Mom Handed Us One Lease, So I Handed My Stepbrother My Bed novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Window Unit
Maricela walks into her mother's old apartment and finds her stepbrother putting out a burning air conditioner, holds his burned arm under the cold tap, and on the back stairs in the dark kisses him.
My stepbrother was standing in my kitchen with a fire extinguisher when I opened the door.
He had no shirt on, and the air conditioner in the window behind him was on fire.
"Get back," he said.
I set both duffels down in the hall and did not get back.
I work nights in an ICU, and I have never once walked away from a fire.
He pulled the pin and put the unit out in three long bursts of white.
Foam slid off the sill and onto my mother's old linoleum.
Smoke leaned out the window into ninety-four degrees of October.
"It sparked when I switched it on," Jakob said.
He reached behind the casing to yank the plug, and his forearm touched the hot metal.
He hissed through his teeth and did not make another sound.
I crossed the kitchen and took his wrist.
My hand could not close around it.
A white blister was already rising on the inside of his forearm, as long as my finger.
"Sink," I said.
"It's fine."
"It's a burn, and I'm a nurse. Sink."
He looked down at me from a long way up.
I am five feet even, and the top of my head reaches the middle of his chest.
He went to the sink.
I turned on the cold tap and held his arm under it with both hands.
Cool running water for ten minutes is the rule.
I had never held a patient's arm for ten minutes with my whole body paying attention.
He smelled like cedar sawdust and smoke.
A scar ran through his left eyebrow, and under it his eyes were a pale, steady blue.
Sweat ran down his ribs and into the waistband of his jeans, and I watched it go.
"You're staring at my arm," he said.
"I'm checking the blister."
"It's on my arm," he said.
"Then I'm checking your arm."
I kept my hands where they were, and he kept his arm where it was, and the water ran.
I had met him exactly twice.
The first time was a rehearsal dinner in a Boerne steakhouse, where he said only a few words to me.
The second was my mother's wedding in April, where he danced one polka with my grandmother and I watched him do it.
His father had stood up at that wedding with a glass in his hand.
"I never had a daughter," Erwin had said, with tears running into his mustache. "I mean to fix that before the year is out."
Everyone had cried.
I had clapped and felt like a guest.
My mother moved to Boerne in May and handed me the lease to this apartment.
In September, Erwin called to ask if his son could take the second bedroom while he started a shop in town.
My mother said yes before I could open my mouth.
She was happy, and I was not going to be the one who wasn't.
I had not told her the other thing.
Eight days ago, I answered an email from a children's hospital in Denver with one word, which was yes.
The contract was due Friday.
The start date was January fourth, thirteen weeks from tonight.
I had told no one, not my mother and not my charge nurse.
On the stairs coming up with two duffels, I had made a decision.
I had spent twenty-five years being a good daughter in someone else's house.
I was not going to spend thirteen weeks being a good guest in this one.
The ten minutes ended.
I shut off the tap and wrapped his arm in a wet dish towel.
"Keep that on," I said. "I'll get the burn cream from my bag."
"Thank you, Saldana."
It was the first time he'd said my name.
The apartment was ninety-some degrees and smelled like burnt dust and foam.
The window unit was dead, and the fans only pushed the heat around.
"Back stairs," Jakob said. "There's a breeze if there's any."
We took the burn cream out the kitchen door onto the landing.
It was dark by then.
A string of porch lights hung in the alley, and the pecan tree over the fence rustled when nothing else did.
He sat on the top step, and I sat on the one below, with his arm across my lap.
His knees were on either side of my shoulders.
I smoothed the cream down the blister, and he did not look at my chest, and I noticed that he didn't.
"Can I tell you something?" he said.
"Go ahead."
"My dad said to be good to you." He watched my fingers on his arm. "He said it three times."
"Your dad tells everybody to be good to everybody."
"He's usually right."
I wrapped a clean gauze around the blister and tied it off.
His arm was warm, heavy and still under my hand.
Thirteen weeks is not long.
I knew exactly what I wanted from them.
For the first time in my life, I did not plan to wait for anyone to hand it to me.
"Then be good to me," I said.
I stood up on the lower step, where for once my mouth was level with his.
I put my hand flat on his bare chest, felt his heart going hard under it, and kissed my stepbrother.
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