Conviction (7 page)

“No, no.” He came from behind me, not tapping along my bare arm like he normally might. Instead, he was all business, until our fingers just touched. He inhaled, then swallowed loudly.

“Relax your shoulders,” he advised, re-aiming us. “Breathe normally.”

I leaned back just enough to better inhale his scent. “Easier said than done,” I mumbled.

He laughed into my ear. “I think you do this on purpose.”

“Do what?”

“Try to distract me.”

“I’m just trying to be better prepared for any situation,” I mused, “…keeping my New Year’s resolution and all that.”

“Yeah, right.” He didn’t sound convinced.

I practiced standing naturally, my finger over the trigger hold as told, only after another lecturing was I allowed to actually try shooting.

Understandably, Charlie stood away from me, hands rustling through his messy hair then retreating to bite on his nails. I didn’t want to make him any more nervous than I had to, so I didn’t try any showboating or quoting cheesy movie lines. Instead, I just fired away. The discharge jerked me back slightly as predicted, but really it was like the muscles in my arms weren’t designed for the movement.

I looked back at Charlie and frowned. “Did I hit anything?”

He grinned and shook his head. “Its gonna be a long day.”

Though he claimed I was a worse shot than Polo (a feat that apparently had never before been performed), I felt more confident about my self-defense. Though I rarely saw guns around Ben Walden’s house, I knew they were there and learning to shoot just made me feel more integrated into the household.

“I just need more practice,” I emphasized.

“Don’t do nothin’ by yourself. I mean it. Promise me you’ll tell me when you want to practice.”

I sighed. “I promise.”

“Good.” He grinned his Charlie grin. “‘Cause if you end up pulling a vice president on Reid, I gotta be there to see it.”

“Okay. Uh, this is the innermost lining of the heart.”

“The endocardium.”

“Hey, now, you didn’t phrase it like a question.”

I smiled and opened my eyes. With his head in my lap, Charlie grinned up at me and tapped the index cards against his chest. After numerous study sessions—most of them pointless as we constantly distracted each other—we had finally worked out a system that actually kept me focused on the material, and Charlie motivated to keep helping me.

“I’m pretty sure I won’t have to put the answer in the form of a question for my exam tomorrow.”

He stretched, took an end of my hair and twirled it around his finger. “I didn’t make up these rules, I’m just trying to stick to em.”

“I’m beginning to think you like this a little too much.”

Even upside down his grin was wonderful. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste. I’m just tryin’ to help you out.” I rolled my eyes but leaned over to kiss him anyway, our agreed atonement for my misphrased or wrong answers.

A familiar beeping in the kitchen made me pull away a second later. The microwave brought me to the domain of our current reality, one full with the smell of freshly popped corn and something sweet in the oven. 

“Maybe we should…”

He choked on his words. “I know, I know.”

Charlie kept his eyes closed but handed me back my flashcards just as Polo worked his way into the living area with a bumbling Tyler on his foot. At this point it was difficult to tell most of the time who was enabling who around the house and who was holding up whom.

“Hey, Ty! This is my leg! You have two of your own! Let go! Let go!” Polo threw popcorn at him from above but Tyler’s grip was as relentless as his giggle.

I tried to make my voice sound scary and failed miserably. “Give this one to me! Muhaha!”

Polo pried him off and tossed him into my arms. Elise constantly drilled him on his colors, shapes, animals, and music notes, though the poor kid clearly had no idea why and didn’t care.

“Where’s your nose, Tyler?”

He pointed to his face and I clapped happily. “Yay, Tyler! Now what color is my sweater?”

He gnawed on his fingers with delight. His first molars were coming in nicely, and it made his smiles even more adorable.

Charlie laughed, and it was disturbing his aim as he strived to throw popcorn into Polo’s mouth.

Yuri walked in and blocked a shot. “Missed, lover boy.”

Yuri plopped down on the floor, which was a prime spot for Tyler as he tried to squirm out of my arms for the popcorn on the floor.

“What are we watching?” he asked

“Something with fire!” Polo said in-between a mouth full of popcorn.

Charlie gave Tyler a wet willy. “That’s all you ever wanna watch.”

“Those are the best kind of movies!”

“You damn pyro! Those movies are awful!”

I bounced Tyler on my knee. “Says the guy who only watches movies where things get karate-chopped.”

Yuri cursed at me in his first language. “At least not everything I watch has subtitles or tries to bore people to death.”

“Documentaries are good.” I handed Tyler off to Charlie. “And silent films are priceless.”

The sliding door of the veranda slammed and we all looked over as Reid stomped in. Like most days, he had spent the majority of the time brooding in the garage or in his apartment. Frankly, it was rare to see him outside of meals unless Ben called the guys around for something work specific, but I couldn’t complain. Even though I had been a part of their lives for almost two months, Reid still hardly acknowledged my presence; though when he did, it was only to send me deadly glares. I did my best to ignore him as Charlie suggested and hoped we could come to a relationship of happy indifference, because my attempts at friendship seemed to get me nowhere.

“Let’s ask Reid what he wants to watch.” Another lame attempt, but I figured I couldn’t lose any points by trying.

The guys turned to Reid as he slinked by and grabbed an apple from the bowl on the countertop. He bit into it loudly and rolled his eyes.

“He’s ‘bout as likely to sit through a movie as that one.” Charlie threw a handful of popcorn at Polo, though the redhead only caught one of the kernels and the rest scattered to the floor.

“Nah. Nah. I hang out for a while. Watch a movie with the little family.” Every word dripped with sarcasm. He chucked the remaining apple at the recycling can, as if predicting the annoyed look when Elise returned and didn’t find it in the compost.

