by Amy Lane
It was a little chilly in the shadow of the pines and cedars, and Joe’s house was in a valley, which meant they were almost always in shade. Joe liked his little valley, this hole in an increasingly busy world. Yeah, he’d gotten the satellite so they could have decent television, and he was going to subscribe to DSL as soon as the station got up this way because Casey needed it if he was going to stay up on technology, but mostly? He was content here, and some of his nicest, most peaceful moments came when he was standing on the red earth and looking up past the tree spires to the blue sky. If he were a man of words, he could have written poetry for that, but as it was, he just liked to raise his face to the heavens and let his heart fly.
Maybe he’d do that today, but for the moment, he kept his eyes on the ground as he and Casey picked their way back toward the heart of the property, to a place where Casey had once brought a sleeping bag so he could lay out under the stars to sleep because it was too hot in the house. Joe had cleared out the brush and leveled it a little, but mostly, it was the same forest clutter underfoot—slivers of wood, twigs, and fallen leaves from the oak trees and needles from the pine.
At the base of a truly spectacular Joshua pine, the fragrant kind with the bark that looked like round-ended puzzle pieces, were the two small monuments. Joe paused for a second and heard Casey go, “Aww,” as he saw Seth’s to the left, and then “No. No. Geez, Joe, why didn’t you tell me?”
Joe shook his head and looked down into those familiar gray eyes, which were growing bright and shiny and almost spilling over. “If he’d been sick, that would’ve been one thing,” he said truthfully. “But one morning, Hi got up and he didn’t.”
Hi, who had followed them out there, heard his name and woofed, pushing his head under Casey’s hand for some long-overdue affection. Casey turned and squatted, gave the dog a hug, and got his face licked, and then Jonesy, the motley puppy with his mismatched coat of black, brown, and gray blotches in medium-length hair, came and licked Casey’s face too.
“I was going to wait for you to get back to get another dog,” Joe explained guiltily, “but he wasn’t going to make it, Casey. He was going to grieve himself to death, and I thought that would be worse.”
Casey kept petting, getting to know the puppy, reacquainting himself with the dog, but the bend of his neck, the curve of his shoulders, were studies in hurt. “You could have told me,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” Joe said, “I could have. But I already knew what it felt like to grieve all alone, Casey. I thought I’d wait until you got home and let you grieve with company.”
Casey stood up and launched himself into Joe’s arms, bitching the whole time. “That’s a real shitty philosophy, you know that? Because that left you here alone with no one to cry on, and it was so pointless—”
“Was not,” grumbled Joe. “Man, that phone call? The one from Pisa? With Paolo? That was fuckin’ awesome. I’d have sent you twice to get one of those.”
“You didn’t have to send me once!” Casey accused, glaring up at him with a face blotchy and stained with tears.
“No,” Joe admitted. “I didn’t. But you need to be glad you went, because it’s the last place you go somewhere without me, that’s for damned sure.”
“Promise?”
Joe nodded.
“I need to hear you say it, Josiah, because the thought of you here alone, doing this, fucking kills me. You’ve got to promise—it’s the two of us, right? We’re gonna be a fuckin’ team. If you think I’m not scared of bringing a baby home, you’re dead wrong. I can’t do it if you’re going to be all ‘Joe is an island.’ I’ve got to be a partner, Josiah. It just can’t work the other way.”
Joe nodded, swallowing hard. “I promise,” he said, his voice gruff and nearly broken. “I promise. There’s some shit a man shouldn’t do alone. This place right here, that’s one of ’em.”
“What’s another?” Casey asked, still suspicious, and Joe managed a little smile.
“Go through life, period, the end. Are you done here, or do you need some more time?”
“I’ll come back later,” Casey said regretfully. “I’m too pissed at you still to do this place justice.”
“Fair enough. C’mon. There’s something else I want to show you.” Joe grabbed his hand again, and they turned back around.
“Did you change the furniture?” Casey asked suspiciously. “Because that would be okay with me. That couch is getting old and fucking ratty.”
“We can get a new one when we get the baby stuff and turn your old room into a nursery,” Joe said. “But no.”
