“Good evening, Flint.”
“You can call me Mr. Hopkins.” I push the button to the elevator.
“Mmm, my landlord likes to role play. Me too.”
I stiffen—everywhere—turning my gaze back over my shoulder. Ellen peeks her head around the corner and winks.
I resist the urge to tug at my tie and scratch my neck. She’s flirting with me. Messing with me. Fucking with my head.
*
Harrison pops in his earbuds the moment I get in the car and ignores me the whole way home. We walk in the back door, and I flip one of the earbuds out of his ear.
“What?” He frowns, pausing whatever is playing from his phone.
I set my briefcase on the counter and grab an iced coffee from the fridge. “Why do you let her call you Harry?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ve called you Harry over the years and you’ve had a conniption fit. Teachers and kids in school call you Harry and you lose it over a name that is in fact your nickname. But some stranger loans you a guitar and plays a few tunes with you and you submit to a name you’ve disliked for years? Help me understand this.”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re too smart to let ‘I don’t know’ be your default for everything you’re asked.”
He shrugs, shaking his head to brush the hair from his eyes. “When she says it, it sounds cool. Not like when everyone else says it.”
“Harry.”
“Nice try. You don’t say it right.”
I chuckle. “It’s not how she says it. She’s an attractive woman and that’s why you’re okay with her calling you Harry.”
“You’re such an idiot.” He rolls his eyes. “Don’t say attractive.”
I twist the cap back onto the glass bottle of coffee. “And what do young, totally cool kids like yourself say?”
Another eye roll. My son is a bobble-head with googly eyes.
“Hot. She’s hot, Dad. Not that you would notice.” He slips his earbuds back into his ears.
I yank them back out, and he grumbles.
“Why wouldn’t I notice a hot woman?”
“Because you don’t have sex with them.”
Just when I think he can’t say anything that can surprise me … he surprises me. “You think the only way to acknowledge a ‘hot’ woman is to have sex with her? I fear you haven’t listened to the conversations we’ve had about sex.”
“Simon’s dad has women over for sex. It’s the only time he lets Simon watch TV for more than two hours at a time.”
“More than two hours, huh?” Simon’s dad is a lucky fucker.
“Gina is Simon’s favorite. After he hears her upstairs thanking baby Jesus over and over, she comes down to the kitchen and bakes several dozen chocolate chip cookies. Last time I was there, she promised to make them dairy and gluten-free in the future so I can have some too.”
Twelve is the new twenty. I didn’t have these conversations with my parents when I was twelve. We discussed football and whose turn it was to mow the lawn. I think there may have been a few conversations about drugs and getting in cars with strangers, but that was it.
“I think you should take a break from hanging out at Simon’s house.”
“Whatever,” says the kid who doesn’t have any true close friends.
Then again, according to him, I only have one friend, and he’s moving halfway across the country.
“Get me your lunch bag to clean out then go do your homework while I make dinner.”
He mumbles something under his breath. I’m sure it has to do with how we never go out to eat. As I unzip his lunch bag, a rodent runs across the counter.
“What the hell?” I grab a pan from the hanging rack above the island and cock my arm back to kill it.
“Stop!” Harrison dives for the rat.
There’s a rat in my house. How the hell did it get in here? “Don’t touch—” Before I can stop him, Harrison picks it up. I cringe, still fisting the handle to the pan.
“Drop it before it bites you!” I warn.
He hugs it to his chest, stroking its head. “What the heck? You almost killed Mozart.”
“Mozart?” I toss the pan on the counter with a clang. “Explain. Now!”
Harrison scowls at me for the loud noise.
“Where the hell did you get that thing?”
“Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a Dumbo rat not a thing. See his ears are bigger and round? Like Dumbo. I really like his gray head and white body. Elle says he’s very kind and has a great personality.”
I’ve had saintly patience with him. I love him. I listen to all of his in-depth descriptions of his latest obsessions. Thanks to him, I’m an expert in areas I never wanted to gain any sort of expertise. But this is not happening. I said no to a fish. There’s no fucking way I’m letting him have a rat.
I rescind my earlier statement to Ellen; she is the bane of my existence.
“You can have a meltdown right here and now, but the answer is no. You are not keeping it.”
“Him.” There’s the eye roll. “And I never said I was keeping him. Elle had him with her today and said maybe sometime I could bring him home for a night.”
“Maybe? Sometime?” With my hands on my hips, I lean forward until we’re at eye level. “Did she say you could bring him home tonight?”
He shrugs, petting the squirmy little critter.
“It’s a simple question.”
“I don’t know. She said maybe sometime I could bring him home for the night, and I said I’d like that, so I put him in my guitar case and then you showed up. I played with him in the car while waiting on you, then I put him in my backpack when you came outside.”
“Does she know you have him?”
Another shrug.
I yank my tie several times to loosen it. My fingers jerk open the top button of my shirt. I’m not in the mood for this shit tonight. “Put it in a bag. I’ll return it to Ms. Rodgers while you do your homework.”
“It will die in a plastic bag.”
I retrieve a paper grocery sack from the pantry and hold it open. Harrison stares at it a few seconds before meeting my impatient expression. He eases it into the sack, and I roll the top down.
“What if there’s not enough air? I kept the zipper to my backpack cracked a bit.”
With a fork from his lunch bag, I stab the top of the sack several times.
“Jeez! You could kill it.”
“I’m not having that kind of luck today, Harrison. Now … don’t answer the door. Stay in your room, and get your homework done. I’ll be back in a bit.”
After we have our customary stare off, he pivots and drags his feet to his room.
I contemplate shaking the sack until the spastic scratching at the bottom ceases, but I’m not a total monster—at least not anymore.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ellen
Stay calm. He’s here somewhere. It doesn’t matter that I’ve spent the past hour searching the building for Mozart. It doesn’t matter that there are a gazillion places he could have squeezed his tiny body into. Don’t think about mouse traps or poison. He will show up.