“You didn’t scare me off. In fact, do you have plans this Friday? Want to go to the movies?”
“I would love to,” he said.
Chapter 6
Shep
I had been on my way out of the gym when I got a call from my mother, asking, if I wasn’t busy, would I mind driving over there to help her move some stuff?
“There’s no one else around at the moment,” she said. “Otherwise I’d get one of them to help me out. Besides, it would be nice if you just came by for a visit, you know.”
That was not the case when I got there, though. Holden was sitting there on the porch swing, drinking a beer.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he said. “How’s my favorite brother doing?”
“Fine,” I said. “Just came from the gym.”
“Working at the homo factory tonight?”
“Yeah. You don’t have to call it that, you know.”
“I know. But it is. And it’s just so much fun to say.
“Maybe I should get you a T-shirt with that printed on it. You could wear it every day.”
Holden snorted. “I don’t think so. Anyway, I’ve got some truly wonderful news. I hope you’re not working this Friday, and if you are, you need to get the night off. Because you’ve got plans. Big ones.”
“Huh?” I said, sidestepping a pile of dog crap that was just sitting there in the middle of front lawn. “Don’t you guys ever clean up after the dogs?”
“You heard me! Don’t try to change the subject,” he said. “Plans. Big birthday bash. Come on, Shep, don’t tell me you forgot? I know that your, like, only focus is going to that gym of yours, but it’s your birthday, man! Mine too, in case you forgot.”
“Oh, I didn’t forget,” I said, though I kind of did. Or not really forgot—more like tried to put it out of my mind would be more accurate. What did I care about having another birthday? I wasn’t a kid; I had no more milestones, nothing that I couldn’t do until I turned a certain age. Well, join AARP, maybe, but I sure as hell wasn’t looking forward to that. “This Friday?” I said.
“Yes, sir, this Friday. I’ve been spreading the word and folks are getting excited. Was thinking we’d start with a good ol’ fashioned barbecue at the homestead, here, and then take the party on down to Buck’s. Hell, they might even let some strippers in for the night—I’ve already talked to Wade about it. It’s gonna be off the hook, bro! I can’t wait.”
“Um, well, that’s great and everything, Holden, but I’m sorry, I can’t make it.”
There was a pause. “What do you mean you can’t?” Holden said, his voice heavy with disbelief. “I was counting on you being there. It’s our birthday. You can’t not be there.”
“I know it’s our birthday, but I’ve got plans. I’m sorry.”
He stared at me for a moment, and then his face broke out into a smile. “You’re just playin’, right?” he said. He started to laugh. “Good one.”
“I’m not joking,” I said. “And I think you’ll be fine over at Buck’s without me.”
“Not if it’s our birthday! We always celebrate our birthday together.”
“That is completely untrue. I didn’t celebrate my birthday at all last year. Which I’m also fine doing this year, too. It’s not like we’re kids, Holden. I don’t actually want to be reminded that I’m another year older.”
He gave me a dismissive look. “I’m embracing it. You know—older, wiser, all that good stuff. Come on, bro, everyone’s expecting you to be there. It would be hella weird if you weren’t. Would there even be a point in having a party if one of the guests of honor wasn’t even there? What are these alleged plans, anyway?”
“I’m going to the movies.”
“The movies? Like, the movie-theater movies?”
“Yeah, with the big screen and the stadium seating and the buckets of popcorn. Those movies.”
“So, something that you could easily do, say, another night, when you didn’t have a party.” He gave me a closer look. “Who are you going to the movies with?”
I paused. “Lena.”
His eyebrows shot up as he tipped the beer can all the way up, draining the last drop. “Lena,” he said, crushing the can in his hand before tossing it to the side, where it landed with a bunch of other detritus. God, the house looked like shit and he wasn’t doing a damn thing to improve it.
“You have to do that?” I asked, nodding at the crumpled can.
He shrugged. “Ma doesn’t care.”
“She probably does and just doesn’t want to say anything to you about it. You could at least get a trash bag and throw it in there. She shouldn’t have to clean up after you.”
His gaze went to the crushed can. “Stop trying to change the subject,” he said. “We were talking about our birthday party. And the fact that you can’t go on account of… Lena? Who is this Lena? I don’t think I’ve ever heard her name before.”
“She’s someone I met,” I said. “Someone I’m seeing, actually.” Why did I feel nervous telling him this?
“Seeing? Like a girlfriend?”
“Something like that. We just met. But…” I felt a smile spread across my face. “I think things are going pretty well so far.”
Holden stood up. “Look at your face!” he said. “Holy shit. You like this girl.” He came over and socked me on the shoulder. “But you still can’t bail on your birthday party.” He turned toward the house. “Hey, Ma!” he shouted at the screen door, “did you hear the good news? Shep has a girlfriend.”
Mom appeared at the door a few seconds later, and I wondered if she’d been sitting at the kitchen table, listening to me and Holden talk. “What’s that?” she said. “Come inside, boys. I’ve just made a pot of coffee.”
