0215543001348293036 vaughn piper oshea m.j. (2 page)

[5]

Piper Vaughn & M.J. O’Shea

I knew exactly what I did need. I pried my cell out of my pocket and hit speed dial two-D for Dusty. My best friend and the only real family I’d had for years. He answered groggily after a few rings.

“Hey, Underoo. You know, I was asleep. What’s up?”

“I thought I told you to stop calling me that.” There was a long silence on the line. I was afraid Dusty had gone back to sleep. “You going to stop calling me Dustpan?” I chuckled under my breath. It was still funny after about a million years. “No.”

“Then neither am I. What do you need, hon? I don’t want to wake up Gary.”

“You’re still with him? I thought we discussed that already.” I held back a groan.
Closeted beefcake asshole.
“Listen, Dust, I might have done something really impulsive tonight.” Dusty yawned, long and loud. “Stop the presses.”

“No, really. Well, two things actually. One was a while ago.”

“Can you please just tell me? I’m too sleepy to play guess the Rue shenanigan.” There was a muffled noise on the other side. “Sorry, babe,” Dusty whispered. “Just a second, okay?”

“Listen, you remember that Natalie chick?”

“Bad makeup, weird stripe job Natalie?”

Wow, he had a good memory. Maybe the makeup was hard to forget.

“That’s the one. So, don’t yak, but a few months ago I decided to test the waters, yeah? Make sure I’m really,
really
gay.”

“Uh, Underoo, you were doing the girls’ makeup in fifth grade.

What was the big question?”

I sighed. “Okay, so maybe it just sounded like a good idea at the time, and I’m trying to rationalize it after the fact.” Dusty snorted. “You really slept with a girl? Like full on sex?”

[6]

one small thing

“Um, yeah,” I muttered. This conversation was getting worse as the seconds ticked on.

“Eww,
gross
. How exactly is that a good idea?” I could feel Dusty’s shock and resounding disgust through the earpiece.

“I was drunk?”

Dusty chuckled. “She seems kinda butch too. Did she want to strap one on and make you take it?”

I was sure Dusty could hear my eye roll over the phone. “As if! I don’t even bottom for guys. Why would I let some chick stick it to me?”

“So you…?” There was another moment of silence. “Aw, shit.

Please don’t tell me this is going where I think it’s going.”

“It is.” Oh, it definitely was….

“Rue! Are you kidding? Now what?” His voice was muffled like he had his hand over his mouth.

“I’m taking it.”

“You’re taking what?”

“The baby, Dust. I’m keeping the baby. Natalie’s pregnant, it’s mine, and she doesn’t want it.”

There, I said it out loud to my best friend. He can tell me I’m
crazy, I’ll change my mind, and the whole thing will be chalked up to
another one of my impulsive decisions. I can change my mind, right?

Dusty squealed quietly into the phone. “You’re gonna be a papa?”
Guess not.

“That’s all you have to say?” I’d been expecting the lecture of the century—kinda hoping for it actually.

“One more small thing.”

“What?”

“I am
not
going to be Uncle Dustpan.”

[7]

Piper Vaughn & M.J. O’Shea

Erik

NOTICE TO VACATE

THE words were written in a thick, bold font, all caps, ten times larger than the rest of the text underneath. They seemed to scream at me, stark black against the innocuous butter-yellow of the paper they were printed on, getting louder and louder, bigger and bigger, until I couldn’t help but reach out and flip the notice over so I didn’t have to look at it anymore. Looking wouldn’t change anything. I knew that. And reading that notice for the twenty-first time in the past hour wasn’t going to help anything, either.

The house was quiet, and I was in my favorite chair, my fingertips nervously skimming over the smooth leather armrests. The texture was soothing, the habit as familiar as breathing. It was probably the only thing keeping me calm. I’d thought for a second, when I first saw the notice taped to the door, that I would shake apart and bits and pieces of me would float off into the atmosphere. It didn’t happen. But part of me kind of wished it would have.

What am I gonna do? I can’t leave this house. It’s
mine
.
I’d been living there since I graduated from college. The very idea of leaving made my entire body tremble. Who would take care of the flowerbeds I’d planted in the backyard? Who would water them and pull up weeds and replant them every spring?

Oh, I couldn’t think about it. Thinking about it made my stomach hurt and my chest feel tight, made my breaths come faster and shallower until my head started spinning. No, no, thinking about it would be bad. But I couldn’t
not
think about it, either. Or the fact that my landlord of six years had left me an impersonal notice instead of coming to talk to me himself.

I had thirty days to vacate the property or make an offer of purchase. I couldn’t afford to buy it. I’d never be able to make the down payment, not with my meager royalty checks, and the publisher had just rejected my book proposal. I’d have to come up with something else while my agent shopped it around. And what if no one

[8]

one small thing

took it? What if I was never published again? Writing was the only thing I’d ever been good at. I didn’t know what I would do if I couldn’t earn a living from it anymore.

Oh God.
I bent down and put my head between my knees before the wheezing started.
No. No, no. Don’t. Don’t think about it.

I wasn’t made for a more normal type of job. I couldn’t deal with sales or customer service. Or anything that involved strangers. School had been bad enough. I’d never liked crowds much. Those massive, jam-packed lecture halls had seemed so intimidating. There were times I made it all the way to school, only to turn around and walk out before I could even set foot inside a classroom.

