Promise Rock 03 - Living Promises (MM) (15 page)

J
EFF
'
S
mother had been… distracted. Surprised to see him, but distracted. She'd just seen him last week, she laughed weakly, why the long hug? Why the tense face? It was just so upsetting, Jeff, because the girl—the one she really liked, the funny one, with the bawdy sense of humor, she wasn't there. People didn't seem to realize what a complete change of routine that was when the girl wasn't there, did they?

Jeff agreed with her and nodded and made all the right noises and tried not to be too disappointed. If he'd thought about it, he would have realized that this wouldn't be a big dramatic reunion. Alzheimer's was a terrible disease—the last twelve years of his mother's life, completely gone. Hell, she was talking about Jeff's swim meet practices, and even, at one point, smiled benignly at Collin and asked him if he was on Jeff's team.

Collin had raised his eyebrows at Jeff and said that yes, yes, in fact, he
was
on Jeff's team, and Jeff shot him a droll look.
Very funny, Sparky. Team, get it? We play for the same team? Oh yes we do!

But still, he was grateful.
The visit was short, but Jeff managed to secure an orderly and assure the young man that he had complete permission—which, he assumed, since no one had come after him and made a scene, he did. He left the cell phone charging along with explicit written instructions for when Jeff would call and how the calls were to be handled. He was grateful when it seemed to be a sure thing and even more grateful that bribes weren't involved this time. Becky had been nice, and she'd been providing for her kid, which was why Jeff hadn't minded the extra money, but this way, he was sure that his phone calls could continue even if there was a sudden change in personnel.
Jeff took his mother's face between his palms and ignored her distracted look. Instead, he concentrated of the realness of her soft, lined skin under his palms and the kind vagueness he saw in her blue-gray eyes.
“I love you, Mommy,” he said quietly, not caring of Collin could hear him but not wanting to shout either. “I love you, and I'll see you around Christmas.”
“Be good at school, Jeffy,” his mother said gently. “Get good grades—your father's so proud of you, you know, being a doctor. Your brother always brags about you. Such a good boy.” She patted his cheek and then looked off into the distance behind Jeff's ear and simply faded away. He kissed her forehead and was grateful. He'd seen Alzheimer's move a lot faster.
Thank you, God, because she still knows my name.
This time, he fumbled for Collin's hand in the elevator. He still felt like a thief, there was no denying it, but sometimes thieves stole things because they needed them to live.
He had brief words with Clarice on the way out of the door, but his father wasn't there, and Jeff was glad. He couldn't do that again, not now. Not when the memory of his mother was so raw in his mind. He and Collin got into the car and didn't speak until they hit Highway 50, and then it was because they hadn't eaten.
Collin pulled off at a strip mall in Cameron Park, and they went into the Red Robin there to eat.
Then Collin started talking, randomly it seemed, but he was funny about it. He talked about his sisters, and how he deprived them of superheroes for three years, and how none of their husbands (or exhusbands) were good enough for them, and his nieces, whom he seemed to spoil almost as much as Jeff spoiled Parry Angel and Lila Lisa.
Jeff listened to him, distractedly at first, and then, as dinner wore down, with most of his heart. God, the kid was funny. Snarky, yes, and a smug little bastard at times, but, well, funny.
Jeff had always really loved people who could make him laugh.
He remembered that when he started talking. He remembered how much he liked to laugh, how much it meant when he could make someone else do it. He shared some of his best stories—many of them gifted to him by other people. He told about his first meeting with Crick, a boy who'd just been given a crippling disability while he was already living with a healthy dose of guilt, and how Crick hadn't let that get him down. He told Margie's story about the student with the backpack full of condoms, and Mikhail's story about living on the streets in Russia and not knowing what a “top” was, and Benny's story about having her hairtrigger big brother teach her how to drive.
He made Collin laugh—he made him laugh a
lot.
And he was happy with himself, as they drove back to Levee Oaks. He thought that he had maybe given a part of himself that he could live with.
Collin pulled back into the parking lot by Jeff's car, and the silence fell between them for the first time since they'd walked into Red Robin.
“Thank you,” Jeff said quietly, looking out into the fog. Levee Oaks was the flat part of a valley, with a big ol' river cutting through it. Lowland fog in the fall and winter was a part of life. But the fog over a parking lot lit by a soda light had a peculiar, pink and melancholy property, and Jeff found his “funny” slipping away.
“You're welcome,” Collin said, and Jeff blessed the fact that he didn't play all coy about asking thank-you-for-what.
Collin's big hand came up to Jeff's cheek, and Jeff resisted for a moment and then sighed. God. He'd been so weak already. What was one more moment of weakness, really?
