by Amy Lane
Dustin’s heart did a barrel roll. “The Camry?” he asked hesitantly. The car sitting next to the oldest minivan was maybe five years old with a primered fender—but his father had obviously done the bodywork. Of course the fender was primered, he thought, his throat tight. That way, he’d get to pick the color.
“That’s mine?” He bit his lip and looked up, just to make sure. Quinlan tossed him the keys and he caught them, seeing his parents in the background looking benevolent and happy.
“We need to replace the belts,” Dad said, walking around the car so they could stand shoulder to shoulder and assess the beast, just like they did in the shop. “I replaced the coil already, and the radiator, and I was going to try to get the rest of the belts done before your graduation, but….”
But Sammy’s flurry of doctor’s appointments in the last three months had meant Quinlan had been needed to pick up the slack with Channing and Tino’s kids. Which meant Mom and Dad had been needed a little more at home.
“That’s fine,” Dustin said through the lump in his throat. He reached out and ran his fingers over the wet-sanded primer. “Wasp yellow, you think?” The car was silver at present, because most cars were silver at present, but Dustin had always said he’d want a car that stood out.
“Anything but red,” his father said dryly. Common car knowledge. Red meant stop, green meant go, yellow meant go very fast.
“Yeah.” Dustin stood up again and crossed his arms, cocking his head and assessing some more. In the background he saw Quinlan with his phone, taking a picture, but he was too fascinated to care. The bumper was perfectly replaced from whatever accident the car had been in, and the tires were brand-new.
And Dustin didn’t have to use his carefully hoarded moving-out fund on a car.
And his parents had given him a present that would let him grow up and move on that much sooner.
“It’s awesome, Dad,” he said after a moment and then turned in the parking lot in front of his school and hugged his father. “Thank you so damned much.”
He turned to his family, excited, mouth open to say, “Hey, Quin—hop in, I’ll give you a ride!” but Belinda had her hand on the door latch, and Quinlan had moved to the minivan to help a wriggling St. Peter into his car seat.
He saw the happy, expectant look on Belinda’s face and managed to keep himself from snarling at her. “Sure, Bel—hop in.”
She did—and Melly followed—and he hugged his mom, who was still crying, and got in and took off. His dad had been right—he could hear the belts whining faintly as he pulled away, but other than that, the car ran like a dream, and he was looking forward to working on it with his father and the other guys in the garage.
But he was always proud of himself for keeping up the happy chatter his sisters seemed to want from him on the twenty-minute drive to the uncles’ house. Most of him was just as excited about graduation as they were, but not all. There was a tiny knot in his belly, snarling and savage, that was demanding to know when he got to spend time alone with Quin.
CHANNING and Tino Robbins-Lowell lived in an eight-bedroom, six-bathroom home in Granite Bay, and in spite of its size and the newish rugs and the fresh paint that appeared every year or so, it always reminded Dustin of his parents’ much smaller home in Rocklin.
As an adult he tried to put his finger on it—there was way more room, and unlike Dustin’s mother, who mostly used child labor to keep her tiny house clean, his cousins Felicity, Keenan, and Letty were only responsible for their rooms, bathrooms, and major spills. The dusting, the vacuuming, the cooking—that was all done by maids from Grandma’s business, and Channing and Tino made no apologies for that. In uncharitable moments, Dustin wondered if that was because they were men, and only women had that weird “I clean my own damned house!” gene his mother seemed possessed by. If someone offered him his own maid, he’d snap up that opportunity in a hot second.
But the space and the cleanliness didn’t seem to matter—neither did the subtle, masculine air freshener Dustin heartily approved of.
The chaos of happy children, of many people, actively involved in busy lives, seemed to just permeate this house the same way it permeated his home, and he’d always loved it here, just like he’d loved it at his mother’s parents as well.
He paused to struggle out of his robe and tie, so by the time he’d gone through the house to the patio in the backyard, he was not the first person there by any stretch of the imagination.
Sammy and Cooper were sitting in the shade by the pool, surrounded by Sammy’s siblings and Dustin’s sisters, and after he’d hugged the uncles and his grandparents, he finally got a chance to ask Uncle Channing about the test results.
