Page 35 of American Hellhound
She chuckled. “Yeah, yeah.”
“You wanna come to the pharmacy with us?” he asked on impulse. “I’ll buy you that Coke.”
“I want one too, Daddy,” Aidan said, tugging at his hand.
“Alright. Ask Mags if she’ll go with us.”
Aidan turned his brown puppy-dog eyes on her, and Ghost could see that she was sunk.
In recent months, he’d asked girls to make out with other girls, to bring him drinks, to suck his dick, to stop snoring and get out of his bed. He wasn’t sure he’d ever asked for anything as innocent as a walk to the pharmacy and the chance to buy her a soda. And, interestingly, the outcome of this request felt important in a way none of the others had.
Maggie nodded. “Alright, I’ll come.”
~*~
“Does your throat hurt? Sometimes when my throat hurts, Coke tastes weird, and Sprite is better.”
Aidan considered a moment, and winced when he swallowed. “Okay.”
Maggie grabbed a twenty-ounce Sprite for him and a Coke for herself, letting the freezer door thump shut afterward. When she handed Aidan’s bottle to him, he looked up at her with something like reverence. His little voice was hoarse from strep when he said, “Thank you.”
Maggie babysat for other families in the neighborhood all the time, but she’d never seen a kid quite this cute. Part of that was his close-cropped curly hair and his little button nose. And part of it was his startling resemblance to his father…who was pretty darn cute himself.
Drinks in hand, they began a slow walk back toward the counter where Ghost was waiting for Aidan’s antibiotics.
“How do you know my daddy?” the boy asked.
Maggie opened her Coke and took a sip to stall for time. She wanted to be careful in her answer. “We met yesterday,” she said, finally. “He helped me out.”
“Helped you out how?”
She cast a glance down at his face, but he didn’t look like he was trying to trap her – she mentally berated herself for being suspicious of an eight-year-old’s motives – only curious. “Well, I was somewhere I shouldn’t have been, and your daddy helped me get home.” She left out the part about asking him to buy her beer.
“Where were you?”
“Um…I’d rather not say.” When she glanced at him again, he was staring at her, that penetrating kid look that made her want to squirm.
But he said, “Okay.”
Ghost turned away from the counter, frowning. “It’s gonna be a half hour,” he said when they reached him. He didn’t sound happy about it.
Maggie looked between father and son, the sadness of the scenario hitting her all over again, like it had out on the sidewalk. Aidan was being a trooper, but his face was flushed and his eyelids droopy; he probably had a fever and his throat had to hurt like hell. Ghost had dark circles under his eyes that she hadn’t noticed last night, like he hadn’t slept; the tight line of his mouth highlighted his impatience with the situation. He was a concerned father, and a dutiful one, too, taking his child to the doctor and getting him the medicine he needed. But he wasn’t a happy one. From his dirty jeans to Aidan’s runny nose, the entire situation screamed a need for a maternal figure.
Maybe there was one. Maybe she just didn’t give a damn.
Seeing that Ghost’s gruff composure threatened to dissolve, she said, “That’s okay, we can kill a half hour.”
His brows lifted, skeptical.
“We can,” Maggie insisted. “Come on, Aidan,” she said, and he fell right into step beside her as she headed for the small arts and crafts section.
“Um,” Ghost said as he followed, heavy harness boots clunking across the linoleum. “What are you doing?”
She’d spotted a word search book a week or so ago when she’d come in to buy tampons, and it was still there, tucked in behind a few Lisa Frank sticker books. “Do you like word searches?”
Aidan nodded.
“Good.” Maggie grabbed a pack of thin-tipped markers and headed for the checkout counter.