“What are you going to do now?” Collin asked quietly, and Jeff leaned into his touch and made everything worse by cupping Collin's hand to his cheek. For a moment it wasn't about what Jeff owed the kid, it was about what he needed from the man.
“I,” Jeff said, feeling the irony well up and unable to stop it, “am going to call my mother on Monday, and go see her probably a few days after Christmas.”
“That's a good plan,” Collin said, dryness creeping into his voice. Jesus, was Jeff so easy to read?
“It's part of it,” Jeff muttered. God. Him with his big words to his father—he'd really let the ball drop, hadn't he? He'd managed to avoid thinking about Kevin's little brother all day, but he couldn't avoid it— not here in the honest quiet of the car.
“Going to clue me in on the rest?”
Jeff looked at the grim lines of Collin's face and thought that he didn't look twenty-four at all. He looked almost ageless with purpose, firm and resolved and, well, grown up.
“I'll let you know if it works,” he said with a sigh. He didn't want to talk about it. Just like going to Coloma that afternoon, he was afraid words would pollute his good intentions and he'd be left with a couldawoulda-shoulda and an empty place in his chest for the cats to purr in.
“Jeff!”
Jeff held up a forestalling hand before Collin could blow all that strong stoicism with a well-earned tantrum.
“Cool your jets. I know—you've been a stand-up guy. You have. I'm eternally grateful, and even if you don't want my gratitude, you've got it. Look….” Oh God. Deacon would never forgive him. “I'll tell you what. Sunday dinner at The Pulpit. I know, I know—I'm sure you've got some sort of family things of your own—”
“Pizza video night, first Friday of the month,” Collin confirmed with a quirk to his lean mouth, and Jeff smiled. Good. Good. He liked families. He
needed
families. Collin's sounded like fun—and wouldn't that be nice.
“Okay. Sunday dinner at The Pulpit—we start cooking around three or four, eat at six, you decide when to get there. Bring whatever you want. Seriously. You like French bread, bring that. You like pie, that's your thing. No alcohol.”
Collin lifted his eyebrows, and Jeff shrugged.
“No alcohol. It's a rule.” He was damned if he'd tell about Deacon's alcoholism. He got permission with his stories—he was careful. He had permission to tell about Mikhail's past; Mikhail didn't give a shit. Deacon's past was Crick's secret. The family knew, but it wasn't Jeff's story.
“Do I need to call?”
Jeff shook his head. Crick was going to get a blow-by-blow—this conversation included. That was the way GBFF worked, wasn't it?
Collin nodded and Jeff said, “Good, see you then,” and put his hand on the door handle, but Collin's hand on the back of his neck stopped him.
“Jeff?”
That quick. That warm hand on the back of his neck, the heat of it through his hair, the memory of it on his back in the elevator or twined with his on the way up the hill, sturdy in the small of his back… that quick, and it all came flooding back.
Jeff's skin buzzed fiery, and his stomach went cold with excitement, and he closed his eyes, because he was weak today, because he needed, and he needed so very badly, and he wasn't going to say no, wasn't going to turn away… God. He was so tired of being strong. “Yeah?” he asked huskily, his head still turned away, but leaning back into the heat of those strong fingers.
“Are you going to look at me?”
“Yeah, okay, fine.” He shifted in the seat and turned around. Collin dropped his hand, and by the time he was situated, there was that pretty, lean face, up close and personal, those golden eyes dark in the diffused light, that lean mouth turned up just at the corners, and that nose—that nose with all the character, the one that had been broken more than once (and was, for that matter, still bruised from when Jeff had done it himself) was close enough to bump gently with Jeff's.
So he did.
Jeff gasped softly, and his lips parted, and he nuzzled back. Collin's mouth quirked up, and that was the last thing Jeff saw because his eyes closed, and then that mouth was on his own, and the kiss began.
It tasted… oh God. It was better than chocolate. It was… it was chicken marsala, or prime rib. It was hearty and strong and warm and filling, and Collin's tongue swept into his mouth without shame and
claimed
him. Jeff groaned and let him. It was his day, he told himself, his day to be weak. He was going to taste this kiss with everything in him, he was going to devour and accept and experience. He raised a shaking hand to Collin's shoulder and shuddered, and Collin's arms went around his shoulders and held him so tight….
So tight. Nothing bad could happen to him when he was held that tight.
The kiss ended, but Jeff kept his eyes closed until Collin's forehead bumped his.
“Was that so bad?” Collin asked, and Jeff opened his eyes and pulled back, wanting to give the kid this, because it was honest, and Collin deserved honest.
“It was everything I was afraid of,” he whispered, and he rubbed his cheek against Collin's lean one to take the sting out of the words.
Collin pulled back, trying to figure out what he meant, and Jeff used his opportunity to escape. He was out of the car and heading for his slightly defective Mini Cooper before Collin could even frame a reply.
He was halfway to Shane's home for runaway teenagers before he could stop rubbing his tingling lips and remind himself that there was really no cause for optimism, none at all.

