Chapter Six #2
“Yeah.” Austin took stock. The handrail shook under his grip.
He doubted it would hold his weight if he tried to use it to pull himself up, so that was no good.
He considered other options. His left foot, thank God, was on another step and solid.
But was there anything to brace against with his right arm?
“Hey, Joe?”
“Yeah?”
“You have your phone, right?”
A pause. “Yeah,” he said slowly.
“Oh good. I left mine downstairs. At least one of us can call for help.”
“Do I need to?” He sounded nervous now. Austin wondered if his lack of panic was more that he’d gone far enough to go out the other side.
“Nah. But figured I should check before I give this a go. You know, just in case.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Austin braced his shoulder and his right arm against the wall, settled his left foot, and adjusted his grip on the old railing. Don’t pull, he reminded himself. “Okay. Here goes.”
He pushed. For a second, he thought nothing would happen. Then his knee shifted and he was all but popping up. He gripped the railing and mattress and panted, adrenaline spiking once more.
“Austin?”
“Yes. Out. I’m good.”
“Oh thank God.” He paused. “You’re not bleeding or injured or anything, right?”
“No, but the hole in the steps is gonna make this a bit harder. Also, I’m condemning these stairs.”
Joe sighed. “Yeah. I guess we better move replacing them up our list of repairs. Think we can buy that at Habitat?”
Austin snorted. “Don’t know, but now is not the time to figure it out. Can we focus on getting off these death traps for now?”
It took another five minutes of pushing, pulling, and grunting, but at last they got themselves and the mattress downstairs.
“I’m assuming that wasn’t the surprise you had for me.”
Austin snorted. “Definitely not.”
They didn’t go back upstairs. Instead, they went to Austin’s trailer to crack open a couple of beers, because if there was ever a day that called for alcohol, this was it. The goddamn house had tried to eat him twice in one day. Austin deserved so much beer.
Once they were settled into whatever seating they could find and Joe had taken a couple of long gulps, Austin let his curiosity take hold. “So, we gonna talk about the pachyderm your children dragged into the room and left behind?”
Joe snorted. “You mean my benchwarming?”
“Your benchwarming,” Austin agreed. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me squat, but I gotta admit I’m curious.”
“A while back I had a boyfriend. We worked together at a local nursery—uh, for plants, not children—”
“I figured.”
“—and we were at the permanent cohabitation stage. Found a house and everything.” Joe drank more beer.
“I’m guessing this doesn’t have a happy ending.”
“Nope. The day before we were set to sign the paperwork, I caught him with his pants down, metaphorically.”
“Shit. As in—”
“Yup. I got home after a week in Mexico for my cousin Fernanda’s wedding.
Paul couldn’t get the time off to go along with me, or so he said.
” Joe sipped his beer. “So I get home after eight days away, opened the fridge to pour myself a glass of water, and suddenly I’m looking at a whole array of temperature-play sex toys.
Which, like, okay, he could’ve just been missing me, but three of them were designed for parts he didn’t have, and the used condoms in the kitchen trash kind of gave it away.
And to add insult to injury, he left the previous week’s stir-fry rotting on the shelf.
” He snorted. “Asshole didn’t even bother remembering when I was getting back.
He got home a few hours later. By that point, I’d gone through denial and anger and had landed on resignation. ”
“You figured it out.”
“Yeah. Suddenly the other signs were obvious and I couldn’t ignore it anymore. He didn’t bother denying it when I confronted him. Out with the old and in with the new.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry.”
“Me too. I mean, not that I found out he was a cheating scumbag before I signed the offer, but… it sucks to find out your taste is that lousy.” He gave a rueful smile that held little humor. “Told you I had fridge trauma.”
Austin grimaced.
“It gets worse,” Joe went on. “We all worked together.”
“Wait—he cheated with your mutual coworker?” Austin said, aghast. Jesus, how low could this asshat ex get?
“Yup. So there went my relationship, my house, and my job, all in one go.”
“Wow.” Austin kind of wanted to hug Joe about it, which was super weird. Austin didn’t hug people. “I can see why you thought a season or two benchwarming sounded like a better option.”
“Yeah. It was a pretty bad burn.” Joe contemplated his beer bottle. “The kids don’t know. I mean, they obviously know Paul and I broke up, but I didn’t tell them why.”
“Why not?”
“Honestly? At first I was ashamed. And then I wanted to keep them out of jail. Gavin and Meg are hotheads. I mean, Will is devious enough not to get caught, but he’s also only just out of his closet and pretty vulnerable about it, so I couldn’t be sure that between the four of them they wouldn’t do something dumb like slash his tires. ”
Austin snorted. “That’s not fair. Your kids are definitely more creative than that.”
“Yeah,” Joe said fondly. “But I’m not.”
“So avoiding the cost of bail is why you’ve kept quiet?”
Joe tipped his head back, drained the last of his beer, and then plunked the bottle down on the table. He leaned over, opened the fridge, and pulled out another. He tipped it in Austin’s direction, and after his nod, handed it over and grabbed a second.
Joe opened it and took a drink. “For a time. But now I just can’t bear the thought of proving to them how much some people suck.”
That was… endearing and adorable.
“I mean, don’t they already know that lesson?” They must, considering three of them apparently had parents so unworthy of them that they turned to a guy who was little more than a kid himself to love them unconditionally.
“Yeah.” Joe frowned glumly at his bottle. “You know what the worst part was?”
“Worse than a cheating boyfriend who sleeps with your coworker and chases you out of your job?” How could it possibly be worse?
“He cheated with a woman, living down to all the negative stereotypes about bisexuals.”
