Sidecar

by Amy Lane

  By AMY LANE

  NOVELS

  Chase in Shadow

  Clear Water

  Gambling Men: The Novel

  The Locker Room

  Sidecar

  A Solid Core of Alpha

  The Talker Collection (Anthology)

  THE KEEPING PROMISE ROCK SERIES

  Keeping Promise Rock

  Making Promises

  Living Promises

  NOVELLAS

  Bewitched by Bella’s Brother

  Christmas with Danny Fit

  Hammer and Air

  If I Must

  It’s Not Shakespeare

  Puppy, Car, and Snow

  Super Sock Man

  Truth in the Dark

  The Winter Courtship Rituals of Fur-Bearing Critters

  GREEN’S HILL

  Guarding the Vampire’s Ghost

  I love you, asshole!

  Litha’s Constant Whim

  TALKER SERIES

  Talker

  Talker’s Redemption

  Talker’s Graduation

  Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  Copyright

  Published by

  Dreamspinner Press

  382 NE 191st Street #88329

  Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Sidecar

  Copyright © 2012 by Amy Lane

  Cover Art by Shobana Appavu bob@bob-artist.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 382 NE 191st Street #88329, Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  ISBN: 978-1-61372-568-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  June 2012

  eBook edition available

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-569-6

  This is for men like my husband and father who believe parenthood is a sacrament and good works bring us closer to the good in the universe, for whom gentleness is not weakness and flaws are forgivable, who struggle daily between what is good and what is easy and very nearly land on the right side of that every single time.

  Note from the Author

  BACK when I used to teach high school, my students would come up to me and try to get me not just to listen to their music, but to love their music.

  It was never going to happen.

  Besides the fact that I was a die-hard Springsteen fan (which just sort of takes you out of all other music categories, favorite-wise!), my tastes ran completely counter to the popular music in the area in which I was teaching—but I told my kids that it didn’t matter. In fact, I told them to embrace it.

  “Okay—you guys, don’t listen to what grown-ups say about your music, because the fact is, that music will help you time travel. You don’t believe me? In twenty years when you’re exhausted and you’re worried about your job or your kids or politics or your spouse, and you feel like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders, you will hear a song, and BOOM! There you’ll be. Twenty years in the past, when you had the entire world before you!”

  I’ve had kids come back and tell me that I was right, and that was true, and they thanked me, because I gave them permission to fly the way they wanted to without ever trying to be someone different than who I was.

  Every chapter in this book is a song title. The two chapters set in the modern day were taken off of 2011 Billboard charts. However, Joe and Casey’s story starts in 1987—and some years are more important to us than others. So I took every chapter title for the rest of the story from a list of the top 100 songs of 1987. Enjoy them. Think of them as your very own time machine, and travel back a little. For some of us (raises hand), 1987 was a very good year!

  Someone Like You

  ~Casey

  THE kid was cold. Casey could see that as Joe puttered past him in the tree-shaded twilight of Foresthill Road near Sugar Pine Lake. It was November and in the forties this time of night, and the lost thing on the side of the road was not dressed for the weather. He didn’t look good at all. His lips were blue, his thin arms folded in front of him were paler than the grimy T-shirt, and his cheeks were hectically flushed.

  And his eyes were dead.

  Casey reached from under the fleece-lined leather lap robe that nestled him in the cozy sidecar (complete with a little space heater at his feet, because Joe took care of details like that) and tapped Joe’s thigh, but he didn’t need to bother. Joe was the same guy he’d been twenty-five years earlier. He could spot a miserable runaway a mile away.

  They pulled the cycle over to the side of the road, and Casey took off his helmet—because he knew they looked scary when you were cold and alone on the side of a country road—and called out.

  “Hey, kid!”

  They’d passed the boy up, walking in the opposite direction, and Casey could see the kid’s shoulders stiffen as they called out to him.

  “Yeah?” he asked, like he was bracing himself for a blow.

  Casey and Joe met eyes. Casey sighed and got out of the sidecar, then walked carefully to about five yards from the boy. A big enough distance so the kid could run away if he felt like he needed to, and close enough so he could see that Casey, at forty-one, was probably fit enough to catch him, and maybe mean enough to give chase.

  “Kid, look. It’s going to dip into freezing tonight. Can we take you anywhere?”

  The kid narrowed his eyes, and he gave a convulsive shudder. “I….” He closed his eyes. “I don’t got nowhere to go.”

  Casey nodded, because they’d known that. “We’ve got a spare bedroom,” he said cautiously. “For the night. No strings. We’ve even got some food.”

  Oh, God. The eyes on this kid. Brown, deep, and terrified.

  “I….” The kid shivered again. “I don’t got no money, but I can”—he grabbed his crotch uncomfortably—“I can pay.”

  Casey wrinkled his nose. “You see that graying bastard on the back of that motorcycle?”

