Joke

by Mia Malone

Then Roddy punched Paddy on his shoulder in a way which apparently was supposed to be friendly but unfortunately dislocated Paddy’s shoulder. At least, that’s what Paddy claimed. Gee and Lee had checked him out and deemed the shoulder to be perfectly fine.

  Roddy had apologized, and Paddy had seemed okay except for glaring at Gib who was laughing so hard he had to hold himself up with a firm grip on the bar.

  Most of this seemed to pass right over Sissy’s head. She smiled and told both Mac and Gib to stop laughing, and when Day announced that he’d join Ice in Vegas, she just smiled some more and told him to not give, borrow, lend, hand or even show her brother any of his money.

  “How relieved are you?” Mac asked when the bikes had disappeared.

  “Like you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “I bet,” Mac snorted.

  “They’re good people,” Paddy protested.

  “Roddy made you cry.”

  “I did not cry.”

  “Almost,” Day snorted.

  There was a short silence, and then Paddy started laughing.

  “Fuck, yeah, the old bastard almost made me cry. Jesus that hurt.”

  “Told them they can come back any time they like. Stay as long as they like,” Joke shared.

  His friends stared at him, but he met their gazes square on.

  “Black pulled me aside and asked if we could keep Sissy safe for two more years. He’ll be out from under that asshat’s father’s thumb by then. Debt free. Kids done with college. His divorce is just finalized, and he’s trying to get his ex to move to somewhere which isn’t in this galaxy. Said he’d break off from the club, pretend to move away. Fight with the family or whatever…”

  Joke kept watching his friends steadily.

  “Told me to keep her safe for two years and then he’d kill the bastard. Has been planning it for fucking years because he loves his sister.” He sighed and said, “So, yeah. They can come whenever and I’ll deal with them.”

  “I had a great time. Haven’t laughed that much in years,” Gibson said calmly. “We’ll deal. And we’ll keep her safe. Keep her girls safe.”

  “Of course we will,” Mac agreed. “What I wanna know is how you’re handling living with this sudden whirlwind of family bliss?” Mac asked.

  “Blissfully,” Joke answered with a grin, and now that the crazy part had left, he wasn’t joking. “Want to join us?”

  He twitched his head toward Jenny’s where Sissy and the girls sat by the window, studying the menus. They all declined, and he crossed the street to have lunch.

  Cady was a bit quiet but Mimi talked enough for everyone and then she suddenly made a face.

  “The principal at school says I need to do volunteer work during summer.” She glanced at her mother. “For twenty hours.”

  “Mimi,” Sissy sighed. “What did you do?”

  Cady murmured something that didn’t sound nice, and Joke raised a brow.

  “I used the f-bomb,” Mimi whispered.

  When no one said anything, Joke leaned forward.

  “How the hell many times did you say it?”

  Mimi giggled and raised her index finger to indicate the number one.

  “Twenty hours of volunteer work for saying fuck?” Joke asked. “Once?”

  Mimi nodded.

  “What do you want to do?” Joke asked.

  “Don’t know.”

  Joke looked over her shoulder and then back at her.

  “You like dogs?”

  “Yeah,” she breathed out. “I love dogs more than just about anything in the whole world.”

  He crooked his finger to indicate she should follow him and got up. Then he took Mimi to see Carmen Alvarez who managed the local dog shelter, and within five minutes she had her volunteer work organized. Carmen laughed when Mimi skipped back to her mom, squealing and completely giddy at the thought of playing with dogs for twenty goddamned hours.

  “What the hell kind of school is she in?” Carmen asked.

  “One where saying fuck is a big no-no apparently,” Joke muttered, wondering the same thing himself.

  ***

  Sissy

  I’d settled into my life in Wilhelmine as a single woman with all the free time in the world and a new man in my bed. Or, his bed, as it were. Now I had my two teenage daughters with me, and I loved having them there. We did things together. Talked. Argued. Had dinners. Normal things. They’d be there for four short weeks so I tried to spend as much time as I could with them. I also pushed back the fact that I wanted to have just a few minutes to myself.

