Growing and Kissing Read online

  “Her sister. Louise.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  I understand they have to check. I’m glad they’re careful, really. And I get that it’s an unusual situation. But waiting while she brought up Kayley’s school record on her computer and checked I really was her legal guardian and allowed to take her out of school felt like it took a half hour.

  Then Kayley was running towards me, five feet four of blonde curls and energy. Thank God she got my mom’s looks and not the pale skin and red hair I got from our dad. Unlike me, she fits right in in LA. She threw herself into my arms, talking at eighty-three miles an hour about Darren, the cute boy in her math class, and the band he’s formed.

  And suddenly, life was bearable. It was as if I could breathe for the first time all day. I didn’t care about being late, or poor, or being trapped in this concrete hell. I squeezed her close, close enough that she rolled her eyes and muttered that I was embarrassing her.

  As long as I had my sister, I was okay.

  “C’mon,” I told her, my voice muffled by her hair. “We’ve got to go.” And I hauled on her hand, hurrying her towards the door.

  “I claim music!”

  I sighed. That was our rule: whoever said it first got to choose the music. That meant a half hour of listening to British punk rock from the eighties. Why couldn’t she be into boy bands like any other teenager? But I didn’t care too much. Even though I didn’t like pulling her out of school, even though the appointment was worrying me, it was good just to spend time together.

  Minutes later, we were sitting in traffic with her babbling happily and me trying to figure out whether we’d make it on time. I don’t know if it’s because of the age gap, but we don’t really argue. Ever. Even before our folks died. I’ve always been the serious, studious one and she’s always been the fun-loving risk taker. We complement each other.

  “I think I could be one of his dancers,” said Kayley. She had her feet up on the dash and was touching up her toenails. “Or at least a back-up dancer. But I think I need to go more...dark.”

  “You are not getting anything pierced,” I said automatically.

  “Maybe an eyebrow.”

  “No!”

  “Nose?”

  “No! You’re perfect the way you are.”

  She crossed her arms and mock-scowled at me. But she was perfect. Smarter than me and more daring, too—not that that’s difficult. And bouncing with energy.

  Well...until recently.

  A month ago, I’d started to have to tumble her out of bed just to wake her up. At first, I’d figured it was just teenage moodiness, but then the school started to complain about her falling asleep during lessons. Sometimes, like now, she seemed to be her old, energetic self, but sometimes she just seemed to slump. And the bruises. She would say they were from hockey at school, but lately it looked like she’d fallen down the stairs. When she’d started losing weight, I took her to the physician. Hormones, he’d said. Probably a thyroid issue. And he’d made us this appointment to have some tests run.

  “Will it hurt?” asked Kayley.

  “Nope,” I told her confidently. My stomach tightened at the thought of anyone stabbing her with a needle, but I didn’t want her to get scared.

  “Liar,” she said.

  Dammit. She always could see straight through me. How do other moms do it? Maybe it’s because we were sisters for so long before I moved into the mom role—we’re too connected for me to lie convincingly.

  ***

  At the hospital, I filled out about a thousand forms and Kayley chattered away happily to the male nurse taking blood from her arm. At first, I thought she was doing it to distract herself. It was only when she mentioned for the third time that I was single that I realized she was trying to match make us.

  “Stop that!” I muttered when he turned away.

  “He’s cute!” she whispered back. “And he’s totally into you!”

  “Kayley!” He was cute, in a way. He had floppy blond hair and a nice smile—handsome in a sweet, unthreatening way. I could see why Kayley liked him. But he wasn’t like—

  My face went hot. Had I really just nearly thought he’s not like Sean O’Harra?

  “You need to get laid,” Kayley told me innocently…

  ...and just loud enough for the nurse to hear. He was grinning when he turned back to us. “All done,” he said, sticking a pad to the inside of Kayley’s elbow. “Keep pressure on that.”

