Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
L ance put his bag down on the floor in Sloan’s kitchen. They had moved all of his shit earlier today, but this was the last of it, the overnight bag with clothes for tomorrow, jammies, and his kit bag.
He went to let Abby out in the yard, her harness already off.
Wow. He was gonna live here. With Sloan.
He had never considered how many moving parts there were to this whole thing, and he was fucking tickled that he’d decided to do this now, here before going to New Mexico.
Luke had occupational therapists coming in for him. There were these specialists who came in and did a class with Sloan. There was a ramp now and a doggy door. At Sloan’s expense, since the house was a rental. It was kind of amazing.
What was even more amazing was that Sloan hadn’t turned and run. He’d just been like, fine, bring it on, and well…here he was.
“You look a little wigged,” Brick pointed out. “You sure you wanna do this? ”
“Yes, I’m really sure. It’s just going to be weird, not being able to just go out to the front room and talk to you guys.”
“So there is this neat thing that has been invented. It’s called a phone. You pick it up, you tell it to call Brick. And then it?—”
“Shut up, you dick.” He couldn’t stop laughing though.
“What?” Brick sounded elaborately innocent.
“Yeah, yeah. Look, thanks for all your help.” He valued his friendship with each and every one of the people who had been with him all this way.
“Hey, we’re buds, man. And I am so happy for you.” Brick touched his shoulder firm enough to let him know he was that close, then gave him a man hug.
“We are. I’m a little wigged.”
“You’re doing great. And it’s not that far from Dallas to Santa Fe. Hell, the flights are cheap. I looked.”
He drew in a breath. “How’d you know I was thinking that far ahead?”
Brick chuckled. “Because once you start thinking of the future, it all lines up.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s true.” Brick had the right of it. Once he’d agreed to let Sloan back into his life, he’d been all over making plans and getting all sorts of stuff lined up. For the future.
It was a wild notion.
He heard Sloan tromp into the kitchen, his bootheels ringing on the floor. “Is that the last of it, babe?”
“It is.” He smiled in Sloan’s direction. For which he got a kiss dropped on his mouth. “Brick and the guys have been a huge help…”
“You want me to order pizza?”
“No, Mr. Late to the Party. I want you to make enchiladas.” Sloan had been at work most of the time. They hadn’t been able to schedule everyone to come when Sloan was off.
“Oh-ho. I get to work now that everyone else can stop and have a break? You gonna hang, Brick? Stan says he is. So is Dan.”
“Well, if the Musketeers…”
“Can I stay too?” Chris wheeled out from the bathroom.
“You bet. I got all the shit. Flat or rolled by vote?”
“What does that mean?” Chris asked.
“Enchiladas. I can do them flat on everyone’s plates or rolled in a casserole dish.”
“Go flat,” Lance murmured out of the corner of his mouth.
“Flat it is,” the guys echoed.
“With eggs,” Lance intoned, starting to enjoy this shit.
“Okay. Everyone but the driver gets a beer.”
Dan chuckled. “Brick? Want to rock paper scissors it?”
“Nope. I still haven’t learned how to do that with my left hand.”
“Liar.” Dan chuckled. “I’ll take a Coke.”
“He means a Dr Pepper.”
“Got it. Go wash up and sit, guys. Half an hour and food will be out.”
“Hey, we can help.”
“No, no, you helped enough.” Bottles clanked as Sloan pulled beers out of the fridge. “What do you want, honey?” he asked.
“Beer is good.” He waited until the guys all left with their drinks, then felt his way around the counter to Sloan to offer up his mouth for a kiss. “Thank you, babe.”
“You are so welcome. I’m sorry I had to pull that shift.”
“Well, they did let you have the day off after you were shot at.”
“They did.” Sloan chuckled. “Anyway, the least I can do is make supper.”
“Want me to help?” Lance teased .
“Not this time. But I found a class in Dallas for cooking for couples where one partner is blind.”
“No shit?” He was stunned. “Really?”
“Yeah. She has all these adaptive tools. I figure we could learn something together.”
Touched, he grabbed Sloan and kissed him again. “Then make the reservation.”
“Cool. I will.”
“I better get out there with the guys.”
“Yeah. I got this for now.” Sloan chuckled and hugged him back.
“Abby still outside?”
“Yeah.”
He called her to the back door, and while she wasn’t in her harness, she helped guide him out to the front room.
Brick hailed him. “So, how’s it going in there?”
“Oh, trust me, with enchiladas, he’s a professional. I hope y’all like Christmas.”
“My favorite holiday,” Stan teased. “But what’s that got to do with enchiladas?”
