Megan Hart - Switch

My whole life."

"Do you take meds for it?" I kept my voice soft, and if the intrusive question offended him he didn't show it.

"Yes."

"Aren't they working?"

Paul sighed, but smiled a little broader. "Not today, I

guess."

"Can I help you?" I asked without reaching for him again,

though I wanted to run a hand over his hair and cup his

cheek. Something smal and soft to comfort him. The way

my mom used to touch me when I was upset.

"You've helped me so much, you don't even know." Paul

took a deep, long breath and squared his shoulders. "Just

having you here has been such a…pleasure, Paige."

I smiled at his hesitation. "Uh-huh."

He rumpled his hair, and some of his tension eased with

that simple act. He took another slow breath and let it out.

He looked at me with naked eyes. "I find, sometimes,

knowing that you're there with my coffee is enough to

keep me on the right track. You never balked, Paige. Not

at anything I asked you. You never made me feel like a

tyrant for needing things a certain way."

"Of course not."

He half lifted a brow. "Others did."

"I know they did."

We shared some silence.

We shared some silence.

"You realy know me, Paige," Paul said finaly. "I'l be sorry when you leave."

This time I did reach for him, if only to give his tie a gentle

tug. "I'm not going anywhere."

The cough interrupted us, and we both looked toward the

door. I didn't drop his tie, not at first. Not when I saw it

was Vivian, her blond hair freshly styled and her brows as

high as her heels. I let Paul's tie slide from my fingers as

slowly as I stood.

"I brought those files to go over, Paul." She didn't come

into the room.

"I thought you were going to cal me first," he said.

She and I both looked at him. I couldn't see her face, but I

knew my mouth had dropped a little. Paul, as a rule,

wasn't mean. Not even close. And he'd pretty much just

spanked her, and not in the good way. I wanted to laugh,

but settled for a smile he returned.

"I can come back in fifteen minutes," she said cooly.

"Would that suit?"

"Would that suit?"

"How about twenty? Paige and I were in the middle of a

meeting."

She left without saying anything, and his shoulders tensed

again, but he took another long, slow breath. When she'd

gone he ran a hand over his hair again and let it cover his

eyes for a minute. When he looked at me, though, his smile

seemed genuine and the horrific blank look in his gaze had

faded.

"She's going to think we're fucking," I said in a low voice.

It was perhaps an inappropriate thing to say, but we'd

moved beyond the pretense of formality.

He nodded. "She might."

"Is this going to be a problem for you?"

Paul didn't even look at the photos of his wife and family,

though his mouth tightened. I wondered if I'd been wrong

about him and Vivian. "It might be a problem for her. But

not me, no."

He paused. "It could make a difference when she's your

He paused. "It could make a difference when she's your

boss, though."

"I already told you, I'm not applying for that job."

I went to the bathroom to get a wet paper towel to take

care of the coffee dripping on the desk. When I came

back, Paul had moved the mug, contents half gone. He'd

puled out a pad of paper and his pen rested on it, though

he wasn't writing. I wiped the spots and tossed the paper

in the trash, then leaned over his shoulder to look at the list

as yet unwritten.

"Start with your e-mail," I said. He wrote it down. "Then sort through the mail in your in-box. Take care of what

needs done with those things."

He wrote that down, too, and the rest of the instructions I

gave him.

"Send me home early," I added, and he looked up, the

scratching of pen ceasing. "I have to be able to pick up my

little brother from the after-school-care program every day

this week. I'l need to leave by three, al right? I'l go

without a lunch break and come in earlier if I have to."

Paul slowly wrote down, Paige leaving early, and looked

Paul slowly wrote down, Paige leaving early, and looked

up at me again. "No, you don't have to. Just make sure

your work's done." Another pause. "As if I need to tel

you."

I leaned closer, just a bit, to say in a low voice, "Write it

down in a list for me. It wil make you feel better."

I left the office with Paul's chuckle ringing in my ears.

Chapter 32

"Can we have macaroni and cheese for dinner? Please?"

Arty clung to my hand like the monkey I'd always caled

him, then lifted his feet off the ground, so I staggered from

his sudden weight.

"Cut it out." I shook him off and set down my overnight

bag.

The living room smeled like my mom's perfume and

something else. Old Chinese food, maybe. I'd have to do a

search. My mom had been known to set down a container

or plate next to the couch while she watched TV and

forget about it. Arty tossed his shoes, coat and book bag

onto the floor by the front door in an amazing one-two-

three slingshot move I wouldn't have believed possible had

I not seen it in front of me. He was already off and running

toward the kitchen when I caled him back.

"Pick that stuff up!" I pointed.

"I need a snack!"

I happened to know they fed him at his after-school

I happened to know they fed him at his after-school

program, because my mom had told me how great it was

not to worry about him being hungry when she picked him

up. "Have a piece of fruit."

Arty stopped in midleap, so fast he skidded on the worn

carpet in the kitchen doorway. "Fruit?"

"Mom doesn't make you eat fruit?"

He made a face like I'd asked him to eat dung. "But I

wanted a Doodle."

I had no fucking clue what a Doodle was, but it didn't

sound pleasant. "Fruit. Or some crackers. I'l make dinner

in about twenty minutes, just let me get settled in."

