Page 12 of Give & Take

I rub the grit from my eyes, lifting my head from my pillow to see Nate, Shelby’s 15-year-old stepson, working his game controller like he’s wrestling a rabid squirrel. Nope, just the wet sound of an alien splatter-gun exploding a dozen feet from my head.

“Hey,” I say groggily. I’d been dreaming of her.

“Hey,” he replies, not looking at me.Splat splat splat.“Sorry, you were sleeping for like a super long time. I tried to wait but?—”

“It’s fine,” I say, sitting up. The sheet falls off my torso, pooling around my hips. I do a quick check to see if I remembered to put on pajama pants last night. I was out at the Rusty Dinghy with Mac’s friend Cal. That guy likes to talk almost as much as me. We did a whole ‘Did we just become best friends?’ bit which was not annoying at all to Mac I’m sure. I didn’t overdo it, but I did crawl into this bed—nay, couch I definitely do not fiton—in the middle of the living room long past Cinderella’s bedtime.

On screen, a princess warrior glares at an alien. Lasers come out of her eyes, and a moment later the green creature is sliced in half.

Reminds me a little of Lana. I can’t help grinning. “Don’t let anything happen to that princess today, okay?”

Nate gives me a strange look. “Okayyy.” He goes back to his game.

I get up and stretch, thinking about what Deanie told me yesterday. I’d only caught the tail end of their conversation on the beach, but apparently my sister put my name up for a nanny job for the summer.

I’d laughed and told her Lana would probably rather hire a sentient pool noodle than me. Besides, I’m not looking for a job this summer. I’m focusing on my dissertation. It hasn’t been going well trying to peck at it here and there. That’s why I decided to spend the summer holed up at my sister’s in Vancouver. I figured I’d have every day to devote to it while she’s at work.

But damn, it would be fun to spend the whole summer up here with Lana and those kids. The kids are amazing—the little one is adorable and the oldest sassy as hell—and I’ve never met a woman like Lana before. She’s so…expressive. So easy to rile up.

Fascinating, and yes, sexy in this haughty, get-the-hell-out-of-my face way. She’s older than me, sure. But that’s what makes her so appealing. She doesn’t suffer fools. She doesn’t take shit.

She’d tell me exactly what she wanted and I’d eat it fucking up.

I drop down to the floor and do my morning pushups, and goddammit if I don’t picture her face. I do some claps to keep myself from descending into a total fucking perv, then switch to crunches.

It’s only when I’m done and shouldering off the light sheen of sweat on my skin that I notice there’s no one else around besides me and Nate, not even out on the sunny back deck where I usually find Shelby and Deanie in the mornings.

“Where is everyone?” I ask Nate as I begin assembling the stovetop espresso maker. They’ve got a coffee pot, but when I mentioned I like the old-school ritual of making coffee this way, Mac dug this out of the cupboard for me.

“I think they said something about some market in Swan River with Aunty Annie,” Nate says, amidpew-pew!noises.

That’s the bigger town further south where the ferry lands from Vancouver. And Annie, I remember, is Mac’s younger sister. Cal mentioned her more than once last night.

“I totally thought you’d wake up when we were all having waffles,” Nate says as I set the espresso-maker on the stove. He’s breaking to drink something from a can. “Your sister kept talking all loud but Dad said you looked like you needed sleep.”

I grimace. “Sounds about right.” I could have had Deanie’s place all to myself back in Vancouver this weekend, but when she told me she was visiting her bestie up here in Redbeard Cove, I said I wanted to come along.

“No,” she’d said.

“But you keep talking about Redbeard Cove like it’s Shangri-La!”

“I have never once used the wordsShangri-La. What evenisShangri-La?”

I then had to recite the poemKubla Khanto her, which led to me playingXanaduby Abba on her kitchen speakers while she was trying to cook dinner. Once I broke out the wooden spoon microphone, she’d groaned and said, “Fine! You can come! Just turn this off!”

I happen to like Abba.

There’s a ping on the TV as Nate starts playing again. “I can go two-player if you want?”

“Oh, thanks,” I say as the coffee starts to gurgle. “Maybe tonight.” If I start playing video games first thing in the morning, my transition into absolute loser will be complete. Not that video games are bad, I’m just already a grown, unemployed homeless man sleeping on someone’s couch.

The coffee gurgles, the sharp scent of espresso filling my nostrils. When it’s done percolating, I pour it into a mug and pad out onto the sunny deck.

I’m not so badly off. I don’t have a job because teaching, which I do as part of my degree, is seasonal. I’ll go back to that in the fall, so I don’t know if that makes me unemployed so much as on sabbatical. I don’t have an apartment because I moved from California to BC for the summer. The clean air is great for my brain.

I press my hands on the wood of the railing, inhaling the fresh salty air. Forget Vancouver, this is the air tobreathe. I already feel a thousand times better up here than in the smog of LA.

Too bad we’re heading back tomorrow night.

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