“The bathroom looked the same.” Casey pondered. “Did you finally get DSL?”
“No, I told you there’s no station in the foothills, okay? Wait a few years; we’ll get it when it gets here! It’s not in the house!”
“Okay, so why are we going back to the house?”
“We’re not. We’re going back to the garage, and you’re being a punk, so stop it.”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t had sex for two months. It’s starting to grate on me.”
Joe turned around and glared at him. “Well neither have I, and I’m about to rip your fool head off. Give it a rest, will ya? We’re almost there.”
The carport still held Casey’s car (the green Volvo now, not the white Taurus—it was still strange seeing it there, and probably stranger still for Casey), but the garage had been cleared out of all the building supplies since the mother-in-law cottage was built. Nothing but space, free and clear. Joe let the feral cats sleep there, and kept all of his tools and camping equipment, but there was still room for the motorcycle, so he’d been parking the thing there for the last couple of years.
But he’d had to clear a space for the thing next to it.
“Oh. My. God!” Casey looked at the attachment to the motorcycle, and then turned to Joe, and then looked at it again. “Joe! What did you do to the Harley?”
Joe looked at the sidecar with justifiable pride. “I made it a motorcycle built for two.”
He’d never let Casey learn to ride. They were too dangerous, he’d worry too much, and that was that. But the Volvo was a family car, and the motorcycle was built for one. He needed his man by his side.
Casey ran his hand over the sturdy metal frame. The thing was homemade—it had a modified chassis from a Yugo and the single wheel from a smaller motorcycle. Joe had cut down the interior from a Volkswagen Rabbit for the shell and installed the back bench seat from the same car. In general, the thing was a hodgepodge of various vehicles, but it was welded, soldered, and electrically connected to Joe’s Harley—it could be disconnected or connected with about five minutes’ worth of work with a horizontal tow bar arrangement and a plug in so the lights would run off the motorcycle’s battery. It was as safe as such a thing could be—and it even had a seatbelt and a roll bar.
“I had to modify the Harley,” Joe said, trying to explain. “It was giving out too much noise and exhaust—I changed up the carburetor and replaced the exhaust manifold so the exhaust comes out on the other side, and it’s not so loud. There’s even a Plexiglas shield between you and the bike—no heat, no exhaust, or at least less of it. It should be okay.”
Casey turned to him, his eyes shiny again but all of the recrimination gone. “But why?”
“Because a man shouldn’t go through life alone,” Joe said simply. “And you’re too big to be riding on the bitch seat all the time.”
And there it was, another armload of Casey, this one warm and wonderful and not angry at all. “I’ll still ride the bitch seat sometimes, you know that, right?” he whispered, and Joe shuddered and held him closer, because he wasn’t just talking about the back seat of a motorcycle. He was talking about being Casey—challenging, feisty, smart, and strong, and not letting Joe get away with jack shit and not settling for anything less than full partnership, even in this big scary thing they were about to do.
“I wouldn’t love you any other way.”
Epi
logue
Paradise
~Casey
2011
AUSTIN was almost asleep by the time Joe pulled up into the garage. He’d wolfed down the sandwich and the leftover hamburger—sleep was only natural, and Casey knew from experience that the vibrations from the sidecar, that low to the ground, could be incredibly peaceful. Unless you were Levi, because every time Joe took him in the sidecar, he threw up.
Casey went into the guest room and got sweats and a T-shirt out of the drawers. After Levi had thrived so well in his first few years, Roy Petty had pulled some strings. They were certified emergency foster parents now—there were all sorts of sizes of things in there for just such an emergency.
On his way out, he heard Levi turn down the TV in his room. He was supposed to be studying, which was why he hadn’t gone out to dinner with them, but Casey wasn’t going to chew him out unless he saw a failed test. The kid did good—worked hard, harder than the other kids, because the insults to his little noggin when he’d been born didn’t just go away with love.
“Casey?” Levi came to his doorway, and Casey looked up at him and smiled. He’d hit six feet tall that summer, and his body was all arms and legs and oversized feet. He’d said often that he wanted to be as tall as Joe. It could happen.
“Heya, Levi. How’s the studying?”