  Joke had offered to use Gib’s or Mac’s guestroom while the girls visited, but I’d nixed that. I loved him, he was in my life, and the girls were old enough to deal with the fact that their mother had a… boyfriend. Man? Whatever, because I was sleeping next to him and the girls hadn’t seemed surprised or upset about the arrangement.

  I’d worried a little about sex and brought it up with Joke, not sure how he’d handle having two teenagers in a place that in essence had been a bachelor pad not so long ago.

  “Not gonna fuck you so the girls hear it, that’s for sure,” Joke said calmly. “They’re at the other end of the place, so we’ll lock the door and be quiet. Or find other places where we can do whatever we feel like doing. Pretty sure we can figure it out.”

  Simple and straightforward like it always seemed to be with him, and that’s how we’d done it. In bed, a long time after the girls had gone to their rooms and very, very quietly.

  Joke seemed to take it all in a stride. Even my damned family hadn’t managed to rattle him, which they informed me via text that they all had tried their best to do. Then they all went on to share their opinion of him.

  “Fucking huge step up from the douche.”

  That was from Black. He had never liked Dante.

  “Not a guy I want to piss off.”

  Ice, and he was probably not wrong about that.

  “A man who tells me I’m the hottest seventy-five-year-old he’s ever seen is a man to keep.”

  From Mom, and oh my God, had Joke told her that?

  “He’s okay.”

  Dad sent that and knowing him, this was praise of the highest order. After meeting Dante for the first time, he’d sent me an email five pages long, not once using the word okay.

  I showed Joke the texts and watched his lips twitch. Then Mimi called for him to come and he walked away. I watched him walk down the stairs and couldn’t hold a smile back.

  Watching Mimi with Joke, or Joke with Mimi, was hilarious but also very sweet. The way they clicked had been a huge surprise, to me but even more to Joke, I suspected. They bonded over her experience at the dog-shelter, followed by discussions about beer soaps and visits to their old farm. There had been lunches at Jenny’s and watching movies when I worked.

  Mimi had also made friends quickly. It had started with Carmen Alvarez’ daughter, Essie, who was the same age and from there it just grew into a group of teenagers who roamed Main Street or pestered Jenny for the milkshakes she didn’t have on the menu but still made when the mood struck her.

  And then Joke took a look at my bike, declared that it was in shit condition and started to fix it up. At first, Mimi sat next to him as he tinkered with it, but soon enough, he had her doing part of the work, patiently explaining how everything fit together.

  I told him he didn’t have to bother because I wasn’t planning on using it much and this was something I should have kept my mouth very much shut about.

  “You’ll be behind me on mine. Figured Mimi could use this,” Joke stated.

  I stared at him, and he looked calmly back at me. Mimi was screaming so loudly I wondered if someone would think we were killing her and call the police.

  “She’s not even –”

  “She will be. Next year.”

  My baby would be sixteen next year and God, no. She was way too young to ride around on my bike.

  “How old were you when you started?” Joke asked, read
ing the look on my face accurately.

  Well shit. I’d started driving on the dirt roads around my parents’ place when I was younger than Mimi.

  “We’ll see,” I murmured.

  “Sure,” he said. “And in the meantime, fixing up this thing will keep Mimi out of trouble.” He grinned at her and added, “No wild parties. No boys. No drugs.”

  She giggled and scrunched up her nose at him.

  “Boys are stupid.”

  “Absolutely,” he agreed. “Keep that in mind for the next twenty years.”

  They turned back to the bike, and when I walked back inside, I heard them laughing.

  Joke had tried to include Cady in what they did, and she wasn’t interested. Couldn’t be bothered. Didn’t have time even though she spent hours on the couch staring at her phone. He’d backed off, and when I worried, he told me to give her some space.

  “Cady, honey,” I murmured and closed the door on Joke and Mimi’s low laughter. “Do you want to go to your grandparents for a week or so?”

  “No.”

  “Go back to Boston?”

  “No.”

  Her eyes didn’t leave the screen in front of her, and I wondered what she’d do if I threw her damned phone out through the window.

