Chapter 15 Prague
Prague
MAYBE IT was because he’d had three parents, but Josh had never wanted one more than the other there for comfort.
His mother, warm, maternal, or Felix, strong and masculine, were both great at feeding that place in a child that needed to be reassured and cared for.
And Danny, kind, funny, intuitive, had been completely wonderful.
Although admittedly during the years he’d been missing from the household, Josh had rather hoped for Danny more than the other two because it meant they could see each other.
This last year, as awful as the cancer had been, had filled up Josh’s reserves of Uncle Danny a little, repaired some of the damage done by missing him.
And the stories—from Liam, from Carl, from Tienne, even obliquely from Danny himself—had given Josh some insight into why Danny had needed to stay away.
Josh’s generation was good at telling people they needed to take care of themselves before they could care for others.
Danny had been doing that—fixing things in himself that had been damaged even before Julia and then Josh had come along—so when he returned for his family, he could be this force, this amazing, kind, avuncular figure of fun and reason and fair play.
And Josh’s Uncle Danny, who in spite of hurting—of screaming inside, Josh could see now—had been there through so much of Josh’s adolescence, even though it meant being in proximity to the one person who had hurt him the most.
So when he opened his eyes in the hospital in Prague, he was not surprised to see Uncle Danny there, the window behind him dark with night. But he was so terribly grateful.
His eyes burned as he let down the guards he’d held in place, the fears he’d held back. Because Liam had been trying so hard to be strong, Josh hadn’t wanted to freak him out more.
“There you are,” Danny said with a smile, his eyes tired. “I’ve been texting your mother. She seems to think you were sleeping late simply to annoy her.”
Josh found he was too tired to smile back. “That’s a lie. She’s been trying to get me to sleep more since I was seven.”
“Yes, but now that you’re grown, she expects more,” Danny rejoined, but the levity was forced, even Josh could see it.
Apparently Danny felt it, because his demeanor softened, became less brittlely cheerful.
“Or maybe I should say she hopes for more,” he said quietly.
“How are you, my boy? And not the ‘I’m fine’ you fed to Liam.
He saw through that, by the way—it’s why he stopped asking. ”
Josh nodded, barely remembering the ambulance ride from the train to the hospital. Liam had told him they’d arranged for the ambulance to meet them in Prague about midway through the train ride, when “resting” became more like “loss of consciousness.”
The ambulance had been the compromise between taking a cab or Liam demanding they stop the train and administer aid immediately.
Josh groaned and looked at the now-familiar lines of fluid—a saline drip and the more ominous red blood transfusion—being administered into ports in the back of his hand.
“This again?” he whispered, grateful his head had stopped pounding. Anemia did that, but so did leukemia.
“We don’t know,” Danny said softly. “You could have been right the first time—anemia from overdoing it. You should have seen a doctor in Stuttgart, but Liam said you were being stubborn.”
Josh’s lips finally twitched. “He was hurting himself not taking me without my consent.”
“Why didn’t you go?” Danny asked.
“Superstition,” Josh said baldly, because that’s what it boiled down to. “I kept telling myself if I could just get the job done, then I could sleep and—”
“Bollix the job!” Danny cried, and Josh blinked.
“Danny…?” Josh said, genuinely surprised.
Danny shook his head and put a hand against Josh’s temple with as much reverence and absolution as a priest. “It was never about the job,” Danny whispered. “It was about doing something together. Don’t you get it, Joshua Daniel? Together means you have to be there too.”
“That’s not entirely true anymore,” Josh told him, suddenly feeling like the parent. “Grace, Molly, Chuck, Hunter, Lucius—they risked their lives the other night.”
“That was our choice,” said a familiar voice, and Josh rolled his eyes and hey, there was his headache.
And his best friend. Together at last. “We love you, Recovery Boy, but I’m not getting a face full of cocaine for you.
I was down for that clusterfuck. You talk about fixing the world?
That shit was prime for being blown out of existence, I shit you not. ”
Danny’s glance toward Grace, who was apparently curled up by Josh’s feet—he could see him now—was affectionate. “Eloquent, Dylan Li,” he said. “And you shall have to elaborate on the face full of cocaine. Sounds… invigorating.”
Grace shuddered, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. For the first time ever, Josh could see the beginnings of a beard on his friend’s usually smooth face. He would have to tease him later.
“Blew chunks like a boss,” he admitted. “Molly force-fed me the liso, and blech. In case I ever wanted to do drugs again, now I don’t. Hooray!”
