15. Zoe

15

ZOE

"AJ, I want your homework done before you work on the scene!" I called upstairs and waited, but there was no response. "AJ!"

"Okay!" he shouted back. "I know!"

I looked down at Daisy, whose tail was wagging happily, thudding against the tile entryway floor at the bottom of the stairs. "Seriously, if this is his attitude now, what are we in for during his teenage years?"

Her big brown eyes stared up at me as her tongue hung out of her mouth. She wasn't worried about his teenage years. She lived in the moment. That was something I needed to get better at.

"You're right."

I patted her head and turned to go back to the kitchen and tripped over cleats. "AJ! Put your cleats away!"

I bent down to pick them up and took them into the mudroom. While I was there, I pulled out a load of clothes from the dryer and put towels from the washing machine into it. With a laundry basket filled to the brim with T-shirts, sweats, and socks, I made my way to the kitchen table and dumped it out. Daisy flopped down at my feet with a heavy sigh.

Tonight was the night Miles would be working on AJ's scene with him. They were going to rehearse it, film it, and upload it to the casting director. I was nervous for him, but I knew that it was wrong of me to hold him back from trying just because of my fear. That wasn't the right emotion to base my decisions on

I caught my reflection in the sliding glass door and wondered if I'd made the right decision on my outfit. I'd changed six times today and finally ended up with a V-neck green shirt that I always got compliments on because it was the same color as my eyes, and my good-butt jeans. They were the jeans that made my butt look really good. It was my day off, so I'd taken the time to blow out my hair and put a little makeup on, something I rarely ever did. I told myself it was self-care. It had nothing to do with Miles Ford coming over. That was a lie. It had everything to do with Miles coming over. He was also the reason I had butterflies that were throwing a rave in my stomach.

I'd barely gotten through my second stack of T-shirts when there was a knock at the door. Daisy scrambled up to her feet and began barking as I pressed my hand to my stomach and took a deep breath. All day, I'd had a running clock in my head of the minutes until he was showing up. If it was Miles, he was early. Fifteen minutes early.

My legs were jelly as I walked to the door and opened it. When I did, I found Miles looking like a Greek god. He wore a gray shirt and blue jeans. Nothing special on anyone else, but on him, it was Sexiest Man Alive magazine cover material. It was truly unfair that one man could be that perfect. His square jawline peppered in stubble, full lips, dreamy whisky-colored eyes, long lashes that any woman would kill for but somehow didn't make him look feminine at all, and thick brown hair that made my fingers itch to run through it. And that was only above the neck. Below it was where the real fun began.

The contours of his broad shoulders and planes of his muscular chest were visible beneath the cotton of his shirt, which was incredible considering it wasn't tight on him. It was just the way it lay on his chiseled-by-the-gods body.

"Hi." The single word came out like a whisper as I reminded myself to breathe. I wasn't sure where all of the oxygen had gone. Miles Ford had the ability to knock the wind out of people just by standing in front of them.

"Hi." He grinned sheepishly. "Sorry, I'm a little early."

"That's okay." I stepped to the side. "Come in."

He walked past me, and the scent of sandalwood and musk drifted through the air. I found myself leaning into it as I closed my eyes. When I realized what I was doing, I took a step back and closed the door.

It was the same scent that was on the hoodie he'd given me. The one that I'd slept in every single night. The one I hadn't washed even though I knew he was coming over tonight and should have given it back to him.

"Hey, pretty girl." Miles bent down to pet a very excited Daisy behind her ears. "Hey, Daisy."

"Um, let me get AJ."

I turned and walked to the bottom of the steps. "AJ! Miles is here!"

"Um, you have…" Miles rose to a standing position.

I asked, turning my head. "What?"

He was pointing around my waist. "On your back, you have a…"

I looked over my shoulder and didn't see anything. "What? I don't see…can you get it?"

He stepped forward, and his arm snaked around me. His body was only an inch away from me, and my hands lifted up out of instinct, landing on his firm chest like a cat clinging to a screen door. We both froze, and my eyes flew up to his. I felt his hand rub against my backside. I sucked in a startled gasp when out of the corner of my eye, I saw that in his hand was a dryer sheet.

Right. I had a dryer sheet on my butt. That's what he was doing.

Neither of us moved. I told myself to move. I said, Self, step away from the sexy man . Stop groping his very hard, very muscular chest.

But I did not listen to myself.

We both stared at one another. It might have just been in my imagination, but I was pretty sure we were both breathing a little harder than we had been a moment before. Again, it might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn his head was lowering down to mine when I heard the sound of elephants stampeding down the stairs, and we both took a step away from each other.

I was dazed and more than a little confused as AJ rushed past me.

"Hey! I have all my lines memorized!" AJ announced excitedly.

"Great!" Miles replied enthusiastically.

Trying to pull myself together and act normal, I asked, "Um, can I get you guys anything? Water? Soda?"

A grin lifted on Miles' perfect lips. "I'm good."

"We're fine, Mom," AJ said in a tone that communicated he clearly wanted me to leave them alone.

"Okay, well, I'll just be in the kitchen if you need anything."

As I walked away, I tried not to think about how good it felt to be pressed up against Miles's body. How right it felt to be in his arms. My body was lit up like the Christmas tree in Times Square, and there was nothing I could do about it.

"Oh, I forgot my pot for the honey. Mom said I could use it for the audition." I heard AJ running back up the stairs as I turned to close the pocket door between the front room and the kitchen.

When I did, I saw Miles' eyes flick up to my face. He'd been watching me walk away. Not just watching my back either. He'd been watching my butt. The jeans worked.

As I slid the door in place, I couldn't help but smile. I shouldn't be happy about that. I was too old to feel giddy over the fact that I'd caught someone checking me out, but the truth was that's exactly what I was.

