If I stayed still much longer, I’d think myself right into a panic attack, and I was not trying to add that to my list of fun experiences for the day. I’d had plenty, thank you very much.
Pops wasn’t home from lunch with his buddies yet, and when he came into the house about forty minutes later, it looked like the kitchen cabinets had puked all their contents onto the counters.
I was standing on a stepladder, furiously wiping down the top shelf, but his gaze bored into my back.
“Bug . . .”
“Hey, Pops.” I couldn’t look at him. If I looked at him, he’d know. Was I bottling feelings? Hell yes. I’d bottle the shit out of them for the foreseeable future. “How was lunch?”
“Fine.”
Silence stretched between us, the only sound in the room thesqueak, squeak, squeakof my scrubbing.
“What in God’s name is happening here?”
“I’m just doing a little reorganizing. The shelves needed to be wiped down, and half of the stuff in here is expired.” I kept my face forward, heart hammering in my ears. “It could make you sick, right? Making cookies with expired baking soda or something.”
“Is that why they taste like that?” he muttered.
I turned around unthinkingly. “What?”
Once he’d gotten a good look at my face, his eyes sharpened. “Were you crying?”
I whipped around again. “No.”
“Don’t you lie to me, Remi.”
Was it too much to ask for one of those faces that hid all the things? I couldn’t lie for shit, and sometimes you just wanted the ability to deceive the people around you when your heart had been broken.
I set my arm on the shelf in front of me and laid my forehead on my arm. “I had a bad morning, and I don’t know if I can talk about it yet, because apparently now we take space from big feelings in this house and I give terrible advice to everyone. I panicked and emptied all the cabinets because I felt like I needed to do something, otherwise I’d fall apart, and I really don’t want to fall apart right now.”
“Okaaay,” he replied, drawing out the word. “Should I expect Gavin to be stress-cleaning too?”
Reluctantly, I smiled. “No, he’s playing Nintendo.”
“Something happen at the shelter?”
I gave him a pleading look over my shoulder. “Pops ...”
He held a hand up. “Why don’t you come down from there? If I keep staring up at you, I’m gonna get dizzy and fall and break a hip, and then where would we be?”
“Hopefully, in a place where you don’t blackmail me with fictional scenarios.” I took his hand and stepped down.
He patted it but didn’t let go. “Come on. Come sit down.”
“I’m not talking about it.”
“All right. We can just sit and stare at each other, it’ll be fun.”
The man all but dragged me to the couch and sat me down in my favorite corner, then walked back into the kitchen and got a perfectly cold Diet Coke from the fridge, handing it to me with a knowing look in his eyes.
“This is emotional warfare,” I muttered, but cracked open the can all the same. The first sip was always the best, and the burn down my throat grounded me amid the knotted mess of my thoughts. As I swallowed, I pressed the cold can to my temples, closing my eyes at how good it felt.
I probably had bags the size of a lemon under my eyes.
“Did you have to put a dog down?”
I shook my head.