How to Love

is over. He was right, for what it’s worth: The plucky policewoman lived to fight crime another day.

“Can I ask you a question?” he says once I start to extricate myself—it’s getting late, and I glance around for my flip-flops. “What would happen if you stayed?”

“I can’t,” I say automatically, a reflex, though for a moment I wonder how it would feel to say yes. “I mean, the baby is here, and—”

“I mean.” He looks disappointed for a second, gets a look on his face like no kidding: The first time I brought Hannah to Aaron’s, he bought covers for all the electrical outlets. “I wasn’t going to send her home in a cab.”

“I know.” Here’s the thing: I really, really like him. You don’t need a map to navigate the level terrain of Aaron’s heart. Still, staying over feels like a big deal for some reason, a step I don’t know if I’m a hundred percent ready to take with him: I think of my phone ringing earlier, “Sympathy for the Devil.” Try to stop thinking about it.

At last I smile, scratch through the sandy hair at the nape of Aaron’s neck. “Another time,” I promise, and head into the bedroom to get my girl.

* * *

Sawyer calls again when I’m on the way home, Mick Jagger twanging out from the depths of my shoulder bag. I fish for the phone and glance over my shoulder at Hannah in her baby seat, but she’s dead to the world. My car smells like Cheerios and hand sanitizer. “We don’t want any,” I tell him, instead of hello.

“You haven’t even heard what I’m selling.” Sawyer’s laughing; I can hear it in his voice.

I frown at the road in front of me, all grim neon strip malls and fast-food restaurants. I am so, so tired of driving this route. “I don’t need to.”

“Sure you do.”

“Knives?” I ask, merging onto the highway. “Vinyl siding? Flood insurance?”

“Better,” he tells me, full of promises. “Let me cook you dinner.”

Oh God. “What?”

“Dinner,” he repeats more slowly, like maybe the problem was in his enunciation. “Tonight.”

“It’s nine thirty.”

“It’s European.”

“At your house?”

“Well, that’s where my kitchen is,” he says logically.

I roll my eyes. The highway is pretty empty at this hour, the darkened silhouettes of palm trees studding the median and the red glow of scattered taillights up ahead. The windshield fogs up a bit from the humidity, and I swipe at it with the flat of my palm. “Where are your parents?”

“At the restaurant.”

There’s no way. “I already ate.”

“Eat again,” he suggests, undeterred.

“I don’t think so.”

He’s quiet for a minute like he’s regrouping, changing tactics. “Where are you?” is what he tries next.

I check on Hannah in the mirror one more time. “In the car.”

“Where were you?”

I sigh. “At Aaron’s.”

“Ah.” Sawyer sounds satisfied. “That’s why you didn’t pick up.”

“Maybe I didn’t pick up because I didn’t want to talk to you.”

“That’s not what it was,” he says confidently. “You just picked up now, didn’t you?”

God, he is so annoying. And, I guess, right. “We were watching a movie.”

“What movie?”

“Who are you, my father?” I dig around in the console for some gum, shove a piece between my teeth and bite down hard. “A scary one, I don’t know.”

“You hate scary movies.”

“Maybe I like them now.”

“Come over.”

“Sawyer.” I should hang up, really. I don’t know why I’m still on the phone. “No.”

“Why not? Come on, Reena,” he says. “I want to see you.”

“You saw me the other day.”

“I want to see you again.”

That’s a bad idea, is what that is. That is a truly terrible idea. “I have to go,” I manage finally. There is no reason in the world for me to want to say yes as much as I do. I’m passing by the airport at this point: the planes low-flying and larger-than-life, all of that coming and going and me just exactly where I’ve always been. “I’m driving, remember? It’s not safe.”

For a second Sawyer doesn’t answer. I’m expecting him to come back with some new and creative sales pitch, but in the end all he says is, “No.” He sighs a bit like I’ve defeated him, and all at once I’m surprised by how it doesn’t feel like a victory at all. “No, I guess it’s not.”

* * *

At home I get the baby into her crib without event and wander around the house for a while, restless. I drink some water standing next to the sink. I go up to my bedroom and stare at Sawyer’s number in my phone’s contact list—dial six numbers, then hedge and hang up (my whole life a holding pattern, some variation on wait and see). I pace.

Finally I come downstairs.

Soledad and my father are sitting in the living room, watching Law & Order on the couch. “Can you guys do me a favor?” I say, hovering on the bottom stair like a ghost and willing myself not to sound so timid.

They both look up expectantly. It’s not often that I ask. “What do you need, sweetheart?” Soledad answers, and the endearment makes me feel about one inch tall.

“Can you keep an ear out for Hannah?” I ask her. “I’ve got something I need to do.”

22

Before

I was sitting on a desk in the newspaper office, half listening to an eager sophomore pitch an expose on cafeteria cleanliness, when I felt my phone vibrate inside my back pocket. I ignored it at first—Noelle, our editor, was hugely uptight about texting during meetings—but it buzzed again a minute later, insistent. I fished it out as discreetly as I could.

Look up, the text message said.

I did, and gasped out loud: Sawyer was standing in the hallway at the windowed door to the classroom, arms crossed and looking faintly amused. He tipped his head in greeting when he caught my eye and I grinned hugely, heart tipping sideways a bit. What are you doing here? I mouthed.

“Uh, Reena.” I snapped to attention. I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Sawyer: Noelle shot me a look that could have taken the bark right off a coconut palm. “Do we have your attention here, or not so much?”

“I’m sorry,” I told her, blushing. Everybody was watching now. Sawyer looked like he was about to crack up. I grabbed my backpack off the chair beside me, made for the door. “I just remembered someplace I really have to be.”

“So,” Sawyer said when I got out into the hallway, pushing me up against a locker and kissing me hello like it had been a lot longer than a couple of days since we’d seen each other. “That was very slick, what you did in there.”

“Shut up,” I said, laughing. I shoved him gently in the shoulders, let him carry my backpack down the hallway like something out of a teen movie. We’d been hanging out more and more lately, going for long drives along the water and hitting up Sonic for Cherry Limeades, making out until my mouth went smudgy and red.