Collin: Friday Night Pizza

I
T WASN
'
T
actually the first Friday night this month—two of his sisters had begged off, and his mother had some sort of business seminar, so they'd postponed it to the eleventh. That worked out well—it was a holiday, and Collin would have given Joshua the day off, but the old man was as eager as Collin to clear out their backlog and get things spiffy for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everyone who had time off during the holidays would come in for a tune-up or a smog check, and that was their bread and butter right there.

So, lucky Collin, he got to go face his family about two days after he'd faced Jeff's. He'd dreaded it. He wondered if his officious sisters could sense the life-altering undercurrents of angst and drama just coursing under his skin.

He was somewhat reassured when he showed up with the beer (his family
always
did beer) and Joshua and his wife Elsie showed up with the salad, and all his obnoxious sister Charlene said was, “Jesus, Collin, do you always have to bring the help?”

She said it to him quietly when they were in the kitchen at Collin's mother's house, otherwise Collin would have done what he'd done when they were kids: jump on her and stick his slobbery finger in her ear until she screeched like a wounded parrot and apologized. As it was, he had the age-old comeback of, “Jesus, Charlene, could you detach your bitch for a while and deal with the fact that I love them more than I love you?”

She looked startled at that, and even a little hurt, and ask Collin if he gave a ripe shit. At that point, life-altering experience with Jeff's family or not, it was the truth.

And maybe even more so, he thought moodily, bringing Joshua a beer as his sisters squabbled over the movie and Elsie listened from the outside, clearly trying not to put a word in because she was a visitor and very much not family.

