Chapter 52

Detention passed slowly.

So did the following week, although dinner with Ryan and a nighttime walk through a theoretically closed park made things infinitely better. A week later she was done with the silly detentions, and all of her television-watching privileges were returned without further comment. There were tests, and homework, and classes to attend, all of which she soon forgot about. Ryan took her out again on Friday night—food from West’s and the second half of a show in the city, seen from the rafters.

Soon it was April.

Soon it was warmer.

Things changed, of course. How could they not? A thousand pieces of every week—moments that she had once shared with Nate—were once again her own, to do with as she pleased. Old routines vanished forever, only to be replaced with new ones. Eventually she found herself forgetting what her old habits had been—had she shared a smile with him when the teacher made a lame joke? Had he met her at the lockers before or after putting away his books? It didn’t matter.

In a way her life was lonelier.

There were no more calls every night, perfunctory though they’d been, to end with a silly game of not hanging up last. No more flirting in the hallways. No more notes passed during the boredom of class. Even the comfort of that friendly face under the same roof for most of the day was gone.

Not that there weren’t some definite advantages to the new arrangement. Despite Ryan’s erratic sleep schedule—especially now that he had hardly any more demons to excuse insomnia—he always made time each week to get her out of the house, not counting the traditional Saturday lunch. Usually that meant he would pick her up in the evening or after school and take her anywhere from Newark to a local playground for an hour. One night, though, when he had off from work, he slipped into her bedroom window and took her off to the beach. They spent the entire night staring up at the stars and coming up with their own constellations until the sun rose and washed them away. Aleda barely got to school on time the next morning, and in the same clothes she’d worn the day before.

Mom couldn’t have been happier for the two of them. Papá eventually and grudgingly got used to the idea, although he never again left the house on Saturday mornings. Talia, of course, was beside herself with joy. Aleda and Ryan, to their lasting chagrin, found themselves roped into a double date with her and her newest boy on a Friday evening when they were too slow to come up with a good excuse.

In fact, the only downside was the fact that Mike Connor and Nate’s parents refused all of Mom’s dinner invitations after that fateful week. And that was just fine with Aleda.

 

 

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Gabriel Kavanagh found an orphaned toddler in the wreckage of a Manhattan apartment on April 18, 1949.

He also found the child’s birth certificate, and his real birth date, but April 18^th stuck. Fifty-four years later, Ryan’s sister still insisted on throwing a big welcome-to-the-family-party and embarrassing the hell out of him on that day. The little blonde embraced the fabricated holiday wholeheartedly by buying enough junk food to feed an army and then inviting said army, consisting largely of people Ryan had never met, to their tiny apartment. To anyone outside the family she simply claimed that it was his adoption day, and didn’t mention the gruesome circumstances. It may have been the one thing on the planet that she could keep her mouth shut about, but she did it well.

The party was on a Friday.

As a concession to his nocturnal schedule, Talia had the party start early, at four o’clock, so that he could still make it to work on time.

“It’s just this stupid thing that Talia’s doing,” Ryan explained to Aleda at a red light. “You can’t give her any excuse for a party. She’ll take it and run with it, all over the apartment. With streamers.”

“You mean you don’t like celebrating your birthday?” Aleda teased.

“It’s not my birthday. It’s my adoption day. If you can call it that.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t get you a present.”

Ryan glanced back at her and raised an amused eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? So that box you hid in your purse was… what? Crayons?”

“It could be makeup,” Aleda retorted. “You never know.”

“Mhmm.”

The light changed, and he gunned the engine. It took a few more minutes to drive the rest of the way to his apartment, and he was gratified to see that there were only a few extra cars in the lot so far. He parked his bike next to the curb and helped Aleda down, just because he could, and they traded helmet for purse in the side compartment.

“Do you know what Talia has planned?” Aleda asked. She unwound the purse strap and slung it over her shoulder, careful not to dislodge the box she had tucked carefully into the side.

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Her usual, I’m sure. Food I don’t want, people I don’t know, and music I don’t like.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

He just looked at her.

“Okay,” Aleda admitted. “It might be that bad. But I’m sure she means well.”

“Yeah, I know she does.” He sighed. “Why else do you think I’m here?”

They reached the apartment door. Aleda reached out to turn the knob and hesitated. “Last chance to ditch,” she offered.

“No, let’s go,” Ryan said. “I’ll have my not-a-birthday party.”

“That’s the spirit!”

He grimaced. “Just open the door before I change my mind.”

She did.

Talia tackled her brother as soon as he made it through the door, dragging him into the living room and introducing him to a small knot of what appeared to be teenagers. She shoved him gently but firmly into the middle of the group and stood back. Aleda watched in bemusement.

“Are those people younger than me?” she asked Talia incredulously.