Of course Joe was more bothered by the idea of what others might think about bi men in general than about the personal hurt. Would it kill him to be a little bit selfish once in a while?
Joe answered his unspoken question by prodding his leg—the unbruised one—with his toe. “Come on. I showed you mine.”
“What, you want to know why I’m perpetually single? You can’t guess?”
“Oh, a challenge?” Joe smiled a little and tilted his head as he assessed Austin head to toe. “Hmm… you have a very needy cat who’s jealous of all your attention?”
Austin spread his hands, gesturing around the trailer. “Obviously not.”
A little light came into Joe’s eyes. “You hate leaving the house after five o’clock.”
Austin laughed. “Rude. And true, but no.”
Joe tapped a finger against his lips. “Porn addiction?”
“Oh, he’s got jokes. Here I am ready to bare my soul—”
Joe raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, hey, you’re the one who wanted me to guess.”
“Dick.” Austin flicked his bottle cap at him. “I mean, the truth is not, like, less shitty than your season-ending injury. It’s mostly the trauma. The non-refrigerator variety.”
He wasn’t usually that forthcoming about it, but, well, he co-owned a house with the guy. Plus, tit for tat or whatever. Joe knew enough about Austin’s childhood to guess anyway.
“General or specific non-refrigerator trauma? Or can I ask?”
Austin drummed his fingers on the table.
“Most of it’s pretty old. I mean, I don’t remember my mom dying.
She, uh, she got postpartum pretty bad, so it was me and my dad until I was six or seven.
” When the drinking caught up with him. Austin didn’t say that part out loud.
“Then he died and I stayed with my great-aunt for a few years, but she got sick and couldn’t look after me, so…
.” Group homes, foster homes. He shrugged.
Joe knew that part too, or as much of it as Austin cared to tell anyone about.
“I learned to be independent maybe too well, but I never got really good at relying on anybody else.”
Not that he’d tried particularly hard.
In his weaker moments, Austin would’ve admitted that he wished things were different.
It wasn’t like he wanted to be alone forever.
But everybody died eventually—his mother, his dad, his great-aunt, even DeeDee.
And as Joe had just demonstrated, people could leave you in lots of other painful ways too.
Austin might not have everything he ever wanted, but he had a good life now.
He had a business that earned him a decent living and kept a roof over his head—and now he had an extra roof, even.
He liked his work, which even five minutes of idle conversation with someone could tell him was a blessing most people didn’t get.
And when he got an itch, it wasn’t hard to go out to a bar and find someone to scratch it.
Hell, as Joe had pointed out, the worst part was having to leave his house after 5:00 p.m.
“Not much of a team player?” Joe said after a moment.
Austin snorted. “Well, it’s not my strong suit.” He’d spent more time with Joe in the past few weeks than he had with any other person since he was twelve years old. “Call it a work in progress.”
“Guess you got thrown in the deep end with this house thing and my seventeen kids.” Joe grinned. “Good thing I’m such a good swim teacher.”
Austin was debating whether to throw something else at him, but the only thing at hand was the beer bottle, and that seemed extreme and also wasteful.
He made a face instead, even if he appreciated the levity.
He was about to ask if Joe wanted another drink when a soul-piercing yowl split the night.
Without a word, they shot to their feet. Austin had two flashlights plugged in on the bulkhead now, and they each grabbed one as they stumbled out of the trailer.
This late in the year, the sun set around five, so it was fully dark except in the little halo around the trailer.
“Where do you think—”
Another sound, this time a snarl, yelping, the scrabble of claws in gravel and dirt.
“Behind the garage,” Austin said, but they were already moving. His heart beat in his throat. That was the dog, he was sure of it. But what was happening to it?
The flashlight beams crisscrossed the yard as they jogged. Joe slowed by the side of the garage long enough to pick up a length of two-by-four, which was a frankly insane thing to do, but probably so was running toward noises that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck like this.
It didn’t take long to find the source of the commotion.
In the muddy light of their torches was a tangle of snarling limbs and blood and fur.
It had to be the dog, Austin thought. The dog and one of the coyotes Linda had warned him about.
The dog had gotten the worst of it. She was on her back now, yelping in terror as the coyote latched on to her hind leg. Any second it would let go and lunge for the poor thing’s throat, and all Austin could do was stand there and gape, frozen in horror.
But not Joe. His flashlight hit the dirt as he stepped forward. Half a second later there was a solid crack as he swung the two-by-four hard into the coyote’s flank. “Get out of here!” he shouted. “Go on—get—”
For a moment the commotion stopped and the coyote froze, head down as it considered this unexpected threat.
Then it squealed, bared its bloody teeth, and fled into the field behind the pole barn.
“Shit.” Joe dropped the wood and fell to his knees beside the dog. Austin was still staring at him, thinking What the hell? Who did that? Who went and fought a wild animal with a piece of scrap lumber? This wasn’t even his dog.
The dog didn’t get up. It was whining now, panting. The whites of its eyes showed when it looked at them, obviously terrified.
Austin dropped to his knees too as Joe ran a gentle hand along the dog’s side, making hushing sounds.
“Hey, girl,” he murmured. “Hey, hey, it’s okay.
We’ve got you.” He ripped his sweatshirt over his head, covered her with it, and wrapped one of the sleeves around the injured back leg.
The dog cried like it was being murdered.
Austin’s heart squeezed. “Help me get her up? We’ve got to get her to a vet. ”
“Better idea,” Austin said. He worked his hands under the dog’s head and neck, surprised when she didn’t try to bite him. Instead, she licked at his arm. “We bring the vet to her.”
Joe blinked at him.
“Linda,” Austin said. “Come on, her car’s in the driveway. She’s gotta be home.”