  “Thank you!” said Kayley, batting her eyelashes. “You’re so nice. Isn’t he nice, Louise?”

  I towed her away, muttering my thanks to him. “You are in big trouble…”—how would mom have done it?—“young lady,” I told her unconvincingly.

  “He’s checking out your ass,” Kayley whispered, glancing behind us.

  I sighed but I couldn’t help smirking just a little and I squeezed her hand as I towed her along. She drove me nuts, sometimes, but I don’t know what I’d do without her.

  ***

  By the time we’d gotten out of the hospital and fought our way through traffic, school was over. Kayley asked if we could order pizza and I hated that even that simple request meant checking my account to see if we could afford it. She deserved so much more—back in Vermont, we’d been comfortably off. And when dad had taken the job in LA we were doing even better. But my job at the garden store paid a small fraction of what our mom and dad had earned and dropping out of college to look after Kayley meant I couldn’t get anything better: I’d been a year from graduation but three quarters of a degree is worth precisely zero.

  We couldn’t afford the pizza but I agreed to it anyway—I’d find a way to make it work and Kayley had been through enough, these past few years. I wanted to give her any little treat I could.

  The hospital called to make a follow-up appointment for the next day. That seemed weirdly fast—her blood tests must barely have been finished—but at least it meant we could get this thing fixed. I called around and reorganized my shifts so that I could take her in the next morning, then told her I was heading up to the roof for a little while.

  The roof is the one part of our apartment block I like. It’s not like there’s anything up there, really: just air conditioning ducts and a view across a sea of concrete. But it’s where I keep my plants. The apartment’s too small to keep anything other than a few houseplants, some herbs in the kitchen and the flowers on the window ledges. I needed space and somewhere I could be alone, even if for just a few minutes.

  Up there, I can breathe. I can feel as if I’m not in a city. For a little while, I can forget about being a mom and bills and the distinct lack of any sort of future and just...grow. Growing things has always come naturally to me, helped by a mom who used to let me help in the garden as soon as I could toddle. It calms me and it’s also the only damn thing I’ve ever been any good at. I love both sides of it: the magical feeling of nurturing something from a seed to a plant and the hard science of it—genetics and fertilizers and crop yields. I’d been most of my way through a botany degree, with plans to do a PhD in intensive growing techniques: I was going to feed the starving in the deserts of Africa, or maybe develop fast-growing crops for NASA to take to Mars.

  Up until a worn tire blew out on an eighteen wheeler. A hundred dollar chunk of rubber that made it slew across three lanes and crush our parents’ car like it was made of tinfoil.

  The sun was just going down, throwing out crazy, elongated shadows across the rooftop. I blinked back tears and focused on the plant I was working on, a Fuchsia that needed pruning. And that’s when I saw it.

  On my left forearm, there was a shadow of a leaf I didn’t recognize. A very distinctive leaf.

  I moved my arm around, watching the shape stroke its way across my skin. I tilted my head, squinted…

  No doubt about it. It was a marijuana leaf. Which made no sense at all because I sure as hell didn’t grow dope.

  I stood up and turned around. The sun was setting behind m
e so now I was squinting into the light. Somewhere in the maze of air conditioning units and TV aerials, there must be a dope plant.

  The smart thing to do would have been to leave well alone. But the lure of something growing drew me in. Maybe it was wild, a seed that had been blown by the wind and taken root in a bit of dirt. I had to find out.

  In the center of the building, there was a raised section accessed by an old, rusting ladder. It took ten minutes of climbing and hunting, all the time trying to shield my eyes from the setting sun, before I found it. It wasn’t wild. Three sickly-looking marijuana plants, each only a foot or so high, were lined up behind an air intake. They were well hidden—only the very top of one was poking out. If the sun hadn’t hit it at just the right angle to cast the shadow, I’d never have known they were there.