Talia grabbed a handful of chips out of a nearby bowl and shrugged. “Could be. It’s just some people I work with, but they’re all really cool and that one guy in the green shirt has been asking me out lately. Oh! And the girl with the bangs plays an awesome guitar.”

Aleda looked at them and bit back a grin. Faced with unfamiliar people, Ryan had wrapped his arms across his chest and stood staring at the wall with an almost stricken expression, not saying anything and looking at once intimidating and uncomfortable as hell. More people had started arriving as well, compounding the situation.

“Are you sure you want to do this to the poor guy on his adoption day?”

“I used to do this to him all the time,” Talia whispered conspiratorially. “By now it’s tradition! And anyway, it’d do him some good to get his a*s out of the apartment and out with people… that is, if he had people to go out with, which is why I invited them all.”

“Oh, yes,” Aleda said dryly. “They look like they’re getting along great.”

Talia switched over to popcorn. “A dollar says he hides in his bedroom within an hour,” she said between mouthfuls.

“No bet!” Aleda laughed. “I’m pretty sure you’re right.”

“Of course I am,” Talia said smugly. “I always call these things… Always.”

Aleda frowned and looked at her thoughtfully out of the corner of her eye. “And… how many bets have you made?”

Talia smirked, in an uncharacteristic echo of her brother. “I got five bucks off Ryan when your mom showed up pregnant before New Year’s,” she divulged.

Aleda stared at her.

“…And another five off West just a month ago.”

“A month ago…?” Aleda thought for a moment. “Hey!” she protested.

Talia shrugged. “What can I say? You guys are all kinds of freaking hilarious to watch. Well, you were anyway. Now I have to go brush the hell out of my teeth after watching you guys together for more than two minutes at a time, but after all that’s what I was going for so I guess I can’t really complain all that much. Hell, you two’d beat the crap out of daytime television any day.”

Aleda gawked at the girl for several seconds, unable to find any appropriate words to respond to a revelation like that.

“You… you mean we were your entertainment?” she finally squeaked out.

Talia grinned smugly. “…Why do you think I ate so much popcorn?”

Despite herself, Aleda couldn’t help but laugh. After all, she couldn’t very well be mad at the little blonde for helping her achieve her current situation, and there was no denying, at this point, that both of their antics must have been amusing to other people.

Except Papá, maybe.

She decided to rescue Ryan with a plate of food. Despite his disparagement of his sister’s eating habits, she had actually managed to stock the kitchen table with a pretty reasonable assortment of healthier, if cheap, additions to the usual potato chips, popcorn, and pretzels. Aleda was able to find some cold cuts, bread, and cheese, and even a few vegetables, and she threw on extra for herself.

Ryan was still trapped in the circle of teenagers, all of them jabbering about prom and homework and their horrifyingly unreasonable parents. His attention snapped from the opposite wall when she approached, and his arm automatically curled around her waist.

“I brought you some food,” she told him. He looked at the carrots in shock and dug in.

“My sister bought vegetables?” he asked in amazement.

“Apparently.”

“Thank heaven,” he muttered. He fished another carrot off the plate and nodded towards the others. “So these kids tell me prom is coming soon?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Well, in a month—the Friday before my birthday. No big deal.” She tried to shrug it off.

Ryan raised his eyebrows at her.

“Okay, kind of a big deal,” she admitted. “But, I mean, you don’t have to go or anything. If you don’t want to. It’s just going to be a bunch of teenagers dancing to bad music and probably getting drunk or something afterwards.”

“I never went to prom.”

Aleda cocked her head. “What, really?”

Ryan shrugged. “I dropped out a few months before graduation, and got my G.E.D. later. Never went to prom.”

“Well…” Aleda hesitated. “Do you want to come to prom with me? I mean, I know you probably wouldn’t like it, so don’t worry about it if you don’t want to go. No problem.”

“No, I’d like to go,” he said.

“You have to dress up,” she warned him. “Suit and tie.”

He pretended to ponder for a moment. “Forget the tie and we have a deal.”

Aleda pouted. “You have to at least wear a tie for the pictures.”

“Do I?”

“Oh, fine. No tie.”

He grinned. “It’s a deal.”

"Hey Birthday Boy! Do you want your presents now or what?"

Both Ryan and Aleda looked up to see Talia coming towards them with an armful of wrapped presents.

"You could have just left those on the table, you know," Ryan pointed out.

Talia scoffed. "Yes, well, you were nowhere near the table. I had to do something about that, didn't I?"

"Yeah," one of the teenagers said. "Let's see what you got!"

Ryan sighed. He touched Aleda's arm one last time and accepted the armload of presents from his sister with only one raised eyebrow to belie his annoyance. He set all but one down on the floor.

