Picture this (Birds of a Feather Book 3)

by Lena North

  “That sucks,” she said.

  “Like a swarm of mosquitos in August,” I replied.

  We sat in silence for a while, and I thought about my family. For the first time since that awful day, it didn’t cut through me to remember them. I’d been so desperate to be happy for them that I’d avoided any memories because they hurt too much. The past few weeks had taught me that it was okay to be unhappy too, and I’d forever be in debt to Carson and Bo for giving that to me.

  “Will you tell Jinx?”

  “Of course,” I said with a sigh.

  “Do you want me to tell her?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes, Wilder, that’d be great. I’ll talk about it with her when I see her, but now you know and she should too. All of you should know, so please tell Jinx and then you can share with the others however you want.”

  We sat in silence for a while, and then I sighed again. I’d been so afraid to talk about my family because I’d thought it would break me, but Miller had been right. I hadn’t thought about it like that, but I was resilient.

  “Are you okay?”

  I looked into her unusual eyes, and they were so often hard and tough, but right then they were a soft amber that soothed me.

  “Yes, Wilder, I actually am. I thought it would be much harder to talk about it than it was. I should have told you before.”

  “You told me now,” she replied calmly. “Now tell me about Miller,” she added, and I jerked.

  “What?”

  “Something is going on with him, and I don’t know what, and Mac doesn’t either. He’s edgy and moody, and that’s not like him. He’s usually the most laid back of all the guys.”

  “Huh,” I said, wondering what she was talking about. I hadn’t noticed any moodiness, though I hadn’t spent that much time with Miller.

  “You talked before, and it looked serious?” she prodded.

  “It was nothing. He explained about his ridiculous self-surgery and the friggin’ stitches he’d put in himself,” I said. “I wish he’d told me and I could have done it for him.”

  “Surgery?”

  “Not in a million years, Wilder. Would have done the stitches, though.”

  “You know how to do that?” she asked.

  “Sort of,” I mumbled, thinking that, shit, this was a part that I just wasn’t ready to talk about. “Not really,” I added lamely.

  “Huh,” she said, eyeing me speculatively. “Is there something going on between the two of you?”

  “What?” I wheezed.

  “Looked like it,” she said, and a sly smile started to spread on her face.

  “No, Wilder, don’t get that look. There’s nothing going on, you know that. He’s older than me, and –”

  “Mill is six years older than Dante. Nine years older than Mac. Not exactly balancing on the edge of his grave, Mary,” she interrupted.

  “I thought Dante was much younger,” I said because I’d thought he was the same age as Jinx and me, but also because I was trying to not talk about Miller. At least, not talk about Miller and me.

  “So?” she asked, not letting my evasive comment throw her off track.

  “Wilder, no,” I sighed. “Even if I was interested, which I’m not saying I am,” I added hastily since she started grinning, “I’m sure he’s not into someone like me.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  I didn’t know what to say, so in another effort to divert her from the topic, I explained how I’d rushed down to the pond and found him. She laughed loudly when she heard about Miller nakedness.

  “I bet he looked good,” she giggled. “They’re all super-fit so even though the man had just dug a bullet out of his leg and was standing in waist high water…” she eyed me in that shrewd way again, “He did step that far back, right? He didn’t stay in knee high –”

  “Wilder!”

  “Sorry,” she giggled.

  “Really, Wilder,” I huffed. “There is nothing going on. I have barely seen him. He came here once to give me some art supplies and then –”

  “Bearing gifts!” she exclaimed.

  “Oh for crying out loud,” I snapped. “Drop it. Nothing. Is. Happening.”

  “Okay,” she said. “He’s a great guy so you could do worse, but I was just teasing.”

  “Good. Let’s go and look at what Bo in his silly way calls my atelier,” I said and got up. “Carson and I call it the barn, but you know Boz.”

  I started walking, and she followed me without talking more about Miller, which suited me just fine. Instead, we walked over to look at my corner of the barn, and she stared at the drawings hanging on the wall long enough for me to get nervous and wonder what she thought about my work.

  “I never realized how talented you are, Mary,” she murmured

  “Lots of practice,” I replied.

  “I could practice for twenty years, and there’s no way it’d look like this,” she said and pointed at a picture of Miller’s kite.

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  The kite had actually turned out better than I thought, so maybe I’d try to do it in watercolors. Or acrylic. The yellow eyes and warm red shades on its feathers would look –

  “Earth to Mary!” Wilder called, and I grinned at her.

  “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “Let’s go back, I’m hungry.”

  We were walking past the house when Wilder stopped to tie her shoelaces, and then she made a soft hissing sound. I turned, and she was waving at me to come but put a finger to her lips when she saw that I was about to call out. I frowned because I was hungry too, and wanted to help Carson with dinner.

  “Listen,” she breathed.

  We were right outside the kitchen, and there were no windows, but the ventilation above Carson’s huge indoor grill apparently went through the wall right where we were standing because we could hear the men talking inside. I shrugged and turned, but then a deep voice caught my attention.

  “You’re getting gray, son,” Carson said.

