Stay Lucky

by Halsey Harlow

  Lucky lingered by his side as he filled his plate and then followed him to a shady place under a tree.

  “Your family has this party every year?” Grant asked, suddenly a little put out that the Garners had never invited him before. It seemed the entire town was in attendance. He could have been feasting annually for the last six years.

  “Yeah,” Lucky said. “But I’ve only been here one time before for Halloween. In California we just walked up and down the street for trick-or-treat. I put the candy in my pillowcase.”

  She sounded unable to reconcile some bundle of emotions running through her, probably about California, and leaving her other father, and moving here. Grant changed the subject in hopes that she wouldn’t try to talk about those feelings.

  “When I said spill it, I wanted you to tell me who it is that lies to you,” Grant said, biting into the hot dog he’d slathered with chili and relish. He chewed as the realization hit him that the topic he’d chosen would probably be laced with feelings too, and he hoped she didn’t cry. He’d feel like a jerk if that happened, and God knows he sure as hell wouldn’t know what to do.

  Lucky pushed a plastic snake out of her eye. “He only lies on accident.”

  “Who? Leo?”

  Lucky said, “No. Daddy doesn’t lie. Sometimes he’s wrong, but he never lies. Papa, though, he promises things.” Lucky shrugged. “Lies are sometimes by accident. Papa doesn’t mean to lie to me. That’s what Daddy says, and Daddy says the truth.”

  Grant said nothing.

  “Dr. Grant,” Lucky said, calling him the name he’d suggested during their chess instruction. “I’m gonna go now. Will you be okay?”

  Grant chuckled at her sincere concern and then waved her off. He knew where the food was, and she’d told him something of interest to mull over for a while as he worked through his plate. Her job here was done as far as he was concerned.

  Lucky ran away, chasing after Mina, a plastic snake dropping from her head to the ground. It was promptly picked up by another child who ran after a small girl shaking it at her and screaming. Grant was grateful for the beer taking the edge off things, and he opened a second one, settling in beneath the tree.

  “That’s a lot of food,” Alec said.

  Grant shaded his eyes, trying to see Alec as more than a dark shadow outlined by the bright autumn sun behind him. His fairy wings moved in the breeze and the sun set off the glitter he’d sprayed into his hair, too.

  “Good food,” Grant said, stuffing another forkful into his mouth.

  “Oh, wow, and you actually have something nice to say,” Alec said, shifting a little so that the light wasn’t stabbing Grant right in the eye.

  “They do this every year, did you know?” Grant said. “And they’ve never invited me before.”

  “Gee, I wonder why.” Alec sat down next to Grant, his smile warm, and the scent of his aftershave familiar and friendly. “I have to leave in a few minutes to go with Dennis to have a phone call with Pamela. She wants to talk to us about something serious. I don’t know. Something that might impact Mina, we think.”

  Grant frowned. “You don’t think she wants custody again do you?”

  “No,” Alec said, his brows creasing in worry. “I think she might be ready to renounce her parental rights and allow me to adopt her.”

  “Seriously?”

  “She’s been in Belgium for almost a year now. She’s dating that man who has three daughters. I kind of think she’s ready to erase what she and Dennis shared.”

  “But she can’t erase Mina!”

  “She can try.” Alec’s shoulders hunched, making his fairy wings flop sadly. “It’s better if Mina stays here and has fun at the party. Leo has already said she can spend the night.”

  “That’s great.” Grant frowned and gazed toward the farmhouse. “So Leo’s living out here?”

  “Yeah, just him and Lucky. His folks still live in the house in town. Anyway, I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”

  “Good luck with it,” Grant said, his mind supplying him with images from the inside of the farmhouse from the only time he’d come up here with Leo. It wasn’t a posh place, but it was cozy inside. A good place for a kid like Lucky.

  “Will you watch Mina for us? Be extra eyes on her until the party ends?”

  Grant glanced out to the pasture where Mina, Lucky, and the other kids were playing with hula hoops and eating ice cream cones simultaneously. All of them were sticky messes that could morph into e. coli vectors at any moment.

  “This is a ploy to get me to stay here longer, isn’t it? So I’ll talk more with Leo.”