"Alright, what is it then?" he asked rhetorically. He held the small box up to his ear and shook it, rather more effectively than if it had been somebody else. Sounded like a watch. A plastic watch. Sure enough, once the wrapping was peeled away and the box itself opened, he held a brand new but cheap-looking watch. Oh well, better than no watch at all.

The rest of the packages turned out to be along the same lines. Little trinkets that a teenager on a retail salary could afford. One package actually turned out to be a tie, and he glanced over at his sister suspiciously... but she was busy with the popcorn and not paying any attention to him.

"I'm still not wearing a tie," Ryan whispered to Aleda.

"What if I wear the tie?" she countered.

"Oh, yes. I'd forgotten. Girls wear ties all the time."

"I could wear a tie if I wanted to."

"The tie stays home."

"Oh, fine. Suit yourself... you always do."

"You got it." He cleared his throat and spoke up a bit louder. "Now, was that all of it, then?" he asked to the general public.

"That's all I've got," Talia said, and shrugged. "You want your cake now?"

Ryan ignored her and turned instead to the brunette by his side. "What about that little trinket you tucked in that purse of yours?" he asked with a smirk.

Aleda looked around at the other people in the apartment. "I was going to show you later."

He grinned wider and bent down to whisper in her ear. "Something you don't want these bowsies to see?"

“Keep your pants on,” she said, grinning despite herself. “They just wouldn't get it, is all.”

Ryan paused for a moment, thinking. "Bless my soul," he said. "Does the lass have an out for me?"

"Just say go."

He grinned, and took her hand. "Hey, Sis!" he called. "Aleda says she's got a surprise for me. I guess I'd better go see what it is!"

"Oh, definitely," Aleda joined in. "Otherwise he's in lots of trouble."

Talia snickered. "Yeah, uh-huh. Whatever you say, crazy kids. Go do your thing. Never mind us poor well-wishers and all our hard work to throw you a party."

Ryan practically threw Aleda over his shoulder and carried her out the door, letting the door to his apartment slam shut with quite a lot of satisfaction. He kissed her soundly once they were out the door and set her down on the back of his motorcycle. He handed back the spare helmet.

“Ok, just for that you get to pick where we’re going,” he said, strapping on his own helmet. It was a pointless pain in the neck, but better that than be hassled by bored cops. Anyway, she needed it. He craned his neck to look back at Aleda, who was apparently deep in thought. “Any requests?” he asked.

“What about Newark? We haven’t gone there much.”

“I’m not taking you to the Olive Garden,” he deadpanned.

Aleda laughed aloud and squeezed his ribs. “No, estupido! Just around. There’s got to be something fun in that city.”

He gunned his engine. “Newark it is.”

 

 

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It was kind of weird, actually. Newark was no more than twenty minutes away from Aleda’s house, and yet they had been there maybe once together. They’d gone to Philadelphia more times than she could count. Maybe it was because they didn’t know as many people there. Maybe it was because Ryan had no idea which property the Council owned, and even less where he might be able to park for free.

Maybe it was because Newark is where Nate had always taken her.

Regardless, he found a likely-looking garage and grudgingly took the ticket. Neither one really wanted anything to eat, especially after the smörgåsbord of junk food that Talia had provided, but it was still a warm day and there was a park just a few blocks away. They walked through it and around it and finally just found a grassy spot near a tree and sat in it for several hours. Ryan was finally able to get her to open up her purse once they had settled down.

Shaking this particular box revealed an odd sloshing sound, and he looked at her with a question in his eyes. She just smirked and told him to open it already, so he did. Beneath the unnecessarily pretty wrapping paper he found a small hip flask, stainless steel with a knotwork design on the front, and a separate piece that could be slipped on a belt. It was very nice, but… a flask?

“A flask?” he asked incredulously.

“Open it!” she repeated.

Doubtful, but curious, he undid the cap and sniffed the liquid that had been sloshing around inside.

Milk.

She’d given him a hip flask full of milk.

“And before you ask,” she said, “I just filled that a couple of hours ago, so it’s still good.”

He took a swallow and nodded. From the taste of it, it was actually half-and-half, and he could feel it go straight to his bones.

“Do you like it?” she asked nervously. “I wasn’t sure if there were specific Irish designs, or—”

“It’s perfect,” he reassured her, slipping his arm around her shoulders. And it really was. For all the times he took bottles of milk with him on a hunt, a hip flask of what was essentially half cream could be the difference between life and death, or at least winning and winning spectacularly. Of course he would have to refill it, because the milk would go bad, but he had a feeling he could make that sacrifice. Next to him, Aleda started to giggle.

“What is it?” he asked, glancing at her. He took another gulp from the flask, figuring it was his not-quite-a-birthday, after all.