“What are you thinking, Collin?” his mom asked. “You look like you swallowed a bug.”
“Not a bug,” Collin muttered. “Just Charlene's attitude. Why's she got to be so mean about Joshua?”
Natalie looked grimly at her youngest daughter, dressed stylishly in tight black slacks and tall boots, with a bright scarlet silk blouse under her blazer. Everyone else was in jeans, with the exception of Joanna's youngest daughter, who was in a fairy princess dress. (Joanna had been a most definite tomboy—the fact that her youngest lived in that dress was, as her mother kept telling her, the most divine karma
ever
.)
“Yeah, well, she hasn't been laid since Mark left—what do you expect?”
Collin turned to his mother in admiration. She never ceased to amaze him. She loved them all—he'd taken over the diner for two days while his mother had talked his sister down from an emotional ledge after her husband left—but that didn't mean Natalie was going to let Charlene get away with snobbery.
“I expect her to bring her own date,” Collin sulked. He was the baby; old habits were hard to break.
“I could say the same thing about you!” his mother said pointedly, and his sulk turned cagey.
“I, uhm, well, maybe.”
Smooth, Collin. Awesome.
“So, that guy at the diner…,” his mother led, looking at him winningly. She had the same light brown eyes he did—she just knew how to bat them more prettily.
Collin was shocked when he felt heat run under his skin and up his cheeks.
So was his mother. “Jesus, Collin, you didn't even do that when I busted you with Tommy in the garage!”
Oh God. The blush was getting worse. Jeff didn't know about that. Jeff, who kept telling him what a grown-up he was and how much of a man he seemed, didn't know that six years ago Collin was dumb enough to get busted by his family banging Tommy with the laundry!
Natalie turned to her son with real surprise and a thoughtfulness she hadn't had, even when she'd been thinking about ripping Charlene a new one. “Collin….”
“Has he told you about his new guy?” Joshua asked, stumping over with his beer clutched reverently in his hand.
“I saw him last week in the diner,” Natalie said, still looking at her son in wonder. “I had no idea they were a thing.”
“We're not yet,” Collin muttered, wishing it wasn't quite so warm in his mother's living room.
“Yeah, but that didn't stop them from taking a little day trip together!” Joshua cackled, and Collin cast him a despairing look. The laugh abruptly stopped. “What? You look like I just stole your best pair of jeans—what happened that day?”
Collin shook his head and looked down at his soda. No beer for him, not with his white count getting a little low. Alcohol was bad news with the HIV, there was no doubt about it, especially in cold and flu season. “It was—man, he so didn't want me there. And I don't know how he would have made it without anyone there.” Collin hadn't said a word to Joshua—not in two days—about what had gone down up in Coloma. But that didn't mean it hadn't weighed heavy on his mind.
“Collin, what did you go do?”
Oh God. It wasn't his story to tell, it wasn't. But as he looked at his mom, her graying hair dyed the same red-brown it had been when he was a kid, the lines around her eyes and mouth more smiles than scowls, he was just so grateful for her. Jesus, he'd been such an unmitigated pain in the ass.
“His mom has Alzheimer's—she's in a home, right? And his dad wasn't letting him talk to her. So he'd been bribing a nurse for phone calls, and she got fired, so he had to go up there—and God, Mom. He hadn't been back for twelve years. And the whole fucking town was like jammed in the office, and they were all so horrible to him, and all he wanted to do was talk to his mom, right?”
“Collin….” Joshua had disappeared, and Natalie Waters was taking her son's heated cheeks between her hands and shushing him, pulling him into the kitchen, where they could be alone.
“That's all he wanted to do,” Collin gasped when the door had closed behind them. “And he got in there, and she didn't even remember he'd been gone for twelve years. She thought I was on his swim team from high school. And she was so pretty, you know, like you, but older, and he… God, Mom. He was so wrecked. And there was that whole scene in the diner, and it sucked, and he….”
Christ. Collin was not going to cry. Not here. Not in front of his mother.
Suddenly he bent down, because he was over six feet tall and she was barely five-foot six, and he swept her up in his arms and gave her a rib-cracking hug. “God, Mom,” he muttered as she hugged him back. “I'm just so glad you didn't give up on me. I mean… I'll live in the garage for the rest of my life, just so's you know I'm so grateful. 'Kay?”
Her half-frightened giggle in his ear was enough to let him know he had to get his emotions under control. “Jesus, Collin—I'm just glad you survived.”