“Clear,” Channing said happily. Hale, hearty, and still devastatingly handsome in his late forties, Channing’s hair was a mix of gray and blond, but his blue-gray eyes were still bright and young, and now suffused with relief about the young man he’d raised as his own. “He’s going to be fine. The anemia is gone—just….” His lower lip trembled, and Dustin had a sudden, adult realization that, as hard as Sammy’s health had been on the rest of the family, it had probably been hardest on Channing, Tino, and Cooper.
His parents and his husband.
God, they must have been out of their minds.
The next two carloads of Robbins-Graysons arrived, with Quinlan drawing up the rear, a sleepy St. Peter in his arms.
“Give him to me!” Dustin’s Grandma Stacy demanded from her preferred spot on the chaise lounge. Quinlan didn’t hesitate, and he shyly took Grandma Stacy’s kiss on the cheek as well.
Grandma Stacy left nobody out of family celebrations.
Quinlan looked up to where Sammy stood, inundated by happy cousins and siblings, and said, “So I take it the news was….”
Grandma Stacy smiled broadly and hugged St. Peter with all her might. “Good,” she said. “So good. You should go say congratulations, honey—he’s been asking for you.”
Dustin expected Quinlan to take her up on it, but at that moment his Grandpa Peter, St. Peter’s namesake, came up to talk to him—and, embarrassingly enough, to give him a card full of money. Dustin was very conscious of being a grown-up here and being the recipient of all of this goodwill—he talked engines and cars with Grandpa Peter for twenty minutes, before Sammy broke away from the other kids and came to speak with him.
“Have you seen Quin? I wanted to tell him myself!”
Dustin’s heart ached happily in his chest, and he turned away from Grandpa with an apology and launched himself into Sammy’s arms for a huge hug.
“We all know, dorkface. Oh my God—we’ve been texting about nothing else for a month.”
Sammy returned the hug, laughing. “Damn, Dustin—are you being nice?”
Dustin scowled. “We were worried, asshole!”
“Okay—that’s the kid I know and love.” Sammy’s teasing subsided, and he looked bashful. “I know you were. Thanks—you know. For worrying.”
Oh geez. Anybody else would have kept teasing and spared Dustin the emotional honesty. “Well, you’re Sammy. You’re the best of us. So”—he smiled wickedly, having fended off this question for the past three months—“what are your plans for the future?”
“For starters,” Cooper said, walking up behind Sam and digging his chin into his shoulder, “we can move out of his uncles’ house and down the street.”
“Freedom, oh freedom,” Dustin deadpanned, and Sammy smacked him in the arm.
“Baby steps!” he protested—but then he made that a lie by looking to where Sammy’s brother and sisters stood chatting with all the Robbins-Grayson kids. Keenan and Melly were both fourteen, and although they went to different high schools, they stood heads together, chatting about their schedules. Keenan wanted to be a music major like his adopted brother Sammy, and Melly was still into dance—they had a lot to talk about. Letty, tiny and perky at eleven, was, as everybody had been predicting, Conroy’s soulmate. Where Conroy said very little
and was simply content, Letty never stopped her happy chatter—and was also simply content. Letty’s short cap of dark hair highlighted her large brown eyes, and her pale brown skin glowed with the sun.
Dustin had to agree that someday Conroy would wake up and Letty would be every girl he’d ever dreamed about, and Letty would be quite happy to be there for him when he did.
Felicity, the oldest next to Sammy, was seventeen now—she would graduate next year. She’d come to the family as Cooper’s foster sister, but Channing and Tino had adopted her legally, as they’d adopted Cooper in spirit, and she was bouncing up and down, chatting with Belinda, her voice rising excitedly.
Sammy’s Uncle Channing had entered his life after Sammy’s mother passed away, and Tino had entered their lives soon afterward. Dustin understood, by that one all-encompassing glance, that Sammy and Cooper weren’t staying close because of lingering concerns over Sammy’s health, but because the kids there meant something to them, and they didn’t want to leave just yet.
Urgh. The sheer nobility of it made Dustin want to hurl.
