Beyond Repair (4 page)

I looked around. A few boxes were in the corner, but the place looked lived in and comfortable. Brown leather furniture, architectural photos, and a giant TV on the wall. You’d never know Zoey, Kyle, and the kids had lived here less than a week ago.

“Different, huh?” Chris’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

“It is,” I admitted. “Seeing it without the painting of the pink flowers and all of the kid’s toys feels strange.”

He shook his head, frowning. “I asked her to leave the painting, but she said no.”

I laughed. “That thing is so ugly. She painted it in high school and knew I hated it. We shared a room, and she insisted on hanging it up until she left for college.”

“You guys shared a room when you were kids and then lived next door to each other? Wow. Kyle told me you guys were close. That explains it.”

“Well, we had some time apart when we were in college, and then I lived in New York for a while.” I immediately stopped talking. My time in New York harbored a shitload of bad memories. I could have kicked myself for bringing it up.

He looked up from the stove. “New York? What made you go there?”

I pulled my hand sanitizer out of my pocket and squeezed a small amount on my hands. “It was my first job offer after college. But I missed my family, so I moved back here.” Looking up, I noticed Chris eyeing the bottle. Great.

I made a lame attempt to change the subject.
“Can I set the table? Where are your plates?”

He pointed at a cabinet, and as I put them on the table, I allowed myself a split-second glimpse of a life I’d never have. Kids playing on the floor, one person cooking, the other setting the table.

Chris gestured toward the refrigerator. “Do you mind getting the drinks? There’s water, soda, and beer. And juice boxes, if you’re into that.”

“Sometimes, but tonight I think I’ll save those for the kids,” I said as I took a bottle of water, automatically looking at the cap to see if it was unopened. I turned to him. “Thanks. What do you want?”

“I’ll have a beer. Please.”

After eating, we turned on the movie for the kids while Chris and I cleaned up. I was grateful that the conversation remained focused on easy topics. Work. Improvements he wanted to make to his condo. Improvements I wanted to make to mine. As we talked, the nerves slipped away a bit.

“Mia really wants to plant a garden, but I am so bad with plants and flowers. I swear, the second I buy them, they die.”

Chris shut the dishwasher and turned toward me. “I worked for a landscaping company in college. Trust me; there are plenty of easy ones that will keep her happy. If you ever decide to do it, then let me know. I’ll give you some names.”

“Sure,” I said, knowing it would never happen. I’d killed a cactus before. If you couldn’t keep those alive then you had a real problem. “So, you and Kyle were friends when you were kids?”

“Yeah, he’s a year older than me, so we weren’t in any of the same classes, but we were both on the basketball team.”

I couldn’t hide my surprise. “Kyle played basketball? I never even saw him make a basket in the two years that hoop has been outside.”

Chris raised his eyebrows, but then shook his head. “He made the winning basket once, but it was for the other team.”

I held onto the counter, laughing. Kyle was skilled at karate and had great reflexes, but it was always fun to hear about when someone you loved made an ass of themself.

His mouth twitched as he watched me, and then he finally started laughing. “Don’t tell him I told you.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t just tell me that and then expect me to not make fun of him.”

“I don’t want him to tell you any stupid stories about me.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you really care what your friend’s sister-in-law thinks. Besides, I bet you didn’t do anything as bad as that.”

He looked up for a moment. “Nah, the best he can probably come up with is when I split my chin open. Go ahead, make fun of him.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I will.”

He smiled and leaned against the counter. “I’m having a good time. Thanks for coming tonight.”

I stared at his uneven smile and let my gaze travel down to the scar on his chin. I never really thought anything of scars before, but his was kind of cute.

“I’m glad you asked.” My voice came out squeaky, and I fought the urge to use my hand sanitizer. He’d already noticed me with it earlier.

“Me, too.” He rubbed the top of his head. “We should go check on the kids and watch
Toy Story
.”

But as we approached the couch, both the kids were passed out.

I checked the time; it was already nine o’clock. Chris shrugged. “I guess we were talking longer than I realized.”

I nodded. “I should probably get her home.”

“Okay. What are you guys doing tomorrow?”

