Stand by Your Manny

by Amy Lane

  A hand on his sweatshirt sleeve pulled him back to those arresting blue-gray eyes.

  “Hey,” Sammy said gently. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I’m just saying—you’ll have Keenan and Letty to haul around, as well as our girl here.” He turned and ruffled Felicity’s hair, and she laughed and ducked her head. “You don’t need to haul my flaky butt anywhere. In fact, it’s my job to give you a hand if you get overwhelmed.”

  Cooper nodded. “Sorry,” he said, trying to find his voice. “Was just… you know….”

  “Overwhelmed and confused?” Sammy supplied, sounding nothing but kind. “It’s all good. You probably need to go to bed and take a painkiller and get some sleep.” He looked up to Brandon and Taylor, who had been following him to the little hallway off the kitchen. “Hey, guys—tell you what. You put those in his room, and I’ll get him settled and help you get the rest of the stuff into the entryway. We can put it away after he’s rested.”

  “Good idea,” Taylor said gruffly. “He’s almost as pale as you are. Here.” He set down one of the garbage bags and pulled something out of his pocket. “Make sure he has one of these every four hours. They’re going to keep him pretty groggy—and he’ll need a snack with them, okay?”

  Sammy took the bottle from him and turned toward one of the kitchen cabinets—one over the counter, with a child lock on it. “See where I’m putting these?” he asked, catching Cooper’s eye.

  Cooper nodded. “Yeah. Good idea.”

  Sammy took one of the pills out and secured the rest. “That way we don’t have to leave it by your bed. Letty’s almost past the age of thinking medicine is awesome, but we don’t want to take any chances.”

  “Oh my God, yeah!” Cooper hadn’t even thought of that, and his heart started beating faster—and his ribs and shoulder gave big painful throbs. He grunted, and Sammy took two steps forward and caught him just as he staggered.

  Oh wow. For someone who seemed so young, he was surprisingly tall—a good half a head taller than Coop himself.

  And his arms were stringy and strong.

  And geez, did he smell good.

  “C’mon,” Sammy said kindly. “Let’s get you to bed.”

  An hour later, Cooper was lying on a nice queen-sized bed with more pillows than he’d ever dreamed of while Felicity directed Sammy where to put his clothes in the drawers.

  “Underwear on top, socks next to them,” she said, pointing. “His all have holes—he wears those boots to work, and they rip them to shreds.”

  “Rent, health, dental,” Cooper recited. He’d heard the stories of kids ending up on the street. He’d taken “workability” classes in high school. No, kids like Cooper didn’t get college, but the rent, health, and dental? That dream they could achieve.

  “We’ll have to get him more,” Sammy said, voice so natural Cooper almost couldn’t take offense.

  Almost.

  “I’m not a charity case,” he mumbled, the pain pill taking away some of his resolve. He would have sat up, but the room was already swimming.

  “We’ll take it out of your salary,” Sammy said blandly, and Felicity giggled. Cooper frowned.

  “What’s my salary going to be, anyway?”

  “Whatever your check is, minus however much we spent on socks.”

  Oh hell. “I’m not helpless,” he muttered.

  “He’s not,” Felicity chimed in. He smiled, thinking his girl had his back. “He can cook. We have grilled cheese on Mondays, spaghetti on Tuesdays, mac and cheese on Wednesdays, corn dogs on Thursdays, pizza bites on Fridays, chicken nuggets on Saturdays, and ramen on Sundays. And we do laundry and clean the house on the weekends.”

  Cooper wanted to hide under the pillows. God. It was so pathetic, the little life he’d carved out for the both of them. But she’d run away from her foster parents twice, and she’d cried on him and cried on him, and he’d promised. Promised they’d be family. He’d never had family—he’d make her his family.

  His family didn’t quite measure up to this big house with the pool and the… oh my God, was he really sleeping in maid’s quarters that were as twice as big as his entire apartment?

  “We have corn dog Mondays,” Sammy said, sounding terribly serious. “I know you haven’t been here for it, but it’s Keenan and Letty’s favorite day.”

  “What about cleaning the house?” Cooper’s heart twisted—she was so earnest!

