Forever Promised (36 page)

“How is she?” he asked when Deacon let him up for air.

“Tired,” Deacon said. “Remembering that she’s not invincible, and she’s not fifteen either. She needs to drink milk and take lunch breaks and… you know. All that shit your sister
so
does not do well.”

“We’ll take care of her,” Crick said with some conviction, and Deacon grimaced.

“She needs a girl.”

Crick blinked. “All the gay men in the world and you need a girl?”

“
She
needs a girl. Someone to talk to. Even Drew tends to freak out about the girlie parts, and from what I understand, he
likes
those parts.”

“Amy—”

“Is across the country, starting a new life.”

“I… there’s something going on with Kimmy. I don’t know. Jeff said it’s sort of private.”

“Well, he’s
your
best friend—ask him! Besides, you know he loves—”

They said it in tandem.

“He loves Benny, yeah. Yeah, I’ll ask him. You know, rally the troops. Get her a girl to talk to. Whatever.”

Deacon grinned, and although the worry lines stayed at the corner of his eyes, he wouldn’t be Deacon if they didn’t. Deacon kissed him again and then took a step back and looked up.

“You know, we’ve got some gas heaters. Ask your sister if she wants her knitting brought outside after Parry gets home. It really is a beautiful day.”

“Deacon—” Crick’s misgivings suddenly bubbled up to the forefront.

“Yeah?”

“Aren’t you… I mean, you know. Worried about the baby?”

Deacon stopped, and Crick could have kicked himself. “Well, yeah,” he said softly. “But… at the moment, the baby is a hope. A good one. One with some teeth. But your sister, we love her now.”

Crick nodded. “We do. Here—let me go ask her about knitting on the porch.”

J
EFF
stopped by after work with a stuffed bear, some chocolate, and premium merino yarn in a color that reminded Crick of the November sky.

And Kimmy, looking miserable and sad in the passenger seat.

“Lookie you, Mr. Care Package,” Crick said, helping Jeff unload the back of the car. He’d been doing laundry most of the day. When Benny and Parry had called to him from the porch that Jeff was there, it had been, once again, the call to slack off from what amounted to an extra busy day.

“Yeah, well, Collin’s coming over with dinner and a bunch of frozen dinners for their fridge. They’ll be balls to the walls with broccoli cheese potatoes and beef bourguignon.”

“Fancy!”

“Yeah, that’s Collin. He’s Mr. Culture.”

Crick snickered, like he was supposed to. “So if he’s bringing dinner, what’s in the cooler?” It was one of those soft-back affairs with a strap to go over the shoulder—they usually came in black, but Jeff had found one in nipple-piercing pink. Jeff took it from him and looped it over his head so the strap was across his chest.

“Two kinds of pie,” Jeff said seriously. “And a shit-ton of this premium organic orange juice, with calcium. She’ll love it.” Jeff
loved
sweets—but very often his drug regimen left him sensitive to them. The pie? That was for Benny and Parry, and Benny and Parry only. It was very typically Jeff.

“Well, this is much appreciated—she’s knitting right now. Did you guys bring yours because….” Crick looked at Kimmy, still huddled in the front, and then at Jeff, who was glaring at her.

“Heifer, get out here,” Jeff snapped, and Kimmy crossed her arms and glared back.

“No!”

“Look, we talked about this—”

“I changed my mind.”

“Because
why
?” Jeff had just picked up the teddy bear and his yarn bag, and he flapped both of them in the air because that’s what he would do with his hands anyway. Crick lunged and caught a ball of really sweet silk cashmere in purple and orange before it could hit the dusty gravel of the driveway. Go good hand!

But Kimmy didn’t notice his heroic save—she was still arguing with Jeff. “Because look at her, there with her kid, and I’m like… like….”

“Like the Scarlet fucking Weiner. Get your ass out of that car and go be a friend!”

“She needs better friends!”

“Well, tough, because God cursed her with you!”

And then Jeff turned to Crick and betrayed every confidence Crick had ever given. “Crick, you asshole, tell her about Germany!”

Crick’s mouth fell open. “I’m sorry?”

“Tell her about Germany! And Deacon, the night of the flood! And coming out at a funeral and in the middle of court and… uhm. Yeah.”

Crick floundered and realized maybe this was how people felt about
him
when suddenly his mouth just opened up and vomited out some shit it shouldn’t. “After we eat this pie, I’m never speaking to you again!”

