Crazy for You Read online

  “Also I love you,” Max went on. “Although right now I have to wonder why.”

  “I love you, too,” Darla said. “And I’m doing a little wondering myself.” She walked over to the door and opened it. “Get in here before you freeze,” she yelled to Nick who was shooting a basket and knocking icicles off the hoop. “The fight’s over.”

  But it wasn’t, she knew. It wouldn’t be over until she figured what the hell they’d been fighting over.

  She had a real good idea it wasn’t Barbara.

  Quinn started her move on Friday after school by loading a nervous Katie, her grandmother’s silver, and nine garbage bags of clothes into her car and driving to her new house. Edie and Meggy met her there and began to polish floors, moving on to windows while Quinn wiped down shelves, hung up her clothes, and put the silver away.

  “This place really is beautiful, Quinn,” Edie said when they were done. “Lots of lovely quiet.”

  “It’s a risk,” her mother said. “I don’t know what people are going to think, you living alone out here. And your next-door neighbor is Patsy Brady, for heaven’s sake, and you know her reputation.”

  Edie rolled her eyes, and Quinn said, “Mom, stop it. I don’t care what other people think. I can’t live my life for other people, I have to live it for myself.”

  “Oh, well, sure, that sounds good—” Meggy began.

  “It is good.” Quinn stood in the middle of her house, feeling invincible. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been. The risks I’m taking like keeping Katie and buying this house”—and wanting Nick—“are making me feel alive.” She looked around at the now-gleaming floors, at the tall windows with all the light streaming through. “How can you look at this and not think it’s wonderful? Can’t you be glad for me?”

  “I am glad for you,” Meggy said. “It’s just, all these changes—” She picked up her purse and sighed. “Never mind, I’m probably just jealous.”

  “You want a new house?” Quinn said, confused, but Meggy shook her head and went out the door.

  “It’s lovely, Quinn,” Edie said. “Have us all over for dinner when the furniture is in.”

  “Right now that’s the pie safe, the washstand, Mom’s red couch and armchair, and our old twin beds,” Quinn said. “Although I did order this gorgeous bed for me, too. I deserve it.”

  “Yes, you do.” Edie kissed her on the cheek as Meggy honked the horn outside. “Have a good life here, Quinn.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Quinn said, and then left to pick up Darla at the Upper Cut so they could clear out the housewares department at Target together, leaving Katie to explore her new house and yard with her usual suspicion and dread.

  “This is fun,” Darla said two hours later, folding the last of Quinn’s new mint green towels into the old-fashioned wall cupboard built into Quinn’s bathroom. “Maybe I’ll hit the savings account and buy everything new.” She shoved aside a pile of Quinn’s nightgowns to make room for towels and said, “What’s this?”

  She pulled out a wad of white chiffon and shook it free and Quinn made a face. “It’s a nightgown Bill got me. Isn’t it awful? It made me feel like a virgin sacrifice. And then when I put it on, he could see right through it so he hated it.”

  “Right through it?” Darla held it up in front of her and looked at Quinn through the filmy cloth. “Oh. And he hated it?”

  “Bill isn’t into sexy,” Quinn said.

  “Max is,” Darla said. “Or at least he used to be.”

  “Then it’s yours.” Quinn waved her hand. “Use it with my blessing.”

  “There’s a thought.” Darla wadded the gown up again and jammed it into her bag where Katie sniffed it and then sighed because it wasn’t food. Darla moved to the sink and opened the wall cupboard to stack soap and toothpaste into the cabinet. “You bought two toothbrushes?”

  Quinn looked at the ceiling. “I bought a bed, too. You never know when you’re going to have somebody sleep over.”

  Darla shook her head. “If you’re talking about Nick, that’ll be never. He’s allergic to sleepovers. Lisa got so frustrated she showed up on Christmas Eve and told him she was staying so they could wake up on Christmas morning together.”

  Since Lisa was history, there was no reason for Quinn to feel jealous, and there was especially no reason for her to feel jealous since she had no relationship with Nick at all, but she did. Really, she was hopeless. “At least Lisa went after what she wanted.”

  Darla snorted. “Yeah, but she didn’t get it. When they came to dinner, she was fuming. She said when she woke up, Nick was out in the living room asleep in his armchair. And then she was expecting a ring and got a CD set.” Darla closed the cabinet door and stuffed the now-empty Target bag in the trash. “And that was it for Lisa.”

  “Was Nick upset when she left?” Quinn hated how needy she sounded.

  “He was relieved.” Darla’s voice was sympathetic. “He always is. Round about the one-year mark, he gets itchy.”

  “With me, it was at the half-hour mark,” Quinn said.

  “Well, he’ll have to go longer tonight,” Darla said. “He has a lot of furniture to unload.” She checked her watch. “They should be at your mom’s right about now. Let’s go.”

  Quinn thought about seeing Nick again and felt like throwing up. “Oh good.”

  Bill watched Quinn and Darla drive away and scowled at the empty house. It was ugly, dirty and gray and skinny and derelict and isolated, and he hated that she was going to live there—especially live there with that damn dog, especially live there without him.

  He got out and walked around the place, shaking his head at the patchy ground, full of weeds and stones, and when he let himself in the backyard through the alley gate, it was worse. Then the dog burst through a flap in the back door, barking at him hysterically, trying to get him in trouble, and he retreated to the gate before anybody could catch him there and jump to the wrong conclusion. He was just there to protect Quinn, to find out how bad the place was, and it was so bad, he knew he had to get her out of there somehow.

  “What’re you doing?” a woman called, and he jerked around to see a blowzy-looking brunette leaning over the fence.

  “Meter reader,” he called cheerfully, keeping his face averted as he waved and went through the gate. The dog followed him through, still barking.

  If the dog wasn’t around, Quinn wouldn’t need a house.

  He slammed the gate so the dog was outside in the alley—maybe it would get hit, it was dumb enough—and then he got in the car and headed for a pay phone. He’d call the pound and tell them a vicious dog was loose. Quinn couldn’t blame him if the dog got out, that was the dog’s fault. And the pound would call him since he’d paid for the license. “Put it down,” he could say. “I think it’s dangerous.” That was the God’s honest truth, too. It was dangerous.

  As he drove away, he could see the dog in the rearview mirror, sniffing garbage cans, not even trying to run away.

  Dumb mutt. It deserved to die.

  They all unloaded the furniture from Meggy’s and carried it into the house under the appreciative eyes of Patsy Brady, who called out, “Hello, Gorgeous,” from her front porch as Max carried in an armchair.

  “You get all the hot women,” Nick said, and Max said, “I’m going upstairs to put that bed together. You go talk to her.”

  “Nah,” Nick said. “I know when I’m outclassed. Once they see you, I’m history.”

  “This thing is huge,” Max said half an hour later, tightening the last bolt. “She have some plans we don’t know about?”

  “I have no idea,” Nick said, but it was hard to look at the bed, glowing like the floors even in the growing twilight, and not think of Quinn on it, in it, under him. Knock it off, he told himself, and then he thought about her some more.

  “We have a problem,” Darla said behind him, making him jump in guilt. “We seem to have lost that damn dog.”

  “She’s nowhere in the house