  The kid looked up. Joe was sitting there, his comfortably wrinkling face sunk into what looked to be a habitual scowl but was really just a thoughtfulness almost out of place in this century. His gray-and-white ponytail was sticking out from under his helmet like a barely contained coal brush, and he had a fairly frightening Fu Manchu mustache with matching soul patch. He was easily six feet five inches tall, and his shoulders were (at least to a young man’s eyes) as broad as a barn. He was one of those men who became thick with age in spite of the best efforts of diet and exercise, and he looked like one hammer swing from his fist would effectively dent the hood of a half-ton pickup.

  The kid’s eyes grew huge. “Yeah,” he whispered, obviously scared of what came next.

  “He keeps me plenty busy. And if I slept around, he’d kill me. And if he slept around, I’d geld him. I’d say you’re safer in the spare bedroom of two old queers than you are almost anywhere else in the county.” Casey lowered his voice. “Including, maybe, your own home.”

  The kid looked up, and something dropped from his eyes, and what was left was naked, feverish, and damned near to done. “I’ll do anything,” he begged.

  “No worries,” Casey said, keeping his v
oice low and soothing, like he would with a wild bear or a rabid chicken. “Here. We’ll let you sit in the sidecar home. We’ve got a spare helmet; it’s nice and warm. It’ll be good. Trust me.”

  The kid cast a hunted look at Joe, who was watching the two of them with serene curiosity. “That guy—that guy’s not gonna….” He shuddered.

  Casey rolled his eyes. “Kid, you should be so lucky. But no. I worked too hard to make him mine, okay?”

  The kid looked dubious, and Casey smiled to himself. Odds were good they’d take the kid home, give him a couple of warm meals, and find somewhere for him to go live. Maybe, if he was like some of the other strays they’d picked up, he’d stay a few months, or maybe a few years, but either way, the kid had nothing to worry about from Josiah Daniels. Joe was 100 percent decent—and 110 percent Casey’s. But even if the kid did end up placed with them, and even lived with them for years, he probably would never hear the whole story. That story was for Casey and Joe alone.

  The kid looked at the sidecar again, and the lines of his face, bitter and saturnine—even at what? Fifteen? Sixteen?—eased for a minute.

  “Would I really get to ride in that?” he asked, and Casey got a glimpse of little kid in the bitter, tattered thing on the side of the road.

  “Yeah!” Casey grinned at the kid and then looked at Joe with the same grin. Something in Joe’s slightly weathered fiftyish features softened, and the kid looked quickly from Casey to Joe and back again.

  “He really likes you,” the kid whispered, and Casey shrugged.

  “Yeah. Yeah, he really does.” The kid didn’t have to know how long it took Casey before Joe admitted to it. “So, kid, you want to use our spare room? We got a mother-in-law cottage. You can sleep there if you want.”

  The kid looked hungrily at the sidecar, with the fleece lap robe and the spare helmet Joe was casually pulling out from underneath the seat. Then Joe added the kicker—an extra peanut butter and jelly sandwich that they’d packed before they’d set out on the bike that afternoon. They’d ended up eating out at The Oar Cart anyway, but the sandwich had let them ride farther before they turned around. Casey could tell when the kid spotted the sandwich. His tongue must have smacked on his palate about six times. Then Joe pulled out the little takeout box from The Oar Cart, the one with half a pound of meat and sourdough bun in it, and Casey could smell the aroma of world-famous burger from where he was standing. He thought the kid was going to swoon.

  “I don’t care,” the boy said, swallowing. “Maybe your house… just for a night.”

  Casey grinned again and held out his hand. “Casey,” he said. “Casey Daniels.” Somewhere out there was probably a birth certificate and a Social Security card and a thousand other things that proclaimed he’d been born with a different name, but he couldn’t find them, and Joe didn’t know where they were, and even Casey’s driver’s license said Casey Daniels now.

  “Austin,” the kid said earnestly. “Austin Harris.” He had brown hair that looked like it had been hacked off in the back, sides, and front, and teeth that hadn’t been brushed in too long. Casey reached out his hand again, and the kid shook it, tentatively.

  “It’s not clean,” he said by way of apology, and Casey shrugged, wiggling his fingers.

  “Skin washes,” he said with quiet optimism. “Here. You eat on the way, and you can take a shower before you go to sleep, okay?”

  The kid shivered all over and squeezed his eyes tight shut. “I think I have lice,” he said, miserable, like this confession cost him everything.

  Casey grimaced. “Well, thanks for warning us. We’ll be sure to treat that helmet with the disinfectant shit when we get home.” He pursed his lips. “I think we’ve got a lice comb and some mineral oil—or would you rather just shave it off?”

  The kid shook his head. “I don’t care,” he said, shivering. “Food, a place to sleep, a door… shave me bald, I don’t care.”

  Casey gestured toward the motorcycle. “Go get yourself settled in. Try not to spill too much on the lap robe. That was a present.”

  The kid didn’t hear that last part. He was trotting toward the sidecar like it was a little slice of heaven. Casey followed more sedately, wondering if they were going to wake up with their throats slit and their television gone but thinking probably not. He knew this kid, knew what he wanted—had been this kid.

