Bones by the Wood (29 page)

“Is it safe for us to go home today?”

It had been cramped having everyone in the clubhouse, and sharing a bed with Josh had not been an ideal situation, but Dizzy felt a little stab at the thought of either of them leaving.  He liked having them close by, liked being able to look up and see them whenever he was thinking about them.

But he couldn’t keep them with him like pets.  “Yeah, should be.”  He had a thought.  “May be better to keep Josh out of school today, though.  Just to keep an eye on him for a little longer.”  Dizzy was pretty certain that they’d killed all the Los Perdidos of note, objective achieved, but just in case there were any lurking that hadn’t got the memo it wouldn’t do any harm to give Eduardo a little extra time to finish his cleaning up.

Thea finished tying her shoe and rolled her shoulders.  She went over to her ancient brick of a mobile phone that was charging on the desk. She checked the time on it, then made the call, lying smoothly to the Administrator about an imaginary case of food poisoning that hadn’t quite cleared.

When she ended the call, she turned back to him.  “I’ve got a shift tonight.  M’I okay to keep that?”

“Yeah.”  He could see the tension in her forehead.  Her work was a lot more complicated to interrupt than Josh’s day at school; there was a much greater ripple effect.  Besides, he could control that scenario a little better.

She made another phone call, confirming her intention to work her shift.   The crease between her brows got a little deeper while she was talking to whoever had answered the phone.  Dizzy wondered whether she was taking shit for having to drop her shifts over the weekend.  He made a metal note to look into the issue.

She came over to kiss him before she left the room.  From the feel of it, she’d intended to keep it quick and chaste.  Fuck that.  He wrapped her up and took her mouth the way he wanted to, the way he wanted to kiss another, more intimate, part of her anatomy.  She was flushed and breathing heavily by the time he let her go.  She staggered back a step, almost skipping out of his reach, grinning like the cat that got the cream.  He damn well intended to get hold of her and finish what he wanted to start, but she skipped right out of the fucking room.

Dizzy dressed quickly.  He was just going to ignore his begging cock until he could get hold of Thea, which meant he needed to distract himself, thoroughly and soon.  He slipped his kutte on, and before he left the room he jammed his Stetson on.  There was something about the weight of it, the firmness of the band around his head, that was comforting.  He wasn’t about to mention that to anyone, though.  Ferret was enough of a nerd to start calling him Linus or some shit like that.

In the main room, it seemed like most of everyone was up and moving around, even Reba, although she looked a little glassy; that was another item for his list.  It was obvious that she was on some sort of junk, and theirs was too dangerous an operation for a junkie to be lying around.  The whole place was beginning to smell a little funky after being so closely packed with bodies for a few days.  Along with Fitz, who shared his disgust at the smell, Dizzy went around the room, opening any window that could be opened and throwing it wide.  The crisp morning air immediately began to clear some of the staleness.

Having opened the door so wide that it was almost touching the stucco wall, Dizzy looked around the bustling interior.  Breakfast was in full flow.  There was eating and talking and laughing and generally an air of happy, semi-organized chaos.  Josh was sitting with Scooby and Shaggy.  It looked odd, the two biggest people in the room sitting either side of the smallest, but Josh certainly seemed to have charmed both of them.  Dizzy wouldn’t be surprised if Shaggy suggested Josh as the first ten-year-old to wear a Prospect patch.

His stomach rumbled, conspiring with his nose to remind him that he hadn’t eaten and that delicious eatables were being cooked.  He found Thea in the kitchen, helping to cook as much as she was helping to direct operations.  He accepted a plate of food, but not before pinching her ass and making her jump.  He was feeling playful, and only a little concerned that he was in danger of making a fool of himself over this woman.

Now that the excitement was pretty much over, he needed to get his head together with his brothers.  They had business to attend to.  There was run scheduled for the coming weekend, and they had a garage full of vehicles that needed fixing.  All the same, when breakfast was over and people began to leave as word got around that it was safe to do so, Dizzy felt a little melancholy that the collective was breaking up, even if it was only temporary until the Friday night party.

Thea had gone back to his room to pack her and Josh’s stuff together, and Dizzy was trying not to go and interrupt her, knowing full well that he’d delay the day by at least an hour if he did.  He was lazing on one of the sofas, trying to enjoy the quiet for what it was, when Josh sat down next to him.  He’d lost track of the young boy, so he was surprised, but not visibly so.  He was getting used to him being around.  Having had a bit of a shaky start when he’d first walked into the clubhouse on Friday evening, Josh had seemed to make himself comfortable, so Dizzy was concerned that the boy seemed less so now.  He seemed downright edgy.

“Wassup, li’l bro?”  It felt wrong to call him ‘bud’, that was Thea’s name for her boy, but he found himself using the moniker that Scooby and Shaggy had adopted for the boy.

“You and my mama, you’re, like...together now... or, whatever?”

Dizzy sat forward.  “Yeah.  But I don’t want that to cause a problem for you.  If you’re not happy ‘bout that, I’d like for you to tell me.”

“No.  It’s okay.  I guess.  Well, it’s kinda gross and weird that she’s got a boyfriend.  She’s never had one before.  But that’s not it.”

Dizzy wondered about that fact, but didn’t ask for more details, because Josh wasn’t done yet.  He was relieved, though, very relieved, that Josh was okay with him being around Thea.

“It’s just, I need, like, help with somethin’.  And I guess if you’re my mama’s boyfriend, that you’re the right person to help me.”