  “Usually that happens Wednesday evening. Nobody has lessons on Wednesdays, so they have to tidy their rooms for an hour after snack. Then, if the rooms get really messy, they have to be cleaned Saturday morning before we go out and do something as a family.”

  Felicity suddenly deflated. “Oh.”

  “Well, you’re invited too.” Sammy smiled winningly at her. “In fact, we’ve had a trip to San Francisco planned for a month this week coming up.” He looked up at Cooper and gnawed his lip. “I might have to stay here and keep your brother company, but Tino and Channing will definitely want you along.”

  “San Francisco?” Felicity asked, eyes wide. “Like… like… where?”

  “Well, I heard them talking, and they have reservations on the Alcatraz ferry, and then back to the wharf for lunch,” Sammy told her, like he was ticking off a list. “The zoo after that. And the ocean after the zoo.”

  Cooper bit his lip. San Francisco? So many things to do there—that he couldn’t afford. He would have loved to have taken Felicity on a trip like that. He’d managed the Sacramento Zoo on free zoo day and the museums on free museum day, but out of town, even packing peanut butter and jelly, was more than they could afford.

  “Oh my God!” Felicity hopped up and down and actually clapped, so excited her dignity and natural guardedness slipped away. “I can go? I mean….” She stopped hopping, and Cooper saw her jaw firm up like she was expecting to take one on the chin. Well, she’d taken a couple of blows that way—Cooper wasn’t sure she could take much more. “It’s not a mistake, right? That I’m invited?”

  Cooper expected Sammy to blow her off the way adults tended to do when they didn’t see. Life had broken too many promises for kids like Cooper and Felicity to trust easily.

  Sammy stopped shoving Cooper’s nastiest work jeans into a drawer and turned to make sure he caught Felicity’s eyes. “Sweetheart, I wouldn’t promise you something like this if we couldn’t deliver. I asked specifically if you could come, and they were happy to say yes. Keenan and Letty are going to love having you on the family adventure.”

  Her lower lip wobbled. “You can’t come?”

  Sammy glanced at Cooper and shrugged. “Your brother needs me here,” he said, and Cooper wanted to protest—but he couldn’t. Just getting in the car to come here had taken it out of him. “Cooper’s been through a lot, and leaving him here in a strange house where he doesn’t know anybody? That’s no fair at all. Me and Cooper can come on the next big adventure, okay?”

  Felicity nodded and then turned toward Cooper, lying next to him on the bed while Sammy finished up. “Did you hear that?” she asked, face shining. “You’ll get to come someday.”

  Cooper swallowed. “Well, you know. That’s if things work out, squirrel bait.” He tapped her nose gently and tried not to funk all over her parade.

  She laid her head on his shoulder trustingly. “You’ll see,” she told him. “Sammy’s been great. He gets me to school on time, and we talk in the car. On Sunday he introduced me to Tino’s whole family.” She patted his chest, like an infant, almost. “I got to play with kids. Dustin was bossy, but Belinda and Melly were fun.”

  “I can’t keep up with all the names,” Cooper told her truthfully. “How do you remember them all?”

  “They played with me. Made it easier.”

  He smiled, eyes closing. This was sweet. When they’d met, he’d been sixteen and she’d been, oh geez, was it only six? The foster family then had been… efficient. They were an efficient boarding station for kids who weren’t meant to stay. Lots and lots
of kids not meant to stay.

  The one she’d been sent to after he’d aged out hadn’t been as efficient.

  “I don’t remember who they’re related to,” he mumbled. Then, truthfully, “I don’t remember who Sammy is related to.”

  Felicity’s giggle warmed something inside him. “Tino and Channing are the two daddies of the house,” she said, trying to instruct him while she was laughing. “Keenan and Letty are their children.”

  Oh. Cooper knew—he’d seen television commercials with two daddies and Facebook ads with two daddies. But he’d never known someone—a real live family—who had two daddies.

  “Is Sammy their child?” Because he couldn’t see how this fit in, really. His young, capable angel didn’t seem like the spoiled child of privilege.

  “Sort of,” Felicity told him. “One of them is his uncle. I think it’s Channing, because they look a little bit alike.”