Or it would have, if he hadn’t felt the same way.
“And seriously,” Sammy said, breaking the sudden quiet, “where’s Quin?”
Dustin looked back over the family, happy and celebrating, and remembered Quinlan’s perennial shyness when it came to being part of the family.
And suddenly he really wanted to know where Quinlan was too.
“I’ll go look for him,” he said determinedly and strode away without another word, probably violating about six codes of family protocol, dammit! But he just had this burning in his stomach, this fierce belief that Quinlan shouldn’t be alone right now.
Back behind the pool house was a small dirt walkway lined with hurricane fencing to keep the neighbor’s oleander from getting out of hand. There was a little corner of open fencing that was a fantastic place for a little boy to go piss if he’d played in the pool too long and couldn’t last long enough to dry off and go into the carpeted pool house. Sammy had shown it to Dustin when Dustin had been four years old and told him under strictest confidence that it would be Dustin’s turn to show Keenan when it was his turn, and so on.
Quinlan had figured out where the place was when Conroy had brought St. Peter there the summer before, and he’d started setting mandatory timers for when little kids had to get out, dry off, and go use the bathroom indoors, because he just wasn’t dealing with a line of little boys pissing in the neighbor’s bushes, and that was the truth.
Well, a year later the oleander had been trimmed, the place was clean, and, yes, it was still private.
Dustin checked there first.
Quinlan was squatting, back to the pool house, face buried in his hands.
His shoulders were shaking with suppressed sobs of pure relief.
Aw, dammit, Quin!
Dustin sank down next to him and put an arm over his shoulders. His body radiated heat, and Dustin could barely hear his muffled “I’m fine. Be out in a minute.”
“It’s okay, you know,” Dustin said quietly. “You were really worried. I saw it.”
“I just need a minute.” Quinlan’s voice was clogged and broken, and Dustin wondered what would happen if somebody not Dustin came back and saw him like this.
It didn’t bear thinking about.
“C’mon,” Dustin said quietly, rising to his feet. “Stand up.” He offered his hand for Quinlan to grab and then pulled, hard. “Let your muscles stiffen up, didn’t ya?”
Quinlan let out a snort—the most encouraging thing Dustin had heard from him in months. “Yes, Dustin, you’re very smart.”
“Whadja think, Quin?” Dustin asked, suddenly hurt and worried. Quinlan was still taller than he was by about two inches—but two inches wasn’t a lot. They stood, chest to chest, and Dustin reached into Quinlan’s back pocket without thinking about it and retrieved the Kleenex Quinlan had offered Dustin’s mom.
“What’d I think about what?” Quinlan took a step back and reached his hand out automatically for the Kleenex, but Dustin followed him and used the Kleenex to mop up his face. God, he was good-looking. Strong-featured, with a square jaw, a bold nose, and, always, those big, limpid dark eyes.
“Whadja think—we wouldn’t get it?” Dustin stepped back just far enough to bop Quinlan on the head like he did with his younger siblings when they were being stupid. “That we wouldn’t understand? He’s… he’s the first person you cared about, after you left home. He’s the center of our family—and, you know. You’re our family too. You were terrified. You were thinking, ‘If he dies, I’ve got nobody holding me here,’ right?”
Quinlan wiped his eyes and looked away. “Shut up.”
“No, you shut up!” Dustin snapped. “I’m right, aren’t I? Well, you’re stupid. But that’s okay. I’m living proof my dad never killed nobody for being stupid.”
Quinlan looked for a moment like he was going to laugh about that, which was good because Dustin had pulled the shitty-grammar card and everything. One minute he was about to crack up and the next….
He disintegrated, and Dustin was pulling him against his chest, soothing him like he’d soothe St. Peter or Tay.
Dustin was so focused on Quinlan that he almost startled when his mother tapped him on the shoulder.
“Dustin?”
“Mom?”
She took in the scene with compassionate eyes. “Here,” she said softly. “I’ll calm him down. You go talk to the relatives and make sure nobody comes back here.”
“But, Mom!” he protested. No, this was not his strong point—and it wasn’t how he’d planned to spend time with Quinlan either—but… but Quinlan needed him.