  “Okay,” I said and went into the kitchen to figure out what we’d have for dinner, thinking that I’d get her to go grocery shopping with me.

  Joke and Mimi came upstairs a while after that, and ten minutes later, everything exploded, starting with Cady who gave up a loud shout when she discovered that her hairdryer had stopped working. She immediately accused her sister of messing with it, something Mimi took exception to and started screeching in Cady’s face. I sighed and walked toward the bathroom to get to their part of the place, knowing that mood-swings like this were to be expected.

  I almost got the door in my face when Cady threw it open and had to sidestep in a way that twisted my knee slightly. I couldn’t stop a small whimper of pain and Joke straightened.

  “I need a new hairdryer,” Cady shouted. “And I need it now.”

  I stared at her and wondered why she needed to blow-dry her hair when all she would do was sit on the couch and do nothing.

  “Honey,” I started.

  “Mimi can pick one up at the store. She needs to go there anyway.”

  “I do not,” Mimi wailed.

  “You took the last tampon so yes you do,” Cady snarled.

  Then they both froze and stared at Joke. They would have been embarrassed about having this conversation in front of their father because Dante was absolutely not a man one discussed menstrual peccadilloes with, but it was clearly even worse to have mentioned something as hugely mortifying as a tampon in front of Joke.

  Mimi blushed in a way I knew meant tears were imminent. Cady turned around and stormed back through the bathroom.

  “Um,” Mimi mumbled.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Joke said calmly. “Grew up with a sister, I can handle that.”

  “What?” both Mimi and I breathed out.

  “Sure,” he said with a shrug. “They call it the monthly but in Jen’s case it was more whenever-the-fucky, so she used to text me all the time to bring her shit. Made so many deliveries to our old high school, I was probably known as the Tampax-man.”

  I pushed out a shaky breath and didn’t know if I should laugh or scream.

  “Tuh,” Mimi said, clearly at a loss for words too.

  “Just saying, honey,” Joke said affably. “If you’re in need of shit, I’m your man.”

  Then he calmly moved toward the door, but he stopped next to me.

  “Talk you your oldest, babe. You might want to convey the message that her mood swings don’t exactly make her a ray of fucking sunshine. She’s also a grownup, so if she ever again pushes you around in a way that makes you whimper like you just did, she won’t be talking to you. She’ll be talking to me, and she will not like it.”

  Then he walked out reaching for the phone in his back pocket.

  I stared at the door he’d just closed and then at my youngest daughter. Mimi was also staring at the door.

  “Did he just offer to buy me –”

  She looked stunned but also close to laughing.

  “I think he did,” I said and wondered how it was possible to suddenly love Joke even more than I had done a few minutes ago.

  Then I started laughing.

  The Tampax-man. Jesus.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sissy

  “Oh my God!” Lee squealed.

  I was feeling good. A few tequila shots would do that to a woman, and it added to my happiness that I was sitting on a back porch in the evening sun with two women who had become friends in a way that made them a lifeline when shit got rough.

  The reason I was sitting there feeling good was that ten minutes after he had walked out, Joke returned, shouted for Cady to join us and pointed at the couch. We sat down.

  “Right,” he said. “Here’s what’s gonna happen and if you have objections, you can have them when I’m not in the room.”

  He was met with silence although I had a feeling he wouldn’t have cared either way.

  “Mimi; you’re with Essie at their place. Carmen is cooking, you’ll spend the night. Sissy; You’re with Lee and Jen at Gib’s place. You’ll stop by the bar and pick up a bottle of tequila on the way there. Cady; You’re with me.”

  After a few seconds of total and very stunned silence, Cady cleared her throat.

  “I’m with you?” she asked.

  “You’re picking up your mother’s shift, so yeah. With me.”

  He was letting Cady work at the bar? She was nineteen, she couldn’t –

  “Babe,” Joke said. “She’s a grownup. She’s also bored out of her mind, and you’re in her face all the fucking time. Go on to Lee’s and blow some steam.” He watched me with eyes that had softened and was full of humor. “She’s gorgeous, but I’ll be there. Tug too. Anyone as much as waves a finger at her, either of us will snap it like a twig.”