“But how did it happen?” Josh asked, curiosity overriding the headache and weakness and the awful feeling of being near tears.
“A gust of wind through a plastic entrance tarp while I was setting the charges,” Grace said, shaking his head.
“Oh my God—right in the kisser. Had a cloth mask, but fuck me, next time I’m going full WWI gas mask because that shit was heinous.
Blew the charge early, I was so hyped. It was a goatfuck.
” He grinned tiredly. “And then we get here and you’re in the hospital again. I could cheerfully kill you.”
Josh felt those tears again. “But you won’t because you still love me, right?”
“Yeah,” Grace said, dismounting the foot of the bed and coming up to hug him, in spite of the driplines and monitors and such.
Carefully, because he’d had practice, he climbed in next to Josh and snuggled.
“Still love you. Liam loves you too, by the way. We had to pry him from your side—he wasn’t smelling too great. You neither. Get a shower, hippy.”
Finally situated, Grace’s body went limp, and Josh was pretty sure he’d fallen immediately asleep, like he did.
“Well,” Danny said, wiping his face, “that was a timely break to save you from getting chewed out. Are you ready now?”
“They were counting on me,” Josh whispered. “I didn’t want to let them down.”
“We could have done something else,” Danny told him, smoothing Josh’s hair back from his forehead with a cool hand. “God, Josh. What have we done—your mother, your father, me—what have we done to make our love feel conditional?”
Josh closed his eyes and swallowed. “Nothing,” he said. “I just… you all gave up so much for me. How could I fail?”
“You can’t,” Danny told him, and Josh heard the sob in his voice, and maybe that little sound allowed him to finally get it.
“You are such a good—truly good—person, Josh Salinger. Not simply smart. Not simply clever and fun. Good. Your heart is so pure. You can’t let us down.
Not if you get sick again. Not if you quit the game—”
“I love the game,” Josh told him, closing his eyes. “No quitting the game.”
“Okay, then. So maybe don’t play it until it kills you, okay?”
Josh nodded. “I would enjoy some more time with Liam,” he confessed.
“Well he… he’s been in love with you probably before you met,” Danny told him. “I’d say it was a fairy tale—”
“We just came from a fairy tale,” Josh said, remembering the oriel and the egg. “Remind me to tell Grace it’s still there.”
“My egg?” Grace asked groggily.
“Yeah,” Josh mumbled. “I checked—still real.”
“Good night.”
“Fairy tales aren’t as hard,” Danny said, ignoring their byplay as he often did. “Relationships take work, and you know that work, my boy. You’ve forged some first-class relationships, and they’ve forged their own. But you need to take Liam as seriously.”
Josh swallowed. “I do, Uncle Danny,” he said, his heart on his sleeve.
“I… feel like he’s everything I’d ever hoped for.
It really is like magic. Like you couldn’t be there for me, so you created my perfect mate by telling a witch all about me, and she made me a Liam to patch any holes you might have left. ”
“You,” Danny said with a smile, “are getting a wee bit daffy. I’ll be sure to tell him about it when he gets back.”
“Where is he?”
“Felix took him to the hotel to wash up. Grace wasn’t wrong about him getting a bit ripe.”
Josh frowned. “How long have I been here—wait, Felix? Who’s with Mom?” He tried to push himself up on his elbow and fell back against the bed, partly because Grace was holding on to him and grumbling, but mostly because his arm—oh fuck, his arm. What in the hell had happened to his shoulder?
“No-no-no—no getting up,” Grace growled. “Stop talking and listen. My God, let me sleep.”
Josh scowled but did as commanded.
“The train pulled into Prague the morning before yesterday—”
“I lost two days?” Josh gasped. They’d only had two weeks to plan!
“And your mother is here. She adores Prague, and she made me promise to take her around to show her the sights. She says she owes me for seeing it without her so many times. Also, she has plans to decorate my apartment—says it’s ‘bland.’ But she’ll have to wait until all our fellow miscreants clear out.
Right now half our party is there, and half of them are at the Mozart, courtesy your rich Uncle Leon, who apparently owns a great deal of stock in that one. ”
Josh blew out a breath. “We know a lot of rich people, Danny.”
“And a lot of people not so rich,” Danny agreed. “I don’t know what to tell you. But what’s to do?”
“So what’s everybody doing?” he asked, the exhaustion suddenly hitting him hard.
“What you’re about to do,” Danny said softly. “Sleep. Don’t worry. We’ll plot next week.”
What was he not saying?
“What’s next week?”