Last Year's Mistake - Gina Ciocca Page 0,3

strawberry-blond beard.

David raised his gloved hand. “Hey, Mr. Crawford. I sort of knocked her over with a baseball. Sorry.”

Uncle Tommy waved off the apology as he trotted toward us. “Don’t worry about it. Girls always get flustered around good-looking guys like us.”

I blew an indignant pfff through my lips and shook my head.

“Besides, David’s no fool,” Uncle Tommy teased as he righted my suitcase and pulled out the handle. “He probably spotted you a mile away and made a beeline.” He winked before adding, “That’s why you’re gonna go back inside and keep your raging teenage hormones away from my beautiful niece. This young lady is spoken for.”

I wanted to die on the spot. My parents must’ve told him about Eric, my friend who’d recently ambush-kissed me in front of the entire cafeteria. My best friend, Maddie, made the mistake of mentioning it in front of Miranda and the news had reached my mother in a nanosecond. Maybe I should’ve told them that I found out later he’d done it on a dare. I’d hardly call that “spoken for.”

I rolled my eyes and gave David an apologetic shake of my head.

“All right, I’ll catch you guys later. Let me know if you need me to work on your yard this weekend, Mr. Crawford.”

“You got it, David. I know where to find you.”

David gave me a hesitant wave. “Nice meeting you, Kelsey.” And thanks to Uncle Tommy, I couldn’t help but notice he was pretty cute. Minus the braces and shaggy hair, of course.

I waved back. “See you later.”

Turned out later came sooner than I expected. When we returned from Thames Street that night, stuffed full of fish-and-chips and all things delicious, I spotted David’s hunched form on the back porch of his grandfather’s house. The voices of two shouting males rang from inside and met my ears the moment I stepped out of the car.

“Maybe I should go over and see if everything’s all right,” Uncle Tommy said. Before he finished his sentence, Miranda ran over to the fence, grabbed the peaks at the top, and strained on her tiptoes to see over them.

“Hey,” she crowed, “there’s someone sitting out there!”

“Shh! Let go before you knock it over!” I pulled her hand from the fence and held it at my side, the same way Mom used to whenever Miranda tried sneaking candy onto the conveyor at the grocery store. Seeing David had looked up, I waved at him. “Hey. Um, is everything all right?”

“Yeah.” He tried to smile, but only half his mouth cooperated. His hands were jammed in his pockets, and the porch swing creaked back and forth under the weight of his slouched body. “I’m waiting for it to quiet down in there. Sorry.”

Miranda hopped on the balls of her feet, trying to get a better look at him. “Come over and play video games with us! We’re having a tournament! You can be on my team, because my mom stinks.”

Collective laughter rang through the darkness. Leave it to my sister to make clueless cute.

“Sounds good.” David stood up, leaving the wicker swing swaying behind him. “Let me, uh, leave them a note.” He grimaced in the direction of the upper floor, where the shouting raged on.

“If you’d grown up and gotten your act together years ago, you and Mom never would have divorced!”

“Still high and mighty, even with the ink wet on your own divorce papers! I don’t need you and your kid telling me how to run my life!”

I shuddered and gave Miranda a gentle push in the direction of Uncle Tommy’s house. “Go inside and help Aunt Tess set up. I’ll wait for him.” Even with her bubble of obliviousness protecting her, I didn’t want her hearing something she shouldn’t.

David reemerged from the house a moment later, jogging up our driveway with his hands bunched into the pockets of his jeans.

“Sorry about that,” he said, nodding toward the other house. “He’s never been this bad before. It’s . . .” He shook his head and frowned. “Out of control.”

“Hey, don’t apologize. He said it himself; you’re not his babysitter.”

“But it’s getting to the point where he needs one. We’re too far away to come running every time he screws up.”

“Where are you from, by the way?” I started toward Uncle Tommy’s back door, David walking at my side.

“Originally Portman Falls, Connecticut,” he said.

“Oh, not far from us. We live in Norwood.”

David stopped in his tracks. “No way. My dad and I are in the middle