  Part of me wanted to break and run. What if someone saw me with them? What if someone thought they were mine? I’d never even seen a marijuana plant in real life, never smoked weed, either—not even in college. My parents had raised me with a serious respect for the law. And these days I was even more paranoid: one misstep and I might lose custody of Kayley.

  But I could see the plants were sick and for me that’s like hearing a sick animal howl. I crouched down and ran my fingers through the leaves. I knew what it was immediately: the pots were too small. They were watered well enough, but that would just make the roots grow faster. Hell, in this heat, their owner must come up here to water them every day—

  I put it together about three seconds too late. His shadow fell across me and his hand grabbed my arm.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” snarled Sean.

  Sean

  For some reason, I didn’t really register that it was her. I mean, of course it was her. Who else in our crappy apartment block has all that long, coppery hair? But I was so mad at her for invading my one private place, I just didn’t think of it.

  Then I spun her around by the arm and I was staring into those same green eyes that had looked up at me in the elevator. Lush. That was the best way to describe them. Like deep green moss by a waterfall. And lush was a good word to describe her body, too. Lush and... bountiful. Natural, somehow, not like one of those Photoshopped blondes who wandered into our neighborhood looking for adventure. She looked like she’d been born in a different time. She looked like—

  This is going to sound stupid. But when I was a kid, back in Ireland, my mom and dad used to take me to these stately homes: big country houses that the rich people used to charge us to mooch around on a Sunday afternoon. In the gardens, there always used to be these statues of women: pale stone, almost white, with green ivy growing up them. Sometimes the women were nude and sometimes they had a sheet or a toga or something wrapped around them, but they were always busty and they had softly curving hips and asses. Sexy as hell...yet, somehow, they always looked innocent.

  That’s how Louise looked: like some goddess of nature, a statue come to life. Gorgeous but innocent, completely unaware of the effect she had on me. I wanted her, even more than I had done in the elevator.

  Which meant I had to scare her off.

  Fortunately, I’m very good at scaring people.

  I tightened my grip on her arm. God, her skin was so soft. And so pale, almost white next to my own big, tanned fingers. And she was just a little thing, the top of her head only just brushing my chin. She still hadn’t spoken. “Well?” I demanded.

  “Sorry!” she squeaked. “I won’t tell anyone!” She said sorry a lot. The sort of person who’d get stuck holding the door while other people went through, too shy to step forward herself. The setting sun was lighting up her copper hair in glorious reds and yellow, turning it to fire. She was beautiful—why the fuck was she shy?

  “What are you doing up here?” I grunted.

  She pointed across the roof. “My plants. I grow stuff up here.”

  Now it made sense. I knew someone must be growing those plants, but I’d presumed it was some old lady—gardening’s a retirement thing, in my mind That’s why I’d hidden the weed where you had to climb up to get to it. “Which ones are yours?” I asked.

  She blinked at me. “All of them.”

  All those? There was a small forest of greenery there, plants I didn’t even know the names of. If it was all hers, that meant we were probably the only two people who came up here—good news for me. My weed was safe, as long as she didn’t blab. It wasn’t the law I was worried about—I only had three plants and that’s legal, these days. It was the fact they’d get stolen, if anyone knew about them.

  I realized I was still holding her arm. I let it go and she slowly dropped it to her side, crossing it protectively over her chest. God, she was terrified—terrified of me. My stomach lurched at the thought.

  Wasn’t that what you wanted? To scare her away?

  Yes. Damn right I did. But my eyes were drawn to her lips—so full, so soft, and the lines of her cheek and neck were so delicate. She really was like some statue carved hundreds of years before—classically beautiful. And from what I knew of her, she’d kept herself clean of all the crime around here. She really was innocent.

  I wavered for a second. But she wasn’t like one of the women I took home from a bar. She was so much better than that. I wasn’t going to taint her, however much I wanted to. I could control myself.

