CHAPTER 36
Easton
Another night hanging out with Leonard while creepy-ass not-dead Reider is doing God knows what with or to Aaron. Yahoo! I love my fucking life.
Taking another draw off my beer, I glare at the episode of Farmhouse Fixer playing on my living room TV. Leonard’s affinity for modern television shows is astounding. Did they not have cable in prison?
It decides to speak because it doesn’t remember the rules. “You know, burying yourself in a bottle isn’t going to fix our disagreements.”
Where in the hell did that come from? Can’t a guy just sit here and contemplate if the man he hates most in the world is considering buying goats and renovating a colonial building?
“Not everything’s about you.”
He must miss the sincerity in my warning because he follows up with an open-minded, “Then try me.”
Am I drunk or did Leonard actually just offer to be my therapy couch? He’s been camped out on that thing for too long if he’s taken on the persona of one now.
Holding up a hand, he adds, “I’ve fucked up enough stuff in my life, I’ve gotten pretty good at fixing things.”
Oh, please. Why can’t they just show some goats so he can return his attention to the TV? Fixing things? What, pray tell, would he have gotten good at fixing in prison?
“ Most things,” he digresses more humbly. “Things that are forgivable.”
Ugh. If he even goes there, I’m going to lose my shit. He’s not going to stop talking, is he? Whatever. I can only listen to this shit in my head for so long.
“You ever meet any con men?” I ask off-handedly, like I couldn’t care less if he replies.
What the hell is the snort for?
“Prison’s full of con men.”
Oh. Well, I walked into that one.
Good talk, Leonard. Good talk.
“Your guy? He pull something on you?”
My guy? I wait for the disparaging remarks, remembering he saw Aaron and I kiss when he broke my shower. Side-eyeing him, I find him waiting curiously for an answer, not an ounce of derision on his face.
“Someone’s conning him , and I don’t know what to do about it,” I mumble just so he’ll quit looking at me.
“The old fear of God is a good way to start.”
Yeah, because Jason looks like a bible-toting man. And, uh, is that what Leonard tried to do to me and Mom back in his tirade days? What a wonderful source of advice I chose.
“It’s his husband. I don’t think I’ve got the right to put the fear of God in him, even if I want to.”
Good. He finally shut up.
Where are the fucking goats? I couldn’t care less about wall colors.
“You sure you’re not the one being conned by both of them?”
“I’m not as fucking stupid as you think I am.”
“I’m just saying…your mother and I had our problems, but not once did either of us ever stray.”
Oh, the fuck he didn’t. Springing out of my recliner like an ejection seat, I level my index finger at him over my beer bottle.
“You don’t get to fucking talk about her! ” Just in case his brain does that thing where it tells him to speak when he shouldn’t, I add, “ Ever !”
Tromping to the kitchen, I polish off the rest of my beer, trying not to let his moment of stupidity push me over the edge. They had their problems? He freaking caused her death. How can he honestly think I’d be receptive to him claiming he loved her once? That’s all null and void once you contribute to someone’s demise. The fucking idiot.
“Easton…”
Ugh… it’s speaking again. Of course, it is.
“I can’t take it back. I know that, but I’d do anything to take back what I did. Everything I did.”
Gripping the handles of the refrigerator, I suck in a deep breath and lean my forehead against the cool stainless steel. “Stop,” I warn. “I don’t want to hear it.”
I don’t open my eyes until I’m convinced he’s finally shut up for good. Sighing, I wrench open the door and grab another bottle from the twelve-pack I bought earlier. If Leonard doesn’t like it, he can go to a meeting. Maybe he’ll find someone there who wants to adopt him as their recovery houseplant. Just set him next to your couch in front of the television. He’ll love it there.
My ass barely lands back in the recliner when that rough, old voice floats across the room again.
“Your guy…he’s off with this husband of his, I take it? Is that why you look like a dog’s ass?”
I spare him an unimpressed look as I kick my boots off with my feet and let them thunk to the floor. If we’re going to start exchanging compliments, I’ve got a few in mind for him that make a dog’s ass sound like a beauty title.
“He was dead.” I laugh at the absurdity of using the past tense. “A car accident. Faked his own death. Now, he’s back almost two years later, out of the blue, like nothing ever happened. Who does that?”
I’m getting better at shutting him up. I bet they don’t even hear stories like this in prison very often.
“And your guy?” he finally asks.
“ Aaron . His name is Aaron. Okay? And he’s obviously not my guy if he has a fucking husband again now.”
“Is he…okay with this?”
I wish shaking my head would bleach my brain of the entire ordeal and this conversation. “No,” I mutter, because Aaron clearly wasn’t okay with it. “I don’t know,” I add just as quickly. Because some dumbass lost his cool the other day and probably drove him to be okay with it. “But he’s not like us. He’s… good . He’s too good, and I can’t stop him from being too good.” I don’t know why I’m still talking other than I want it out of me and I don’t know how else to purge the pain. “I don’t want to. It’s what I…”
‘ Love about him ’ gets stuck in my throat, and my voice starts to sound wrecked. Leonard doesn’t need to know that. He didn’t need to know any of it. Jesus, I’ve lost my mind.
Scoffing at myself, my laugh sounds like it belongs to Snidely Whiplash’s dog, Muttley . “Why the fuck am I telling you?”
That was meant to be rhetorical, so naturally, the world’s shittiest plumber pipes in. “Sometimes it’s good to let things out. You can’t keep everything bottled up or—”
“Save it,” I cut him off, heaving myself out of the recliner.
Family time is officially over. I need to go burn some damn sage now. If I have to hear him preach to me after I just spewed all that crap, I might light more than sage to cleanse my apartment.
A good cleanse… that’s exactly what I need. No wonder I can’t even be content being miserable in my own place.
“And you need to leave,” I inform him on my way to my room. “I can’t have you here. Not now. Not like you gave me much of a choice in the first place.”
“I’ll sign into the Siever halfway house tomorrow. I’ll be gone in the morning.”
There’s no saltiness to his tone. It’s so agreeable, it just pisses me off even more.
“Whatever.”