St. Nacho's 4: The Book of Daniel (4 page)

Jake spoke from behind me. “So naturally, you handled it like everything unexpected. Glue some money over it and hope it holds.”

I hadn’t realized that he was beneath the counter, restocking the refrigerated cases. “I said I was sorry. I came to apologize some more. If you like, I’ll grovel. The sooner we get this done, the quicker you can tell me what you need from me, and I’ll get right on it.”

“We have more fruit tarts in the back, Muse.” He rose, holding an empty sheet pan covered with sticky parchment paper. “What I need is for my brother to be happy for me.”

“Okay, sure. But I’m in the middle of a divorce. Our parents are divorced. Everyone I know has been married and blown it, and frankly that’s what my first thought was. Oh,
no
. Here we go again.”

He blinked at me. “That’s honest, at least.”

“I don’t want to be honest. I want to say what you need to hear. But I don’t know what it is. You guys might make it. People do. No one
I
know but—”

“Okay, now it’s time for you to stop talking,” said Muse

“All right.” I almost raked my bad hand through my hair. More than once I’d forgotten and been sorry. “Maybe we could go for a walk and talk, all right? I know I’m not saying the right thing. I don’t know if I’m even capable of that. But I’ve got your back, you know that, right?”

“I know.” He put the tray down and started to unbutton his chef’s coat. “I’ll go change, and then you can drive me over to the high school.”

“What’s there?”

“I’ve been unofficially helping out the soccer team, and they need a ref.”

“Are you serious? Aren’t you just finishing up a full day’s work?”

“I ref a couple times a week. I like it. It feels good to run around a little.” He took the tray and started through the door to the kitchen in back.

“It’s your legs.” I turned to Muse. “Can I get a coffee to go?”

“I guess.” She eyed me archly. I resisted the urge to rub my nose or check my fly.

Jake stopped. “Want me to make you a sandwich or something to go?”

“No thanks.” I hadn’t eaten lunch, but truth be told, I wasn’t often hungry after therapy. It’s amazing what chronic pain will do to your appetite.

“Therapy day, huh?”

I nodded.

“I’ve got a little something, and I’ll throw it in a bag. If you get hungry, it will be there.”

I nodded.

Muse gave me a coffee; she’d drawn something on one of the little sleeves. Since she didn’t like me much I imagined it probably wasn’t the ancient sigil for
Have a nice day
. If I were feeling more energetic, I would have gotten out my phone and looked it up on the Internet. Someone, somewhere probably had a list of “stuff to draw on the coffee sleeves of people you don’t like.”

Muse went off to wait on a table full of trendy boys with laptops and long eyelashes that fluttered like laundry on a line as she refilled their coffee. Was I ever that young? I couldn’t help noticing they were beautiful, the lot of them. Lean and strong, with long, elegant hands and big feet they hadn’t quite grown into yet. Their leader, made obvious by the way he slouched in his chair with his arms spread over the backs of his friends’ chairs and his legs splayed wide in a perfectly primal display of his sex, jerked a chin in Muse’s direction.

I wondered what she wrote on his coffee sleeve. If it wasn’t at least the ancient runic symbol for
fucking horndog
, I’d feel singled out. It wasn’t a secret that Muse spent most of her free time with Minerva, the owner of a little bookstore called Rune Nation and Izzie, who owned my gym. Whatever Muse was getting up to in her occult studies, I figured it was mostly benign. I’d been calling the three of them the Witches of Westwick since I’d moved to town.

Sometimes the interconnected nature of the people who lived in St. Nacho’s made my skin actually
itch
, and it was usually then that I got in my car and left.

“What are you looking at?” The curiosity of the alpha of Muse’s little pack of admirers had turned to me.

Apparently I’d spaced out while watching Muse pour coffee, and his little tribe figured I was checking her out or something.

I couldn’t help but laugh. Jake originally described Muse to me as a “feisty marmoset” and we both felt absurdly protective of her. Maybe I was bristling because all that lean young flesh was sizing her up. One of them knocked a fork off the table, and when she bent to pick it up, they leered at her ass and nudged one another.

I actually sputtered like some enraged father. “Knock that off, you—”

“Back down. I can handle these monkeys.” Muse nudged me with her shoulder as she passed me. “I put something in their coffee. They won’t be able to get it up for a week.”