  “And is it working?” Leo himself asked, suddenly crouching down beside him on the grass.

  “You have got to stop sneaking up on me,” Grant grumbled.

  “I walked over here in plan sight.”

  “No, you approached from behind the tree. I don’t have eyes in the back of my head.”

  Leo laughed. The sound of it was full of a kind of happiness that seemed all encompassing, like anyone could reach out and have some of it if they wanted. When he stopped, he said, “I hope you take Alec up on watching Mina for him, because I’d really like you to stay.”

  “There!” Alec said, and slapped Grant’s thigh. “It’s a plan. Now, if either of you need anything, I’ll have my cell phone. And Dennis will have his. Obviously.”

  Alec jumped up and was gone before Grant could even finish swallowing the deviled egg he’d stuffed in his mouth. He watched him go, the fairy wings flapping as he walked, and then Dennis stepped up to join him, kissing his forehead and smiling down at him before waving goodbye to Mina.

  “Listen,” Grant began, and then he didn’t know what to say. He pinched the bridge of his nose, looked around. “This isn’t exactly my kind of thing.”

  “No, of course not,” Leo said.

  “Now this food, though?”

  “It’s good, isn’t it?” Again there was that longing in Leo’s voice.

  “Where’s your plate?” Grant asked.

  Leo shrugged. “If I can score a new kidney, I’ll be able to eat a plate like that, too. Though, if you’re not careful, Grant, we may have to roll you out of here.”

  “I wouldn’t care,” Grant said.

  And he wouldn’t because he would be full, delightfully completely full, and he wouldn’t need to eat a Michelina’s frozen dinner tonight. Plus, if he managed to get some leftovers to take home, he wouldn’t have to eat one tomorrow night either.

  “Whoever made this thing with the beans and the tomatoes and the maple syrup needs to be given an award,” Grant went on.

  “Oh, really? That would be me.”

  “You made this?”

  Leo nodded, and Grant had to hold back from grabbing Leo’s head and kissing him. The man was gorgeous and could cook and made Grant want. But he’d learned his lesson the first time, hadn’t he? Leo was dangerous.

  “So, what’s my reward?” Leo asked, and he gave Grant a look so flirtatious that it almost made Grant hard.

  “Congratulations, you won the honor of getting me another beer,” Grant replied, forcing himself to look out to the pasture where Mina was sticking her head into a half-barrel, and coming up with an apple hanging off her front teeth.

  Leo grinned and laughed. “You can be such a jerk.”

  “You like it,” Grant said.

  Leo stood up and said as he walked away, “I never said I didn’t. I’ll send Lucky over with another beer.”

  Afternoon passed into evening, as Grant gorged on food. He fended off townspeople commenting on his stomach as the bottomless pit, and he endured Mina sitting on his lap through the god-awful sing-along portion of the evening. He covered Mina’s ears while they told ghost stories, though. The poor kid was terrified, and whimpered in fear, while burying her head into his chest and just holding on.

  The fireworks were small things, nothing elaborate or huge, and Grant stuck around telling himself that he’d just
wait to make sure no one blew their hand off or blinded themselves. The fact that he’d lingered all day had nothing at all to do with watching Leo, or studying the way Leo’s hair glowed in the fading autumn sunlight.

  God, it had nothing to do with that.

  It also didn’t have to do with the curiously comforting scent of bonfire smoke and burning hay that covered Leo’s clothes, and which Grant could smell whenever Leo came back to sit beside him. It definitely had nothing to do with the lust that curled in Grant’s stomach whenever Leo brought over another beer, and ran his cold fingers over Grant’s hand in the exchange.

  Grant groaned. It had everything to do with all of those things.

  “Hey,” Leo said, having somehow escaped Grant’s sight again and snuck up to where Grant sat with his back to the oak tree. Leo crouched beside him. “Did you get enough pie?”

  “A man can never have enough pie,” Grant said.

  Leo lifted a brow. “I am so tempted to make a ‘that’s what my cousin says’ joke, but I won’t.”

  “Your cousin?”

  “He’s straight. Well, the three older ones are. The littlest one is still just a kid, so who knows?”

