mom, I don't think—”

“Of course they should,” Herb said automatically, cutting his daughter off. “Why wouldn't they? They're best friends.”

“Dad, we haven't been best friends since we were six,” Carri said through her teeth.

“Well, I was seven,” Josh said, just to watch those eyes flash again. He raised a brow at her. She silently snarled back. He felt his own childish urge to poke the bear rise again. Habits weren't easy to break, after all.

“You two kids go have some fun,” Herb said, banging on the table once. The women jumped, startled, as the plates and glasses rattled. Josh shifted a little in his chair in case he needed to help Maeve subdue the older man. “Go. Go! Go be young while you still can.”

“Dad, I haven't even finished dinner,” Carri protested, holding up a forkful of ham as evidence.

“Josh can afford to feed you. He's got that paper route.” Herb looked at him for confirmation.

Josh's eyes flitted over to Maeve's tight-lipped grimace, then to Carri's watchful gaze. Slowly, he nodded. “Yes, sir, I do. I'd be happy to take Carri out for the night, if that's okay with you.”

Herb nodded, and kept nodding. “Good, good. Young people being young. Go. Go on. Get.”

“Mom,” Carri started, but Josh simply stood, kissed his own mother on the cheek and took the keys she handed him. He'd parked at her place and rode over with her. If she wanted to leave before he returned, his mother lived two blocks over. She'd be the first one to tell him she could walk.

“C'mon, Carri, we're not welcome here anymore.” He hooked an arm around one of hers and dragged her out of the chair. He watched, amused, as she bent down and scooped one more mouthful of potatoes into her mouth before grumbling and leaving the table. “I'll have her home by curfew,” he promised, giving Maeve a quick, private look. “Call if you need . . . anything.”

Thank you,
Maeve mouthed.

“You fell for it.” Carri waited for Josh to start his mother's car and pull out of her parents' driveway. “You totally fell for it. Hook, line, and sucker.”

“Sinker,” he corrected automatically, putting the car into drive and heading out of the subdivision.

“No, sucker. You're a total sucker. The moms played you, and you know it.”

“Maybe,” he admitted, “but your dad wasn't playing anyone. It seemed the easiest way to not ruin the evening.”

Carri crossed her arms over her chest and stayed silent, rather than admitting defeat.

“I'd rather cruise around in silence for a while than feel like the moms are watching us for any little hint of a spark. Wouldn't you?”

She nodded.

He drove for a few minutes, then slowed and pulled into the parking lot of a Taco Bell. Looking at him from the side, she watched while he shrugged and got into the drive-thru line.

“Hey, we cut out from dinner early. Don't tell me you don't still love this crap.”

She did. She really, embarrassingly did. “Fine. But you don't get to throw this back at me later if you don't feel good.”

“I would never,” he lied unconvincingly.

They ordered their food—Carri ordering nearly twice as much as Josh—and pulled out again. “Where are we going?” she asked, digging into the bag and taking out a chip.

“Somewhere we can eat without people staring.”

“Why would someone stare? It's not like anyone knows who you are.” She grinned at that, but instead of throwing an insult back at her, as the usual course of things, he simply gripped the steering wheel tighter and stretched his neck. “Josh?”

“You suck.”

It was an insult, but a weak one. Something was up.

“I am rubber and you are glue?” she asked placidly, watching as he drove back toward the direction of their parents' neighborhood. When he pulled onto a side road, she grinned. He was heading to their old elementary school.

He turned his mother's car into the parking lot, drove over the loose rock that had been kicked out of the playground's boundary lines, and parked beside the deserted area. A few street lamps shone in the distance, and the moon was out in full force, so it wasn't totally dark. But a little eerie nonetheless.

Carri paused while he got out of the car. Looking back in at her, he sneered. “Chicken? Afraid some guy with a hook for a hand is gonna spring out of the trees and get you?”

“That was in one of those scary children's books, and it was very realistic to a nine-year-old,” she retorted, leaping out and slamming the door shut behind her. “And shut up, or I'll throw your taco into the trees.”

“It's basically poison anyway,” he said, climbing up to the platform just before the tallest slide on the playground. She followed without thought, handing him the paper sack as she crab-walked the last few feet to sit beside him. Both scooted until their legs dangled down below, as they had when they'd been children. He handed her the first burrito of her order while he got started on his own food.

“Why are you being so nice?” she wondered out loud, taking a bite.

“What's nice about this?”

Neither looked at each other, preferring to stare off in the same direction instead.

