He holds his breath, desperate for Avery to accept this.
Avery frowns. ‘OK. It’s the rule.’
‘You know West is a jerk, right?’ Sammy’s voice is too high.
Avery frowns and pulls out of Sammy’s grasp and then he seems to take in, for the first time, Sammy’s swollen cheek and bloody, crusted nose. ‘You hit people. That’s worse than anything West does. It’s bad, Sammy. It’s so so bad.’
Sammy’s teeth clench. ‘I didn’t hit anyone. I promised I’d stop, didn’t I? They jumped me.’
Avery flicks his fingers by his ear. ‘I have to go.’
‘Avery, please …’
Let him go, Sammy. He doesn’t belong to just you.
‘Just please,’ Sammy whispers, ‘don’t let them hurt you.’
But Avery doesn’t hear because he’s already crossed the basketball court and vaulted over the broken-down fence to trot up to his new friends. His smile is puppy-dog wide. Innocent and anxiously excited. West drapes an arm over his shoulder. Laughs at him.
Or with him?
These kids are older and they’ll push him into things he’s not ready for.
Sammy looks down at the toy car in his hand. A tear hits it, hot and wet.
He’s crying?
He’s stupid to be crying.
When he looks up again, the group has gone and he’s alone in a near empty school – just overgrown grass and a forgotten basketball and crinkling food wrappers.
Alone.
His knuckles tighten around the toy and then he gives a tiny, melted cry and throws it. Hard. Fast. Gone.
He drops back against the wall of the school, head curling against his legs as the universe spirals out from under his fingertips.
Their routine becomes pleasantly seamless after a week.
Sam lurks in the office until the house clears out and then he emerges and tucks himself into Moxie’s day. This generally involves tricking the little boys into eating breakfast and wrestling them into clothes while Moxie snatches a few minutes at her sewing machine. Then the babies promptly ditch their clothes in favour of the wading pool. Sam and Moxie oversee while eating salted caramel popcorn and lying on their backs under a frangipani tree.
They talk.
Sam turns out his pockets and discovers there are words in the bottom. They come out faster the more he’s around Moxie. And she doesn’t glare when he stammers or roll her eyes at his opinions.
Wow, he actually has opinions.
‘I’m actually not descending into madness with you around,’ she says later, scrolling through her phone and eating popcorn. ‘Or thinking too much about my mum.’
He checks her eyes quickly, waiting for the sad cloud and the stiffness that always follows mentioning her mother. But today her smile is sad and small and then she just shrugs.
‘Maybe I’m a tiny bit glad you sneaked into my house.’
‘Has your dad noticed that, um …’
‘That you never leave? He commented that you’re always around, but,’ she flips a kernel into her mouth, ‘he still thinks you go home at night.’
‘Are you going to tell him?’
‘Obviously. Soon. Someday.’ Moxie twirls her phone to show him a photo of a model with wind-scrubbed hair and a wild rainbow shirt. ‘See this? This could be you.’
Sam looks up, alarmed.
‘If you modelled for me, which would do wonders for my portfolio. You’d need to cut your hair though. I’ll bribe you with chocolate truffle cupcakes.’
‘But if you bake them, isn’t that more of a threat?’
‘Careful, sir,’ she says. ‘There is a time-out corner and I will use it on you.’
Sam self-consciously tucks his hair behind his ears. ‘I don’t have money for a haircut.’
‘Right.’ Moxie chews her lip. ‘But do you actually like it long? Because you could just get it tidied. You look like a haystack.’
‘It gets in my eyes,’ Sam says. ‘But I can’t—’
Moxie sits up suddenly, screwing up the picnic blanket they’re sprawled over. The baby and Toby are licking watermelon ice blocks and slapping them on Sam’s arms intermittently. He’s a sticky mess.
‘I’ll cut it.’ There’s a dangerous spark in her eyes.
Sam is decidedly nervous.
‘I’m good with scissors.’ Moxie makes a snipping motion with her fingers. ‘How hard can it be?’
They decide to do the responsible thing and watch YouTube clips first. Moxie fetches her sewing scissors and Sam sits on the bottom veranda step.
‘Take your shirt off,’ she says, ‘so I don’t get hair on it.’
His heart should not speed up as much as it does right then.
He shrugs out of it obediently and balls it into a knot. He decides to not look at Moxie’s face at all considering he still has remnants of road rash and smudged yellow bruises. No girl’s heart is going to stammer at seeing him half undressed, that’s for sure. And he doesn’t want to see disgust in her eyes.
His shoulders hunch over slightly and she sits behind him on the steps.
She ruffles fingers through his hair. ‘It should be just like cutting out a dress.’
‘Please don’t cut out a dress in my hair.’
‘Ye of little faith.’
Grady’s jeep clunks into the driveway at that moment and three sawdust-covered boys tumble out. They’re arguing loudly about how much caffeinated energy drink you could consume before giving yourself a stroke and they don’t notice Sam and Moxie until the little boys run to the fence and shriek for attention.
‘Hey, babies.’ Jeremy swoops in, folding himself in half over the gate to kiss their watermelon-sticky noses. ‘And what cities have you felled today? How have they—’ He looks up and then nearly falls face first over the gate.
Jack is there in an instant, a devilish grin spreading over his face. ‘Whaaaaat did we interrupt here?’
Moxie snaps her scissors at them. ‘Haircutting. You’re next, Jack. I might take off a few ears while I’m at it.’
Jack’s grin fades. ‘Over my dead body, pipsqueak.’
‘That can also be arranged.’
Grady stomps over and surveys everyone with a tired sense of indifference behind his glasses. He sneezes once, mumbles, ‘Hay fever,’ and then shoves through the gate and into the house.