We went inside and she poured me a cup of the crappy Folgers she always drank. “Sit, sit,” she said, so I sat, and Holden did, too. He dumped two heaping spoonfuls of sugar into his chipped mug before taking a sip. “So did you hear that Shep has a girlfriend?” my brother said.
My mother looked at me, mouth open, eyes wide. “You do?” she said. “Weren’t we just talking about this?”
“She’s not necessarily my girlfriend,” I said. “So don’t get too excited or anything.”
“Well, you’re skipping out on our birthday celebration for her, so I’d sure as hell say she’s a girlfriend,” Holden said.
“It’s not that I’m skipping out. You just sprung this on me anyway. And it’s not like thirty-five is really a milestone or anything—it’s not like turning forty.”
“Well, why don’t you bring your girlfriend!” Mom said. “We’d all love to meet her. That would really make it a special celebration.”
I held up my hands. “Hey, look. We’re definitely not at the point where we’re ready to be meeting each other’s families or anything. This is all kind of new for both of us.” But even if it wasn’t, even if Lena and I had been going out for years, I didn’t know if I’d want to introduce her to my family.
“I know,” Mom said. “You’re ashamed of where we live. You don’t want to bring a girlfriend over when the sink is full of dishes and the floors need to be vacuumed and the windows need to be washed. I know. But is this really someone you’d want to be with if they were going to judge you about the condition of your family’s house? It’s not like you’re living in squalor.”
“Sounds fine by me,” Uncle Devin said. He had just come in through the side door and traipsed over to the fridge, which he opened and pulled out a carton of lemonade. “The fewer people we have over here that aren’t family, the better.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
He tipped the lemonade carton up to his mouth, took a sip, and then gave me a level stare. “I know you know,” he said. “It’s these others that I’m not so sure about.”
My mother waved him off. “Oh, come on now, Devin, it’s not like she’d march right up to you and ask for a tour of your place or anything like that. You don’t even have to come around if you
don’t want to.”
“Pretty sure I don’t want to.” He opened the fridge and slid the carton back in, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Not that I wouldn’t want to meet a girlfriend of yours, Shep. Just not here.”
He shuffled out. You could say Uncle Devin was something of an odd duck, because he was. He was probably on the spectrum, though of course he had never been tested for that sort of thing. His interests had always lay in science, in how things could be combined together to make other things.
Both Mom and Holden were looking at me. “I would really love to meet her,” Mom said. “We would keep it very low-key, of course. It would be fun. Plus, it’s your birthday! Your brother’s been looking forward to this for… well, all year, really!”
“That’s kind of ridiculous,” I said. “We’re not seven years old. Should I be expecting a piñata and a clown and pin the tail on the donkey?”
Holden shrugged. “If that’ll get you to come to the party, sure, why the hell not? Don’t be an old stick-in-the-mud. No one likes a party pooper. Life is hard enough as it is; we should take any chance we can to celebrate all things, big or small. And turning thirty-five is not something small, either!”
“Thirty-five,” Mom said, sounding somewhat wistful as her gaze went back and forth between the two of us. “Sometimes I can’t even believe it. It seems like not that long ago the two of you were toddlers and I was chasing you around every which way. I swear, it almost seemed like you guys were conspiring against me.” She blinked. “I miss those days.”
I took a sip of my coffee. Ah, a selective memory. If you heard Mom tell it, our childhood was blissful, a sort of Gerber baby/Hallmark commercial all rolled into one. I had a hard time believing that she couldn’t remember the realities of what our childhood had really been like, but I knew that denial was a tool people commonly used when they were trying to forget about bad things that had happened in their past.
“Anyway,” I continued, “as I’ve already said, I have plans on Friday, and I don’t really see the need to cancel those plans since I wasn’t going to really celebrate my birthday anyway.”
“I can’t believe it,” Holden said. He chugged the rest of his coffee, which was still probably scalding hot. He left his empty mug on the table as he stood up, shooting me a disdainful look. “Lame, bro,” he said. “I’m already not digging this new chick of yours and I haven’t even met her yet.”
“She has nothing to do with this,” I said. “She doesn’t even know that we’re having a conversation.”
“Whose idea was it?” Holden asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Whose idea was it to go to the movies? Yours or hers?”
“Hers.”
He gave a self-satisfied nod, as if this just confirmed that Lena was trying to sabotage plans she didn’t even know about. I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come on.”
“I’m out,” Holden said, and he strode out of the kitchen, letting the screen door slap shut behind him. I looked at my mother.
“I see he’s still as dramatic as ever.”
“He’s really been looking forward to this party is all,” she said. “More coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
She collected Holden’s cup from the table and went over and put it in the sink. “If he’s old enough to throw his own birthday party, he’s probably old enough to put his own coffee cup in the sink.”
“Oh, I don’t mind doing things for him. I wouldn’t mind doing things for you, either, if you were ever around.”
Christ. The way she made it sound it was like I was never here, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Anyway,” I said, “what was it you wanted me to help you move?”