Even though I knew AJ would hate me for it, I listened to them while I was folding my clothes. I could put my earphones in to give them privacy, but the truth was, I wanted to hear how it was going. I was worried for AJ. He got frustrated easily when it came to reading. Or math. Or pretty much anything that wasn't sports or video games.

"Do you want to talk about the scene or run through it a few times?" Miles asked.

"We can run through it," AJ said. "I've been practicing with Kendall at school."

"Okay, good. Whenever you want to start."

"I saw the book…I mean…is that…I mean…" AJ stumbled over his words.

I could hear AJ's tone change. He was getting frustrated. My heart sank. Part of the reason I didn't want him to do this was because I knew that there might be long chunks of dialogue. He was barely getting by with his schoolwork as it was, and that was with a tutor and extra time doing his tests. I didn't want anything to knock him down again. He'd already felt like he was different, and he'd even told me several times he thought he was stupid.

"No big deal. Let's try again," Miles encouraged.

"When the book I saw…wait…I meant…" AJ sighed heavily. "I can do it. I don't know why the words in my head aren't coming out right."

I laid the shirt I'd been folding down. If this continued, I would have to shut it down. I was not going to let this set him back even further.

"Okay, so let's forget about running the scene for a minute," Miles said.

"No, I can do it," AJ argued. "I just, I know what it says, I just get…"

"I know, man; believe me, I know you can. Listen, I used to get so frustrated with myself because I thought my brain was messing me up, but then I realized that it wasn't. It was actually helping me."

"It was helping you?" AJ repeated.

"Yeah, it was. I didn't know it at the time, but it was. When I got diagnosed with dyslexia, I was twelve, and I had only done commercials and a few sitcoms before that where my dialog was short lines, so it wasn't so bad. But then I got cast in a role in a small independent film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, and not only did I have to learn a ton of lines, but they were in what felt like a completely different language. I mean, technically it was English, but Shakespeare was not the way I was used to hearing people talk. My manager had me go and see an acting coach, Jay Rudin, who specialized in working with neurodivergent performers, and he changed my life."

"He did?"

I could hear the hope and vulnerability in AJ's voice, and it broke my heart wide open. I hated seeing AJ struggle. Even though I knew I couldn't fight all his battles for him, I wished I could. I wanted to. It killed me that I couldn't.

"Yep," Miles continued. "Jay didn't sugarcoat anything with me. He told me the truth. He said that with dyslexia, I was very likely to have short-term memory loss, difficulty reading out loud, that it might be hard for me to learn another language, that I might get overwhelmed or frustrated easily, that my words could get scrambled from when they left my head to when they came out of my mouth, and that all those things could cause me anxiety and maybe give me low self-esteem. And they might even make me get misdiagnosed with ADHD."

I took in a shaky breath. Most of those things were issues that AJ had experienced. He'd never attempted to learn any other language, but if I had to guess, I would assume that he would struggle. And he'd been tested for ADHD twice.

"And that changed your life?" AJ stated flatly, not sounding too impressed.

Miles chuckled. "Well, no, that made me feel like Jay understood me and really saw me for who I was. I was so sick of people telling me that I was smart and just not paying attention or living up to my potential."

I exhaled a breath that had been building up in me for years. Several teachers had said the same thing about AJ. It was so frustrating to him and me.

"What changed my life was that Jay told me then thing that caused my brain to have those challenges made my brain have strengths in other ways."

"What strengths?"

I could hear the hope in AJ's voice. His interest was clearly piqued.

"People with dyslexia also have really vivid imaginations, and they are visual thinkers."

Check and check. AJ was always daydreaming. His teachers constantly said he lived in a world in his head.

"They are resilient," Miles continued.

Check. No matter what knocked AJ down, he got up and kept going.

"They can identify patterns and similarities in groups of things. They can solve complicated problems quickly. They are out-of-the-box thinkers and will always come up with an abstract solution. And they are extremely intuitive and can make very strong connections with people."

As Miles spoke, I realized not only was he describing AJ, he was also describing Austin. And I wondered if he was also dyslexic, and he just hadn't been diagnosed.

Austin never did well in school. He struggled with standardized tests, but was always good when we did our homework together and I read the problems out loud to him. And I mean, come on, what teenage boy decides to get bees to make a girl honey over the summer, one they'd never even spoken to before?

"My dyslexia is what makes me good at my job."

"It is?" AJ asked.

"Well, I mean that depends on if you think I'm good at my job." Miles chuckled.

AJ laughed.

"I think that you can use your dyslexia as a tool. So, when you get a scene like this one, really picture it. You're not in this living room. You are in the library or the hallway, or wherever the scene takes place. And you're not talking to the reader, who is me, or if you decide to be an actor, it might be a casting director; you are talking to the other character in the scene. So, close your eyes and picture where you are."

I didn't hear anything for about thirty seconds.

"Do you see where you are?" Miles asked.

"Yes," AJ responded.

"Okay, think about what you want from the scene. Do you know what you want?"

"I want her to like me."

"Okay, great. So that is what you want. It doesn't matter what the words are. That's your goal. Okay, let's try it again."

I lowered down in the chair and listened as they ran through all three scenes that they were going to be filming for the audition. It was strange to hear AJ saying things his dad had said to me. But it was also incredible to hear how natural he was at saying them. He didn't sound like Austin had. He was making it his own. It was night and day from what he'd sounded like before.

Miles had given AJ a great gift tonight. Whether he got the part or not, he'd shown AJ a different side to his dyslexia and educated me on how my son's brain worked. I didn't know how I'd ever repay him for that. I mean, I had a few ways I'd like to, but they were not appropriate at all. Nope. Not at all. But that didn't stop me from thinking about them. And dreaming about them. And thinking about them again.