Never Have I Ever(28)

That was reassuring. That meant he was likely still sixteen. A junior.

“We all understand each other?” I said to both of them.

“I’m sorry, Monster,” Mad said. She put her face by Oliver’s face and smiled. “Am I to be executed with the sunrise? Should I bid my dumpling of a baby brother a final farewell?” She kissed Oliver’s cheek with a resounding smack, and he giggled. I couldn’t help but smile back at the both of them.

Part of me still wanted to ground Maddy, mostly so I could send Luca away, but that would not be fair. Plus, in an hour Maddy’s mother was scheduled to have her weekly phone call. Laura lived in Birmingham, and while the court had granted her supervised visitation, she only managed to show up for it once or twice a year. There was a good chance she wouldn’t call at all, which was one kind of awful, and an equally good chance that she would call very late, or drunk, or both. Wednesdays were hard, but today, with this boy in tow, Maddy was being silly and charming and kissing on the baby like it was still Tuesday.

“‘Buttercup doesn’t get eaten by the eels at this time,’” I told her, and she grinned.

“Go see your mommy,” she told the baby. I held out my hands, and Oliver lurched toward me. I perched him on my hip again.

Maddy turned away and plucked at Luca’s shirt, pulling him back toward the swinging door.

“Where you going?” I asked.

She froze. “Upstairs? I wanted to show Luca this video.”

“Run up and bring the iPad down,” I said, and then fixed Luca with a firm gaze. “We also don’t let Mads take boys up to her bedroom.” Maddy shot me an agonized look for saying “bedroom,” but I was not here to play. “Why don’t you sit down at the breakfast bar. Have a snack. I’ve got homemade blondies.”

Maddy looked like she was hoping the earth would mercifully open up and swallow her whole at my offer, or maybe she was hoping it would swallow me. But Luca was a teenage boy, and he perked up at the mention of food.

“Great,” he said.

“Milk?” I asked him.

“Oh, my God,” Maddy said, but Luca said, “Yes, please,” at the same time.

I began the process of getting plates and napkins and blondies and pouring milk one-handed, with the baby “helping.” Luca wandered past us, into the keeping room, looking around while I got their snack together. Maddy plopped onto a stool at the breakfast bar, staring daggers at me, trying to eye-stab me out of the room.

“These are cool,” Luca said. He was over by the sofa that sat against the side wall, looking at the photo grouping I’d hung there, eighteen pictures in various sizes of undersea animals. He pointed at the center shot, a spectacular purple-and-orange Spanish shawl. “What’s this guy?”

“A nudibranch,” I said, and he chuckled. “Yeah, it’s a weird name. They’re little shell-less mollusks, and they come in a ton of crazy colors and shapes. Believe it or not, that blue-and-white guy with the wings in the next picture is a nudibranch as well.”

“That animal is the same thing as that?” he asked, looking back and forth between them.

“Yeah. Monster took those pics. She’s a dive instructor,” Maddy said, proud in spite of herself.

“Really?” he said, glancing over his shoulder at me with new respect. He pointed at a tiny blushing octopus. “That’s my favorite animal. I had a stuffed octopus when I was little. I dragged him around until his legs fell off.”

“Mads took that one,” I said, and he turned to look at her with the same respect.

“You dive, too?” he asked her.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. She tucked a curl behind her ear, grinning self-consciously. “I’ve been junior-certified since I was ten, and even before that I was pool diving.”

“That’s so cool,” Luca said, and Maddy’s eyes flew to my face, instantly pleading.

“Monster could teach you,” she said.

“I’d be into that.” Luca came over and sat by Mad, his elegant slide in contrast to the way she had hurled herself down, and took a huge bite out of his bar. “This is amazing,” he said, with his mouth full. He swallowed, then said to Mad, “We never have crap like this at my house.”

I believed him. I somehow couldn’t imagine Roux in an apron, licking beaters.

“Did your mom give up sweets for Lent and not go back?” Luca blinked at me, confused by my joke. “You know, when you give up sugar or cussing—before Easter?” He shrugged, and I gathered that Roux was not religious. I also felt a small flash of shame, grilling the kid. Luca was an innocent bystander, and with better manners than I would have thought a boy raised by his bitchy mother would possess. But I still wanted to know about her. “I meant your mom is not a baker?”

He shrugged. “She doesn’t, like, keep any kind of bread in the house.”

“Does your mom—” I began, but Madison interrupted me.

“Let’s go to the basement. Watch the video on the computer down there.”

The bedroom was a no-brainer, but I didn’t know if Davis would want his daughter down in the basement alone with a boy either. We hadn’t set boy rules, because up until today there hadn’t been a need. It seemed to me a girl could get just as pregnant on the cushy rec-room sectional as she could on a bed, and polite as he seemed, Luca was still a sixteen-year-old boy. But maybe I was letting my feelings about his mother spill over onto him. Would I feel this way about any teenage male who wanted to watch videos in the basement with Mad?