While We Waited

I see Fin mouth I know, right?

“Can you take her home?” Jason asks me.

“Of course,” I rush to say. He looks fearful, so I try to reassure him. “We’re only a few blocks from home.”

“Don’t let anything happen to her.”

“I promise.” I try to assure him, but he’s still worried, I can tell. I think he truly cares about her.

“Can I go with you?” she asks him. “Please?” She’s talking to Jason, not to me.

“Go home, Finny. I can’t protect you tonight.”

“I’ll call you later, sweetie,” Norma says. “I promise.”

“You swear it?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Jason says.

“Well, don’t die,” Fin says. “I’d feel terrible. It would take me minutes to find Norma a better man.”

Norma laughs and gets in the car. I watch as their taillights fade into the distance.

“Thanks for helping,” she says quietly.

My breath makes little puffs in the cold night air. “You’re welcome.”

“So, what were you doing there?”

“Oh, shit.” I thump the palm of my hand against my forehead. “I came to get you. They’ve been calling you for hours but you weren’t answering.”

She pulls her phone out of her pocket and scrolls through the texts.

“I totally forgot we go on tour tomorrow,” she says on a groan.

I nod. I didn’t forget. Wren says it’s going to be a short tour, but we’ll all be gone.

She starts walking quickly toward her apartment, her heels clicking on the concrete. She jams her hands into her pockets and I follow her.

“Finny,” I say, after we get in the elevator at her apartment building.

“What?” She looks everywhere but at me.

“I thought we were going to go visit your mom this morning, but when I woke up you were gone. Did you change your mind?”

She shakes her head. “No. I went.”

“By yourself?”

She nods.

“You were supposed to take me with you,” I remind her.

She takes in a deep breath and lets it out. “She’s fucking crazy, Tag. Totally mental. Like, locked-up-so-she-can’t-kill-anybody mental. I don’t like to take people to see that.”

She’s acting like this is new information for me. I already met her mom. I know what she’s dealing with. “Was she okay today?”

She shakes her head. “No. She was herself.” Her voice is quiet and I can barely hear her. She lays her head back against the wall of the elevator and closes her eyes.

Suddenly she opens them and looks at my bare chest. “Tag, can I tell you something?”

I cross my arms, because she’s appraising my chest like she wants to have me for dinner. “I guess.”

“You’re fucking hot,” she says. She licks her full lips, and I find myself going hard again.

Then the elevator dings, the doors open, and she steps out. I take a second and try to collect my wits, because they’re scattered like a pocketful of dimes strewn around the floor. She reaches back and holds the door open.

“Bring your fine self inside,” she says. She grins at me.

I wonder what she’s like when she’s not hiding her pain behind her sexuality. I suppose I won’t have a chance to find out.

Finny

When I don’t know what to do or how to comport myself, I flirt. It’s how I’ve always gotten by. And watching Tag’s face turn red, it’s totally working. He’s thinking more about kissing me than he is about my crazy mother.

I step into the living room and stop short. All four of my sisters are here.

Peck’s sitting with her baby on her knee, and her husband Sam is next to her on the sofa.

My sister Star is sitting in her new husband’s lap.

Wren and Lark are sharing an armchair, and Emilio and Marta are standing by the kitchen counter. “Where the hell have you been?” Emilio demands.

I look around at them all. “Dancing,” I say slowly. “Why? What’s up?” I go and get a bottle of water from the fridge.

“Why didn’t you answer our calls, mija?” Marta asks.

I shrug. “I couldn’t hear the phone over the music.”

Suddenly, Emilio notices that Tag isn’t wearing a shirt. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” I say. I sit down on the arm of the couch. Tag goes and gets a shirt, and he’s still pulling it over his head as he walks back into the room. As his most magnificent six-pack disappears, I see a streak of red, raw, angry skin disappear beneath the fabric. Was he hurt? I’ll find out when the interrogation is over. “Where’s the rugrat?”

Wren jerks her thumb toward Tag’s room. “He’s asleep.”

Benji sleeps in tiny sprints, I’ve learned.

“His name is Benji,” Tag reminds me.

“Benjamin Taggert the Third,” my sisters all say in unison. Then they laugh when Tag scowls at them.

“Why are you wearing his shirt?” Emilio asks me again. He’s not going to take no for an answer.

“Hers got torn off by an overzealous fan,” Tag blurts out.

I mouth the word traitor at Tag. “It was nothing–”

“Jason is on the way to the hospital,” Tag goes on to say. If he was two steps closer to me, I’d kick Tag in the nuts. “He was hurt. His wife picked him up.”