  Then a warm breeze blew across us and suddenly the scent of her was in my nose—flowers and warm spices and nature, a smell totally unfamiliar in the middle of the city. She was staring up at me with those huge green eyes and breathing just a little too fast with fear, those full breasts lifting and straining at the tight fabric of her t-shirt. I felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to just slide my hand across her cheek and kiss the fuck out of her, tell her it was all okay, that she didn’t have to be scared of me. I wanted that to be true. And then I wanted to peel those tight jeans off of her, get my knee between those milky thighs and plunge my fingers into her, jerk her t-shirt up to her neck and go to work on those breasts with my lips—

  “Just stay away,” I grated. “Stay away from my stuff.” And I jerked my head for her to leave.

  Her throat worked as she swallowed. She nodded silently and hurried away—I watched her ass sway with every step, a perfect heart shape that made my palms ache with the need to get hold of it. I dug my nails into my palms.

  Then she was climbing down the ladder, breasts bobbing and swaying, and running across the roof to the door that leads to the stairs. She put her hand on the handle and I knew that this was it—once she’d gone, I’d probably never see her again.

  And then she did the one thing she shouldn’t have done.

  She turned around.

  Louise

  What are you doing? Louise, what the hell are you doing? But I couldn’t seem to stop myself. My body was twisting, my eyes searching for him. I found him still standing on the raised section of roof, silhouetted by the sunset. “Your plants are dying,” I blurted.

  He just stood there. The sun behind him meant I couldn’t see his expression. “They’ve grown too big for the pots, so the roots are being strangled. You need bigger pots, like three times as big.” I nodded towards the stack of pots by my plants. “I have some spares. You’re welcome to them.”

  He just stood there. I still couldn’t see his expression but I swore he was staring at me. With hate? Anger? I was painfully aware that he could jump down the ladder and be on me before I could get down the stairs. He could grab me....

  Grab me...and do what? I could feel my heart hammering in my chest but there was something else, too, a giddy, fluttery feeling that left me light-headed.

  He took a step towards me. Just a single step. And suddenly I was bolting down steps two at a time, and I didn’t stop until I’d reached the tenth floor and was safely back in my apartment.

  ***

  “Dirty Dancing?” asked Kayley. “I’m fourteen, not eight.”

  “You need to watch more wholesome movies,” I told her. �
��Be glad that there’s kissing.”

  Kayley crossed her arms grumpily, but settled down to watch. Movie nights were one of our favorite traditions, even if it did mean a few compromises. I hadn’t been kidding about the wholesome thing, though. It felt like she was growing up too fast. Fifteen would be bad. Sixteen, seventeen—urgh. I remembered what a pain I was when I was that age and Kayley was way more of a party animal than I ever was.

  Kayley was our parents’ “miracle child.” Complications after me meant my mom thought she couldn’t have any more children. Eight years later, out of the blue, Kayley comes along. The fact I was so much older meant that I was sort of a mom to her even before the accident.

  Don’t think about that.

  I tried to bury myself in the movie and that kept the memories at bay until I turned in. But alone in my bedroom, with Kayley’s soft snores coming through the wall, I lay awake and worried. We were close to broke. Kayley’s basic medical insurance would cover the blood tests but if it was some hormone thing that needed regular treatments we were going to start running up some big bills.

  I lay there for a full hour, staring into the darkness with my brain working overtime. I needed to sleep. We had the follow-up appointment at the hospital and I had work in the afternoon. Think of something pleasant.

  Sean’s face swum into my mind.

  No! Not him! Sean was everything dark and forbidden. Dangerous, destructive, illegal…

  ...and hot as all hell.

  What if he’s out there right now? What if he was out in the hallway, standing in front of our front door?

  Of course he’s not. He’s out at some bar with a blonde in his lap.

  But what if he was? What if he had been looking at me in the elevator, and again on the rooftop? Being the object of his attention would scare the hell out of anyone...everyone knew that Sean O’Harra didn’t stop until he got what he wanted. But what if he wasn’t looking to beat someone up or wreck a business?