Sometimes being there was too much for me to handle, sensory overload, and a part of me shut down like a server too many people were trying to access at once. My brain sent out an error message, and my body responded by getting back to familiar surroundings as quickly as possible. At that time it’d been my bedroom at my parents’ house.

These days it was my tiny Cape Cod with its polished oak floors and the old brick fireplace I liked to sit near during the winter months while I wrote and drank cocoa from my Darth Vader mug.

It was home. Had been for over half a decade. But in a month I would to be forced to abandon it, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea.
Where will I go?

I’d never been very good with change. Scratch that—I was downright
terrible
with it. And my parents knew that too. They’d helped me find this place before they moved up to Boston a few weeks after my graduation, when the idea of leaving the house where I’d grown up had sent me into nine different levels of panic. Now it was my personal sanctuary, calm and peaceful and oh-so-silent when I needed it to be. I could set out all of my model spaceships and
Star
Wars
action figures without worrying about them being touched or broken, leave my laptop open on my desk without worrying about prying eyes, and I never, ever had to let anyone else inside if I didn’t want to.

It was perfect.

[9]

Piper Vaughn & M.J. O’Shea

A moan worked its way from my throat. “How can he j-just toss me out?”

There was no call for it. I’d always been a good tenant. I took care of the house and the property, kept the lawn mowed and the bushes trimmed in the summer, the sidewalks shoveled and salted in the winter. None of the neighbors had ever complained to the landlord about me, as far as I knew. They’d never had a reason. I’d done everything right, everything the way I was supposed to.
Everything.

“Oh… oh G-God….” I snatched the paper up again, searching the words for some kind of loophole, some sort of miracle solution. There was none. Either I could buy the house or I could get out. Those were my only two options. And there was no way I could buy it. Absolutely none. No bank would ever approve me with inconsistent book sales as my only source of income. So, really, there was only one thing I
could
do: find somewhere else.

The notice crumpled as my fists clenched. When I realized what I was doing, I hastily put it back on the table, smoothed out the wrinkles, and patted it once or twice for good measure. It held no answers, only doom, misery of the acutest kind. A little devil in me wanted to rip it to shreds. But then I’d have to clean up the mess, and more than anything I did
not
like messes.

I settled back into my chair, eyeing the paper as my fingers resumed their habitual stroking of the armrests. I had to do something, come up with some type of plan so I wouldn’t snap under the strain of uncertainty. That was what bothered me the most—the feeling of helplessness that came from not knowing what might come next.

Mom.
She would know what to do. Together we’d be able to think of a solution.

I dug my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed her number with shaky fingers. She answered as cheerfully as ever, but all it took was a few words from me for her tone to change from happy to alarmed.

“Erik, honey, what is it?”

“I n-need your help. I have t-to find somewhere else to l-live….”

[10]

one small thing

Chapter 1

Six months later

Rue

“DUSTY, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

I looked down at the tiny bundle in the car seat beside me, sleeping, mouth open, surrounded by fuzzy pink blankets and the tiny stuffed toy one of the nurses had given her. She was gorgeous already. I was biased, of course, but she had a fluffy shock of my black hair, pale, petal-soft skin, and her cheeks were rosy with sleep. Perfect and gorgeous. But just because she was beautiful didn’t mean I wasn’t more than a little bit scared of her. A
baby
. It was hard to believe she was actually mine. For real.

Yeah, terrified would probably be closer to the truth. No books, none of those classes at Planned Parenthood, nothing had been enough to prepare me for what was to come. At least I was smart enough to know I’d completely changed my life. The question was, was it for better or for worse? I supposed only time would tell.

Dusty was driving us home from the hospital for our first night together out in the real world—me and Alice. My daughter. My chest got all fluttery at the thought of it.

“Don’t you think it’s a little too late to be saying you don’t know what to do? Whatever ‘what’ is, you’re going to have to do it now.”

[11]

Piper Vaughn & M.J. O’Shea

I rolled my eyes. That was helpful. “Thanks for the support, Uncle Dustpan.”

“I thought we talked about that.” Dusty chuckled. “Listen. Those ladies at the hospital talked your ear off about childcare and nutrition and blahdy blah blah. We’ll find someone to watch the tater tot during the day, and you’ll be fine taking care of her on the weekends, right?”

“What about when I’m at the bar?” I hadn’t exactly taken my job and full-time school schedule into account when I decided my baby needed a dad, and that dad had to be me. I was so unprepared, and I had only one very short week to get prepared.

“I’m only at The Bean three nights a week, and I’m guessing Rhonda won’t mind if Alice comes with me. The other nights I’ll be at your place before you need to go.”

“The Bean” was actually Temple of the Bean, the offbeat art house coffee shop where Dusty worked. The place was usually filled with blue- and black-haired kids who invested way too much money on eyeliner and dark lipstick. The look was hot if done right, in my opinion at least, but I shuddered at the idea of my daughter spending three nights a week in that environment. Didn’t have much choice. I was desperate. Temple of the Bean it was. Guess anything was better than one of the back rooms of the Tom Tom Club. Didn’t want my baby to learn
those
types of skills too early in life… especially not from boys who didn’t know what they were doing half the time anyway.

“Are you sure you don’t mind taking her?”

“I don’t mind. What are best friends and gay uncles for, right? It’s only until we’re rich, famous stylists anyway, and we can hire an army of the best and most fabulous nannies for our girl.”

“Only the most fabulous.” I smiled. “Love ya, Dust. You know I’ll repay you somehow.”