  Cady suddenly started laughing, and I swung around.

  “God, Mom,” she said. “He’s so right. I am so bored. I love you. You know I love you, but I have nothing to do. I need to… Please, Mom. Please just go away.”

  I stared at her, and it hit me. I knew she was growing up. She wasn’t a goddamned grownup whatever Joke said, but she’d leave home after the summer, so she would be one within shortly. How could I have forgotten that? Joke had seen it, and I hadn’t.

  “He’ll snap their fingers like a twig,” she whispered, and I saw how she struggled to hold back laughter. “Bet that’ll be a change from being known as the Tampax-man.”

  So I let her go down to Oak where Tug would start teaching her how to work in a small-town bar. And I watched through the window how Mimi ran up to Carmen Alvarez’ car to go and spend the night with a girlfriend. Then I pushed Joke into our bedroom, locked the door and unbuttoned his jeans. And now I was feeling mellow.

  “It was only once,” Jenny murmured.

  “What?”

  “He brought me tampons one time. Or, yeah. Three. Maybe four.” Her lips curled in a satisfied grin. “The Tampax-man,” she snorted. “I love my brother.”

  “I love him too.”

  Then I put a hand over my mouth and stared at them. I hadn’t planned to say that.

  “Of course you do,” Jenny said and reached for the bottle.

  Could it be just that easy? Of course I loved Joke, and let’s have another shot?

  I decided that since I did indeed love him and also wanted another shot, it could absolutely be that easy, and held my glass out to Jenny. Then we giggled some more about our men, talked about going camping when the girls had gone back to Boston. About the people in town, and what Jenny had planned for the diner. And about Gibson’s oldest son who lived in Wilhelmine, and how his other two would be in town for a few weeks later in the summer. We agreed that them not being there whilst m
y oldest girl worked behind the bar in Oak was a good thing.

  “Love them,” Lee murmured. “Two weeks is enough, though.”

  “Yeah?” Jenny asked.

  “Grownup sex,” Lee said, and I nodded.

  “Having quiet missionary-style sex is less fun,” I agreed.

  “You started faking it again, Sissy?” a deep voice full of laughter said behind me, and I whipped around to glare at Gibson.

  And Paddy.

  “What is it with you guys and sneaking up on us?”

  “How would we know shit if we didn’t?” Paddy said and sat down. “Talked to Joke about rebuilding so next time the girls are here you can… go crazy.”

  He wiggled his brows, and I felt my lips twitch.

  It wasn’t as if I screamed the roof down but the rebuild Joke had told me about would be better. Much better.

  “Joke’s rebuilding?” Gibson asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Patty’s daughter won the lottery so he’s adding another bathroom,” I grinned at Paddy, “And you better put in double insulation.”

  “That makes no sense at all unless Joke has stomach issues I don’t want to fucking know about,” Gibson muttered.

  Paddy chuckled.

  “Sure it does in a tequila-infused mind. Patty was going to close the gift-shop. She sells well enough, but she’s getting older. Mary-Sue won the lottery, wants a place to putter around in and bought the building next to Jenny’s. Fixing it up, and they’ll put the shop there which means Joke has empty space in his building. He was going to have bedrooms down there, figured the girls could use them when they visit.”

  Gibson started laughing, and so did I. I’d told Joke sweetly how happy they would be to have their own private entrance so they could come and go as they pleased. The look on Joke’s face had been hilarious, and the plans had changed.

  “We’ll have our space down there, with our very own bathroom, and no, that’s not where you need to soundproof the walls,” I said.

  “Don’t worry,” Paddy grinned. “You’ll have a nice private space downstairs. Plumbing is there already. We’ll close up the windows on the front and add some others. Move a wall, open up to the stairs. Easy. We’re moving things around on the backside too. Cosmetics but there’ll be a wall separating the bar and your entrance. Simple shit to do, but it’ll look good.”