“The usual, just hanging out. We’ll probably be outside in the morning.” Pausing, I tried to think of a smooth way to ask him to come over. “Um, feel free to stop by. If you want to. That would be cool.” I wanted to take back the words the instant they left my mouth.
That would be cool?
What was I, twelve?

“We can do that. We’ll look for you guys.” He seemed slightly amused, probably because I just stumbled over asking something as simple as getting two kids together to play.

Not trusting myself to say anything else, I nodded before I leaned down and scooped Mia up, who stayed asleep the whole time. Chris hovered behind me. “Do you need help?”

I laughed. “Nope. I’ve done this a million times.”

Chris gave me a serious nod. “I’ve only done it two times, so I guess you win.”

He walked toward the door, and as I followed him, my hair fell in my face, covering my eye. I attempted to shake it out of the way discreetly, hoping I didn’t resemble Cousin It too badly. Chris held the door open and looked down at me. “Good night, Brooke.” He reached out and pushed my hair out of my face, barely grazing my skin with his fingers. His hand lingered for a split second then he dropped it. “There. Now you can see.”

Usually, I hated it when people touched me, but this didn’t feel dirty or threatening, just … nice. My face tingled from where his hand had made contact, and my heart was beating so loud I heard the thump in my ears. And I
liked
it. Our eyes locked and my mind couldn’t focus on anything but him. In that instant, the blue of Chris’s eyes became my new favorite color.

I blinked several times, realizing it was my turn to talk. “Thanks. And, um, thanks for having us over. Good night.” I turned away and walked out the door.

* * *

“When is Ryder coming?” Mia hopped up and down on one foot, her voice getting dangerously close to whining.

Tired of answering her, I sighed. “Mia, I don’t know. He may be doing something else today.” She woke up asking for Ryder and begged to go outside all morning. We hadn’t even been outside for ten minutes, and this was her fourth time asking me. “Chris said they might come over, but didn’t say when—”

“Mia!”

A little boy’s voice yelled from across the yard, and I looked up to see Ryder sprinting over to us. I smiled at him but could not fully divert my attention from Chris. He walked behind Ryder, hands in his pockets, sleeves too short again …
damn
. I was tempted to start fanning myself with my hand when he grinned.

“Morning, Brooke.”

“Good morning.” I smiled politely, but then turned my attention to the kids. If we were going to be spending time together today, then I was determined not to get too comfortable. I didn’t want the warm and fuzzy feelings from last night again.

Mia and Ryder chased each other around the yard, yelling and laughing.
Yes, watch the kids. Don’t drool over those arms, the blue eyes, the scar across his chin …

“So, I have to be honest. I think my nephew has a thing for your daughter. He saved all of the berries from his Captain Crunch this morning for her.”

I burst out laughing as I looked at him, my earlier thought going out the window.

“Don’t laugh, Brooke. If that isn’t love, then I don’t know what is. He ate two bowls of the reject cereal just to get her a good amount.” He kept his tone serious. “He also wants to take her to Pizza Castle.”

“They just met last night and already he wants to take her to the classiest kid-themed restaurant in the city? You’re right; this must be serious.”

Chris shrugged. “Sometimes when you meet someone, you just know you want to eat mediocre pizza with them and jump into a ball pit.” He looked at me for a second, but then he looked down at his shoes. “So, do you want to? I, uh, figured I should ask you this time and not Mia.”

I watched Mia stop running and spin around at Ryder, both of them laughing and then Ryder taking off in the other direction. I didn’t want Mia to be like me. She needed to be cautious, as all women do, but I didn’t want her to ever be friendless and have stupid phobias. I couldn’t raise her to have the problems I have. Chris wasn’t a psychopath; he was an uncle wanting to do something fun with his nephew. “We would love to.”

Chapter Four

P
IZZA CASTLE WAS A FOUR-YEAR-OLD’S
dream. I guess it was also a dream for some parents because along with bounce houses, a ball pit, bowling, and huge climbing structures, it also had video games. And not just the new video games that kids loved; they also had old-school games for the adults (with the added bonus of giving out tickets when you won).

