Page 12 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

I was aware of his daughter’s great fashion sense because ninety percent of his phone’s memory was filled with images of her, and I’d seen all of them.

“No thanks, but I appreciate the offer.” She would probably have spotted the padding in my bustline and might have mentioned other improvements that I needed, which I couldn’t attempt now because the car was arriving and I didn’t have any more time to play around.

I was going to a party and it was funny to feel excitement again.

I realized that I’d felt the same way a few times over the past couple of weeks since I’d been to the doctor’s office.

That app therapist had been right about trying to make connections.

Ava lived in a pretty house with not too many stairs leading to the front door, which I was happy to note when the rideshare dropped me off at her address.

There were a few cars parked on the street but it didn’t seem like it was going to be a very big gathering.

I had scheduled my arrival to be a little late, which I’d learned was the appropriate strategy for a party.

Maybe everyone else was planning to get here even later.

Ava answered the door when I rang the bell, and she grinned as if she was extremely pleased.

“Emerson! I’m so glad you could make it.

Come on in.” She let me walk at my own pace into her living room where she introduced me to her husband Jeff and two of her three kids, and they were all as good-looking in person as in the pictures she’d shown me.

Her parents were there, too, and a small group that she introduced as a friend from high school, that woman’s husband, and their children.

Besides them, there weren’t any other guests.

Nicola, her old friend, seemed to be almost like family—and most of the other people actually were.

I wondered for a moment about why I might have been asked but then I decided that it didn’t matter.

I was here to form relationships, and maybe Ava wanted the same thing from me.

Could she also need a friend? But there was plenty of food and drinks, so maybe more guests had been expected and had no-showed, or more were coming later.

I did my best to be a person they would want to like, but as usual, I found it easiest to talk to the kids. Gradually, I was talking only to them. They invited me to play and that was what I was doing when Ava came to find me.

“Emerson? Why are you down here in the basement?” she asked. She was frowning. “Weren’t the stairs hard for you? Levi said you struggle with them.”

“He told you that?” I put down my plastic teacup and mini backhoe.

It seemed odd that he would have mentioned anything about me, since we hadn’t really been in touch since I’d told him that his good friend August was likely a criminal.

Afterwards, I’d texted him a few times before remembering what Grant had always said about how I bothered him too much.

“Leave me alone,” he’d ordered, and I’d told him that if he would just answer my questions about when he planned to come home, I wouldn’t have to bother him.

After all, when someone was gone for a whole weekend with zero communication with his live-in girlfriend, wasn’t it normal that she would worry and also get mad?

That was just one of the times he’d told me to get off his case.

Due to those past experiences, I’d recognized what was happening when Levi had only answered me with a word or two: he was also signaling that I should leave him alone, and I had listened.

“My brother told me all about you. He’s definitely interested,” Ava said, smiling.

“That means he likes you and wants you to be his girlfriend,” her daughter advised me. “Thea explained,” she next answered her mom’s question about how she’d garnered that information about boyfriends and girlfriends.

“Thea and I will be having a talk about oversharing,” Ava stated, but I wasn’t paying much attention to this side conversation.

“Why do you think he’s interested?” I asked.

“I’m his big sister. I can tell,” she explained. “Why don’t you come back upstairs and see him?”

“Levi’s here?”

“He mentioned that he might stop by,” she said, her voice very nonchalant.

“I like this,” Ava’s son told me. He was sitting on my lap and he rubbed at my arm. “You have stripes, like that cat. The one with just the eyes.”

Now I focused on what he was saying. “What did you say about a cat’s eyes?”

“He means you have stripes like the Cheshire Cat,” Ava’s daughter Everly informed me.

She’d done a lot of interpreting for her younger sibling.

“It disappears until only the eyes show. I’m a lot older so I don’t talk about when people have stripes, but he’s little and does dumb stuff.

The Cheshire Cat at scared him when we saw the movie. ”

Her brother said it did not scare him and their mom intervened to head off an argument, but I was staring at my arm. I did, in fact, look striped, like there were dark streaks on the pale, greyish undertone of my skin. I also rubbed at them, but they didn’t go anywhere.