Levi grimaced and ran his hand over his shaved head and the blond-brown kinky stubble that remained. For a while, it had been cornrows and beads and Casey rebraiding it a different way every week because Joe was at a loss for that one. Thank God Levi had decided he liked it better short. They’d bought a set of clippers and told him to knock himself out. “Algebra II. You wouldn’t… you know. Want to come help me with it?”
God, it was hard to ask for things at seventeen, wasn’t it?
“I’d love to,” Casey said, standing on his toes and running his hand over that shaved head. God, he’d held this kid when he was a bald, screaming baby; he surely had the right to palm that big goofy teenager’s head now, right?
Levi grinned, his teeth big and even (braces!) and white in his latte-colored, high cheek-boned face. He had a long jaw and a slightly flattened nose. No beauty contests in his future, probably, but that smile—God. Melted Casey, and had Joe wrapped around the kid’s little finger, ever since his very first one.
“We brought home a stray, though,” Casey said, looking at Levi meaningfully, and Levi nodded. This wasn’t their first one, and Levi knew the drill. “We’ve got to get him showered and deloused before he goes to bed.”
Levi grimaced. “Oh God. Doesn’t Roy take care of that when we get them?” Lice. They’d all had ’em.
“Yeah, but we found this one. Your dad’s calling Roy right now.”
Levi nodded. “How bad?” One thing he’d learned growing up in Joe’s house was that as hard as it was working through the ADHD, the dyslexia, the communication handicaps and slight hearing loss that his hellific infancy had bestowed on him, there was always someone out there who was worse off than he was. Casey had often thought that Levi could have been another statistic. He’d been an angry middle schooler, a screaming mess of a grade-schooler, and a walking teacher’s meeting through much of his freshman year. But difficult or easy, he was Joe and Casey’s kid. They took him to programs, monitored his homework, remembered his medication, and worked on his behavior modification with his full participation. And sometime in his freshmen year, they’d taken in yet another stray—a girl about his age who had cried nonstop for three weeks, and who had confided in Levi like she had confided in nobody since she’d first been placed in the Daniels home.
Casey was never sure what her story was. She’d been gone within a month to a halfway house with a shrink in residence, because Joe and Casey were afraid for her, and Levi was afraid she’d hurt herself, and that was enough for them. What he did know was that shortly after Cynthia left, Levi had walked up the stairs to their bedroom one night, when they’d both been up reading, and said, “I really love you guys. Dad, Casey? All the shit… I mean, I know I’m not a great student, but you know I love being with you, right?”
Casey and Joe had nodded dumbly, and Levi had turned around and gone down to his room, and they hadn’t had one call to the principal’s office or to meet a teacher or anything besides his yearly IEP meeting for his disability plan since.
Levi had grown up, and grown up fast, and Casey and Joe were beyond grateful.
They’d made sacrifices for this—neither of them regretted it, but they were there. Casey had only worked at Intel for a year. For a year, Joe worked nights and Casey worked days, and they played tag-team to watch Levi, because they did not jump through all those hoops to put him in childcare. But the commute—and the time away from Joe—was too damned hard. Casey had quit Intel and become an independent consultant as soon as Joe got DSL. He did okay that way—well enough to pay off the Volvo and for the family to go on some good vacations (lots of trips to that place in Los Angeles to see the mouse with the big ears—Levi still would rather go to Disneyland with them than anywhere else on the planet), and well enough to save for Levi’s college so he wouldn’t have to work. So decent, yes, but they weren’t rich. Casey wasn’t going to set the world on fire as an engineer; Joe wasn’t going to have a cushy retirement until much later than he’d planned. But it didn’t matter, because now, when Casey told Levi they had a new stranger, a new kid his age, who was going to share their home and their table and their dogs and their cats (a new generation of each, because time marched on) and, yes, Joe and Casey’s time, Levi would say exactly what he was saying now.
“Okay. You want me to show him the ropes?”
And Casey smiled. “God, Levi—you’re an awesome kid. You know that, right? I love you so much it’s gross.”
Levi smiled again. “Well, hell, Casey, I hope so. I’ve been practicing my suck-up for years!”