It turned out to be this heavy oak dresser that was blocking the door to the walk-in closet in the upstairs bedroom. It was the master bedroom, the largest room in the house, yet no one actually slept there because it was so full of crap. A verifiable episode of Hoarders right here. I had no clue where all the stuff even came from. There were stacks of old magazines, from like decades ago, a pool table, speakers, several couches, easy chairs, box fans, old air conditioners…
“Where did all this stuff come from, Mom?” I said, once the dresser had been moved. I didn’t even want to know what was in the closet. “You know what you should really do,” I said, “is rent a dumpster and just throw all this stuff out.”
“Oh, I could never do something like that,” Mom said, struggling to pull open the closet door. “Everything has so much sentimental value.”
I glanced at the old air conditioners. “Even those? Those things don’t look like they’ve worked in at least a decade.”
“Things just add up,” she said. She gave the door a final yank and it flew open. Plastic bins of craft supplies slid out.
“What are you looking for, Mom?” I asked, waving my hand in front of my face to try to disperse the cloud of dust that had just blown up in front of me.
“Here it is,” she said. She had an armful of old photo albums. “Your brother asked me to get some old pictures of you two. For the party.”
I sighed. “Then maybe he should be the one up here helping you.” She set the albums down on top of the dresser.
“I don’t mind,” she said. “Though now that you’ve been kind enough to help me get this dresser out of the way, I think I might go through this closet. I can’t even remember the last time I had access to it.”
I left her to start sifting through whatever it was she’d stuffed away in the closet, however many years ago it had been. I walked back down the hallway, past my old bedroom, which she had basically kept the way I’d left it. The door was ajar; I could have pushed it open and gone in, but I didn’t want to start taking a walk down memory lane right now. Instead, I decided I’d head out, and hopefully not have to run into my brother again.
It wasn’t Holden, though, who was in the kitchen when I came down; it was Dad. He was pouring himself a cup of coffee, and he barely glanced up.
“Your brother’s upset,” Dad said.
I shrugged. “He’ll get over it. It’s just one night.”
“I know, but I think he’d been planning on this for a little while now. I overheard him and Abe talking about it the other night.”
I ran a hand through my hair and took a deep breath. There was no real point in arguing with my father, because an argument with him would never go anywhere. I tried to steer clear of that sort of thing, but it was obvious that the scales of favoritism had tipped in Holden’s favor since I had left.
“I’m just saying… It probably wouldn’t be that big of a thing for you to go to this get-together.”
“Yeah, except I already have plans.”
“Then bring her along, too. Your mother would be thrilled to meet her. You don’t have to stay long; you can head over to Buck’s right after. How does that sound?” He took a step closer to me. “You’re not embarrassed by us, now, are you?” he asked, his voice lower than it normally was. His head was cocked forward but he was looking right at me, his eyebrows raised, forehead creased.
“No,” I said, a tremor of fear quaking through my gut. I could probably take my father if it came down to it, but he had a ruthless streak to him, and I’d seen him beat the crap out of guys who were a lot bigger than he was. And if it ever did come down to it, I really didn’t know if I’d be able to face off with him—he was my father, after all. I wasn’t a little kid anymore, but he would always have that position of authority over me. I looked him straight in the eye. That was the best thing you could do, like how you’re not supposed to run away if you encounter a mountain lion. “No,” I repeated. “You know I’m not embarrassed.”
“I wonder about it sometimes,” he said. “Abandoning your family is a pretty strong statement to make.”
“I’m not trying to abandon you guys. I still come around as often as I can. I’m just… there’s things in life that I want to pursue. And there are bett
er opportunities for that in the city.”
“Why don’t you bring your new girlfriend by, then. I don’t think you realize how upset your mother is every time you leave. It really does just break her heart. Especially with you still working at that… gay place. That sort of thing could make a person wonder.”
“Dad. You know I’m not gay.”
“I know you didn’t start that way. But you hang around that sort of stuff long enough, the way you are… who knows? It could rub off on you.”
“It’s not like it’s some disease I’m going to catch. The money’s good. The schedule suits me. I only have to work four nights a week.”
“You could work a lot less than that and make a lot more money if you just came back home and helped out your family. We’d be more than happy to have you back. Could put your natural talents to good use.”
“I’m pretty busy with things right now,” I said. “And I’m okay with that. I like how my life is. I don’t… I don’t really want to change that.”
Dad took a sip of his coffee. “That’s a shame,” he said. “At the very least, then, you could make the effort to come by for the party. The barbecue here. You don’t have to go down to Buck’s afterward. I’ll tell Holden that myself, if you want.”
Despite what my family might have believed, I really didn’t want to have conflict with them. So I nodded. We could do the barbecue, and maybe we’d still have time to catch the movie after. I sure as hell wasn’t interested in bringing Lena down to Buck’s, especially if there were going to be strippers there. No, thanks.
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll be here for the barbecue. I’ll let you tell Holden. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”
At least until he finds out that I’m not going to Buck’s.
But that’s just how Holden had always been. He wanted everything to go his way. He didn’t really understand the art of compromise. Which was, perhaps, why he was still single.
Chapter 7
Parker Security Complete Series Page 54