  He got to the motorcycle and planted his hands easily on Josiah’s strong shoulders, swung his leg around, and got his feet settled on the pegs.

  “You know who that kid reminds me of?” Joe told him as they watched the kid fumble with the helmet strap and get settled under the lap robe, huddling down near the space heater using as much play as the seat belt would give him.

  “Yeah, I know,” Casey said, resting his cheek against Joe’s back, careful of clunking the state-of-the-art bright turquoise helmet on his head against Joe’s back, or against his no-nonsense-black helmet, with too much force. Joe could take it—the sonuvabitch was strong—but Casey wouldn’t ever do anything to cause him pain.

  “You only think you know,” Josiah said softly. “You’ll never know what it costs me, seeing you in them, again and again and again.”

  “But you take them in, every time,” Casey reminded him, tightening his grip around Joe’s waist.

  “Yeah, well, what else would I do?”

  “Not a damned thing.”

  The kid had overcome the adjustment shivers and was starting to plow through the food. They had about a half an hour before they got to their own little piece of Foresthill, so Joe didn’t waste any time kick-starting the bike and roaring back onto the road.

  He wouldn’t do a damned thing different, and Casey wouldn’t want him to. After twenty-five years, that was saying something.

  Because Casey wouldn’t change it either.

  Livin’ On a Prayer

  ~Casey

  25 Years Earlier

  FUCK, it was cold in the foothills. The truck driver had pulled off at some bizarre intersection on I-80 that proclaimed itself to be the exit for a place called Foresthill. He parked the rig (no payload, or he wouldn’t have been able to pull off) in the parking lot of a Raley’s supermarket with a McDonald’s in the lower quadrant. He stopped to go get food, and when Casey asked if the guy could get him some, he was met with another round of This Is Your Ass.

  “You gonna let me again?” the guy asked. He was a short, stocky guy with a thankfully midsized dick.

  “I didn’t let you the first six times,” Casey snapped, tired of it all. “All I ever offered was a fucking blowjob, and you’ve fucked me six times in the last two days. I think I could get some goddamned food!”

  The guy—Big Daddy (ugh!) or Glen or whateverthefuckhis namewas—was sitting on the far side of the truck, which meant that moving in to crack Casey across the face was awkward, which was good, because if he’d actually landed the blow he’d had planned, he would have knocked Casey unconscious. As it was, he laid open Casey’s lip on his teeth and bloodied his nose, all in one casual crack of a closed fist.

  Casey had been hit a lot in the last couple of months. He grunted and let his body go limp to absorb some of the pain.

  “I’ll be back in a few,” the guy said like he hadn’t just practically knocked Casey’s teeth out. “Maybe I’ll bring food.”

  Well, maybe “maybe” wasn’t good enough. The thought was hard to get past Casey’s ringing head and the pain blossom in his face, but still, he heard it loud and clear.

  He opened the door and hissed—it was fucking cold, and the taste of snow was like the edge of bronze on his tongue—but that didn’t stop his resolve any. He was still dizzy, so scrambling down from the big rig was hard, and he was damned grateful he didn’t fall on his ass. He eventually made it to his own two feet, though, and tried to take stock. He walked to the edge of the parking lot, almost amused to see a sidewalk rounding this little corner of strip mall, and then saw the yellow sign across the street. It prohibited any
vehicle over five tons from driving the granite-wall-lined road beyond.

  Well thankyajebus, it looked like things were finally going his way.

  He tucked his hands in the pockets of his dirty 501 jeans, pulled up the collar of his grungy, once-pink Izod shirt, and started walking down the side of the road.

  For the first quarter mile, he was protected by the roughly cut granite walls, which blocked the wind, and he was grateful. Then the blind drop of the hill he was walking down ended, and he caught his breath.

  He was going to cross that?

  The road dipped down and then became a bridge—one of the tallest Casey had ever seen—spanning the gap between what looked to be two mountains. And as Casey was trying to catch his breath for the height of the bridge, his granite windbreak ended, and he was exposed to the force of the wind. It was sharp enough to bring tears to his eyes, but not once did he think of going back.

  He plodded, grimly determined not to wander back up that hill to where Glen “Big Daddy” truck driver waited with his ready fist and hamster’s libido. Glen hadn’t been the first Big Daddy Casey had met in the last two months, and in this moment, walking toward that vast, tenuous space between everything that was safe, Casey felt like he was leaving Glen and all those other horrors behind. He was done with them. The wind grew stronger until, by the time he was actually on the bridge, on the little pedestrian walkway of the separated lane that was going east, it felt like it was actively trying to rip him off his feet and hurl him over the chest-high rail.

  If it hadn’t been for his piss-stubborn defiance to resist doing what the wind was trying to make him do, he might have simply climbed up and jumped off all on his own. As it was, that trip across the bridge—some twenty-five hundred feet, compared to the more than seven hundred foot drop below him—was the longest walk of his life.

  But the bridge ended, like all things must end, and he wisely didn’t stop and turn around to see what it was he’d just crossed. Most of him knew that until he could no longer see the bridge, the temptation to jump off of it might just break him.