I take a drink of my water, following her gaze. I’d hate to think of Pike living in that house alone after I leave. He really should be sharing his life with someone.
“I know a few single women who wouldn’t mind changing that if given the chance,” I remark, thinking of April, my sister, and half the moms on our block who flirt with him when they pass his house on their ‘jogs’.
“Yeah, but he’s a loner,” she replies.
I nod, smiling in agreement. “Yeah, I’m starting to understand that.”
“He wasn’t always like that.” She glances at me, taking a sip of her drink. “He was a lot like Cole back in the day. Partying, laughing, speeding, breaking rules…. He even spent the night in jail once.”
My eyebrows dart up. Really?
I turn my eyes back on him and watch him pull the baseball cap out of his back pocket and pull it over his light brown hair, the muscles of his tattooed arm bulging against his T-shirt.
“But then Cole was born,” I say, guessing the story from there.
“Yeah,” Teresa sighs, rocking left to right to the music playing from some speaker in one of the houses. “Someone had to be the adult, and Lindsay…” She trails off and then straightens, clearing her throat. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to gossip.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “He certainly doesn’t give up much.”
I’ve seen Cole’s mom here and there, and it’s hard to picture her with Pike. She’s pretty ostentatious, and I feel like the Pike I know would get whiplash trying to keep up with her.
At least, I know from C
ole has told me that it didn’t last long between his parents, and if he didn’t have some of the same mannerisms as his father, I’d wonder if Pike was sure Cole was his son. She’s had at least four boyfriends whom I’ve seen in the past couple of years.
Teresa exhales a breath and lowers her voice. “Pike is proof that we learn when we’re forced to and maturity is more the result of experience than age,” she tells me. “He was the only twenty-year-old I knew working two jobs without even a second thought to all the friends he was losing because he could never hang out.”
I look over at her, suddenly wanting to know it all. I want any insight into who he was before I knew him.
“All of his friends were buying hot cars,” she continues, “but he’s been driving his dad’s old pick-up ever since I’ve known him. It was never a sacrifice to him, and there was never any question about taking care of Cole. It takes conviction to do what you know you’re supposed to do regardless of what you want.”
Her words hit me, and I let my gaze drop. Conviction to do what you know you’re supposed to do…
And I suddenly feel like shit.
He wanted me the other night. And if it weren’t for Cole, I have no doubt we would’ve slept together.
But Cole is there, between us, and we can’t change that. Not ever. It’s wrong, and no matter how much I want him, he would only hate himself afterward. His son will always be more important than anything else.
“He’s a good man,” she says.
Then she turns to put a serving spoon in the salad and open the chips for the taco dip, and I stand there, feeling like a truck is headed for me, but I can’t move.
He is a good man.
I can’t ruin that.
I suddenly feel like I need to get out of here. Pike’s not my family, and as natural as it feels to be where he is, it’s on borrowed time.
Over the next couple of hours, I keep my distance from Pike. Teresa gives me a tour of her house, I sit with her and few others, eating and talking, although I don’t say much, and one of Dutch’s kids wrangles me into dodgeball in someone’s driveway. I help kids light sparklers, although, it’s not yet dark, and help Teresa take empty tins to the garbage and clean up soda cans and water bottles.
I’m not sure if Pike is paying me any mind, because I haven’t looked at him to check his whereabouts, but once in a while, I feel the back of my neck get warm or a tingle spread up my spine.
“Oh, hey, Jordan,” someone says, hopping over my legs, about to trip. “Didn’t see you there.”
He laughs, and I look over from where I lay on the grass to see Carter Hewitt smiling over his shoulder at me. Another guy and girl stand around him, but I don’t remember their names even though we all graduated together.
Carter and I were supposed to go tubing today, but he cancelled due to this block party his parents asked him to be here for. Luckily, too, because I was having a hard time talking myself into not cancelling. I didn’t want to let Pike win that argument, but he was right. Tubing is an excuse to get drunk, and I wasn’t in the mood.