This was met by a classic spit take by a boy in a white T-shirt with some bloodied video game zombie on it. While he was gathering napkins to wipe himself down, she grinned back over her shoulder at me.

“Or I would if I only knew of such a thing.”

Jake witnessed the last bit of that exchange and growled a warning. “
Muse
.”

“All right, all right. I promise I won’t render the customers impotent.”

“That’s all we ask.” He handed me a huge, doubled shopping bag that felt awfully heavy for a quick sandwich.

“What have you got in here?”

“Just some sandwiches and salads I made up earlier. Some bread and pastries. A piece of
dulce de leche
cheesecake and some bottles of iced tea.”

“Enough for an army. I can’t possibly eat this much.”

“That’s good, because it’s not just for you. You can share with me and the other refs, and we eat like the athletes we are.” He grinned. “It won’t go to waste.”

“Thank you.” I hefted the bag and pushed through the front door. “Car’s this way.”

Jake nodded and followed me. To get to the car,
of course
we had to pass by the firehouse. I noticed some of the crew out cleaning the truck, stretching and sweating in the midafternoon sun. I didn’t see Cam among them, but even as I walked by—trying not to search for him—I realized I could still hear him say
Daniel
in that velvety dulcet voice he’d used on me that morning and even the memory made me shiver.

Who would have thought such an immense and vibrant boy-man could be so tender?

A vaguely disquieting yearning was building inside me to investigate that further. Maybe I would, later—or maybe I wouldn’t.

Things could get complicated quickly between me and a man like Cam.

When Jake and I got to the car, he insisted that he should drive. I think he just liked to drive my car, so I flipped him the plastic electronic key.

“Are you getting used to driving an automatic now?” he asked, once we got in.

“I miss the IS F and its racing transmission. I miss zero to sixty in less than five seconds.”

“That wasn’t a car. That was a gasoline-powered penis.”

“I
know
. That accident emasculated me.”

“Not from what I’ve heard.”

“I was speaking metaphorically. Physically, not so much.” Recent memories made me own up to the truth.
Not so much
was an understatement. I admitted—if only to myself—I’d been enjoying a true free-for-all of casual sex.

Jake started my new GS. It really was a gorgeous car. Deep sea mica blue with gray leather seats and bird’s-eye maple accents. It had all the bells and whistles. No one in their right mind would put on the pity-party hat while riding around in a machine like that, but I was so fucked-up I couldn’t get attached to it.

“I think you may just be confused, Dan. You’re unhappy about your car because you think you have to be glad you kept your hand. And maybe what you really miss is—”

“Thank you, Dr. Freud.”

“Freud would have called your old car your compensatory
penis
and left it at that. You know I’m right. It’s okay to be angry, but you’ve chosen your battle unwisely here. Don’t take it out on this sweet honey of a car. It kills me. You don’t deserve her at all.”

“And you do?”

“I cherish her.” He teased. “She’s my preciousssss.”

“You can wash her next time then.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ll wash her.” He leered at the steering wheel and started stroking it like a lover. “I’ll get her all soaped up and slippery and use my big, fluffy microfiber towel on her. That’s what I’ll do.”

“You’re starting to creep me out.” I knew he was right. Well, not to anthropomorphize a car like that, but that I should be glad I had both my hand
and
a new car. My doctor thought someday I’d be able to drive a manual again. Maybe. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. Everything mattered. What I’d lost, how long it was taking me to recover. Everything.

Simple,
stupid
skills I had never given a single thought to until it became necessary to use them, only to find that I no longer had them—like eating with chopsticks.

“It’s taking a while to adjust, Jake. Sometimes it feels like I lose something new every day.”

“The adjustments will bottom out. You’ll find yourself on an upswing soon. You’ll gain new skills and regain old ones. In the meantime, I’m here for you if need me to drive you anywhere. We could try looking for a doctor in New York if you aren’t entirely satisfied with the docs at Cedars in LA. I could drive you in your car.”

I could always count on Jake to lighten a mood. “Thanks. We’re doing okay. Me and my Frankenstein hand. Still scaring the faint of heart with its patchwork appearance, but doing all right.”

