Page 109 of Chasing Headlines
“What?” Hilda flipped open her textbook, laying it on top of the coffee table. “I have to study anatomy for my major. It's one hundred por ciento a clinical diagnosis.” Her lips curved into a wicked smile.
“Somehow, I doubt that.” Cathy shook her head and went back to her computers and logic.
I narrowed my eyes and pointed at Hilda. “Bailar el mambo horizontal.”
“Livvie!” Hilda stood up. She grabbed and threw a couch pillow at me.
I laughed harder as she picked it up and threw it again. I couldn't deny it, I pretty well deserved it.
A mostly-comfortable silence hovered in the air. Hilda occasionally snapped a page of her textbook as she read. The whir and clickity clack of Cathy's computers and her typing faded into the background of my mind.
“My mother would struggle with feeling shut in.” His deep voice soothed and ached at the same time. I got this weird feeling at that moment, like Breslin Cooper was more than what could be captured with a camera or words on a page. He was like seven-year-old me, lost and terrified, hiding behind shoes and coats, desperate to keep the nightmares from tearing me apart.
“And then the door opens and he goes right back to being an asshat.”
“Don't you have homework or studying or something besides this grumbling and sighing routine?”
I blinked. Hilda looked up and met my gaze. Warm brown eyes with exotic tints of greenish gold gleamed beside her perfect skin. “I need to write my article, but there's a flea ridden guard dog with a bad attitude in my way.”
“They let the old lady keep a dog?”
“Yeah, his name's Cooper. Antonio knows him as Coop.”
“You mean your baseball crush is now a, ah, a menace.”
“Menace, bane of my existence. Somewhere in there.” And then, for no reason at all, my brain recalled my first conversation with Dotty. “No, and I'm such an idiot.” I groaned and threw myself back into a lying position on the couch. “I even told her he was my baseball crush. Why?”
“You told the lady you're supposed to interview and who lives at the senior center where he works, that you have a thing for Coop?” Cathy looked down at me like I was a two-headed fish in an aquarium and sipped at her Star Struck fuel.
“I think I told her I once had, you know, queasiness, sweating. Hot flashes, maybe. You know, like how you feel when you get food poisoning. And she interpreted that as 'I had a thing'. Past tense.”
Cathy shook her head and disappeared from view.
“Be serious, Livia.” Hilda smacked my arm. It stung.
“Ow?” I rolled my head to the side and made an exaggerated mad face.
“I can't help you if I don't understand. I know you think he was some amazing baseball player.”
I sat up. “He still is. Will be.”
“But since coming here, Antonio said you two are about as incompatible as, I dunno, if oil had something it disliked more than water.”
“I like that he's suddenly 'Antonio', now. Not 'that jerk Jimenez'.”
“Stop deflecting.” Hilda huffed and gave me that frown with her mouth tucked up on one side that was one hundred por ciento serious, and just as completely unamused.
I pointed at her. “I'm not deflecting, you're deflecting. And giving me your 'such-a-mom' face.”
“Livia, sometimes you, ach! Me vuelves loca. Yes, I like him. He just grows on me like the mushrooms, and I can't help it. That grin with that annoying dimple and the way he?—”
“It's been terrible, huh?” I picked at my nail polish. “Being treated like royalty whenever he's around.”
“It can't last. You know that, right?” She leaned back against the couch and stared at the ceiling. “It's an act until I sleep with him, or he gets tired or?—”
I leaned over her until she met my gaze. “Or he's actually serious and will love you until the day we all return to dust. Either by natural causes or zombie apocalypse.”
“Ach, you're the weirdest friend I've ever had.” Her mom face cracked. She rolled her eyes as a smile pulled at her mouth.