I didn’t scramble to my feet and try to rush past him. I didn’t move at all.
“Hey,” he said with slightly narrowed eyes. He’d stopped with one foot on the top step, the other still down behind him.
I didn’t reply.
“Forget your keys?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” I turned back to the wall in front of me, staring at the ugly paint.
He finally fully ascended the stairs and walked toward a door one down and across from Adam’s. He kept glancing at me as he shifted his helmet up under his arm and dug keys from his pocket. “You call somebody?”
“Nobody with keys is coming here.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“I’m sitting.”
He shook his head before he unlocked his door and let himself in. He was back a second later, sans bag and helmet. This time he walked right up to me. “Hey, so I’m thinking I need to call somebody to come get you. Whose apartment is this anyway? Ex-boyfriend?”
I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply through my nose. “Sorry, guy, but I don’t know you, so I’m not going to talk to you right now.” I pulled out my phone and my shiny new car key and held them up for him to see. “I’m not stranded or anything, so feel free to go inside your apartment.”
“It sounds like you know me.”
“What?”
“My name,” he said. “It’s Guy. You just called me guy, and we met once before right in this hallway, so...”
I stared at him with my snottiest teenager face, but he didn’t back away.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“What’s your name?”
I didn’t answer, but I saw his eyes flick to the number on the door above me and then back with a different question in his eyes. And I knew. “You’ve met Shelly.”
His silence was answer enough.
I let my head tilt backward until it was resting against the door. “Great,” I said. “Then you probably know that my mom’s a bitch, I’m an ungrateful brat, and my dad is the long-suffering saint who tirelessly puts up with us. Did she read you the full transcripts from the divorce hearing, or is she saving that for when she knows you better, so, like, the second time she sees you?”
“Whoa,” he said, holding up a hand. “I haven’t been here much since I moved in. I’ve spoken to... What was her name? Shelly? I’ve talked to her maybe a couple times passing in the halls, but I don’t know anything about anything.”
It was impossible to tell if he was lying or not, but it was just another thing that didn’t matter. “Whatever. Look, I don’t really care what you think of me.” He still didn’t move. He was just standing there a few feet from me. “Are you going to leave or what?”
“Are you?”
“No. I’m fine. I like being exactly where I am. When I want to leave, I’ll get into my car and go.”
“And when is that going be?”
I scowled at him. “What, are you planning a party out here? Go back into your apartment and quit hulking over me.”
“Sorry,” he said. “But you’re depressing the hell out of me sitting here. Why don’t you come inside with me until you feel like going somewhere that isn’t the hallway?”
“Pass,” I said. “You’re starting to sound super creepy, Guy. In fact, I’m pretty sure Shelly referred to you as the creepy guy from down the hall. And anyway, what are you, thirty-five? Today is my sixteenth birthday. I’m so illegal it’s not funny.”
He laughed like I hadn’t just insinuated that he was a pedo. “For the record, I’m twenty-eight. But good to know I look midthirties.”
I didn’t apologize.
After a good thirty seconds of silence, he left. He walked into his apartment without closing the door, and a second later he was back, leaning against the frame with a carton of ice cream in one hand and a spoon in the other. I watched him eat several bites, and he watched me watch him.
“Want some?”
I made a face and went back to watching my wall. Though I did want some. I hadn’t eaten all day, and the sight of food, even ice cream when I was chilled through from sitting on thin carpet for hours, looked really good. “Are you seriously doing this right now?”
“It’s really good ice cream. It’s got candy bars chopped up in it.”
“Why do you care?”
He didn’t answer, just continued eating. And it suddenly seemed like the best offer I’d had all day, so I stood up, leaving the door to Dad’s empty apartment behind me, and literally took candy from a stranger.
* * *
I came to a dead halt the second I stepped into his apartment. My eyes went so wide that I’d swear my eyelashes passed my eyebrows. Like a magnet, I flew to the nearest shelf in front of me and started dragging my hands down row after row of movies. Every wall in the apartment was lined with them. Thousands.
I let out a laugh.
“Yeah, occupational hazard,” Guy said, coming up behind me. “I’m a film critic and—”
I tore my eyes from the shelves and spun to find him right behind me. “You’re the film critic?”
“I’m a film critic. The film critic? That’s got to be Roger Ebert.”
“No, I mean...” My eyes widened impossibly farther. “I’ve been waiting to meet you. I heard that a film critic moved in and... I love movies.”
“Yeah?” Guy said, his lips curving up. “Guess it’s a good thing we found each other.”
ADAM
My arm went numb all the way down to my fingertips before pain crashed back up, all courtesy of the dead-arm Jeremy just gave me. The worst part was that I couldn’t hit him back. It was all part of the moronic agreement we’d reached to help reunite our family.
The first thing I had to do was stop being a jerk to Dad. Anytime I started, or Jeremy perceived that I was starting, he got a free shot.
Jeremy grinned at me and readied his fist for the next hit.
I just stood there. Outside Dad’s apartment. When I didn’t have to be there. It wasn’t a holiday or special occasion. It was a Wednesday. It was nothing. Which was why Jeremy said we should visit him. We.
Mom had looked like we’d asked to shove her into a small, dark box filled with spiders suspended from the top of a skyscraper. There it was, all her fears rolled into one: her sons wanted to leave her. She managed to smile and cry at the same time. She wanted us to go, but clung to our shirts a little too strenuously to really sell it.