  “Ah,” Grant said. “You have too many relatives. A whole mess of them. That can’t be sanitary.”

  Leo laughed, and said nothing for a few moments, until he murmured sweetly, “Thanks for coming out here today. You seemed to have a good time.”

  “Don’t fool yourself,” Grant said. “But it was good pie.”

  “My Papaw’s recipe,” Leo said, his voice fond and soft. “He died a few years ago.”

  “I remember,” Grant said.

  Leo had been in town for the funeral, and had stuck around for a few, long, annoying days, during which Grant saw him in Starbucks or Little Apron, and, as always, Leo’s presence had been impossible to ignore.

  “I’m really glad you came,” Leo said, picking up a small stick and twiddling it between his thumb and forefinger. Then he sat down all the way, crossing his legs and resting his back against the tree, his shoulder pressing against Grant’s.

  “I’m glad I ate the food,” Grant said.

  “You’re not gonna give me even a little bit, are you?” Leo asked, gray eyes and gentle smile making Grant’s chest feel tight. “I mean, would it hurt you to say that you’re glad you came, too?”

  The beers must have loosened his tongue, because he said, “It might. It might be the magic spell that undoes all that’s good in my life, and leaves me broken beyond repair.”

  “You don’t believe in magic,” Leo chided.

  “Nope. Or luck,” Grant replied.

  “You love your life here in Blountville, though, don’t you?” Leo’s voice was soft, respectful, but somehow affectionate, too.

  A roman candle shot into the night sky; the light left a red trail and then disappeared into nothing. Kids spelled out words with sparklers and their delighted shrieks of laughter filled the air when a bottle rocket screamed its way up into the dark and exploded in a burst of color overhead.

  “It ain’t bad,” Grant said.

  Leo settled in beside him, his legs sprawled open, his arm against Grant’s, and his hair smelling of some kind of mint shampoo and the smoke from the bonfire. Grant glanced over at him, watching his face light up with the next firework.

  Leo caught his eye and his smile grew wider.

  Grant was acutely aware of Leo’s thigh pressing against his, but he didn’t move away. He knew he should leave. Knew that Leo’s fingers inched slowly toward Grant’s hand, and that he didn’t plan to do anything to stop their fingers from intertwining.

  Leo breathed, “Nope, it ain’t bad at all.”

  Grant was a goner, just like Alec had said, and he couldn’t even begin to explain just why.

  And while the pie and the food had been good, he suspected that it hadn’t been that good. Not good enough to make up for all that was going to happen now, anyway. That was for certain.

  Grant had managed to avoid falling down that rabbit hole called love the first time around, but this time around he wasn’t going to be so lucky. He’d already slipped, and there was no use in grasping pointlessly at the air on the way down.

  So he grasped Leo’s hand instead.

  Chapter Nine

  Eight Months Ago

  It had been a month since the Halloween party, and Grant was still trying to come to terms with the fact that he was currently behaving in a way that was suspiciously similar to dating Leo Garner.

  There’d been the ‘double date’ at Alec and Dennis’s house. And there’d been a few Saturday lunch dates at Chik-fil-A. Lucky would pop French fries in her mouth and suck down a shake, while she and Grant played chess on the iPad, and Grant and Leo talked.

  And once there’d been a night out at Little Apron, sitting at a table alone together, eating a nice meal. Then, when a small brass band started playing, and folks started dancing, Leo had suggested joining them. Grant, to his own surprise, had accepted. It’d felt good holding Leo on the dance floor, and the curious eyes on them had only made it better. Having Leo’s body against his for everyone in Blountville to see counted it as a very big win.

  In addition, Grant went out to the farm sometimes, and Leo and Lucky gave him lots of food to eat. Other nights Leo, either alone, or with Lucky, came over to the apartment and they ordered in a dinner, and occasionally they walked over to the park and sat on a bench while Lucky ran around and played.

  During all this, Leo’s health seemed to hold steady enough, but Grant couldn’t forget the transplanted heart in his chest or the non-functioning kidneys in his back. It made every day that Leo lived and laughed a little bit sweeter, and a little bit scarier, too.

