Chapter 4
FOUR
Hatch
Chris squinted through his dad’s windshield, not sure he believed what his eyes were seeing, but regardless how many times he blinked, they kept telling him the same thing.
A matte black Ford Taurus was parked in front of Frank’s place. What were the chances that his parents’ friend—or anyone else in their lives down here—owned a car that looked exactly like Ivan Morrison’s?
And had Oregon plates?
None.
He asked the question anyway. “Dad, what kind of car does Frank own?”
“Oh, um.” His dad flicked the turn indicator and maneuvered into the narrow parking space next to their home. “Frank has a RAV4, I think, and a motorbike. Why? Are you thinking about buying a car? We could check out a few while you’re down here.”
The only thing worse than spending the day wandering around the swap meet would be wandering around several used car lots. He’d still be hot and sweaty, but he’d also have to fend off smarmy salesmen.
“No, Dad, I am not in the market for a new car at the moment.”
A sinking-tingly feeling of dread plus anticipation made his stomach churn. There was only one person in the world that the ugliest car Chris had ever laid eyes on belonged to, and that was Ivan Morrison.
Ivan Morrison, whose picture should be next to the word chaos in Webster’s Dictionary: Ivan Morrison, Chaos Factor.
What the hell was Ivan Morrison doing in Surprise, Arizona?
There was only one way for him to find out. Chris pushed open the car door but paused with one foot on the pavement and one still inside the car as a more horrifying thought occurred to him. Frank’s house was locked up tight right now.
Where exactly was Ivan Morrison, and just how long had he been here?
“Sounds like your mom has guests over,” his dad commented innocently over his shoulder, turning away from the front door and instead heading around to the back patio.
“Guest, one guest,” Chris corrected as he scrambled to get out of the car. “What the actual fuck?”
“What? Is something the matter?” Lance asked.
Everything was the matter. Morrison and his parents, together? Disaster.
Jogging across the street, Chris swiped his hand across the hood of the Taurus. It had been parked in the shade of a palm tree and was cool to the touch—at least, not scorching hot. He tried to calculate how just long that would take and thus how many hours Morrison had been there, and… he couldn’t. The answer was too long .
“Nothing, just… nothing,” Chris said, catching back up with his dad.
After an entire day wandering the swap meet with Lance Hatch, all Chris wanted to do now was hide over at Frank’s place with a cold beer and maybe some cheap Mexican food. The dream slipped from his grasp when a deep, loud laugh that he recognized as Ivan Morrison’s reached his ears. He’d heard it often enough, after all. And as much as it irritated him in the moment, the sound inevitably made him smile in other circumstances. Morrison always made him smile.
He wasn’t smiling now. No way. Not going to happen.
His dad looked over his shoulder again, motioning for him to hurry up. “Come on, son, sounds like happy hour has already started.”
Chris slowly trailed after his dad while still trying—and failing—to work out what the fuck Morrison was doing in Arizona.
It couldn’t be anything good.
Coming around the corner of the house, Chris paused and watched his dad kiss his mom on the head and then plop down on the chair next to hers.
As he’d thought, it was only Morrison and his mom out on the patio. The neighbors hadn’t been invited over for an impromptu party—not yet anyway. But the two of them had been making enough noise to wake the dead. Luckily, quiet hours didn’t start for a while.
His mom appeared to notice Chris first. Appeared being the operative word. Morrison wouldn’t still be alive if he wasn’t always aware of his surroundings. Even if the empty tumbler in his large hand indicated the man had finished off at least one of his mom’s dangerous “special” vodka lemonades.
“Sweetheart!” his mom exclaimed. “Look who I found!”
Morrison shot him a cheeky grin and Chris narrowed his eyes at him in return. Morrison shrugged back.
Oh, yeah, the man knew he was in deep shit.
“Dad, this is”—Chris scrambled for the right words—“my friend, Ivan Morrison. Morrison, this is my dad, Lance. I see you’ve met Mom already.”
“Don’t be afraid to use the word boyfriend, Chris,” his mom gushed. “We’ve been chatting for hours. I can’t believe you’ve never mentioned Ivan to us before. But he explained that you’ve only recently decided you two are serious. Makes my mom heart so happy.” His mom clapped one hand across her chest dramatically and nowhere near her heart. Chris speculated that Susie’s lemonade specials must be even stronger than usual, and they were usually damn strong.
Now Morrison was decidedly not looking Chris’s way. Chris moved over, directly into Morrison’s line of sight, and mouthed, Boyfriend ?
Morrison shrugged again. Chris decided to ignore the fact that he wasn’t exactly pissed off by Morrison’s use of the word.
“I’m so happy to have a chance to use this new glassware,” his mom continued, oblivious to the half-hearted death glare Morrison was receiving. “And I just made a fresh pitcher of lemonade and was about to pour Ivan another. Let’s celebrate!”
She held her hand out for Morrison’s tumbler. He gave it to her without hesitation and damn if Susie didn’t fill it to the rim. A tray with two more empty glasses sat on a low table by her elbow. It was going to be a long night.
“Have a seat, honey.” Deftly, his mom poured her concoction into each glass and handed one to his dad and the other to Chris.
Accepting the drink, Chris surveyed the scene of the crime. He caught Morrison’s eye again and raised one eyebrow with an added what the fuck cock of his head. Morrison shot back yet another expressive single-shoulder shrug. So many shrugs and not one of them was a guilty one.
That was the moment Chris spotted the photo albums sitting off to one side of Morrison’s chair. Stepping past him, Chris snatched the top one and held it up for all to see.
“Photo albums?” He shook the offending book and set it back down. “Really, Mom?” He infused his voice with the tone he usually reserved for employees who’d stepped over the line. Morrison had heard it plenty. And much like with Morrison, it had no effect on his mother.