“You think he needs you?” his mother asked, reading his thoughts with uncanny accuracy. “He needs a mommy. He’s needed a mommy since he moved in to our house. I’ve been waiting for this moment for four years. Now go.”
Dustin swallowed and turned on his heel, reminded in living color that graduation was not really a full pass to adulthood.
“I’m really fine, Nica,” Quinlan hiccupped behind him.
“Shut up,” Dustin’s mother snapped. “Shut up and hug me, sweetheart. You’re not going anywhere until we’ve made you all okay.”
Dustin never did find out what his mother said to Quinlan after he left. But an hour after Dustin returned to his graduation party, he was sitting alone with a ginormous piece of carrot cake when Quinlan sat down next to him, carrying nothing but a fork.
Dustin looked at the fork and at Quinlan. “You think so?” he asked, but he couldn’t summon much hostility. Quinlan looked better—his eyes were only a little red, and his mom must have stolen all the cucumbers because his nose was only a little swollen.
“You hate cake,” Quinlan said quietly, taking a bite. “You particularly hate carrot cake. I don’t know why your mom thinks it’s your favorite, but I’ve watched you for four birthdays, and you find a way to ditch out on your carrot cake every year.”
Dustin sighed and let him eat.
“When I was seven, I did something really horrible to Belinda—don’t ask me what it was—”
“What was it?”
“I honestly don’t remember.” He didn’t either. Headless Barbie dolls were involved, but after that he’d blocked it out. “I just remember the aftermath.”
“Which was?” Quinlan took another bite of cake, and Dustin wished he’d gotten an even bigger piece.
“That Mom asked me what kind of cake I wanted for my birthday that same day, and to keep Belinda from telling, I told Mom it was carrot cake, which was Belinda’s favorite. And then Mom just kept fixing it for me every year, and now I feel too bad to change it.”
Quinlan chuckled and took another bite. “How about,” he said, grabbing Dustin’s water and washing down the carrot cake, “you tell your mom next time, ‘Hey, I know usually I like carrot cake, but can I try….’” He held out his hand and made a c’mon c’mon gesture so Dustin would finish th
e sentence.
“Chocolate banana cream pie,” Dustin supplied, feeling a little dreamy. Nobody made that, but he loved it.
“Mm….” Quinlan closed his eyes. “Okay. Yeah. We can fix this,” he said, sounding excited. “We can get you the pie you love.”
Dustin nodded. “Quin?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s okay—I won’t tell anyone I saw you cry.”
Quinlan swallowed another bite of Dustin’s cake. “Thank you,” he said humbly.
“And I don’t think… you know. Bad. Badly. Whatever. I don’t think badly of you, because… because your heart was just too full.”
Quinlan nodded. “Sometimes, when you go a while without feeling much at all, feeling too much all together….”
“Hurts,” Dustin whispered. He wanted to kiss Quin’s cheek. Wanted to squeeze his knee or lay his head on his shoulder.
“Yeah,” Quinlan agreed, taking another bite.
“Don’t eat that too fast,” Dustin said, knowing in his gut that now was not the time. “It could make you sick.”
The next day, Dustin’s mother texted him the picture Quinlan had taken in the school parking lot, Dustin standing next to his father, their arms crossed in front of their chests, their heads cocked at the same angle, the fascination on their faces—there was no doubt Dustin was his father’s son.
Dustin studied the picture, thinking he’d have it framed, and then looked at the other ones she’d taken. There, a whole one of the Robbins-Graysons—Dustin in the middle with Mom and Dad on either side, Conroy, Melly, Belinda, and Tay kneeling in the front, and, standing with St. Peter on his hip, slightly apart and behind Jacob, Quinlan.
What’s it gonna take, Quin? What’s it gonna take to get you into the center of the picture with me?
Dustin thought he was going to have to think about that one for a long, long time.
Three months ago
Quinlan
“SO, Madison, Quin tells us you’re a musician too.” Nica was smiling—that is, her teeth were showing—but Quinlan wasn’t fooled. This had been a mistake.