“You went to Taco Bell, when you hate it. Your insults are weak at best. And you're sitting here quietly, not commenting on how bad the food sucks or how I'll get fat if I keep eating like this.”

He spared her a baleful side glance. “Hasn't seemed to make you fat yet. Guess I was wrong about that one.”

That was definitely not a compliment. Not from Josh Leeman.

“Maybe I'm keeping you off balance,” he said.

“No.” She swallowed another bite, then held out a hand for her next item, swapping the taco he gave her for the crumpled wrapper of the devoured burrito. “Really. What's going on?”

He swung his legs a little harder than he had been. “You've got hard times ahead. I don't need to make it any harder than it will be. I like Herb. I hate what he's going through. You and I might not be friends, but we're not exactly enemies.”

It had certainly felt like they were enemies in elementary school. “Remember when you tripped me while I was playing tag on the pavement, right over there?” She pointed to the area where two basketball hoops faced each other. The pavement had long since cracked and crumbled, with grass sprouting up in tufts.

“Accident,” he said blandly.

“Was not! I had to get three stitches in my lip.” She bared her teeth at him, showing off the thin scar she knew was still there on the underside of her bottom lip.

“How about when you stepped on my hand while I was climbing the rock wall?” he shot back.

“Accident.”

“Bullshit. I couldn't play Pop Warner for two weeks after that.”

Carri smiled, thinking of the satisfaction she'd felt. She'd done it after hearing from Susan, who'd heard it from Thomas, who'd listened in while Josh told Greg S. that he wouldn't have kissed Carri if she were the last human being on the planet and his only other option was a platypus.

Carri had liked Greg S. at the time. And was pretty positive that the
I'd rather have the platypus
comment had sent him running.

“For not being enemies, we made each other pretty miserable as kids.”

“As kids?” he scoffed. “We're still doing it. Miserable is a stretch, though. I'd say it was more pleasantly uncomfortable, at best.” He was quiet for a moment, then softly added, “My most vivid memories have you in there somewhere.”

Her heart skipped a little. Casually looking at him when she reached for another soft taco, she took in his face for a moment while he was distracted. His hair was shorter now than the last time she'd seen him. Nearly buzzed, though it suited his face. His baby-blue eyes with their thick fringe of lashes—he'd despised them as a child—made an appealing package . . . if she were being impartial about the whole thing. And he'd definitely filled out, even from where he'd been in college, which had been pretty fit. Being the second-string quarterback still meant he had to be on top of his fitness, apparently. No slagging off, even if he'd never have the upper hand against a god like Trey Owens.

“Maybe the bad memories.”

“Not all. Like when the football team won state my junior year. I looked up in those stands . . .” He paused, his voice a little dreamy, remembering a simpler time. “Looking for my mom so I could do some corny
thank you
gesture, and there you were. Sitting beside her. For some reason, you caught my eye first, and I couldn't look away.”

She blinked, not remembering the scene at all. Then he went on.

“There you were, in the stands, looking adorable while flipping me off from two hundred yards away. As if you knew I'd somehow manage to see you and you wanted to give me a parting gift before I got too excited.”

She chuckled. That sounded much more like her.

“I cherish that memory.”

“Simpler times,” she agreed, then finished her taco in silence.

***

Josh pulled back in to his mother's driveway beside his car. He used his own key to walk in and called out, “Ma?”

“Kitchen.”

He wandered back through the house he'd grown up in as a child. It had been just the two of them after his father left when he'd been seven. Only the two of them to fill the house, and fill it they did. Or rather, Gail did. She'd held on to almost all his childhood memorabilia, down to the participation trophies that most any kid is willing to throw away a day after they're handed the tiny little plaque.

It didn't take a team of psychologists to realize she was emotionally hoarding his memories because she'd learned early that life was never as settled as you thought it was, and there were no guarantees. But as it was mostly contained to his old bedroom and its walls, he let it go.

He found his mother in the kitchen, as she'd said, dividing her lunches for the week into small containers. She was an organized soul, his mother. “Hey.” Reaching around her, he grabbed a handful of grapes from the colander she'd put them in to drain.

“You're back early.”

“Thanks for letting me borrow the car. I thought it was better if we got out of there.”

With a heavy sigh, Gail dished out several servings of what looked to be chicken salad with an ice cream scoop. “You had the right of it. Herb seems to struggle more when Carri and Maeve are in the same room. Doesn't help that Carri's the spitting image of her mother at that age. It confuses him, poor man.”