“Now, don’t get yourself all riled up,” she said with a broad smile, handing the re-filled drink back to the uninvited guest. “Have a seat already.” She leaned across and patted the empty patio chair next to Morrison. “I’m just so happy for the two of you. Lance, make a toast.”
“Ivan tells me you two met at work,” Mom said, her smile taking in the both of them.
“I suppose that’s the truth,” Chris allowed.
Chris sat in the open seat next to Morrison and sipped at his refreshed drink. He was going to kill Morrison later, but it also wasn’t the worse thing in the world to let his folks think he had a real boyfriend, that he wasn’t all work and no play—even though he so was. He eyed his half-empty glass; it was probably time to slow down.
“We met at the same office,” Morrison agreed. “But I’m transferring to a different organization, and I ended up with some time off between assignments because of that.”
He was transferring? Since when? He had time off? That actually wasn’t a shock. But this was the first Chris had heard of a transfer. Wasn’t he being loaned out? Had Morrison requested the transfer? Was the move permanent? What the fuck was going on in Portland while he was on vacation? He made a mental note to call Radisson and find out exactly what was happening. Paulter was useless for information.
“I’m a bit of a maverick,” Morrison continued. Chris snorted, earning himself a look from Susie. “The current boss and I don’t see eye to eye. Chris and I met at trivia night a while back. Opposite teams. Mine trounced his team, and I think I impressed him with my knowledge of the TV show, MASH .”
They had met at that trivia night event, the one immortalized in the picture in his office, before Ivan ended up working directly for Chris. He’d forgotten that fact. And, yes, Ivan’s team had won that night. But that’s only because Chris had been forced to team up with some yahoo from accounting. And Dennis Paulter. Fucking Paulter.
“I had to team up with Paulter, you know that. Although for someone who wasn’t born before MASH ended, you sure do know a lot about the show.”
“And you were what, five?” Morrison shot back.
“And now you’re moving in together,” his mom interjected, all starry-eyed.
Chris inhaled sharply, choking and coughing on the swig of toxic lemonade he’d just taken. Morrison pounded him on the back.
“You alright?” Ivan asked him.
“Just,” Chris rasped when he could speak, “lemonade—wrong way.”
“Lance and I met at a Grateful Dead concert,” Mom said, unfazed by Chris’s coughing fit. “Remember, honey?”
“That’s right,” Dad concurred, scooting closer to his life partner and swinging his free arm over her shoulders. “It was love at first sight. They were playing Uncle John’s Band , and Gerry was on guitar. It was hot and they had sprinklers running all around the venue, so there were rainbows everywhere. I’ll never forget that day.”
“We danced the rest of the night away. I think we were both high as kites on mushrooms.”
“Mom,” Chris said warningly.
“Oh, Chris, I just don’t know sometimes. Always so serious. If you didn’t look so much like me, I’d think you weren’t our child. Well, that and the thirty-six hours of labor you put me through.”
The reminder of the not-so-quite-in-the-past drug use—at least now, Chris hoped, his dad just smoked pot—was more than enough. And Chris did not need a play-by-play of the day he was born. He’d heard it enough times already.
“I think Chris takes after both of you,” Morrison said, scooting his chair closer to Chris’s and draping his arm across his shoulders, a mirror of what Lance had done.
Not for the first time since Ivan Morrison stormed into his life, Chris noted that he enjoyed the smell of Morrison’s cologne. Maybe it was just Morrison’s scent in general. The heavy weight of his arm was reassuring as well, keeping Chris from completely freaking out because his parents believed they were an item.
It wasn’t the worst thing that could happen while he was on vacation, he reminded himself. If his parents thought he and Morrison were together, maybe they’d stop pestering him about “true love” and all that bullshit. Maybe his mom would stop worrying about him being alone for the rest of his life, as if having personal space was a death sentence.
“It must be hard worrying about each other. I know Chris isn’t in the field as much as he once was, but still.”
“We’ve seen a lot, you know,” Morrison agreed. “A lot of bad stuff comes from drug running. Sh-stuff I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.”
Susie nodded. “I understand that. Just a couple of weeks ago, some locals were found locked up in a Conex box out in the desert. Police said it was a drug deal gone wrong. I can’t even imagine.”
Chris could imagine. He’d seen it with his own eyes. So had Morrison. Ivan squeezed his shoulder.
“I’m a bit peckish,” Morrison said. “Is there a good place to eat around here?”
If he’d hoped to change the subject, food was an excellent choice. Chris figured he really was hungry though.
“It takes some serious calories to keep up this svelte figure.” Ivan motioned to his chest.
Was Morrison self-conscious of his size? Yeah, the man was big, but it was mostly muscle. If he had a little extra, it suited him, and therefore it was not extra.
“We’ve got plenty to go around,” his mom said. “Right, Lance?”
But first, his mom poured more drinks all around, and when those were empty, his dad fired up the barbecue. It was a damn good thing none of them were driving anywhere.
They laughed and talked loudly about nothing important while scarfing down Lance’s world-famous barbecue chicken and seared corn on the cob. Chris hadn’t laughed that hard or felt that comfortable around his parents in years. Maybe ever. And it was all because of Ivan, who fit like the perfect odd-shaped puzzle piece between Chris and his folks.
When everyone was finished eating, Chris and Morrison took everything inside and loaded the dishwasher before saying their goodbyes.
“Thanks for feeding us, Lance,” Morrison declared while rubbing his stomach in satisfaction. “I haven’t had a meal like that in ages.”
“You’re welcome, son. We’ll do it again tomorrow night!”