His shoulders shook, and he laughed out some of the rougher emotions rioting in his chest. “I'm glad I survived with you here,” he muttered, and then set her down with a sigh. He heard his sisters out in the living room, laughing. Charlene's brittle squeal didn't fracture on his nerves the way it used to.
“How's your friend?” his mother asked him in the almost awkward silence.
“Hurting really bad,” Collin told her. “Unbelievably bad. I don't know what to do for him—he's not letting me, or anyone, I think, in to help, you know?”
Natalie shook her head. “I think maybe what you've been trying to do? I know it's not easy for you.” Her laugh was wise and sad. “I
really
know it's not easy for
you
, especially, Collin. Least patient kid on the planet, you were. You know we took you to be diagnosed for ADHD?”
Collin nodded his head. God, yes, he knew—just because his mom had put up with a lot didn't mean she suffered in silence.
“My point is,” she said, rolling her eyes dryly, “that you've been stalking this guy like a cat. Cat isn't your style. Rhinoceros on steroids—
that's
the boy I know and allowed to live. So, you know, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. He means something to you—whoever he is, however you knew him or know him now, he
must
mean something to you.”
Collin nodded mutely and tried to put together the handful of times, really, he'd been in Jeff's company and see how it added up to this compulsion to know what made the guy tick and to see that he would be okay.
It didn't. All that was left was that moment in the shop and the realization that he'd go through a hundred days like the one in Coloma just to know he had the right to watch Jeff fidget and know that no one else would see him the way Collin did.
His mother ruffled his hair. “I'm gonna leave you alone, sweetie. Bring him around sometime, okay?”
“I told him he'd have to come eventually,” Collin told her with a slight smile. “I'm having dinner at The Pulpit on Sunday—he owes me one. What?”
His mother's expression was pained, and he couldn't figure out why. “Oh, Jesus, honey. Those people at The Pulpit—they're
family.
You go ahead and court this boy—”
“He's older than me!”
“But not older than Joanna,” she snapped back smartly. “Anyway, go and court him, but promise me we get you on Christmas and video nights, okay?”
Collin grimaced and shook his head, turning away to look out the window over the sink, into the black darkness of a November evening without fog.
Eventually, he went back into the front room and took his place on the floor with Kelsey (the kid in the fairy princess dress) on his lap. Her little bottom felt like it was made of tree limbs and boulders, and she had elbows that could cut steak, but when he wrapped his arm around her and felt her snuggle back, it was like everything was going to be all right. She was three years old, and Joanna's other daughter, Allison, (who was sitting in Elsie's lap, much to her Auntie Charlene's disgust) had been born about three months after that dingy gray day at the Sacramento CARE clinic.
They started
Beauty and the Beast
, because the first movie was always a kids' movie, and Kelsey snuggled right into him, like he was her favoritist person ever. The
second
movie, when the short people went into Mom's guest bedroom and went to sleep, was the movie that people spilled blood over. Everyone except Collin, because watching the first movie with Kelsey and Allison and Gina's son, Gage was as close as he might ever get to fatherhood, and once he'd decided he wanted to live, and live well, he found that he
coveted
the spare moments of fatherhood that came his way.
Collin remembered Jeff's pride that he had “nieces” at The Pulpit and held Kelsey just a little bit tighter.
You and me, Jeffy. We're a lot more alike than you think.
“What did Mom talk to you about?” Joanna whispered in his ear. She did it while she was handing him popcorn, and it took him a minute to get the plastic bowl situated before he could turn and answer.
“Courting,” he whispered back, making sure Kelsey was so into the movie she didn't hear.
“You courting someone or someone courting you?”
Collin gave his favorite sister a droll look over Kelsey's head, and she laughed quietly, holding up her hands. “Okay, okay—you courting someone. That's an improvement, Collin. Me likey.”
“An improvement? And improvement over
what
?”
Joanna had a wicked sense of humor—it was probably where Collin first learned to love people who could really make him laugh. “Yelling, „Fire in the hole!' and blowing your brains through a straw?”
Collin smirked and tried not to suck the scratchy part of a popcorn kernel through his windpipe. “I enjoyed those relationships,” he said with as much of a straight face as he could.
Joanna reached over his shoulder and ruffled Kelsey's hair.