“I think my self-tanner went wrong,” I told the kids and while they didn’t understand, Ava did.

She knelt and picked up my wrist to get a better look at the problem. “How long did you leave it on?”

“It’s still on,” I said. “Was I…oh, right.” I did remember that I might have rinsed off after I’d used it before, but that had been a year ago at least. Maybe two. “It was kind of old lotion,” I commented.

“Did you exfoliate first? Why didn’t you wash it off?

” she asked as she examined me, and those would have been good steps.

In the few times we’d met, Ava had seemed like someone ready and able to take charge, but even she seemed nonplused by the state of my skin.

“Come upstairs and we can try to get it off,” she finally said.

“I have a scouring pad that I use on the pan after my husband makes lasagna.”

But above us on the main level, her front door slammed. “Aves, I’m here,” a voice called, and both kids squealed with excitement.

“Uncle Levi!” they said, and fought over who would get up the stairs the fastest. Woofy the dog won and Everly, being bigger than her brother, came in second. We heard Levi consoling his nephew.

“I used to be so much smaller than your mom, and now I can beat her up the stairs any day of the week,” he said.

“I don’t want to wait until I’m old like you!” Elliott told him.

“Old? No way. Hi, Woofy, how have you been? Trip anybody lately?” Levi asked. Their voices faded as their feet thumped away.

I’d had no hope of being the first one up the stairs, because sitting on the tiny chair at the tea table had been a poor idea.

I started to get up but I made a sound in my throat, and Ava responded immediately.

I had my doubts about whether Levi would have been able to beat her at anything, because she was also strong.

She literally picked me up under my arms and set me on my feet.

“You don’t weigh much more than when I’m carrying all three kids,” she said when I complimented her, but she was still frowning and now she was rubbing her shoulder. “We don’t have time to scrub you.”

“I don’t care if Levi sees my stripes,” I responded, although actually?

I did. I had put some effort into looking nice and nothing like the Cheshire Cat, and I wished that I’d reviewed the instructions on the self-tanner instead of getting caught up in the expiration date.

I also wished that I hadn’t disregarded that expiration date.

Ava also disregarded my response. “I know! I’ll get you a sweater.

Tights would look strange with that dress so we can’t cover your legs, but he’s unobservant.

Levi never cares much about looks anyway, but we should still put your best foot forward.

” She hustled up the stairs, telling me to stay put and she’d be right back.

“I can put my own feet forward,” I called, but she hadn’t heard me. I had no desire to wait and hide, though. I started up too, wondering why everyone had such long flights of these stupid things. I was about a third of the way when Levi appeared at the top.

“Emerson.”

“Hi,” I said, glad that the light was dim. But then he flicked the switch and everything was illuminated, including my skin.

“Do you need help? Here.” He quickly descended and then offered his arm, which I took. His skin, I noticed, was a nice tan color that seemed to be natural. “Now I get why Ava was suddenly having a party. I couldn’t think of reason, except maybe to celebrate my absence from her house.”

“Where did you go?” I realized that I was breathing heavily and decided that I was absolutely going to start taking more walks, even if it hurt a lot.

“I got an apartment. How have you been doing? How’s the Spanish?”

“ Bueno ,” I responded, because I knew it meant good. According to Hernán, I was learning by leaps and bounds. He thought so because I’d mastered all the question words and had also greeted him by saying “ hola .”

“ Me alegro ,” Levi said. “I’m happy to hear it.”

I would have replied that I was also happy to hear about his new apartment but I didn’t want him to notice how much I was wheezing. I held back my curiosity for later.

Whatever he and Ava might have said about his parents kicking his ass and closing the Bank of Dad, they sure acted glad to see him and hang out together.

His mom was all smiles and when she leaned up to kiss him, she smiled at me, too.

I started to pull away but, surprisingly, he put his other hand over mine and kept our arms intertwined.

He led me to a couch and we sat there together.