Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(49)

The woman’s face spreads easily into a wide smile. Lawson has her smile. It’s a nice smile. “Oh! Lawson mentioned you! Nice to meet you! Aren’t you sweet? Come in, come in. Sorry about the house. I’m Lawson’s mama, by the way.”

“I thought maybe.” I follow her inside. Lawson’s house is modest and comfortable, and clearly his mom has won the war for its decorative soul. It has “special meal” smell mixed with the chemical tang of Glade apple-scented plug-ins. Whooping spills out of the living room, drowning out the sound of some game. Lawson’s mom steps in, and I follow.

“Boys, this is Lawson’s friend Josie.”

I peek my head in and give a little wave.

“Hi,” I say to the man who looks like Lawson’s dad. “Hi again,” I say to his brothers. They nod politely. “We met at the fight,” I explain to Lawson’s mom.

“I’m Lawson’s dad, Arturo. I go by Art.” He speaks with an accent and has a warm and kind face. A nice face. Like Lawson’s.

I step inside and shake his hand. “Josie Howard.”

“Lawson expecting you?” one of the brothers—Connor, Wyatt, or Trey—asks.

“No.”

“Don’t be surprised if he ain’t any fun to hang out with,” Connor, Wyatt, or Trey says. “Don’t judge him based on tonight.”

“You think Law’s gonna be sad to see a pretty girl carrying a stack of pancakes?” Connor, Wyatt, or Trey says. “Buddy, he ain’t whupped that bad.” They all laugh raucously.

I blush.

“Y’all behave,” Lawson’s mom says with a heretofore unseen firmness, eyebrows raised.

We climb the stairs. I look at the family pictures lining the landing. “You’re sorta surrounded in this family, huh?” I say.

“On all sides. Boys, boys, boys everywhere. But”—she leans in, a conspiratorial tone in her voice—“I always win. Even if they don’t realize it.”

She knocks on a closed door. “Lawson, honey?”

“What?” he calls.

“Can I come in? You got company.”

“Yeah.” He says it after a beat’s longer hesitation and more reluctance than I would have liked.

She opens the door, and over her shoulder, I see Lawson reclining on his bed, paperback in hand, ice pack covering one eye. Tater is snuggled up next to him.

My heart does a strange little swoop when I see him. Like when a bird is flying along really fast and it stops beating its wings for a second and does that glide-and-dip thing. Um, okay, I guess, heart. Stop being goofy.

We make eye contact and he tries to get up quickly, but he’s obviously sore and moves deliberately, like an old man. I never noticed before how fluidly and gracefully he moved normally, until seeing him like this. “Josie? Git, Tater.” Tater jumps down from the bed and exits.

“Tater!” I bend down and scratch Tater’s neck with my free hand as he’s leaving. “Hey, dude,” I say nonchalantly, standing and holding out the plate of pancakes. “I brought you your favorite food out of all the possible foods on earth.” I punctuate this with a little eye roll.

“How’d you know where I lived?”

I blush again. This really is bananas, what I’m doing. “I…got your address from the twins. Wanted this to be a surprise.” I’m keenly aware of Lawson’s mom, still standing there. What she must think of me right now. The Pancake Stalker.

“I am surprised,” Lawson says, not unhappily (or happily).

“Anyway, I just came to drop these off.”

“It was a good surprise.” He sounds like he’s saying this for his mom’s benefit.

“I’m gonna grab y’all some milk and another plate and silverware,” Lawson’s mom says, and leaves.

The air between us is thick and stiff.

“So. Hi,” I say.

“Hey.”

“I met your dad. He seems really nice.”

“He’s cool.”

“So he’s named Arturo, and his sons are named Connor, Wyatt, Trey, and Lawson?”

Lawson gives the barest hint of a smile. “My mom, who’s a seventh-generation Tennessean, made a deal with my dad: she names the boys; he names the girls.”

“She’s four for four, and your dad—”

“Big loser. Just like me.”

“Oh, come on. You lost by like one point.”

“Still.”

“You doing all right?” I ask.

“Yeah.” He motions at the book he’s left tented on his bed. “Doing some reading. Distracts me.” He’s having trouble making eye contact, like back at the arena after the fight.

I take in his room for the first time. It’s a hundred times neater than any dude’s room I’ve ever been in, and it’s filled with books.

“You’re a legitimately huge reader,” I say, walking over to one of his bookshelves. They skew heavily toward sci-fi and fantasy.

He sits back on his bed. “I contain multitudes.”

“What’re you reading?”

He holds up the book. “Last book in the Bloodfall series. You read them?”

“I’m into the show.”