“Oh bullshit. You love me. You forgive me. Get that part over with and
sit in my fucking car and bare your soul!
”

Crick stared at him as Jeff flounced away with a teddy bear in one hand, a knitting bag in the other, a portable ice chest slung over his shoulder, and enough swish in his ass to power the Sunset Strip.

Crick watched Benny wave and smile and welcome Jeff up to the porch. Jeff blew a bubble in Parry Angel’s ear and looked very seriously at her craft project (something that involved a lot of glue and foam pieces) and then presented the teddy bear and yarn before going into the house with the food.

Fuck.

For an asshole, he really
was
a good guy. He wouldn’t ask if there wasn’t a reason.

Crick sighed. The shadows were long and it was getting chillier—the windbreak offered by the Mini Cooper’s interior was welcome.

“So, why am I telling you about one of the shittiest things I’ve ever done?” he asked, sliding in carefully. He was surprised at the legroom, although he shouldn’t have been, because Jeff was over six feet tall as well, but still. The car didn’t look that big on the outside.

And Kimmy usually looked bigger.

It wasn’t that she’d lost weight—although there was some of that—but Crick had never seen her so… diminished. Crick had always thought she was a pretty woman, and even though Crick had seen Shane’s sister during one of the worst days of her life, he’d always gotten the impression of strength and humor.

There were lines in her face, around her mouth, and a sort of miserable defensiveness in her shoulders.

“I have no idea why,” she said now, but when she turned to him, the corners of her mouth were turned up a little. “Who knows why Jeff does anything?”

Crick looked across the yard. Jeff must have cracked a joke on his way back to the porch, because Benny was laughing at something he’d said, and Crick had an answer.

“Because his heart is actually bigger than his mouth.” Oh God. “So, here goes, you ready? It’s short.”

“Hit me.”

“So, I’m in Germany, and I’m halfway through my tour, and I’ve got leave. And Deacon and Benny are here, and Benny just had the baby without me, and things haven’t fallen to shit yet, but Deacon isn’t doing well. Any idiot can see it from six thousand miles away. Anyway, so I end up in Germany on leave, and… and….” He remembered the pounding music, the girl dragging him away from the strip club. Her brother, Stefan, blue eyes, gapped front teeth, who had listened to stories about Deacon for most of the night before he finally just quieted Crick with a kiss.

“It was a night,” he said into the silence of the car. “I confessed to Deacon the next morning. He… he was awesome. I mean, I don’t know how he felt in real time, but… but for me? It was like… it kept me sane, right?”

Kimmy was looking at him with big eyes, and for a minute he couldn’t place her expression. When he was talking about it to Deacon later, because he told Deacon everything, he said she was looking at him a little like Crick looked at Deacon. Like he was a hero.

“I know the feeling,” she said quietly.

“So, that was me in Germany. With Deacon….” Crick cringed. Well, fuck. The whole town knew, right?

“Deacon
cheated
on you?” She sounded horrified, and Crick knew he needed to make sure she understood.

“Not… he wasn’t quite in his right mind, see?” Crick gripped Jeff’s steering wheel and then reconsidered. Was that black stuff leather? Holy cow, did Jeff have a
kid leather
steering wheel cover? Damn, that was nice, wasn’t it?

Kimmy cleared her throat, and he sighed, wishing he could talk about all-leather interiors. God. This had been hard enough when they’d told each
other.
“He hadn’t heard from me in three days—my phone got lost, I hadn’t even texted—and he’d been working. Benny said he’d been awake for pretty much seventy-two hours, loading sandbags near the levee to keep the place from flooding. So he’s coming back from the sandbag place, and the truck stalls in front of a bar. He orders a 7UP, goes to take a leak, and the girl who wanted him all through high school spiked his drink.”

Kimmy groaned, and Crick shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, it’s worse than that—you know he hadn’t eaten, and you know about the alcoholism, and he hadn’t had a drink in a year and a half. So when it hit him… it was bad. Not so bad he didn’t say my name in bed, though—which sort of sucked, because she was cheating on her boyfriend, who was a cop who tried to beat the hell out of Deacon when he got out of there. And then there was a trial, and, so, you know, that’s how the whole town knows Deacon’s gay.”

By now Kimmy was covering her mouth and trying to hold back horrified laughter. “Oh my God!”

