Page 44 of Work with Me

I jumped down from the truck’s cab, my Converse slapping onto the street. I trudged up the short walk between a pair of twisted-looking trees covered in clumps of delicate lavender flowers. Two short steps, and I was on the shady porch, my finger poised over the bell. The scents of roasting chicken and garlic wafted from the open window next to the door, along with female voices. Screwing my eyes almost shut, I pressed the button.

Light, running footsteps approached the door, which swung open. A skinny kid with a green cast on his arm smiled at me through the metal screen. The bruise under his eye matched the purple door. He couldn’t have been more than eight, with straw-colored hair curling down over his ears. His eyes were brown, not the ocean blue of Alicia’s; still, his mouth was the same shape as hers—I should know since I was low-key obsessed with it.

“Hey,” he said.

I hadn’t heard the woman approach. Her feet were bare, and she wore a flowered dress that hung almost to her ankles. Threads of white streaked her dark hair. The lines around her eyes deepened when she squinted at me. “Can I help you?” Her vowels were soft and colored with the bluesy music I sometimes heard in the bars on Sixth Street.

Maybe someone had fat-fingered Alicia’s address into the Synergy payroll system? I looked at the house to the right. Nondescript red brick. Grass cut short like a putting green. Maybe that was hers. I checked the house to the left. A rusty washing machine sat on its peeling front porch. Probably not that one.

“Sir?” the woman asked.

“Um, hi. Does Alicia Weber live here?” I shifted my weight onto my back foot, ready to pivot down the steps and head to the house on the right.

“Yeah, she does,” the kid said. “Who are you?”

Whoa. I balanced my weight. “I’m Jackson Jones. We work—”

“We know you.” The kid squinted at me.

He knew me? It’d been a while since I’d been on the cover of any business magazines. And these people didn’t seem the type to getCar and Driver.

“He means we know you work together.” The woman’s lips tightened, all the softness gone from her face.

Oh, shit.I could imagine the stories Alicia had told about me at home. Was this her…aunt? Much older girlfriend? The kid had to belong to Alicia because he and the older woman had no features in common.

“I, ah. She forgot her phone. At work. I brought it to her.” I held out the device, my skin fizzling with the obliteration of my hopes of seeing Alicia.

“What are you two—” Alicia, also barefoot, had come up behind the woman. Her hair fell in loose, irregular waves around her shoulders, and she’d traded her silky blouse and tight skirt for a burnt-orange Texas Longhorns shirt and a pair of cutoff black sweatpants. I’d seen her knees before when she sat at our desk, her skirt inching up above them. But I’d never seen so much of her pale thighs.

“Jackson?” Her voice hit me like an electrical shock, and I ripped my gaze off her legs and onto her slack mouth.Shit! Eyes! Look at her eyes!

Her own gaze dropped to my still-outstretched hand. “You brought me my phone?”

“Yeah, I—you left it at the office.”

She stepped around the woman and then gently moved the kid to the side so she could push open the screen door. Standing a step above me in her bare feet—my eyes burned to peek at those shiny black toenails—she stared me directly in the eye. Her fingers brushed my palm as she took it from me. “Thank you.”

I shivered even in the sticky evening warmth.

“Aren’t you gonna invite him in?” the woman said. “He came all the way out here.”

“It—it wasn’t far,” I said.

“How did you even—” Alicia said at the same time.

“Your mama raised you better than that.” Now the woman’s voice held the bite of a hot pepper. “Jackson, would you like to stay for dinner?”

My mouth had been watering at the delicious smells that surrounded me. And was that cinnamon? I sniffed hopefully.

“He really can’t—” Alicia began.

“Do I smell pie?” I said.

“Apple,” the woman said.

I looked Alicia in the eye. “I’d love to stay for dinner.”

Her pointy chin jutted out, but she said nothing, only held the screen door for me until I put my palm on it and stepped up into the house.

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