“Not as much as you're going to enjoy something that lasts longer than a week and a half and gives you more of this,” she said seriously, and he dropped a kiss on the straight, fine blonde hair standing static with electricity right under his nose, and nodded.
“Shhh…,” he said, watching as Gaston started to lead the troops to defeat the beast of the unknown. “This is my favorite part.”
But he thought about it, and thought about it carefully, for the rest of the evening. Hell, he thought about it right until he surprised the hell out of himself by showing up at The Pulpit on Sunday at four. Jeff wasn't there yet, and he was going to make himself busy in the kitchen, but he saw that Crick pretty much had it under control.
“Hey, do me a favor, would you?” Crick asked, looking… well, older, was the only way Collin could describe it.
“Yeah, sure—anything.”
Crick looked at him, maybe really looked at him, for the first time since the moment he and Deacon had needed to break up a melee in their driveway with a pipe hose. “You really care about Jeff?” he asked, seriously, and Collin nodded.
“Yeah.”
“Good.” Crick reached in the refrigerator behind the counter and pulled out chicken and set it down, then started rooting in the cupboards for marinade. “He's going to need it. Look, Collin—here's the thing, okay?” Crick looked at the assembled ingredients and mumbled to himself for a minute, like he was trying to remember something. He stopped for a moment, gave it up, and then turned back to Collin like this was serious business. “The whole family is going to be here, everyone but my sister Benny, and she already knows, and we're going to drop sort of a bomb on the world here, yanno?”
Collin's eyes bugged out. “You're not moving, are you? Because Jeff….”
Crick smiled wearily. “Are you fucking shitting me? Do you have
any
idea what it cost us to fucking stay here? Jesus, talk about drawing the wrong fucking conclusion—I'm surprised you and I didn't bump into each other more during high school!”
Collin preened, flattered that his hero had actually noticed him. He wasn't proud of the preen, but he didn't think there was a thing on the planet he could do to stop it. “You were pretty into Deacon after….”
The preen went away, and so did any pretense to lighthearted banter. Crick's best friend—some said his first boyfriend—had died in a car crash in Crick's sophomore year. Collin had been in junior high at the time, but it was a small town.
“I was sort of into Deacon before Bobby died,” Crick answered with a
very
crooked grin. “But yeah. After that, I came to live here, and The Pulpit was pretty much my life. Still is,” he said with a smile, and it wasn't Collin's imagination. There was something palpably wrong with Crick's smile, with his words… hell, with
everything.
“So,” Collin said, “if you're not moving….”
Crick shook his head and concentrated very hard on chopping vegetables for the salad. Collin noticed that these people seemed to eat a lot of veggies for horse ranchers—he'd have figured Deacon for steak.
“Look, man, you'll find out soon enough, but if I tell you before I tell the family, there's going to be a massacre on our hands, okay? But the thing is—and don't take this the wrong way—but there's going to be the little girls here, and Martin—”
“Martin?” This was news.
Crick's look was eloquent and annoyed. “Goddamn Jeff for a rutting sand-fucker anyway. Jesus, what does he think is going to happen if he actually picks up the fucking phone and gives you some precious fucking information? You're going to stick your tongue down his throat via the fiber optic network? Shit!”
Collin's lips twitched as he tried very, very hard not to laugh. Crick Francis may have been older, and he may have been more worried man than fucked-up kid, but his mouth was still a thing of beauty as a functioning cesspool, now wasn't it? “I take it that Martin is coming with Jeff?” he asked neutrally, and Crick sent him a look of pity over the salad fixings.
“You take it that Jeff has found the perfect shield in case you want to try to, I don't know, give a shit about him? Yeah. Nothing crashes a fucking date like a teenager hauled in kicking and screaming by the scruff of his neck!”
Collin was forced to laugh—at the same time he was forced to agree. “He felt obligated, I guess,” he said, trying to reason through the hurt. “He… family matters a lot. I guess like he felt….” God, he couldn't say it. The hurt was a lot bigger than he'd thought at first, and he couldn't seem to squash it into his chest the way Jeff had.
Crick stopped chopping vegetables, ostensibly to stretch his crippled hand. But while he was paused, his face did a complicated dance, like he was trying to make something a priority in his head when in reality, it was the last thing on his mind.