We slap-fight for a little while before she grabs a handful of my untameable Baby Houseman hair and gives it a pull. “What are you even gonna do without me,” she says.
“I don't know,” I say. And it's true; I have no idea. I've been one half of TaylorandAanya for as long as I can remember. I don't know what I'm going to do without her.
I don't tell her that I'm ready to find out.
We pull up in front of Dominic's house—my house—at around six. He waves at us through the kitchen window, mouths pizza, and Aanya and I look at each other and make a split-second silent and unbreakable vow that we will not mention that we have already eaten and will worship at the shrine of the holy pizza with all the devoutness of people with empty stomachs.
Dom hugs me with one arm. “Welcome home, kiddo,” he says, and gives Aanya a solemn handshake with his other hand. “Thanks for the transportation help, chief.”
“I need to carbo-load before I get those Legos out of my car,” she says.
“Pizza's on the counter, help yourself.”
“Where's my mom?” I say.
“Upstairs, unpacking...something. And Alexis is around here somewhere.”
“Oh, she is? Good.” Alexis is Dominic's daughter from his first marriage. He and his ex-wife have joint custody, so Alexis lives in each house for a week at a time. She's five or six, I can never remember. I've met her a bunch of times, of course, but Dominic and my mother always scheduled their visits around her when they could, and even though Dominic and his ex are on good terms, it wasn't as if he was bringing her up on road trips to see his girlfriend and her teenage daughter.
Aanya goes to the fridge—something I still don't do here without asking, and I seriously have to stop myself from giving her the kind of Aanya behave look I have to shoot her all the time whenever we're in public—to get ice. When she opens the door I see my mother's photo magnets of my cousins and of our trip to Spain arranged in a heart, just like she had them on our fridge at home. And I realize her U of Miami mug is probably in that cupboard right there, and he's already probably stocked up on the crunchy peanut butter she can't live without, and that mango on the counter, that might be for me.
After we finish inhaling the pizza, Aanya and I trek back into the heat and unload her car. Obviously the Legos aren't really a problem; it's the shoes and books that make our knees buckle. I don't even have that many shoes, just really big feet, so each pair of canoes weighs as much as a small dog.
“You couldn't have made the moving guys do this?” Aanya groans.
“I needed these until the last minute.”
“All your shoes?”
“I had to cradle them like my children.”
“Four boxes of books?”
“I didn't know which ones I'd want to read on the way.”
“All the Harry Potter books, Taylor?”
“I'm a fast reader.”
With Dominic's help, we finally get the boxes up the stairs and to my room, which seems smaller without Dominic's file cabinets and computer and the desk where I used to do my homework. I don't know where those things are now. I was kind of hoping I'd get to keep the desk.
“It'll look bigger once we get your bed set up,” he says. “The movers unloaded your mattress in me and your mom's room, for some reason. I guess they could tell we don't really like each other enough to share a bed.”
“I knew it.”
“At least we've got your bookcases, though. You want help unpacking?” The room's full of boxes, some that we shipped here weeks ago with things I've now realized I probably don't have any use for. Turns out I didn't really miss the creepy ceramic doll my grandmother sent me when I was eight.
“That's okay.” I don't need Dominic helping me sort through my boxes. I padded my fragiles with underwear.
“Lemonade?” he says.
“I'm okay.”
“Me, please,” Aanya says.
They head downstairs, and I unpack half a box before I decide I hate this and go look for my mom instead. I find her in the master bathroom, with its separate shower and bath and his and hers sinks. If I ever start to wonder why we moved to Dominic and not vice versa, I'll come into this bathroom to remind myself. (Though that's not really why, of course; Mom and I were in an apartment, none of our family lived nearby to us anyway, and living that far away from his ex would mess up his custody thing, I'm sure.)
But still. The bathroom doesn't hurt.
“Baby.” My mom smiles at me, tucks me under her arm, kisses the top of my head. “About time you got here!”
“Yeah. We had to stop and sell drugs.”
“I hope you drove a hard bargain.”
“Yeah, but we spent all our profits on hookers.”
“You find the place okay?”
“I've been here a billion times, Mom.”
“Right.” She's wringing her hands, a little. “Stupid thing to say. I feel like I've been saying nothing but stupid things all day.”
I straighten her little bottles of moisturizer. “Relax.”
“Did you see your new textbooks?”
“Do we have to talk about this already?”
“Dom went and picked them all up for you, they're on your bookshelf.”
I saw them. “I think this counts as talking about it.”
“School starts in three days, Taylor.”
“Thank you, I can count.”
“Oh, that's good, because it's junior year of high school. I think they expect you to