  I blinked. Kit was getting gray hair? I hadn’t noticed.

  “Welcome to the club,” Miller muttered.

  “Yeah,” Kit sighed. “Started a while back.”

  “Didn’t notice,” Hawker said.

  For some reason this made both Miller and Carson burst out laughing.

  “What?” Hawker asked.

  “I should hope that you didn’t notice,” Bo said, and it sounded as if he was laughing too.

  “What?” Hawker repeated.

  “Well shit,” Miller sighed. “You know it runs in the family, and you know we start going gray before we turn thirty.”

  “Closer to twenty for me,” Carson rumbled sourly.

  “I know you do, so I have to repeat myself. What?” Hawker asked curiously.

  “Doesn’t start on the head,” Miller muttered.

  There was a long silence, and Wilder and I looked at each other in confusion.

  “Really?” Hawker said. “Strange. Seen you without your shirts all your lives –”

  The others all started laughing, and I heard a growling rumble that I figured was Hawker Johns displaying his displeasure. I could have growled myself because they really didn’t get to the point very quickly.

  “Oh my God,” Wilder breathed suddenly and slapped a hand over her mouth, but before I could ask her to explain, Miller spoke.

  “I’m not talking about the chest.”

  “What?”

  “Jesus, Hawk. Not on my head, not on my chest. Where the hell do you think?” Kit snapped, and my eyes widened.

  Were they talking about –

  My thoughts were interrupted when Wilder took hold of my hand and yanked me away from the wall and started dragging me around the house. When we’d rounded the corner, she let go of me and doubled over.

  “Holy shit,” she groaned.

  “Did they just say what I think they just said,” I
said, still stunned by the weird fact we’d learned, and trying my best to not think about the area they would have been talking about, on either of the men because that would have been even weirder.

  “Oh. My. God, yes,” she wailed and laughed so hard she had to sit down.

  I started laughing too, and after a while, I sat down next to her. She wiped a few tears from her cheeks and turned to look at me.

  “I’ll use this information. Don’t know how. Don’t know when, but I will. Oh my God when I tell Mac…”

  I looked primly at her.

  “I don’t think it’s nice to talk about your friends’ pubic hair, Wilder,” I said

  It was a struggle to keep my face serene, and laughter bubbled up my throat, although I held it back and must have pulled it off credibly because she stared at me.

  “After all, it’s not so strange,” I added, “If it isn’t on the big head then it’s on the little –”

  Her loud whoop cut me off, and she started laughing hysterically again, and so did I. It took us a good long while to calm down to a state where we felt we could face the men, but finally, we walked toward the kitchen door.

  “You had me on that one, Mary,” Wilder said. “Pubic hair? Who would use those words?”

  Before I could stop myself, I asked, “But what else would you…” I trailed off when I saw the look on her face and added quickly, “Don’t, Wilder. I don’t need to know.”

  She grinned and stretched her hand out toward the door, hesitated, and asked quietly, “Didn’t you notice?”

  “Notice?”

  She stared at me.

  “Didn’t you notice that Kit was getting gray around his di –”

  I slapped a hand over her mouth and looked around, which was ridiculous because they were all on the other side of the door we were standing outside.

  “Stop it, Wilder, we weren’t doing it,” I hissed. Her eyes started to glitter gleefully, so I snapped angrily, “Since you met Mac, I swear, sex is all you think about!”

  “Mary,” I heard Hawker rumble from the door that he’d apparently just thrown wide open. “Do you really think this is something I want to hear?”

  Well, crap. Wilder and I both froze, and our eyes met. Then we turned slowly toward her father, who looked like he’d sucked on a lemon for a very long time. Miller and Kit stood behind him, and they were both grinning.

  All I could look at was their hair. Miller’s unruly, thick mop suddenly seemed way more salt than pepper, but I couldn’t see any gray at all in Kit’s. Although I wouldn’t, of course.

  I knew I was going to start laughing any second, so I clenched my teeth tightly together, and focused on breathing through my nose.

  “I can’t do this,” Wilder suddenly choked out.

  “Pizza,” I wheezed without unlocking my jaws. “In town. We have to leave,” I managed to press out.

  “But the food is ready,” Carson said and pushed Kit out of the way to look at us.

  Then he pulled his hand over his head to push his completely gray hair out of his eyes, and I felt a tear slip out of my left eye. My belly was shaking, and I couldn’t hold back a small whimper.

  “Mary?” Miller said, looking confused.

  “Yes. Pizza,” Wilder groaned. “Now.”

  Then we turned around toward the cars and went into the nearest village to eat pizza. It had been an escape from embarrassment, but after sharing my past with my best friend, it felt good to eat greasy food and laugh again. It felt as if life was returning to normal, whatever that was.

  Wilder dropped me off but didn’t enter the house, and as I walked up the steps and turned to wave at her, I saw her father and Kit come around the corner. They went straight to the car, and since it was Hawker’s, or more likely because he was Hawker, he walked to the driver side, opened the door and calmly waited until his daughter got out. Wilder grinned and waved at me as she rounded the hood, and then they left.

