Page 32 of Power Play

I folded up that paper and handed it to her.

“Don’t be so sure. He’s not as nice as he seems,” I said, without any real heat.

“Liam Locke! I heard he donated money so the township could re-open the public pool in this neighborhood. Now the kids have somewhere to swim in the summer. That man is a saint!”

Of course he did that.

I jumped out at my stop and started the long slog uphill to Liam’s house.

I hadn’t seen Liam in person since the End Zone party two weeks ago.

But even trying to avoid him, I couldn’t.

For the parade last week, Portland had been packed to the rafters. Everyone on the Eastern Seaboard was there, losing their minds as the buses went by. It went down the center of town, right in front of the bar where I worked and I saw him, standing in the open top with his arm around Mike Harrison. Their faces now freshly shaved. Their playoff hair trimmed up. Their smiles so joyful it could bring a tear to a cynic’s eye.

Me. I was the cynic.

But I couldn’t avoid him forever.

“Hey Mike,” I said, approaching the stoic bodyguard sitting on Liam’s front porch. Did Liam ever let this poor guy inside the house?

“Hey,” he replied. Then breaking protocol, he said, “Not sure if you want to be here today.”

“Let me guess, his date still here from last night?” I asked.

“Nope,” Mike laughed.

“Another party?”

“Far from it. But I guess you’ll see for yourself,” Mike said ominously. I opened the door to an incredibly quiet house. No music. No laughter. No video games. It was…eerie. Usually, this house was full of people and noise and ruckus. Even if it was just Liam here, he lived his life very loudly. Without apology.

But today his house was a tomb.

I walked down Liam’s vanity hallway towards the living room where the silence gained a kind of horror quality. I was suddenly terrified of what I would see when I turned the corner. Was it a murder scene? Mike would warn me about that, wouldn’t he? If there was an actual dead body situation inside?

Cautiously, I poked my head around the corner to find a living room that looked like… well, a toy store. Or like a whole toy store had exploded. There were Lego kits. Stuffed animals. A dozen different games, set up and discarded. The pieces tossed around the coffee table like there’d been a tantrum.

On one end of the low, wide gray couch was Liam.

On the other end was a little girl with bright pink glasses and long brown hair in a crooked braid down her back.

And they were staring at each other.

No. Not quite staring. They were shooting daggers with their eyes.

“Um,” I said, and Liam looked at me with such sudden and wild hope that I sucked in a breath. Startled by all the emotion he was revealing. But, just as quickly as he saw me, it was gone. Like it never was.

The mean golden retriever was back.

“It’s you,” he said.

“It’s Sunday. Of course it’s me. What’s going on here?” I asked. The little girl, since Liam wasn’t staring at her anymore, had picked up a book, flopped over on her back and was reading.

“Tess and I are… Tess!” Liam cried. “What did I say about reading?” Liam looked at me. “This can’t be good for her.”

I laughed, but then realized he was serious. “Are you joking? Reading is great for her.”

“I don’t know what I am,” he whispered and hung his head in his hands.

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