  Lastly, Grant had actually given Leo his cell phone number. What’s more, he picked up the phone when Leo called, and he never failed to reply to a text from him either.

  Amazingly, despite the red flags and danger signals sent up by his heart, Grant liked dating Leo Garner. The time they spent together had a certain rhythm and peace to it that Grant appreciated in his otherwise hectic life.

  All the animosity and bitterness seemed to have bled out of him as he’d held Leo’s hand under the tree on Halloween. Life was confusing. People made mistakes. Leo had made choices that didn’t have a happy ending, but there was no reason why there couldn’t be a new happy ending now. Well, no reason except for Leo’s fragile health.

  All in all, he was so satisfied with his new Leo-involved life that Grant heard the nurses whisper that he looked weirdly happy lately, and it seemed to unnerve them in ways that made Grant smirk with delight.

  But it was true. He was happy.

  He wanted to keep on dating Leo, spending time with him, and watching Leo be effortlessly amazing. Leo was such a strong man, going through so much, but always with an amazing attitude, and a smile for everyone—even Grant. Not to mention, always doing his best to be a fantastic father. Grant found little not to admire in the man, though he did wonder sometimes where Leo got his money. Perhaps from a settlement with Curtis, who, as everyone knew, was bringing in millions ever since he starred in a big superhero blockbuster two years prior.

  But Curtis Banks wasn’t something he and Leo discussed.

  They talked about a lot of things, but they didn’t talk about the past, and they didn’t talk about the future, and they didn’t kiss. And, frankly, if Grant was going to keep dating Leo Garner, something had to give on that front, because he was having the kind of dreams he hadn’t had since he was fourteen years old.

  Now seemed like a good time to bring it up. Sure, the movie they’d watched had been pretty stupid, but Leo’s warm body tucked in next to him on the old, soft sofa in Grant’s apartment had more than made up for the inanity as far as Grant was concerned. Plus Lucky was staying with Leo’s father, which opened up all kinds of possibilities, as far as Grant was concerned.

  So when the credits flickered onto the screen, Grant’s heart skipped a beat
as he tried to think of how to broach the topic of physical intimacy.

  Leo sat up, stretched his arms, and picked up his cell phone, checking for texts. He used his thumbs to press in a reply to whatever he found there. “It’s from Dad. He says Lucky’s welcome to spend the night with them. She’ll love that. Dad’ll make her pancakes in the morning.”

  “Pancakes?” Grant asked. He liked pancakes. In fact, it’d been a long time since he’d had homemade pancakes. He couldn’t even remember the last time, actually. Maybe never.

  Leo smirked, and fought back a laugh. “Yeah, pancakes. Why? Want to go spend the night with my parents, so you can have some, too?”

  “Well, if that offer’s on the table…”

  “Let’s leave my folks to Lucky,” Leo said. “You don’t cook much, do you?”

  “I leave that to Alec. He feeds me.”

  “Alec’s a good friend.” Leo smiled warmly at Grant and then bent close to nuzzle his cheek. The closest thing to a kiss they’d had yet. Grant’s heart beat faster. Leo went on, “I could come back in the morning and make pancakes for you, though, if you want. I could even teach you how. It could be fun.”

  “In that case, why leave?”

  Leo’s lips curved into a radiant smile, and he flushed, glancing up at Grant and then back down again. “It’s a little soon for that, don’t you think?”

  “Is it?” Grant asked.

  A month of whatever this was and it was too soon? How long did it take to court Leo Garner?

  “You haven’t even kissed me,” Leo said. “So, yeah, I’d say it’s a little soon.”

  “I could remedy that.”

  “Maybe you should,” Leo whispered huskily.

  Grant leaned forward, and just as their lips were about to touch, Leo’s phone rang. “Tell whoever that is to—”

  Leo flushed even more and fought a grin before picking up the phone.

  “Hey, baby,” Leo said. “Did Grandpa tuck you in yet? You’ve got Sammy Spider? Yeah…uh-huh? Oh, I used to love that one, too. I called her Freckles. No, she’s a stuffed mare, not a donkey, silly. Okay, well, I love you, too. Sleep tight. Bye.”