14. Dean
DEAN
It was weird, talking to Landon about the band.
About music? Sure. A poetic twist of some specific lyric? Absolutely.
Fuck, most of the time it seemed like he’d gotten more out of those than I did. He was able to draw connections that had never occurred to me before.
But talking about the band, how Henry and I had pulled Craig and Riley in when we were all still in high school and Riley was testing out different pronouns every week before they settled firmly in nonbinary land—shit, talking about Henry at all felt a little weird with Landon.
Mostly because I didn’t want to come across as one of those guys still hung up on tragedy. That didn’t change the fact that it was pretty fucking tragic. Henry hadn’t even made it to thirty.
Didn’t change the fact that I still carried my wounds around either.
I just wasn’t enough of a moody artist to feel great about going on at length about somebody I loved to the guy I was interested in now.
It was a balancing act, trying to be honest while not making him uncomfortable.
When he started fiddling with the seam on his pants, I reached for his hand, and he slipped his fingers easily behind mine. No hesitation, no pulling away. He was just there, a steady presence beside me. His eyes were wide and earnest as he listened, and I thought—
Well, I thought he heard me. I didn’t feel judged, and he didn’t act like I’d disappointed him or was asking too much by talking like this.
Which, of course, just meant I spent the evening being a selfish asshole who wasn’t paying enough attention.
That was what I’d convinced myself of by the next day, when I was meeting Lucas for dinner after work.
We had a booth to ourselves, and big steaks cooked rare, seared just right on the outside, with a big pat of butter in the middle.
Sometimes a big cat just needed a hunk of meat, you know?
We talked about his work and trivia and what I’d been reading and when we should go see Mom and Dad next—there was a long weekend coming up and Lucas offered to drive.
I didn’t work up the courage to ask about Landon until after we’d eaten all twelve ounces, but the night was coming to an end, and I couldn’t let it slip past without spreading some more angst around to all my friends, family, and folks at home.
While I screwed my lips to the side, Lucas tilted his head curiously. “Something on your mind?”
I stared at my empty plate, smeared with red. “Did Landon seem, I don’t know . . . okay? At work today, I mean.”
“Sure did!” Lucas announced with a smug grin, so loud I blinked at him. “Asked him how your date went, and he turned red as a cherry. I think you’ve charmed him, big bro. You haven’t lost it yet.”
“Ah.” Really? He wasn’t upset. “Ah, that’s, ah, good? Yeah. That’s good.”
I was scratching the back of my neck when Lucas narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. “Is it? Because you don’t seem that stoked.”
“I am! I am. He’s great. Landon’s great.
So fucking smart, and he does this thing with his nose when he doesn’t like something that’s just—” I shook my head.
No, I didn’t need go on about Landon’s crinkly little nose his coworker, even if Lucas was my brother and was wearing a shit-eating, triumphant grin already.
“I like him,” I admitted, biting my lip while my mouth stretched wide. “A lot.”
Too much, maybe, given how even when I was crashing out about the band, my ennui was derailed every time I remembered how hot it was when his hands were on me, the tight, needy sounds he’d made when his dick was in my mouth.
There was something about rendering a clever man like that speechless that fucking did it for me.
But that wasn’t what we were talking about.
I grimaced at my brother. “I kind of . . . unloaded on him last night.”
Lucas arched a brow. “I’m going to need more details than that, dude. What do you mean, ‘unloaded on him’? You don’t mean—”
He glanced significantly down at the tabletop, and it took me a second to realize he wasn’t interested in the treated wood, but was glancing at my crotch like he had X-ray vision.
It was just about cause enough to turn the same table over on him.
“No, dude!” I growled. “Fuck. No.”
He held up his hands, palms out. “Hey, I don’t know what kind of hip new lingo you artist types are using nowadays.”
“Hip? You sound like Dad.” I sighed, dragging a hand down my face. “Okay, so, not that. I—Craig’s leaving the band.”
Lucas blinked, as startled by that admission as I’d been that it just fell out of my mouth like that. Context, right? I needed to provide context.
“Shit,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “They’re having another baby. It’s not . . . bad. It just . . . ”
“Sucks.”
I shrugged. “A little. For me. In a supremely selfish way.”
Lucas frowned. “You can be happy for your friend while admitting that this kinda isn’t what you wanted. That doesn’t make you a bad person.”
My teeth sank into the inside of my cheek. “Okay. Well, I don’t want Craig to back out of Lucky Black Cat, and I was sulking about it last night—”
He held up a single finger. “You were feeling your emotions.”
I scowled. “Well, now you sound like Mom.”
He didn’t take the bait but swirled his hand in the air for me to continue.
“So I told him. Landon. About . . . all of it. Messing around in the garage when we were kids, how we thought we were going somewhere, and at first, it really seemed like we were. Then how—”
I grimaced again, and I didn’t even know why—if it was talking about Henry to Landon or just facing the whole thing over again and wanting to shrink away from it. I hadn’t talked this much about Henry in—
Well, since the memorial.
“How it all fell apart when Henry got sick?” Lucas asked gently.
I shrugged, wrapping both hands around my beer and those last cold gulps that promised to get me through this.
Lucas leaned in over the table, bending down to catch my eye. “You know I think you’re great, right?”
I huffed and nodded. “You have to. You’ve, like, spent your whole life idolizing me or whatever it is little brothers do.”
He scoffed. “Have not. Not ever. I’ve always been more hip than you.”
I couldn’t help my incredulous stare, even as he turned his chin up and grinned at me.
“But really,” he said, leaning in again, “I think you are so fucking talented, and your music is worthwhile, and Lucky Black Cat is amazing. And even if it’s not the same as it was yesterday, or it goes away entirely, you’re still incredible and your dreams are still worth chasing.”
I puffed out my cheeks and let the air out slowly. “Well, I hope so. I’ve basically rendered myself unemployable by mainstream society.”
Lucas rolled his eyes as he dropped back in his seat.
“Bullshit. I could get you a job at Crescent tomorrow, and you know it. I even think you’d get on with Seth.
You two can do the whole big, broody predator thing.
Be all protective and whatever. But I’m not letting you do that.
I’m gonna give you about a week to pout—”
“That’s nowhere near enough time.”
“For someone as edgy as you? Probably not. But, like, throw all those feelings into a new song or something. You’ll pull out of this. Figure it out.”
“And it . . . wasn’t too much for Landon?”
Lucas snorted. “He seemed fine. One check, please.”
This last, he threw over my shoulder as the waiter approached. I scowled at him. I hated when he insisted on paying, and he knew it. It made me feel small, pitiful, even.
I was the older brother. I was supposed to take care of this kind of thing.
Still, he snatched the pleather folder before I could grab it, and stared me dead in the eye as he put his card inside.
“Dean, you’re not actually too much for anyone.
You get to be hurt and flawed and have your big feelings, and none of that makes you a burden.
What will is if you don’t figure out how to accept kindness when it’s offered to you.
Anybody you date, Landon included, is going to want to take care of you sometimes.
Everybody who loves you does, every bit as much as you want to take care of us.
So stop trying to be the big man all the time and feeling bad when you’re honest, okay?
You went through some shit with Henry, and he needed you to hold it all together for a while, but you don’t have to do that anymore.
You definitely don’t have to do it alone.
I’m glad you talked to Landon—I like that you feel like you can be that honest with him—and if you’re really worried, you should ask him how he feels about it. I bet he’s glad too.”
Damn it, he really did sound like Mom. When did my little brother become the reasonable one?