Page 114 of Space Balls: Houston, We Have Liftoff
It’s past sundown, and I’m peeking into the windows of the West Mansion from the porch while on the phone with my sister. I make out Flynn and Holt sitting on opposite ends of the couch, the lights from the television illuminating their faces. Are they… are they watchingIt’s a Wonderful Life?
Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey is hugging his family in front of a Christmas tree.
Yes they are. I never would’ve pegged the West brothers as fans of such a sappy holiday classic.
“Well? Is she there?” Brit asks.
Nose pressed almost to the glass, I look left and right. “I don’t see her,” I whisper.
“You sure she’s there?” Brit whispers back even though she’s forty minutes away holed up in her Pinterest room like it’s Mission Control and she’s the flight controller for my spacewalk.
“Yes, according to my intel, she’s here.” Plus there’s the fact that the holographic van is parked in the drive. I should’ve known that if it didn’t belong to a stripper, the glitterized vehicle would belong to Rose.
I love that about her. But I’m also going to buy our kid polarized sunglasses to protect their eyes from its blinding reflections.
Ourkid. The more time I’ve had to think about the baby and not about my irrational fears, the more excited I become about my impending fatherhood. I’m going to be a dad, and not just any dad, a dad to Rose’s baby.
“How reliable is your intel?”
I sigh, coming back to the present. “How reliable is any bribable kid in his twenties?”
“Ten-four.”
A headache knocks at my temples, and I ask myself why I felt the need to take my sister’s advice.
In a weak, desperate moment, I showed Brit Rose’s text about the doctor appointment, wanting to know how to decipherYou’re welcome to come if you want. Does her use ofyou’re welcomemean she’s willing to give me another chance? When she says I can come to the appointment ifIwant, does that meanshedoesn’t want me to but she’s inviting me for the baby’s sake?
Hoping female insight would help, I listened to Brittany.
“Don’t text her back,” she said. “Show up on her doorstep,” she said. “Everyone likes a grand gesture,” she said.
So I showed up. After an hour of relentless Houston traffic, I showed up at her condo.
Only to have Rose’s doorman bar me from entering again.
Pacing the sidewalk outside her building, I called. And I called. Despite Brit’s advice, I called.
Finally, after the fourth message where I pleaded for Rose to pick up, a young valet waved me over. For fifty bucks he informed me that Rose wasn’t home. For a hundred more, and a promise that I’m not a murdering stalker, the valet admitted to hearing Rose on her phone as she walked out of the lobby, telling someone to meet her at the ranch.
Why I called Brit when I arrived at the West property, I have no idea. They say you’re a fool in love. I think I’m taking that saying too much to heart.
I glance down the porch. “Tell me again why I can’t just knock on the door?”
“If some asshole had knockedmeup when I was twenty-one, then ran off like a coward only to come knocking on the door a few hours later, wouldyouhave let them in?”
Damn it. “Point made.”
A minute later, I’m tiptoeing around the side of the house like a thief in the night, sticking to the grass to avoid noise, hoping not to get shot by any late-night workhands patrolling the area.
I’ve seen too many Westerns.
“So?” Brit asks after I’ve remained silent for too long.
“It’s dark.” Unlike the front of the house, which is lit from the nearby barn spotlights, the back is not. The only thing helping me make out where I am is the soft glow Christmas lights twenty yards away wrapped around a small, in-ground Christmas tree and outlining a one-stall barn.
“Any lights on upstairs that you can throw pebbles at?”
“Not a one.”