Yuri and Polo sighed simultaneously. “You watch the weirdest crap of all.”

I picked Tyler up from the floor and plucked the popcorn from his tiny palms. “Anything but Dario Argento
, please!
”

“Or Kubrick.”

“
David Lynch,
” Yuri added, laughing.

“
Hitchcock,
” Polo shouted.

As the opening credits came up, Polo whined. “I hate this one.”

Reid swiped Polo’s beer and sat beside him. “That’s only because to you everything is a mystery.”

“It isn’t a mystery when you’ve seen it twenty freakin’ times.”

We all laughed, but since we had seen the movie at least twice each it was easy to wander off. Even Tyler, who was usually so easily amused, was already asleep on my shoulder, breathing softly. I could feel his solid little heart beating against my own. Aside from the occasional disruption of a hiccup, he slept soundly.

“I’m going to go put him down,” I whispered to Charlie before moving from the loveseat and heading for the stairs. Walking with a sleeping Tyler made me feel like a ninja. Each one of my attempts at stealthy movement made him flinch and his eyelashes twitch. Knowing what a light sleeper he was, I took my time, creeping up each stair and nestling him in his crib without trying to make any noises. I wondered how Elise did this all the time, and I had to admire her patience. Was it something that automatically came with motherhood or did it come later on with diapers and sleepless nights?

Either way, I was glad I had agreed to babysit so she and Ben could have a date night. I had done it before so Elise could go to Pilates or grocery shopping, but that was for hardly more than an hour or so when I just had to make sure he stayed out of trouble.

Amazingly, he stayed asleep even after I adjusted the blanket and various stuffed animals in his crib. I stayed for a few minutes and watched the soft rising and falling of his breath and the drool escaping from his mouth before leaving for the west wing and my own sort-of-bedroom.

My laptop was still charging and my textbooks were sprawled on the bed from my earlier study session, but I couldn’t stand the idea of going back to studying just yet. I could hear the surround sound of creepy music barreling from downstairs.

Addie—

Hi sweetheart. Sorry it took such a long time to get back to you. I’m sure you heard about the blizzard that got here the other day. We had to shut down the office for a few hours because the ice took out power lines. (See pictures attached.) I even broke the damn snow blower trying to help the Remolds with their walkway. Did I tell you Helen broke her hip? I’m envying that California weather of yours. 

Robbie sent me some photos from the last station he was at. He couldn’t say where he was, but I still wished I was somewhere near that temperature. I’m looking into renting the house at Long Branch this summer for a few weeks. Robbie thinks he’ll get leave in August but isn’t sure yet. You and your girlfriends haven’t gone and made any plans, right? It’s bad enough you’re not coming home for spring break.

Think about it and get back to me. I don’t have to tell you those prime summer weeks go fast.

Don’t study too hard,

Dad

I sighed and braced myself. I had been avoiding this since I had gotten here, looking for the right moment and trying to find the right words, finally deciding not to do it over the phone but rather through e-mail. My conversations with Dad had been tight, almost rehearsed. I intentionally called him between classes so I had an excuse to say good-bye within a couple of minutes. I told him about school, the weather, and occasionally about things my ‘new friends’ and I did around ‘campus,’ but I never told him about the thing I loved the most and really it felt like a sort of blasphemy at this point.

Dad,

I did get those pictures Robbie sent. But let’s be real, they were really just beige blurs with flash glares. Haha. When he does get home I’m going teach him how to take a photograph.

The shore sounds like it could be a lot of fun. I was thinking about taking a class or two over the summer, but Melinda and another friend talked me out of it (insisting I don’t have any fun as it is). Actually the other friend I’m referring to is of the male persuasion. And don’t freak out when I tell you this or anything, Dad, but he and I have kind of been seeing each other for a few weeks now.

Sorry to hear about Mrs. Remold’s hip. Ouch! If you see her, please give her my best. It’s kind of a funny coincidence, in my anatomy of movement class we just finished the unit on hips and did a group lab where we got to dissect an artificial hip. It was really interesting, but the smell just about did me in. March is right around the corner, so think sunny thoughts!

Love,

Addie

I hoped that sandwiching the information between some other tid-bits might soften the blow a little. Though truthfully, Dad might not panic at all at the prospect of me dating. I would be eighteen in nine weeks, six days, four hours… (not that I was counting or anything) and had never shown any symptoms of love sickness until now. Maybe he would just be grateful that I had waited this long.

I checked the rest of my e-mail. Unsurprisingly, there was already another one from Harpsten, a reply from my earlier e-mail that morning. I laughed as I read the subject title:
Can’t HaNdEl the ClAsSiCal

Addie,

I don’t know if your parents made you listen to Beethoven in the womb or something, but the songs you sent me are. Not. Right. This is the stuff you listen to study? This stuff would be putting me to sleep in about ten minutes flat. Come to think of it, it did. Almost made for a nasty ride home, by the way. It’s unnatural for people under 100 years or older to listen to this kind of music. I know you’re in California and everything, but come on! I’ve attached some music that you clearly are in some serious need of. I expect to have a full report by the end of the week—

Adam

P.S. Your Dad says you’re not coming home for spring break. You know you can’t leave the country just yet, right?

I hadn’t expected Harpsten to e-mail so frequently, nor did I expect to enjoy the correspondence as much as I did. Though it might have been sneaky, I felt much better about knowing Dad’s coming and goings. In the flush of busy days before January 15th, Harpsten even kept me updated on just how many late nights Dad was keeping, and helped me nag him about keeping his health.

But there was something else to it as well. Now that he no longer asked about my kidnapping, I felt free to talk about whatever crossed my mind.