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Nervously, I glance around the bedroom. The night breeze that was so enjoyable a few minutes ago now holds an ominous edge.
“Oh god, Mais. Get a hold of yourself. If it was Sean, he wouldn’t be knocking on your fucking door,” I whisper harshly to myself.
As if the universe read my thoughts, Harlan calls through the door. “Maisie? It’s Harlan.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Did we wake him up? Stress pulls my shoulders tight as I step off the bed and try to put Audra back down in her Pack ’n Play. But my daughter starts screaming her head off. If I thought her earlier cries were loud, there had nothing on these.
Scooping her back into my arms, I walk through the apartment until I come to the front door. I could just not answer, but somehow that feels wrong. Especially to someone who’s done nothing to earn my rudeness.
I crack the door open and pitch my voice over the sound of Audra’s wails.
“Yeah?”
Harlan’s standing on the landing at the top of the stairs, his hands in his pockets. He’s still dressed. That means we didn’t wake him, right? Or he fell asleep on the couch until Audra started screeching her head off.
The breeze carries his rugged scent along with the fresh pine.
A look of concern covers his features as he takes in the screaming baby in my arms. “Is she okay? I heard her crying from my room and just wanted to check on you both.”
“She’s teething. So she’s mostly fine. Her mouth just hurts right now.”
“Oh.” I swear I see his face soften in the low light from the fixture hanging beside the door. “Is there anything we can do for her?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Not really. I have teething gel in my camper, but didn’t bring it with me, so I just gave her some Tylenol. Sorry for waking you. I’ll close the bedroom window and let you get some sleep.”
Taking a step back, I’m about to shut the door when Harlan says, “Wait.”
I pause.
“Do you want me to bring some ice over? That should help right?”
My eyes narrow on the man, suspicious of the offer. Just then, Audra lets out a screaming wail sharp enough to pierce my eardrums and I relent. “Yeah. That should help.”
“Okay. Be right back.”
Instead of stepping back and closing the door to wait, I watch Harlan walk down the stairs. His wide shoulders almost too much for the narrow stairs. The way he skips every other step — probably because he’s so tall. He disappears through the sliding doors on the back deck of his house and a breath gusts out of me.
I don’t understand him. He has no reason to be this nice to me. No reason to offer me the apartment because my luck went to shit. No reason to come knocking on the door in the middle of the night, just because he heard my daughter crying. I’ve been pretty defensive since I woke up in the hospital to his questions, but he’s been nothing but kind to me and Audra.
Looking over the frame of his house, I try to imagine what the inside looks like.
There isn’t much room between the attached garage and the house, but I wonder where his room is that he might have heard.
Knowing your luck, his bedroom is right next to yours.
Before I can dig into that distracting thought, he reappears with a plastic bag of ice and quickly climbs the stairs — two at a time — to hand the bag to me.
“You want some company while you sit up with her?” he asks.
A closer glance is all it takes to realize that we didn’t wake him. He’s still in the casual jeans and flannel over white t-shirt that he was wearing most of the day. He’s also more alert than someone who was woken up would be and my shoulders drop a little more at the relief.
He probably heard Audra from the front of the house when he was getting home from his brothers’ poker night. Which makes more sense.
That kindness is what gets me. It hits me right in the loneliest parts of my heart and I can’t stop myself from saying yes.
“Sure,” I say before I let myself think of all the reasons that this is a terrible idea.
Good job, Maisie. You invited god knows who into your place in the middle of the night. Best decision-making skills ever.