  “Java in the living room!” Bo shouted as I closed the door.

  They’d started a fire even though it wasn’t needed, and there was a tray of cookies on the table. It had barely started to get dark outside, but all the lights were on, and I knew they’d lit them for me. I walked through the room, turning a few of them off, and sat down on the couch.

  “It was good to see you laugh,” Carson muttered as he filled a mug of coffee and handed it to me.

  “Thanks,” I said and sipped the warm brew, frantically trying to come up with something to say that would change the topic.

  “What was the joke?” Miller cut in, and I turned slowly to look at him. “What?” he asked curiously when my blank mind didn’t find one single word to say.

  Well, crap. I wasn’t going to lie. Not to these men.

  “We heard you,” I whispered and looked down into my cup.

  “Heard what?” Bo asked.

  “We were passing outside the vent from the kitchen, and we heard you, okay? You were talking about Kit.”

  “Kit?” Carson said, but Bo made a sound, so I looked at him, and his eyes had started to glitter with unholy glee.

  “You were talking about gray hair, um, and…” I trailed off and waved a hand from my head and down over my belly a few times.

  They stared at me for a split second, then Miller muttered, “Well, fuck me,” and they started laughing.

  I laughed too, although I think it was a little hysterical because I’d just realized that there was only one answer I wanted to give to his statement, and that was, “Okay.”

  Chapter

  Eight

  Poopy

  I was sitting next to Miller, in his car, going to his home in Norton.

  Falling in love with a man whose nephew I’d been dating just a few weeks earlier wasn’t something I’d expected. Figuring it out while having coffee with him, his brother and brother-in-law hadn’t made things easier, and it had been hard to pretend nothing was out of the ordinary. I’d gulped down the coffee, scalding my tongue in the process, and made my excuses. Then I’d spent the next hour folding and refolding my clothes, desperately trying to talk myself out of feeling what I felt.

  Nothing good would come of it, I thought and told myself it was just a delusion, mostly because of how I’d dreamed about Mill as I grew up. When I’d calmed down a little, I sat on the bed to think. As I let my pens fly over the sketch pad, I slowly accepted that none of what I felt came from the silly stories I’d made up. It was all because of who he was. I had no clue what to do, and I knew that he’d not want to have a young girl like me giving him cow eyes, so as I drew his kite for the millionth time, I decided to move back to my place in Prosper as soon as possible.

  “Are you okay, baby-girl?” Bo whispered from the door, and my pen made a long dark line straight across the kite.

  “I’m fine,” I chirped and pulled off the paper, letting it fall to the floor.

  Bo walked into the room, closing the door behind him and sat down next to me.

  “Carson and Mill are worried,” he said quietly.

  “Why?” I squeaked, cleared my throat, and repeated more calmly, “Why?”

  “They thought you might be embarrassed about the things you heard,” he said.

  Oh, that. I relaxed and grinned at him.

  “Hilarious trivia, Boz, that’s all,” I said cheekily.

  He started laughing and added with a wink, “I know it’ll be a struggle, cutie-pie, but try to keep your imagination away from my man’s genitals.”

  “God, Bo,” I said with a shudder. “He’s old enough to be my father.”

  “Age is just a number,” Bo said. “You’re a lot older than your years in many ways, sweetie.”

  It was a gentle probe to make me talk about my past, and I wanted to, but needed Carson to be there too when I did so I just smiled.

  “I have no money,” I said instead.

  “I have plenty, you can have some of mine,” he replied instantl
y, and he did it grinning, but I could see that he meant it.

  “No way, but thank you for offering,” I said. “I just need to find another job.”

  I’d called the restaurant where I’d been waitressing the past year and told them I was sick. The owner had been sympathetic but had also told me he’d give my job to another girl, and it wouldn’t be there when I got back to Prosper. I’d expected that, and since I had a small savings account, I’d been able to pay my rent. I would manage one or maybe two months, and then I’d have nothing left.

  “You work with Carson every day,” he said.

  “And I live here for free and pay nothing for the food I eat.”

  “You’re family, sweetie,” he protested.

  I leaned into him, and he put an arm around me.

  “I love you,” I whispered.

  “Oh, baby-girl, I love you too,” he replied quietly. “Let me think about your job-situation for a while. I won’t try to give you any cash, but will you promise me one thing?”

  I nodded into his shoulder, and he went on, “If you get desperate, then talk to me. Swallow your pride, and let me know, honey.”

  “Okay,” I whispered, hoping that I’d never have to, but relaxing a little with the knowledge that I had that as a last resort.

  “Okay,” he said and moved toward the door. “The Keeghan’s were tired, so they are both in bed. I’ll join the older dude, so the couch is all yours,” he added as he left.

  I sat on my bed for a while longer, wondering if I should try to sleep there. Then I sighed and went out to the couch, turning off all lights except two. One step at the time I thought and slept deeply until late the next morning when Carson put coffee and a huge plate of sandwiches in front of me and gave my cheek a soft caress.

  “Mornin’, sweetie,” he said.

  “You didn’t have to make breakfast for me,” I murmured as I stretched.