“Sloan is using red and green chile both.” He knew this without asking, because Sloan pulled that out when he was trying to impress.
And these guys were first-timers.
“Green chile. Red chile. Both.” He grinned and shook his head. “It’s the New Mexico state question, you know? Green chile is fruity, and red chile is smoky. Together they’re magic.”
Dan shook his head. “You sure know a lot about this, man. Have you been to New Mexico?”
Lance nodded. “Yeah, couple times.”
They had touristed together a little bit, back at the beginning. Nothing serious. The food, though? Sloan had made friends with a couple of New Mexicans who worked in the kitchens, and they’d had some amazing, spicy meals out there in the desert.
“Where are your people, Lance?” Stan asked. “You never talk about them.”
He didn’t feel like there was a lot to say. “No. They’re here in Texas, man.”
He’d come out of the closet. He’d left home. He’d joined the service.
He’d called them twice since he’d left home. When he’d called to say he was being deployed, they’d hung up on him. The time he’d called from the hospital, she’d told him it was God’s will.
Maybe it was, but it was his will to walk away from that poison and never look back. He didn’t regret it at all.
“We’re not close.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Stan sounded so upset, so embarrassed, so he shook his head.
“Thank you. It’s…It’s been long enough that I… I don’t really think about them. When I do, it’s like with that distant fondness of when you were a kid. Fuzzy and pointless.”
“What about Sloan? Does he have people?”
“He does. He’s got a sister, a niece and nephews, a thousand and eight cousins, and he’s got parents. They’re all up there in Santa Fe.” They were just a normal, goofy, happy, big family.
“They all know about Lance, and they’re all looking forward to him coming home when he’s ready.
” There wasn’t an ounce of doubt in Sloan’s voice.
“Lance has a niece and two nephews, Mama and Dad, and a sister, and about twenty-seven-thousand cousins. They are all desperate to get to know him and fold him in to our specific brand of crazy.”
“My mom cries every time she sees me.” Stan’s voice seemed to come from out of nowhere. “I don’t know what to do, so I asked her not to come. I mean, she’s not from here. She’s up in Minnesota. But she cries. A lot. This whole thing is hard enough without her doing that.”
Lance could tell that had to hurt like a bitch, right? At least his people didn’t care. He didn’t have to worry about hurting them or not hurting them or being hurt by them anymore. He’d made his peace with that as well as anybody could.
Stan had this person who wanted to see him, who wanted to be involved, but the person they once knew was gone.
He knew that was a terrible thing to think, but it was true.
That person he’d been? He was gone. But it was true all the way, because it wasn’t the outside.
That kind of pain changed a person. Altered them on a soul-deep level. There was absolutely no way he could go through this and end up the same person on the other side.
Lance was different now. He didn’t know if that was good or bad. He thought it was just…he guessed it was what it was.
That was something they all had in common.
No one got out untouched.
“It could be worse, Stan the Man. You could have my parents.”
The collective groan filled the air.
Chris’s folks were relentless, wanting to visit every weekend from New Orleans, calling daily, sending care packages a couple of times a week.
Jim and Molly Smith were incredibly sweet people, but, sweet Christ in heaven, a man needed to be able to hold his own dick sometimes.
“You know, I joined the Marines to begin with, just to get away from them.” Chris’s chuckle was merry, but there was a hint of truth there.
“They put a chairlift in their house. I told them I wasn’t coming to live with them, but they said, ‘Oh, you can use it when you come to visit’. Ramps. Chair lift…”
Brick snorted, and there was some sorrow underneath the wildness in the sound. “Look, guys, we all deal with own our shit, and I guess they do too. Good, better, and indifferent. It’s tough as hell being a parent.”
Nobody said anything about that because Brick was in the middle of a weird custody thing with his baby mama. He was missing having his little girl around.
Lance had dated girls a lot when he was a teenager, because that was what one did, but he had never been in a situation where getting a girl pregnant was a thing.
Thank God for that, because he didn’t think he or Sloan were meant to be parents. Uncles? Sure, okay. They had enough to take care of themselves. They didn’t need babies.
“Lord have mercy, y’all. Sloan goes to make enchiladas and all of the sudden we’re all gloom and doom.” Lance tried to go for light and easy, but not an asshole. Stan didn’t deserve someone being an asshole.
Stan chuckled, and the sound was a little rough, but not too bad at all. “Shit. We don’t need that. Family is hard, like Brick said. But we got each other and the ranch, and that’s a good thing.”
“To Luke and Matt,” Brick said, clinking his bottle against Lance’s.