  “Yes,” Sammy said, interrupting them with some humor. “Channing is my uncle, and when my mother died, he moved his entire life up here for me. And Tino came to be the nanny, and they fell in love, and we’ve all lived happily ever after!”

  “I’m sorry,” Cooper said, closing his eyes against the embarrassment. “I totally forgot you were here.” Oh geez—how rude!

  “Don’t worry about it.” Sammy’s voice dropped gently. “Felicity, I’m done, and it’s almost time for dinner. Can you go tell—tell, not yell—Keenan and Letty? Tell them ten minutes, okay?”

  “Sure, Sammy!” she said gaily. “What’s for dinner tonight?”

  Sammy smiled a little. “Lasagna. Tino’s sister made it—it’s really good.”

  “Whee!” Felicity ran off, and Sammy pulled a chair up to the edge of the bed.

  “You’re wiped out,” he said to Cooper. “So I’m only going to talk for a minute, okay?”

  Cooper nodded. “Sorry about the prying—”

  “Not at all. No—it’s about Felicity. You almost told her no, didn’t you?”

  Cooper blinked. “About the trip?”

  “Yeah. You almost—”

  “I didn’t want her to get her hopes up,” Cooper said softly. “She’s not fami—”

  “Look, Cooper? Here’s the thing. You haven’t met Keenan and Letty yet—but I’ll give you a heads-up. They don’t look anything like me. I grew up here with my two gay uncles, and both of them have loved me like a father—except my father hasn’t been a part of my life since I was a kid. Brandon, the guy who pretty much came and told us you would be taken in? He’s—and get this—my uncle’s husband’s sister’s husband’s cousin. And his boyfriend is my uncle’s husband’s sister’s best friend.”

  Cooper laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Oh my God!”

  “Right?” Sammy grinned at him and then sobered. “We love Felicity. She’s a wonderful kid. I get that people may have broken promises to both of you—maybe for your entire lives. But no part of my family has ever been turned away or disappointed or rejected just because they’re not… you know. Related.”

  “I’m on a bed in a stranger’s house.”

  Sammy’s hand on his arm was not unpleasant, but it was unexpected. “Well, when you’re feeling better, maybe we can become your friends. You think?”

  Cooper looked at his hand—long-fingered, artistic—and swallowed and tried not to think about how he’d been calling Sammy his angel in his thoughts for the last hour and a half. “Okay,” he rasped. “Yeah. Fine.”

  Sammy squeezed his upper arm, and then he stood up. “I’ll bring you a plate when you wake up from your nap.”

  And before Cooper could ask “What nap?” he fell asleep.

  HE woke up in an hour and heard bickering from the kitchen—two young voices talking about him, of all things.

  “No, you can’t visit him!” the older voice—a boy?—insisted. “He’s dead!”

  “He can’t be dead!” the younger voice replied—this one sounded very much like a little girl. “He can’t be, because Felicity loves him and she’d be sad.”

  “Well, Sammy said he was ‘dead to the world,’ so if that doesn’t mean dead I don’t know what—”

  “It means he was really deeply asleep,” an older male voice said. “Sammy was saying that Felicity’s brother was too deeply asleep to meet you two now. He got hurt, you guys. He’s probably too damned tired to deal with kids right now. We want him to get better so he can deal with you when we’re tired!”

  “You are not even that old!” the boy sassed, and he was rewarded with a deep laugh.

  “Did you hear that, Tino? I’m not even that old!”

  “I’ve been telling you that for thirteen years!”

  Cooper chuffed out a soft breath. This—this—was what he always imagined a happy family sounded like. No yelling, no bitter sarcasm, no apathy. Teasing, humor, even some kindness. He opened his eyes and tilted his head, wondering if he could get a glimpse of somebody moving in the overlap between the two doors across the hall.

  Instead, he saw his ang—Sammy, coming in with a plate of food.

  “Don’t worry,” he said softly, turning on the light by Cooper’s bed. “We told them you’d be awake tomorrow after school and they could come in and talk to you then.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” Cooper said, half smiling. “I was just… pretending.”

  “Pretending what?” Sammy busied himself with the tray next to him, and Cooper pushed up on his good shoulder and tried to shove pillows behind him. “Here,” Sammy directed, and from nowhere he pulled one of those cushions meant to support your back in bed. It stopped at Cooper’s shoulders, though, and Sammy shoved two more pillows behind his back and then set up the tray.