Confused him, and devastated Carri. He'd seen her face when her father had first had his outburst in the hospital, and again at dinner. It tore at him, knowing what she was going through. Or at least guessing. His father had been gone in an instant. Here one day, tucking Josh into bed, and gone the next with no excuses. No lingering for years, watching them slowly fade, like Carri would end up enduring.

He wasn't quite sure which was worse.

“Did you and Carri have a good time?”

“Sure. Got some Taco Bell, which will likely play havoc with my intestines for three days.”

His mother looked at him over her shoulder with wide eyes. “Taco Bell? Joshua Anthony Leeman, you can't tell me you took a pretty girl to Taco Bell. That's horrible.”

Enjoying himself now, he grinned. “It gets worse, Mom. We didn't even go inside. We got it from the drive-thru.”

She shuddered.

“I know, that was my thought.” He shrugged one shoulder and popped another grape into his mouth. “But it's her favorite. I thought that was a gentlemanly thing to do . . . pick her favorite place. I only complained, like, twice.”

Gail's eyes narrowed, and he let his grin slide. “What?”

“A pretty woman like Carri does not deserve Taco Bell drive-thru. I taught you better than that.”

“First off, I already said it was her favorite. You know she loves that fast-food crap. And secondly, Carri isn't a
pretty woman
.” He said it with air quotes. “She's just . . . Carri.”

“I raised an idiot,” his mother muttered and turned back to her lunch options. “A total and complete moron. I did my best, you know.”

Realizing she wasn't speaking to him, Josh kept his mouth shut.

“Did what I could, got him the fatherly advice when he needed it, tried to be an example of how to treat a lady. And this?” She shouted it at the above-range microwave, as if the appliance would flash an understanding grimace in its shiny door face. “He takes her to Taco Bell!”

“Okay, so . . . I'm gonna head back to my place.” He started to walk off but darted back and kissed her on the cheek. Quickly, of course, because he wasn't a fool and wasn't going to stick around to get his ass whooped on if his mother so chose.

He wasn't an idiot, despite his mother's lamenting words. He knew when to cut and run.

Pretty woman,
he scoffed, and struggled not to let Carri's face fill his mind on the drive back to his apartment.

***

Two days later, Josh sat in Pizza Dan's with his two best friends, Tony and Derrick. He'd had two large slices of loaded thick-crust pizza and was debating a third—and the time it would cost him running on the treadmill in his apartment complex's gym as penance.

Derrick was obviously debating slice number five. Though he'd been on the high school football team with Josh and Tony, he'd let himself go just a little after senior year. He'd played two years at a junior college, decided he'd risked injury one too many times, and gave up the sport as a player to become a simple spectator. His wife found him a cuddly teddy bear, which Derrick liked to mention anytime Tony or Josh gave him hell for gaining a beer gut before thirty. He was, in a word, comfortable. Great wife, decent job, good friends . . . no real worries. Settled, Josh supposed. Settled and happy.

Tony gave himself his own worries. Mostly of the female variety. He'd struggled through one semester of college before dropping out. Josh had been concerned about his best friend, but Tony had rebounded nicely, becoming the manager of a local grocery store and chasing skirts for a hobby.

“How's the team setting up this year?” Derrick asked, taking a drink of soda and grabbing his fifth slice. The decision was over. “The draft picks coming into town yet?”

“I actually met one yesterday. Setting up home base in my building. Decent guy. But, man, each year they keep getting younger and younger.”

Michael Lambert, another Bobcat, had taken on the role of main mentor for the incoming rookies. He'd bug the returning vets until one of them would agree to take on a rookie for the season to keep the newbies out of trouble. The guy was seriously into helping the fellow athlete, or whatever. Thanks to living in the same building, Michael had cornered him more than once in the elevator to get him to agree to mentor some newbie. The guy was good and collected IOUs like they were plated with gold. If you needed something, Michael knew who could get the job done. Or he'd do it himself and happily pocket the favor for later.

Meeting the seventh-round draft pick for a quick lunch and showing him around the areas by their apartment building had been like watching a baby brother enter the adult world for the first time. “It was a little shocking, how naive this one was. Probably a sign we're getting older.”

“I'm good with that.” Derrick smiled around the pizza slice hanging out of his mouth.

“I'm not.” Tony tossed down his napkin. “You know what the new cashier told me the other day? I was sitting there, showing her how to log a canceled receipt, and just casually mentioned that bar I like to go to. You know the one.”

“We know,” Josh and Derrick said as one, both with resignation. Sin's Inn, which often lived up to the name.