Dizzy felt a cold knot in his throat.  He’d known that getting involved with someone with a child would bring some particular complications, but he hadn’t intended on trying to parent Josh, certainly not without Thea’s permission.  He was more than a little concerned about how serious something might be that Josh would come and speak to him about it, especially since his relationship with the boy’s mother was still effectively only hours old.  But he swallowed all his misgivings as best he could.  Thea and Josh were a package deal; he had to deal with that or face the consequences.

“I’ll try.  What do you need help with?”

“It’s her birthday next weekend.  We never do much for it.  But, if you’re, like, her boyfriend, then you should know about it, right?  And I kinda feel like, with this weekend being...I don’t know.  Like maybe I, we, should do somethin’ for it, but I don’t know what.”

Oh, well that wasn’t the trauma he’d been expecting.  He had no idea how he was going to help Josh, but he was touched that the boy had asked for his involvement, and encouraged that it was a positive sign that whatever it was they were starting could work.

“Okay, I’ll help you with that.  I’m not sure what’d be good, but I’ll think about it.”

“Good.  Thanks.  She’s thirty.  That’s, like, a big thing, isn’t it?”

Dizzy was rendered momentarily speechless.  He knew how old Thea was, but having her ten-year-old son, who wasn’t even as old as the age difference between the two of them, spell it out to him, that threw him for a loop for a moment.

“Yeah, but don’t worry, li’l bro.  We’ll come up with somethin’ good.”

“Good.  That’s great.  Thank you.”

Josh’s attention was diverted when Thea reappeared.  She spotted him and Josh.  He saw surprise cross her face, before it relaxed almost immediately into a pleased smile.

He followed them back to their apartment.  Mostly to check that her car made it, and partly out of a reluctance to let them go, rather than out of any real fear for their safety.  He would have suggested that she bring the rattling shell into the garage, but he feared that it was beyond the point of saving.  Another project was added to his mental ‘To Do’ list.

When Dizzy got back to the clubhouse, his brothers were waiting.  None of the women were in sight, and Dizzy supposed that they’d either all left or made themselves scarce.  Even with the men dotted around the room, chatting quietly, it felt empty and silent.  Dizzy went to the bar and asked Nut for a shot of Jack.  He needed something to take the maudlin edge off his thoughts.  He downed the shot, relishing the quick burn in his throat, and then asked for a coffee.  Once Nut had poured it, he signaled to the others that it was time to meet.  They’d discuss business, then he’d go and take his frustrations and disquiet out on the projects in the garage that had mostly been ignored all weekend.  At least the broken vehicles would keep him occupied for a while.

Was it really only Monday?  Was it really only seven days since she’d watched Dizzy beat the addict that had tried to rob the store?  So much had happened since then that Thea felt physically jarred.  Her world had been turned upside down and righted again, but she thought maybe she was still on the other side of the looking glass, staring at the shadows of the life she’d been living before.  Things were different now.

Dizzy had followed them back to their apartment building, made sure they got inside okay, left her with a kiss and ridden off. Thea wasn’t sure what that meant, if she should be scared still.  But he’d said they would be safe and she believed him, and besides, she wasn’t quite ready to let him go yet.  Seeing him ride off had added to the feeling of ending, of the return to normality.  Their apartment had seemed small and cramped and very, very quiet.  It was a little musty, so Thea had opened the windows and stripped the beds down.  There were some funky things living in the refrigerator that had once been edible, but that were now about ready to walk out on their own legs.  She’d thrown those into the trash with a grimace.

She’d taken Josh to the laundromat, and then taken him to the store to restock.  Val had been on shift, which was odd. She didn’t usually work the earliest one, but she’d explained that Thea bailing over the weekend had meant some shuffling around.  Val had hinted that the manager wasn’t too pleased, which Thea was expecting since he’d been downright snippy with her on the phone that morning.  Thea didn’t mention the developments with Dizzy to Val. She wasn’t sure what to introduce him as; boyfriend seemed like the wrong term for a grown man, and it had only been a couple of days really, and how in the hell was she going to explain how all that had come about.  She had no idea, so she kept quiet on the subject. 

She gave Val the same story that she’d given the school about the stomach bug to explain why Josh was with her and not in class.  She had to give Josh a lot of credit, she hadn’t thought to warn him, but he’d rolled with it.  After a quick glance that seemed to be asking what in the hell she was lying for, he got it, and started spinning impressively gross tales of projectile vomit that soon had Val crying for mercy.

Thea got it in her head to blitz the apartment after lunch and enlisted Josh to help her clean.  The fuzzy stuff in the fridge had made her skin creep, and she knew she wouldn’t settle until all the surfaces had been wiped over with disinfectant.  Josh was quiet and not all that chatty while they worked.  Thea figured he was feeling the loss of his new friends and all that activity as much as she was.  He’d been about joined to the hip to Shaggy and Scooby, and now he was back on his own again.

Thea hated asking her boy to lie, since she’d invested a lot of effort in to trying to make sure that he didn’t feel the need to keep things from her, but she knew she had to have a difficult conversation with him before he went back to school.  She decided to broach it while they were washing out the cupboards in the kitchen. 

“Bud, I hate sayin’ this, but you know you can’t mention at school where you were this weekend, right?”  They’d piled the contents of all the cupboards into the living room space so that Josh could clean the under-counter cupboards while Thea stood on a chair to clean the wall units.

“Yeah, I kinda figured that, Mama.  I’m s’posed to have been sick.”

Thea paused in re-soaking her cloth in the bucket of soapy water.  “Yeah, I’m sorry I dropped that on you.  I didn’t think.”