  “Pretending what?” he asked again when Cooper was situated.

  Pretending I have a family. Pretending I belong here.

  But that just sounded so pathetic, right?

  “Nothing,” Cooper muttered and then looked at his plate in surprise. Lasagna dripped cheese and meat sauce and an amazing sort of butter parmesan crust onto his plate. “This looks really good!”

  “It’s my aunt Nica’s cooking—it better.”

  Cooper smiled at him tentatively and picked up his fork. “Does she run a restaurant?”

  Sammy shook his head. “No. She runs soon-to-be six kids. But she’s the reason Uncle Tino met Uncle Channing.” He smiled and settled back in the chair, apparently determined to keep Cooper company. “Want to hear the story?”

  Yes. Just keep sitting there and smiling at me.

  “Sure,” he said instead. “If you don’t mind watching me eat.”

  “Not at all.” And while Cooper ate lasagna so good he’d only dreamed about it, Sammy launched into a story about a poor young college student arriving at Sammy’s door, and how Sammy had given him hell because Tino hadn’t been his sister, Nica.

  “You thought your mom would come back when the dinner boxes got delivered?”

  Sammy had told the story with laughter in his voice, and some parts had made Cooper smile, but that part… that part seemed to hurt something deep inside Cooper, something he couldn’t make better.

  “Yeah,” Sammy replied, sobering. “It was just like my last hope. Mom used to say the whole world started over on the first Wednesday of the month when the Dinner Box girl came. And I just… you know… hoped.”

  “I….” Cooper swallowed. “I hoped too. After my mom left me in foster care. I kept telling my first foster family not to get too used to me—she’d be coming back.”

  “Did she?” Sammy asked, his voice neutral, like he’d already figured the answer.

  “No,” Cooper whispered. “Not once.”

  “Mine either.” Sammy shrugged. “I was lucky. So lucky. I had Uncle Channing, and then I had Tino, and all of Tino’s family.” He smiled a little, almost in apology. “But you know, after my mom died, I never took them for granted.”

  Not spoiled. Sammy was not spoiled. He’d had things for his whole life, and even love all hi
s life, but he knew what he had.

  “That makes you smart,” Cooper told him seriously, using his finger to wipe the last of the lasagna sauce off his plate. “You need to be smart to survive.”

  Sammy’s laughter took on a self-deprecating ring. “Not as smart as you think,” he said dryly. “Channing and Tino keep reminding me that sometimes I get so lost in my head I forget to look around me.”

  Cooper grunted. “Well, I didn’t end up in the hospital because I made the best decisions.”

  The frown on Sammy’s face almost scared him. “How did you end up in the hospital?”

  Oh geez! “Well, so, there was this air conditioner unit on the roof,” he began. He told the story, realizing Sammy was hanging on to his every word. For a moment he forgot to be shy or guarded. For that moment, his clothes were clean and mended, and his hair had just been cut. For a moment he didn’t worry about when his last bath had been, and—just for the story—he was the most popular kid in class.

  “So you don’t remember falling?” Sammy asked, staring at Cooper like he’d survived a collapsing building after he’d run in to save orphans and kittens.

  “I’m told that’s a side effect of a concussion,” Cooper told him, nodding seriously. He closed his eyes, and the honesty slipped right on out. “My head hurts,” he admitted.

  Sammy grunted, and Cooper heard the click of the medication bottle. “I’m sorry. I was supposed to give you these when you were done eating. That’s my bad. I got so caught up talking I forgot you’d probably really like them now.”

  Sammy’s fingers, fumbling in his, made Cooper open his eyes. Sammy had gotten up to give him the tablets, and he stood much closer now—close enough for Cooper to see the dark rings around the gray irises of his eyes.

  Sammy sucked in a breath, those amazing eyes widening in surprise. “Uh….”

  Cooper barely caught the pills as Sammy took a step back to grab a bottle of water from the side of the bed. “I’m sorry,” Coop muttered, embarrassed.

  “For what?” Sammy turned back and waited for a moment while Coop tossed the pills down his throat and grabbed the water bottle to wash them down.