Page 106 of Kiss Me Tonight

I remember the first time the cops walked into our tired apartment with its creaky steps and moldy walls. I’d stayed there for a little under a month before a neighbor reported my mom as missing. She wasn’t missing—just chose a different lifestyle, one that didn’t include her five-year-old son. The police had all agreed that it was a miracle I’d survived that long. But that was me to a T: scrappy and resilient to the bitter end.

“We’ll go down there together,” I tell Harry, keeping my tone level, the same way I always talked to the kids who matched with Junior Buccaneers. Like frightened animals, kids can be skittish. I know I used to be. “Me and you. How’s that sound?”

“Did they take you away?” His shoulders curl in tightly, a sixteen-year-old reduced to the emotions of someone so much younger. I know how he feels. Acutely. “When the police came, did they put you in . . . foster care?”

There’s little point in lying to him. “Yeah, Harry, they did. But I was only five. No dad, a mom who had left for good. No other family to take me in. Our situations aren’t nearly the same. Your aunt, she comes to some of the practices, doesn’t she?”

Looking startled, as if surprised to know I’ve been paying attention, Harry bites down on his thumb. “Yeah. My great-aunt. She’s . . . weird.”

Weird isn’t synonymous with awful. Clearly, the woman cares enough about her great-nephew to show up to our scrimmages and cheer him on. “Does she know that your mom leaves?” When Harry shakes his head, I sigh. “Kid, just because she’s weird doesn’t mean she’s not family. What’s so weird about her?”

“Her house smells like cat pee.”

Unfortunate, but not the end of the world. “What else?”

Harry flicks his gaze away from my face, as though he’s thinking hard on that. “She really,reallylikes takeout.”

I bark out a laugh. “Harry, most of the world prefers takeout. You know how well this pizza joint knows me?” I point to the boxes. “I order out from them at least three times a week.”

“She also has dolls! Weird, creepy dolls. Coach, I swear their beady little eyes follow me whenever I sleep at her house.”

I can’t stem the laughter reverberating in my chest. It rolls out of me, boisterous and hearty. “Do they talk?” I manage on a short breath.

“I think some of them do . . . maybe. One time, when I was a kid, I ripped out their batteries and they still didn’t stop talking. Aunt Gloria isweird.”

“Well, we can’t have you staying there then.” I bump a fist against the table, rattling my silverware. “Who knows, kid? One day you might be at practice when those dolls kidnap you to another planet.”

Finally, that pinched, fearful look dissipates from his face. “You’re making fun of me.”

“All I’m saying is, there are worse things out there in the world than cat pee, takeout, and creepy dolls.” Dropping my voice to a serious note, I lean forward, propped up on my forearms. “I don’t want you to ever have to face those worse things, kid. I don’t want you to ever go through what I went through.”

“When you went into foster care . . . did you like the families they put you with?”

I think of Mrs. Ramirez and the countless other people I stayed with until I graduated high school. Only one home resonated with me—the last one I ever lived in before I turned eighteen. Mr. and Mrs. Halloway. Elderly couple in their seventies. Good-natured souls. They’d had their hands full with me, but they knew how to harness my anger and bad attitude. Football was my saving grace, and, in a way, it was theirs too. Both the team and the game kept me out of trouble.

“Some,” I say evenly. “But every person I lived with made me who I am today. And if I wasn’t me, then I wouldn’t be here right now, sitting at this table with you.”

30

Aspen

The boys, including Harry Blackwater, are tucked in bed when I sneak out my back door sometime around one in the morning.

I don’t know what Dominic told the police about Heather Blackwater or Harry’s crazy aunt who I never noticed attending our practices. But Dominic noticed—the man who the world views as unfeeling, saw what I failed to. Even more, he spoke to Harry on a wavelength I never could, getting to the heart of the matter within mere minutes. When Dominic dropped Harry off at my house, it was with a faraway glaze to his dark eyes and a softly spoken, “I’ll pick him up in the morning and bring him to his aunt’s. We already filled her in about what’s going on at the station.”

He left as quickly as he appeared.

So here I am.

Barefoot, dressed in the same clothes from earlier, skirting around the shoulder-high hedges that separate our two courtyards. Turnaround is fair play—if Dominic thinks he can stop by whenever he wants, then I can certainly return the favor.

Using the flashlight on my phone to guide the way, I hurry across his neatly trimmed lawn. Unlike my house, there aren’t any French doors to peer into, so I’m forced to knock on the single back door and wait like a total lurker.

“C’mon, Dominic,” I mutter, bouncing from one foot to the other in my impatience. I knock again, adding a littleratta-ta-tafor fun.

Hello, my name is Aspen Levi and I come to your house in the middle of the night bearing show tunes.

Imagine all the restraining orders I’d get with a calling card like that.

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