Crick shook his head. This was where the history lesson ended. “The day got worse,” he said after a minute. “A lot worse. But… but, you see? It
got worse.
I mean… the cheating, that was bad, and… and sex isn’t small, but… but it’s not
everything
, you see?”

Kimmy nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I see.” She looked up at the porch again, and Benny and Parry and Jeff all had their knitting out, and Jeff was holding a full needle of stitches in one hand and gesturing with the empty needle in the other. “How much does Benny know?” she asked quietly.

Crick blinked. Whatever reason he was doing this, he didn’t know what Benny had to do with it. “All of it?” he said, thinking. “Yeah. Yeah—she was there when I texted Deacon from Germany. She… I guess she’d been calling Deacon the entire blackout because she’d come back from her grandma’s in Natomas and was trying to find out where he’d gone. So, yeah. I guess Benny knows the whole thing. Why?”

Kimmy sighed. “You know, your sister looks at me like I’m a grown-up.”

Crick looked at her sideways, leaving off his contemplation of Jeff’s steering wheel. “You are a grown-up,” he said. She was, right? Shane was older than Deacon, so Kimmy was older than Deacon, and if Crick was—holy crap, was Crick
really
twenty-seven? Yes, yes he was, so Kimmy was—“You’re like, what? Thirty-seven?”

Kimmy’s sharp look was almost reassuring. “Thirty-six, asshole, and has life taught you
nothing
?”

Crick shrugged. “I’ve got Amy, I’ve got Benny, and I’ve got Melanie. Amy doesn’t give a shit how old she is, Benny isn’t old enough to give a shit how old she is, and I haven’t given a shit about Melanie for over ten years. What is it with women and their age, anyway?”

“We’re supposed to get less attractive with age,” Kimmy said dryly. “But you’re right—since I wasn’t that attractive to you in the first place, I guess I’ll settle for old crone—”

“Oh Jesus, shut up!” Crick snapped. “Look—this is all girl shit, right? Well, this is all above my pay grade. You need to talk to
Benny
about this, and I need to stop telling you the worst things that Deacon and I ever did, because that shit’s just depressing! Are you going to talk to my sister or not? Because I need to know how many people to cook for and—hey!”

Kimmy seized his head firmly in her hands and pulled him sideways for a big, squishy kiss on his cheek, just like a maiden aunt.

“You’re awesome,” she said, and he turned to see a decidedly Kimmy look on her pretty face. “You and Deacon, you’re wonderful. Don’t worry about the worst shit you’ve ever done. You’ve made up for it since. It’s my turn to do the same thing, okay? Yeah, I’m staying for dinner, and Lucas’ll probably come join me. Go cook, and tell Jeff he needs to go inside so you can be gayfriends, okay?”

Crick leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, where the softness of the cover once again reminded him that Jeff had shopping down to an art
and
a science.

“Okay,” he muttered. “I’m confused. Holy Christ am I confused. But if you can make my sister feel better, I’ll tell you any secret you want. My first blowjob, when Deacon and I got laid—”

“Oh hell, junior, get out of the fucking car!” Kimmy hopped out, looking surprisingly light on her feet for someone who had looked tired and sad just moments before. Crick struggled out after her and limped gamely across the driveway to the porch.

“Did you girls talk?” Jeff asked smugly—but he was also looking at Kimmy with something like relief.

“Uncle Crick’s not a girl,” Parry corrected. “He’s a boy. Deacon said so.”

Crick looked at his niece in horror. “You had to ask?”

“You screamed at the casserole and your voice got funny,” Parry said forthrightly. “I thought you were a girl.”

“No,” Crick said, closing his eyes against Jeff, who was laughing so hard he was beating the side of the porch couch in an effort to breathe. “
Uncle
Crick. I’m a boy. And Uncle Jeff is too, but he might not be if he doesn’t get his ass inside.”

Benny made a little whimpering noise, and Crick sighed. Yeah, yeah, the whole reason he’d had that little confessional with Kimmy was to get Benny a girlfriend. Yes. A girl. That was what this was about.

“You want to come inside with me?” he asked Parry, and sent his sister a dark look. “We can talk more about girls and boys inside.”

“Can’t I just watch
SpongeBob
?” Parry asked plaintively. “I’m tired of knitting!”

Oh thank God. “Good. I’m tired of talking about girls and boys.
SpongeBob
sounds
awesome.
”