baggage claim. He honestly believed she would be rather large. She’d been a chubby little girl who stuffed food in her mouth all day long, had short curly hair—Rita always seemed to cut Mya’s hair in strange ultra-short styles—and weird glasses. Mya had worn glasses back then and whenever they’d fight, he would call her Four Eyes, of course.
But the girl in the floral dress with the strawberry hair down to her tiny waist, and a face that could bring the dead to life, wasn’t exactly what he was prepared for. Nor was he prepared for her fear of dogs. Not that most grown men hadn’t walked the other way when Voodoo was around, but her fear was borderline hysteria.
He opened the back of his van and tried to secure Voodoo in his cage, while Mya waited with her luggage on the sidewalk.
“This won’t take but a minute,” Eric told her, but the dog was ornery and wanted to give Mya a friendly welcome nudge. Mya stood as far away as she could. “He wants to say hello,” Eric told her.
“Hi,” she said, waving from her safe vantage point.
“I think he wants to smell you before you get in the van.”
Mya’s left eyebrow went up. He suddenly remembered how she could move each eyebrow independently. When they were about five or six, he thought she was an interplanetary alien because of it, but then he was a big fan of Star Wars.
“You can still do that.”
“Do what?”
“That thing you do with your eyebrows.” He tried to move his eyebrows independently, but couldn’t.
“You remember that?”
“Yeah. It’s not like it’s a common thing.”
“What else do you remember?”
“That you liked peas and spinach. What kind of kid likes peas and spinach?”
“You used to snitch butter out of the fridge and chew on your dad’s vitamin E caps and make yummy sounds.”
“I had a thing for oil.”
It started to rain again, and she still wasn’t in the van.
“You have to let him smell your hand or he’s going to be restless the whole way.”
“Aren’t there enough smells in that van already? Why does he need mine?”
“Dogs like to know who’s around them.”
Mya slowly made her way up to the open door with her hand held out, but he could tell that she was ready to pull it back at any moment. He took hold of it, and she moved up closer. He liked the feel of her skin next to his.
Calm down. There’s no hope here. She’s way out of your league.
Voodoo stuck his nose up to their hands and took a couple long sniffs, but to Eric’s surprise, Mya didn’t pull back like he had expected. Instead, they stood there for an awkward moment holding hands…just like they did the day that he left when they were seven.
AFTER THE SMELL INTRODUCTION with Voodoo, a black pit-bull–bulldog mix with a head the size of a beach ball and teeth way too big to think about, and he was safely inside his black metal cage, Mya sprayed almost her entire bottle of Nanette Lepore around the foul-smelling van. Peach and cranberry permeated the air. Then, while Eric loaded her luggage right behind the front seats so Mya could keep track of it, she gingerly hoisted herself up into the passenger’s seat. When everything and everyone was safely tucked inside, the trio was on their way home.
This ought to be good.
“You look so different,” Eric said while he merged into the swarming traffic.
“Growing up will do that to you,” Mya answered, not wanting to actually sit back in the faded gold cloth seat. She had no idea what kind of muck might be attached to it and didn’t want whatever it was stuck to her bare back. She leaned slightly forward and held her obviously chewed seat belt out so it wouldn’t touch her dress.
“No. I mean your hair’s a different color, no glasses and you’re, well, thin.”
Mya turned to face him. “Are you saying I was fat? ’Cause I was never actually fat. I was simply big-boned.”
“And you changed that?”
“I grew out of it.”
“Oh.” He stared at her for a moment, then back at the street, then back at her. “And your nose. I can remember you had a real—”
Okay, so Mya had had a nose alteration when she was nineteen. Nothing major. Just some tapering of the width and a little off the tip. It’s not like she had her whole nose reconstructed or anything drastic. And so what if she did have a nose job. Was that some kind of crime or something?
“Shouldn’t you be concentrating on your driving?” She forgot what she was doing and sat back in the chair, instantly feeling something sticky on her back. She leaned forward again.
Too late.
“Aw, what’s on this seat?” she whined.
“Voodoo drools a little. It’s the bulldog in him.”
“He drools on your seats?”
“Only that one. It’s where he usually sits.”
Okay, I think I’m going to be sick.
She sneezed.
“Sorry, but the heater doesn’t work. I’ve got a sweater in the back somewhere,” Eric offered.
She could only imagine what a stinking, wet, hairy mess his sweater would be. The thought made her shiver out loud. “I don’t really think I need it. Thanks.”
They drove out of the airport in silence, while Voodoo literally snored like a mad bull in his cage. The mere sound of his raspy throat reminded her of those vicious teeth of his.
She sneezed again. Perhaps she was allergic to something inside the van. Oh, hell, she didn’t even want to think about what it could be.
Once they were on the crowded freeway and headed to her mom’s house, she decided the least she could do was make some polite conversation. After all, the man was giving her a ride home. “So, what about this weather?”
He chuckled. “We haven’t seen each other since we were kids and that’s the best you can do? You want to talk about the weather?”
All right, now he made her smile. “Okay. What are you into these days?” She thought she’d use some of her interviewing techniques.
“That’s a start. I’m into a documentary. What about you?”
“I do trend analysis. In more familiar terms, I’m a trend spotter.”
“Oh yeah? I heard about that. Seems like it would be a cool job.”
So, he isn’t so nerdy, after all.