“It’s not that bad, you know?”

“Sure,” I said, looking out the passenger window. I found it ugly. There were times I couldn’t even look at it. I flexed my fingers where I could see them and felt a familiar, sickening lurch in my gut. “I know. I’m grateful I still have my hand.”

As we passed the intersection behind the gym, we heard the first wails of sirens behind us and pulled over to let fire trucks and the EMTs pull past.

“That your man?”

“Yeah.” Jake squinted after them. “He’s on shift. Cam too. I wonder what’s up. Something on the highway probably.”

“Probably.” As we pulled into the parking lot next to the high-school field, we could still hear the sirens. “Do you ever give any thought to what they might be going into?”

My brother flashed me such a look of contempt, it surprised me.
Of course he did
. I was stupid to even ask. The man he loved was in that paramedic unit, and they could be rolling into anything. I have to admit I’m a seriously self-absorbed fuck sometimes. If I loved someone like that I’d be holding my breath every time I heard the trucks pull out.

“Of course you do. That’s JT out there. I wasn’t thinking of it like that.”

“It’s time you did think of it like that.
That’s
what I’m asking of you. Fuck the ceremony, fuck the party,
fuck
whatever it’s going to cost. I’m committing to the man I love, and I need you to treat my feelings like they deserve to be treated. Like they’re real. Like they’re significant. If not… Don’t bother showing up.” He got out of the car and started marching to the field, leaving me to extricate myself.

“Aw, Jakey.” I ran after him carrying the bag of food. “
Yasha
. Don’t be like that. I’m always the last person to arrive at these things. You
know
that. But I get there eventually. I get it. I do. I’m sorry.”

“I know,” he said before he left me to join the team holding practice. He turned back around with a wry grin on his face. “Eat your dinner. Later I’ll explain emotions to you again, you sorry bastard.”

I sat down on the bleachers and wondered what I was doing there. I’d originally gone to mend fences. Had I done that? Or made things worse? I peered into Jake’s bag with some notion of grabbing a bottle of iced tea, but as soon as I did, I saw he’d carefully packed everything he knew I love to eat.

There were containers of his special chicken salad, which he made with grapes and celery and I don’t know what all—crunchy bits of candied nuts and some elusive middle-eastern spice that elevated it to gourmet fare. He had some sort of sandwiches wrapped in parchment paper that I discovered were full of grilled vegetables and herbed goat cheese. I found a container of peppers and one of pickles. Each course was beautifully prepared, each thing wrapped perfectly so that it stayed that way.

“Jeez, Jakey.” When I got out a fork and lifted that first fresh bit of chicken to my mouth, I realized he must have forgiven me before I’d even arrived.

I looked up and found him watching me from the sidelines while the players did a dribbling drill.

I waved, and he waved back, smiling.

Fuck my hand. I was lucky I got to keep my
brother
. I had a feeling that if I focused on the most important outcome of our accident, I’d be just fine.

My phone rang, so I got the earpiece from my pocket and answered it that way. “Livingston.”

“Daniel, it’s Bree.”

I hesitated before talking, because she wasn’t supposed to call me. Ever. She was supposed to call her lawyer, Jim Anderson, who had the spectacularly bad judgment to also be her lover, and he was supposed to call mine. “Yeah?”

“It’s probably nothing, but I found a letter in the mailbox for you today. I wondered why it didn’t get forwarded, and then I realized it doesn’t have a stamp on it. Why the hell would someone drop it off?”

“I don’t know. Who is it from?”

“Anybody could have dropped this off, right at my door. Does this mean that one of your—”

“I asked,
who is it from
, BreeAnna?”

“There’s no name, it just says it’s private. Personal for you only. They obviously aren’t aware you don’t live here anymore. The only reason I haven’t turned it over to Jim is because you’ve been pretty fair. But if it’s something from a woman…or a-a man…and it proves you fooled around on me, I wanted to give you a chance to come clean.”

More like you want another shot at controlling me
. “Go ahead and open it.”

“What?”

“Open it. Or throw it out. Whatever it is, it probably doesn’t matter. I couldn’t care less. You won’t find anything sensational enough in some hand-delivered letter to break our prenuptial agreement, and I think you know that.”