Personally, though, the place made me nervous. The act of letting kids scarf down pizza before jumping in a bounce house just begged for a vomit situation. But since Mia had been to Pizza Castle several times for birthday parties and with Zoey’s kids, I pushed the vomit fear to the back of my mind as we walked in. Mia immediately pulled Ryder into a climbing maze with slides and tunnels.

“Make sure you can see Chris or me the whole time!” I called as they ran off.

Chris tilted his head as he looked at the maze. “That thing is crazy. I kind of want to go in.”

“You’ve been here before and you never been in the climbing maze?”

“No. Ryder had his birthday here, but I only did the bounce house.”

I tried to keep my face straight as I imagined Chris in the climbing maze, those barely covered arms climbing and crawling. Heat traveled through my body, and I shifted my weight from one foot to another. After taking a large sip of the water I got from the vending machine on the way in, I casually said, “You should do it. Adults go in all the time.”

“I should. It’s fun, right?” He looked at me with the uneven smile, and I took another swig of water.

I had been in the maze before. Many times, when Mia was younger and needed help navigating. I would use several words to describe it, such as claustrophobic, irritating, and noisy. Fun was not on the list, but who was I to stop him? “It’s an experience.”

“Yeah, you’re right. How many times in your life do you get to go into a giant maze thing?” With that reasoning, he crawled in.

Poor Chris. He really had no idea what he was getting himself into and kids surrounded him in an instant. Someone must have asked his name because soon five different voices started calling, “Chris! Watch me! Can you help me? Look at me, Chris! Can you lift me?”

I had to hand it to him, though; he handled it a lot better than I would. He patiently watched each kid who wanted to show him how they jumped or went down the slide, and he told them what a great job they did. He lifted children who requested help onto different platforms. He smiled and talked to everyone. My heart swelled as Mia ran over to him and pulled his hand to race her down the slide, and he let her win.

A few minutes later, he emerged with Mia and Ryder. “I think we should play some video games now.” He nodded toward Mia. “They could probably use a rest.”

Mia was grinning, but she was panting and sweaty, her cheeks flushed pink. She looked up at him, and he took a couple of deep breaths. “Right, Mia? We did a lot of climbing and jumping in there.”

“It was a lot of work racing on the slide,” she said to him. “I won, so that was even more work.”

Chris nodded with a serious expression on his face. “You went down the slide so fast, I could only see a big blur.”

My heart did a little flip, which pissed me off. For the most part, I could bury my feelings about everything, and yet here I was, acting like a frigging sixteen-year-old. The whole purpose of spending time together was for Mia to play with Ryder. No matter how cute Chris was talking with Mia or how that smile made me all warm and tingly, liking him wasn’t an option. Besides, neither one of us dated.

“Great job, sweetie. Let’s go play games.” I pushed Mia’s sweaty hair off her face and the kids led the way to the video game area, finally sitting in a driving game. After feeding some quarters into the machine, I turned to Chris. His attention was on a little boy who looked to be about a year and a half, enthusiastically pressing buttons on a game in demo mode. He shook his head and turned back to me.

Our eyes met, and he flashed a perfect smile, really even and smaller than the crooked one I had gotten used to seeing. The sad look in his eyes proved he was faking. And for some reason, I wanted to know why. But like hell I was going to ask him.

I had to say something, though, because the silence between us felt way too awkward. “You’re really good with kids.”

He rubbed the top of his head. “I like hanging out with Ryder.” The real smile came back. “Mia, too.”

“She’s never going to let you live it down that she beat you in that race.”

He gestured toward them. “Look at how well their date is going; we’ll be back here again. I’ll just challenge her to a rematch.”

More time together. I shouldn’t have liked the thought as much as I did.

We played games for close to an hour, winning a pile of tickets mostly thanks to Chris, me, and the classic Nintendo games.

“You’re
good
at this.” He looked impressed when I beat him at Donkey Kong.

“I’m even better at Duck Hunt,” I called over my shoulder as Mia and Ryder walked over to the game.

Unfortunately, though, he beat me. “Well, it’s nice to have a challenge. Zoey sucks at …” I paused when I noticed Mia staring at me with her mouth open. “Grown-up word. You don’t say that.”