Casey smiled, stood on tiptoe, and kissed his son on the cheek. “Let’s go check on Austin, okay? Joe’s giving his info to Roy.”
Joe was hanging up as Casey and Levi rounded the corner, and Austin looked up to see them and seemed relieved.
“Roy says you’re good to stay for a week or two,” Joe said. “Maybe longer, if you fit.”
“Anyone ever stay forever?” Austin asked, looking around their little home. There were pictures on the walls—lots of them. Levi as a baby, asleep on Joe’s chest; Levi as a five-year-old at Disneyland, hugging Mickey Mouse; the three of them standing at Lake Tahoe on a camping trip, taken by Joe’s nephew, Eli. There were pictures of Alvin and Wendy and their three kids, and Eli and his girlfriend, and even one of Joe, Casey, and Levi with Joe’s parents, taken shortly before their deaths in 2005. They’d died within a week of each other, and the whole family had gathered to mourn. There were pictures of Levi with fosterlings, camping, playing with the dogs, swimming in Sugar Pine, and pictures taken by Levi of the fosterlings with Joe and Casey at high school graduations and birthday parties. All of them—the entire collage of them down the hallway, behind the couch in the living room, around the big-screen plasma television—were framed, and beautiful, and them.
“Yeah,” Joe said gently. “But if you fit, we’ll probably only keep you until you’re ready to go away to college.”
“I’ll be eighteen before I graduate,” Austin said, looking wistfully at all those pictures, and Joe shrugged.
“Means you age out of foster care, not out of Casey and Joe’s radar. Austin, this is Levi, our son. He’s going to show you to the bathroom and help you make yourself at home in the guest room. We’ll try and get you some clothes that fit in the morning, okay?”
Levi stuck out his hand, and Austin followed him down the hall, the two of them talking quietly about pop singers as they disappeared. Levi liked Miguel, Lil Wayne, and Usher and Casey and Joe let him have them. Joe liked to say that he didn’t have to get Levi’s taste in music as long as Levi didn’t give Joe and Casey crap for theirs. It was a deal—but that didn’
t mean they didn’t give some of Levi’s songs a play on family trips, because that was only fair.
So Levi liked R&B, and Austin liked country, and they disappeared down the hallway, hammering out a code for being in each other’s lives for an indefinite length of time, leaving Joe and Casey alone.
Casey watched them with a lump in his throat, and then he wrapped his arms around Joe’s middle. It was a little harder to do each year, but it was always worth it.
“You think he’ll be okay?” Casey asked gruffly, and Joe kissed him on his short graying hair.
“I think he’ll be great,” Joe said, and then his other arm came around and Casey was engulfed in that familiar, all-encompassing hug. “He’s just like you, baby. He’s a fighter.”
“And I had you.”
“And he’s got both of us. And Levi. We’re unbeatable.”
Casey grinned a little. “Team Daniels. We’re number one.” He followed that up with a sniffle, because the last twenty-five years had been damned short.
“God, you’re sweet,” Joe said softly.
“Don’t fuck with me, Josiah. I’m having a moment.”
“So am I. Every moment I’m with you.”
Casey gave it up and let a few tears come. “You suck.”
“Not tonight. Tomorrow, when the kids are asleep. I promise.”
Casey laughed through his tears, because he had to. Because that was the two of them, and that was how they would always be.
About the Author
AMY LANE is a mother of four and a compulsive knitter who writes because she can’t silence the voices in her head. She adores cats, knitting socks, and hawt menz, and she dislikes moths, cat boxes, and knuckle-headed macspazzmatrons. She is rarely found cooking, cleaning, or doing domestic chores, but she has been known to knit up an emergency hat/blanket/pair of socks for any occasion whatsoever or sometimes for no reason at all. She writes in the shower, while commuting, while taxiing children to soccer/dance/karate/oh my! and has learned from necessity to type like the wind. She lives in a spider-infested, crumbling house in a shoddy suburb and counts on her beloved Mate, Mack, to keep her tethered to reality—which he does while keeping her cell phone charged as a bonus. She's been married for twenty-plus years and still believes in Twu Wuv, with a capital Twu and a capital Wuv, and she doesn't see any reason at all for that to change.