Arty grumped and groaned and stomped, but came back

out in a minute with a box of cheese crackers. He hurtled

himself into a beanbag placed close enough to the TV he

could have read Braile on the screen, and turned on

cartoons loud enough to make me wince. He wasn't happy

to scoot back or turn it down, but he did. I tried to ignore

the crumbs spewing from his mouth with each guffaw.

I took my bag up the narrow stairs and down the dark,

close hal to the room at the back of the house. My mom

close hal to the room at the back of the house. My mom

had taken the front room, overlooking the street, with a

panel of four large windows. Arty's smaler room was

between hers and the bathroom. The room at the end

should've been a nice den, a sewing room, a playroom, but

for some reason nobody in the house used it.

There was a bed, at least, a creaking twin bed that

matched one of the dressers I'd inherited from my

grandma. The sheets were clean, and the bedspread, and

my mom had laid out clean towels for me, too. I set my

bag on the rickety, spindle-legged chair I'd never have

dared sit on, and I colapsed onto the bed. The ceiling had

cracks in it, and water damage. One high, narrow window

had a blind but no curtain. That would be pleasant in the

morning.

"Paiiiiige! I'm hungry!"

The wail drifted up the stairs and I heaved myself out of

the bed to holer, "I'l be right down!"

When I yanked the door opposite the foot of the bed,

though, al I did was chip a nail on the knob. The door

stayed stubbornly shut. Not the closet, then. It must have

been the door to the attic. I tried the one next to the

been the door to the attic. I tried the one next to the

dresser, revealing a set of wire hangers I used to quickly

hang my work clothes for the next couple days. Then it

was downstairs to the kitchen, which looked as if it had

been cleaned in preparation for my arrival.

Which meant my mom had wiped down the counters and

cleared out the sink, but the floor was a little sticky in front

of the fridge and crumbs coated the table. When I was

younger, it had never occurred to me that other people

stored leftover food in the fridge or the freezer. When we

got pizza it often stayed out on the counter until it was

gone. Sometimes she put it, stil in the box, in the oven until

we remembered to take it out and throw it away. My mom

cooked but haphazardly, so spaghetti sauce had always

made Rorschach blots on the stovetop and stiff noodles

stuck to the ceiling where she'd tossed them to see if the

pasta was done.

When I was in elementary school, I'd come down with

food poisoning. To be fair, it wasn't my mom's fault. I'd

spent the day with my dad at his country-club pool, where

they fed me extravagantly on fries and hot dogs instead of

making me eat the peanut butter and jely sandwich my

mom had packed for me. I brought it home and ate the

sandwich later that night for dinner. An hour after that, the

sandwich later that night for dinner. An hour after that, the

world began to spin. An eternal half hour after that, I

started to puke.

I had a morbid fear of food gone bad after that. I wouldn't

eat anything I suspected, even vaguely, of having turned.

When I opened my mom's fridge and saw the containers

and jars, al potentialy swimming with bacteria, my

stomach clenched tight in protest.

"Let's go out to eat, okay?"

I didn't have to say it twice. My arms filed with squirming

little boy as Arty tried to squeeze the breath out of me and

mostly succeeded. I put the kibosh on McDonald's, but

conceded to Wendy's, where he thought he tricked me

into letting him get a Frosty, when realy I just wanted an

excuse to get one for myself.

Inside the restaurant, Arty launched himself across the

room. "Leo!" Arty seemed incapable of using a voice at

anything less than a shout, but Leo didn't seem to care. He

patiently let Arty leap al over him, then looked at me over

the top of Arty's head.

"Hey, Paige."

"Hey, Paige."

I stuttered for a second. "What…hey. What are you doing

here?"

He lifted his bag of food. "Getting dinner."

Arty had settled back down to the toy he'd found in his

kids' meal bag. Leo was hesitating, but I gestured at the

table, and he sat. "It's good to see you, Leo."

"You, too. What's been going on?"

Of al my mom's boyfriends over the years, Leo was the

one I liked the best. He'd never tried to be my dad, and he

hadn't forced friendship on me, either. Maybe it was

because I was already grown up and moved out of my

mom's house when they started dating.

I glanced at Arty, lost in his own world of ketchup-firing

French-fry cannons. "I thought you and my mom were

going away together."

Leo's eyes never left mine, though his mouth set into a hard

line centered in his bushy, biker beard. "Obviously, we

didn't."

"So where did she go?"

He shrugged and looked away. "That's between you and

your mom, Paige."

Another guy? It had to be. Why else would Leo look so…

lost? And on a man his size, with that beard, the tattoos

and the denim biker vest, lost wasn't a look I'd ever

expected to see.

"I gotta run," Leo said and leaned across the table to ruffle Arty's hair. "Take care of the kiddo."

"Of course." I watched him head out and turned back to

Arty. "Where did Mama say she was going?"

"To a spar," he said.

"A spa?"

"Yeah, that's what I said. A spa. She's going to get a

message."

I sighed. "A massage?"

He grinned, showing the gap between his teeth where he'd

He grinned, showing the gap between his teeth where he'd