She shook her head, still fighting a grin. “Nothing, really. It’s just… remember the last time we sat against a tree like this for hours on end?”

Ryan had to grin too, remembering it. “I was so pissed at you that night. I don’t even remember why.”

“I was probably acting like a brat.”

“You’re not a brat,” he told her seriously.

“Yeah.” She winked. “But I know how to act like one.”

“You and my sister.”

She paused for a moment or two. “…That night was the first time you used my name.”

Ryan frowned. She was fiddling with the grass, raking her fingers through it and pulling the blades out straight.

“You always called me ‘little girl’ before that, or just talked about me like I wasn’t in the room,” she continued. “I remember, because I was almost as shocked that you called me ‘Aleda’ as I was when I realized I had ended up in the middle of that clearing.”

“I was a bit of a jackass, yes.”

“But that was the first time you weren’t.”

He pulled her closer and slipped his hand down a bit further than he probably should have in public. “That was also the first time I found myself wanting to pummel that idiotic boy, too,” he revealed.

She gaped up at him. “Don’t tell me… you were jealous?”

“Me? Jealous?” He scoffed. “Never. I just knew he needed a good kick in the a*s, that’s all.”

“Mhmm.” She didn’t believe him. But that was okay.

They sat like that for a while longer, just enjoying the day. Ryan finally rose to his feet and pulled her with him.

“What is it?” she protested.

He had to hide his smirk of amusement. “It’s past dark out, lass. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

“Oh, right… I knew that.”

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll buy you some ice cream.”

“I thought this was your un-birthday.”

“It is! And the un-birthday boy wants to buy you ice cream,” he said as he hooked his arm around its usual spot on her back and led her back towards the street.

“What if I don’t want ice cream?” she asked, just for the sake of being contrary.

“You want ice cream,” he said confidently.

“Somebody’s sure of himself,” she remarked. They came to the end of a block and had to stop while the light was red. Ryan took the opportunity to pull her around to face him and they locked eyes.

“Your heart beat a hair faster when I mentioned it,” he told her, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. “And I can see in your eyes that you like the idea, plain as day.”

Aleda cracked a smile. “Creepy and cute at the same time. Not bad.”

“So glad you approve.”

The light changed and the white pedestrian sign blinked into life on the other side of the street, so they kept walking. Unfortunately, neither was quite sure where the nearest ice cream shop was, but that didn’t bother Ryan. On a warm spring night like this it couldn’t be hard to find. Aleda was perfectly content to walk as well, which was surprising. He must be rubbing off on her.

Their walk took them through a slightly run-down area and Ryan shook his head in consternation. Harder to find a nice ice cream shop in a place like this. He must have turned wrong at some point. He stopped walking and looked around.

“What is it?” Aleda asked.

“We’re not exactly in the ice cream district anymore,” he told her. She glanced around.

“I don’t see much of anything except dark buildings around here,” she said. “How did we get here?”

Not much of anything at all, indeed. He grinned to himself and pulled her into a nearby alley. Not that he needed to. He pressed her against the brick wall.

“I must have gotten distracted,” he murmured, bending low to nuzzle her neck. 

Aleda giggled and let him continue his assault.

“In fact,” he muttered into her hair, as one hand came up to toy with her sleeve, “I might just have gotten distracted enough to forget ice cream altogether, and—”

“Wallet, now!”

Ryan groaned. Again? He looked over his shoulder and glared at the new arrival: a scruffy man in a sweatshirt, holding a gun. “Do you mind?” he demanded. “I’m kind of busy here.”

“Her purse, too. C’mon!”

He sighed and raised an eyebrow at Aleda. “You think you can…”

“I’m staying put,” she promised. “Do your thing.”

“Hey! I’m talking to you!”

Ryan snarled and spun around, catching the man’s gun before he could so much as blink and slamming it into the wall. The warped metal clattered to the ground, useless. He again glared at the interloper, who was now looking considerably more nervous. The man managed to pull a knife out of somewhere, though. Barely more than a pocket knife. Ryan made a depreciative face at it.

“Seriously?” He rolled his eyes. “Okay, boyo, play time’s over.” He plucked the knife out of the man’s hand and snapped the blade off with his thumb. “That’s a gun, and a knife. What else d’ye have up your sleeve?” He slammed the man against the opposite wall and twisted his arm behind his back, doing a fair impression of a policeman’s grab, then proceeded to search him for any other weapons. Fortunately he didn’t have to actually pat down the emphatically unwashed man; a cursory glance showed no weapon-shaped gaps in the man’s light.

“Alright, get out of here,” Ryan told him, and gave him a shove out of the alley. He ran off, his hurried footfalls echoing in the night air. Ryan turned to Aleda, who was watching him with a smile. “So…” he said. “Ice cream?”

“Definitely.”