Page 31 of Really Truly Yours
“It’ll matter to a lot of people if you fly out of here and hurt someone.”
I feel the rage on my face as I scowl at her. But that’s only debris from my meeting with Donny.
Her calm reason hauls me from the brink. I have a collection of speeding tickets at home that prove I drive my emotions. There’s the one for going a hundred the night Kelly told lies to the press. There’s another for doing one-ten on the freeway the night I threw three walks in the ninth and lost an important game-seven two years ago. There’s—
Point taken. I smooth my palm over the jumble of hair on my head. “Could I get a drink of water, please?”
“Um, sure.”
On the way up the sidewalk, I notice a stack of mail in Sydnee’s hand. I also notice what I had missed until the AC escapade, what her sweater doesn’t fully hide. She has long legs, an hourglass waist, and the knit fabric clings to the curve of her hips.
When she opens the door, I sail in behind her.
She turns, squinting, our faces only a couple feet apart. If she tells me to leave, I will.
She doesn’t. She drops the mail on a two-seater table and goes to the kitchen. I help myself to a seat on the lone barstool while she reaches for a plastic cup from a cabinet. She fumbles, and it bounces off the gouged countertop, landing next to an assortment of brown pill bottles that’s quite a collection for someone so young.
She retrieves the cup. “Ice?”
“You sure you don’t have something stronger than water?”
Hand on the freezer door, she stops. “Like?”
Like the kind of stuff I’m back to not drinking. I rest on an elbow. “I could sure use a Dr. Pepper.”
Her eyebrows rise. Yep, that was edited special for her.
Her hand switches to the door of the refrigerated section. Out comes a maroon can. “You’re in luck. Okay, mostly in luck. It’s off-brand, but it’s close.”
Our fingers brush in the exchange. “Thanks, Sydnee.”
I pop the top and take a long drink, the fizz a distraction from all the rest of…everything.
Like Donny’s, this house is small, except Sydnee’s main living space is open, the stub of a breakfast bar the only divider between the no-frills kitchen and the living room not up for accommodating more than two people, three tops. Unless she’s hiding an extra wing down the one short hallway I can see, this place is only in the hundreds as far as square-footage goes. My college apartment was bigger.
Unlike Donny’s place, this house is a home. Sure, it shows its age and the old furniture a lack of prosperity, but scattered feminine touches make it a place to take a load off. It’s clean and neat, and Sydnee has a green thumb, judging by the jungle of potted plants in a far corner. A cheaply framed watercolor above the sofa is colorful and cheery.
Which is not how I would describe the nature of its owner. With her, my brain conjures words like, sober, cautious, circumspect.
I realize something. “No TV?”
I turn from my perusal, and man, peruse this. Sydnee is a sight. Serious or not, her cheeks are a warm pink and her honey-brown hair is sprawled across her shoulders. The blue and green in her eyes have a rivalry going, making it tough to pick a winner. Then my eyes get hung up on her mouth.
“It broke last year. It’s okay. I’m more of a reader anyway. If the mood strikes, I watch online.”
I know a mood that’s striking me.
And it is wholly and completely out of line and not appropriate to either the person or the moment.
I drink down the last of the no-name soda, mentally packaging up the out-of-order ideas and taping the box for good measure. I clink the shiny can on the counter. “About earlier, Sydnee.”
The hue on her cheeks deepens.
Yep, that’s the moment I’m talking about. “I’m sorry. I overstepped. I don’t always think before I act. I tend to just…do.”
I guess she’s staring at her feet down there somewhere, on the other side of the bar. Her hair swings forward, blocking her face. “No big deal.”
I hope she means it, and she’s right in one sense. With any other woman, I wouldn’t think twice of a moment of playfulness. In this case, it hit out of nowhere, and Sydnee is practically a stranger.