Lance grinned, taking a sip. Good smells were already coming from the kitchen. Damn. That was a fine thing. And he thought he could hear hopeful sniffing.
Abby got up, her nails clicking as she headed off to the kitchen. Definitely good smells, then.
“So this is a nice little rental,” Brick said. “Comfy.”
“It is. And the landlord was great about letting Sloan put in a doggie door and a ramp. I think he figures he’ll make a deal with Luke and Rory once we’re out to rent it to guys who are ready to graduate to living alone…”
“There you go; that makes sense.”
Chris’s wheels slid across the floor, the sound a now familiar hiss.
“The ramp would work, but for somebody like me, I mean, if you’re in a wheelchair and you’re in it, you’re going to need the counters lower.
There’s all sorts of things, but if you’re able to stand for short periods of time or if you have legs—you know, prostheses—I can totally see this working out.
Hell, you could rent it after Sloan and Lance if you’re done, Brick. ”
“No, I’m just gonna head out I think. I don’t think I’ll need a quarter-way house.”
“A quarter-way…” Lance tilted his head. “Oh, you mean you’re halfway from the halfway house?”
“Smart soldier.” Brick clapped him on the shoulder. “You’d almost think that you were in the Air Force.”
“Shut up. Just because I’m not a lazy fucker…”
They all cracked up, this game well-played and familiar.
“Seriously though. My arm’s as good as it’s going to get, as far as me learning how to use it. I’m considering heading off.”
“What about your custody stuff?” Dan asked, and there was a long silence.
“I don’t think that’s going to be a thing. She’s got a stepdad who wants to adopt her, and they don’t want me in the picture.” Brick sighed, and Lance tilted his head. He sure thought Brick and Chris were…close. “There’s lots of folks who don’t want me in their picture.”
“But doesn’t what you want make a difference?” It seemed like it ought to.
“Not if it hurts her, it doesn’t. I don’t know. I haven’t made any decisions yet. I just heard from my lawyer. I got to decide whether to keep fighting or give up.”
Jesus. It was just one thing after another, like a set of dominoes ready to fall. He hated that Brick felt like his daughter might never want or need to see him. That wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair.
But he got it, too. It was hard to feel useful. Necessary. It was so much easier to let people take the fast way out and not face up to the way this kind of injury made someone different.
Then again, it wasn’t for him to make Brick’s decisions for him. Even if he wanted to whack the guy.
Hard.
Brick sighed. “Like I said, we’ll see how it goes.”
“Yeah. Of course.” Lance let it go. He didn’t want to bring them down anymore. He almost suggested turning on the TV, but that was a cheap distraction too. So he pondered his next brilliant social move.
Stan chuckled. “We’re such a happy-go-lucky bunch.”
“Shut up,” Brick said, and the sound of a light thunk meant Brick had slugged Stan gently.
“So, what can we do?” Chris asked.
“We could play partner Monopoly.”
Lance tried to squint at Stan, which never did any good, really. It never made his remaining low vision any better. “‘Partner Monopoly’?”
“Yeah. I mean, you might not be able to see the board, but you have the instincts of a shark. I’d be your partner.”
“Huh. Or we could play trivia.” He couldn’t read cards, but Lance was pretty damn good at pop culture and history.
“Hey, we can do that,” Chris said. “Does Sloan have cards?”
“Yeah. He has all these decks of trivia cards in the buffet over there.”
“Cool.” There was a rustle, and Brick came back a few seconds later. “Here we go. 1990s and 2000s trivia.”
“Cool.” He grinned. This he could do…
By the time Sloan started delivering “hot plate” warnings and food, Lance had accumulated the most cards, which was how they were keeping track of the winner.
“Nice, honey,” Sloan told him.
“Thanks, babe.” He sniffed hard, the smell of chile making his mouth water as it always did. Something about capsaicin made his tongue sweat.
“God, that looks good,” Chris said.
“Smells good too,” Lance agreed.
“There two eggs on top center of the plate, Lance. Over easy. And the garden is at nine.”
“Got it.” And Sloan didn’t have to tell him that the plate was hot. He knew it had been in the oven to melt the cheese and bring everything together.
This was his crew. They were used to watching him eat, and Brick had his issues, too. So did Stan, come to that, his scars and such making it hard to open his mouth as wide as he was able to once upon a time.
They all ate hearty, and he felt just as tickled as Sloan had when everyone loved the food. He was damn proud of Sloan and his enchiladas.
And he was proud as hell to be moving in with the man he still loved more than anything else in the world. He guessed if Sloan was this determined to keep him, well, who was he to argue?