Chapter 11 #2
“I wish we could, but didn’t we promise to go to brunch? What time is it?” He didn’t feel like searching for his phone, so he raised his head enough to see the stove across the room. “Ugh, quarter to ten. We really should shower. I don’t want to eat with your nieces and nephews smelling like sex.”
Malcolm still grumped about getting up, but he brightened immediately when Iggy pulled him into the small tub to shower together.
They knocked elbows and bumped butts a lot, but it was fun and easy.
The white line across Malcolm’s side where he’d had his appendix removed reminded him of that first “Two Truths and a Lie” conversation.
Getting to know each other again with riddles.
It also reminded him of Malcolm’s cancer scare, and how precious life truly was.
That Malcolm could have not listened to his roommate, gotten so much worse, and possibly died before they ever got their second chance.
They hadn’t made any declarations, hadn’t made any promises, but Iggy couldn’t help feeling as if an invisible wall had been shattered and partly knocked to the ground, leaving them each bare to the other.
Emotionally bare, since they were both getting dressed again. Combing their damp hair and making themselves presentable for Malcolm’s family.
Iggy briefly returned to the saloon to turn off the forgotten coffee machine and clean the pot before the day crew arrived.
At ten-fifteen, they piled into the station wagon, giving Malcolm a few extra minutes to duck into his camper and change shirts.
Iggy waited for him by the camper door so they could go inside the house together. He wasn’t nervous.
He was…surprised he wasn’t nervous. This was a big deal, and yet right now? It also felt inevitable. Like ever since Iggy flew into the airport at Fort Collins, he was waiting on brunch with Melissa and the kids. Waiting to be made part of the Montgomery/Ricardo family.
Uncle Howie was going to be surprised as hell when Iggy saw him next.
Malcolm joined him outside the camper. Iggy was kind of curious to see the inside but now wasn’t the time, not when he hadn’t eaten in ages, and he’d been promised some sort of tater tot casserole.
Plus, farm fresh eggs. Iggy had eaten at more organic, farm-to-table restaurants than he could count, but these eggs were apparently two days free of the chicken’s butt.
That was fresh.
The back door of the house, which was maybe thirty feet across the backyard from the camper, burst open and three kids came out in a small cluster of moving bodies.
Sofia, Tommy and Nelo surrounded their Uncle Malcolm like they hadn’t seen him months.
Nelo kept his distance from Iggy, but he was the youngest, and seemed warier of strangers than his siblings.
Suspicion was a good trait in little kids.
In his experience.
“You’re the bar-meek, right?” Tommy asked. “You came to my game?”
Iggy smiled. “The barkeep, and yes, Malcolm was kind enough to invite me to see you play yesterday. Your team did a great job.”
“We didn’t win.”
“No, but you played with great sportsmanship.”
Tommy looked quizzically at Malcolm. “Is that a good thing?”
“Yes, it is,” Malcolm replied. He ruffled his nephew’s curly hair, and Tommy ducked away with a scowl.
“Mom said you used to be Uncle Monte’s boyfriend,” Sofia said. She looked so much like her mother that Iggy wanted to see Melissa’s elementary school photo just to compare. The boys had to take after their dad, because they didn’t look much like Malcolm, either.
Then Sofia’s words kicked in. “Um, yes, when we were in high school, Monte and I were boyfriends.” He purposely did not meet Malcolm’s eyes, unsure what he’d see in them.
What had today been for Malcolm? Goodbye sex?
I Miss You Sex? They hadn’t discussed it, too caught up in the bliss of being with each other. Hopefully, it wasn’t a mistake.
“Guys!” Amy yelled from the back door. “Mom says to wash up, we’re eating in, like, two minutes!”
Iggy followed the crew inside. The back door led through a small utility room and then into a bright kitchen full of delicious smells.
Melissa stood over a cast iron skillet that sizzled away on the stovetop.
“Boys, how you do like your eggs? I’ve done up scrambled for the kids, but I do take requests. ”
“Scrambled is fine,” Iggy replied. “You’ve already made the casserole, you don’t have to special order the eggs, too.”
“He’s a keeper.” Melissa flashed Malcolm a conspiratorial smile. “You gonna stick with scrambled, too? Or make your poor, tired sister do something special?”
“You know you make the best scrambled eggs in Colorado.” Malcolm kissed her cheek on his way past the stove. The kids had disappeared, probably to wash up in whatever bathrooms the house possessed. “What can I put on the table?”
“Nothing, Nelo and Sofia were perfect helpers this morning. You two go sit in the dining room.”
Malcolm’s amused smile said that being served like this was not a typical occurrence in this house, and Iggy imagined not.
A single working mom with four kids didn’t have a lot of extra emotional energy to hand around for things like a plated Sunday brunch.
Probably why so many people relied on home delivery nowadays.
He followed Malcolm into the attached dining room, which had early American furniture that looked like it could have come with the house.
One entire wall was covered with framed photographs of the family, everything from posed school photos to holiday candid shots.
A wedding photo of Melissa and her husband Tomás, someone Iggy regretted never having met.
Uncle Howie had always spoken highly of Tomás as a handyman.
They looked so happy in the wedding photo; Iggy couldn’t imagine Melissa’s pain.
A metal folding chair had been squeezed in on one side of the table, to give them seven spots, and after holding out a wooden chair for Iggy, Malcolm took the metal one.
The casserole already sat on the table, still steaming, near a bowl of grapes and a pitcher of orange juice.
The kids piled in and took their chairs.
Amy and Tommy squabbled briefly over the captain chair opposite where Melissa would sit, since that spot had a big insulated mug by the plate.
Melissa put the skillet of eggs on a trivet then sat. “Sofia, it’s your turn to the bless the food.”
Iggy tilted his head down respectfully while Sofia said a quick, generic grace.
Amy took point on dishing out the casserole, while Malcolm rose and returned a minute later with mugs of coffee for him and Iggy.
Nelo talked a bit about that morning’s Sunday School craft project, and Iggy was happy not to immediately be the center of attention.
The food was hot and greasy, salty and delicious, and Iggy made a mental note to take some Tums when he got home.
“Mr. Iggy?” Sofia asked, the perfect picture of polite preteen. “How’d you get the name Iggy? Is it short for something?”
This was a common question that Iggy had stopped being annoyed by when he was ten. He’d actually turned quite a few kids onto reading classic literature. “It is short for something,” Iggy replied. “Have you guys ever heard of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow?”
“Isn’t that a Johnny Depp movie?” Amy asked. “I think I watched it at Bella’s house last Halloween.”
“Yep, that was a thing, and it was an animated show, and before that, it was a story written by someone named Washington Irving. It made the myth of the Headless Horseman famous.”
“A headless horseman?” Nelo repeated. “How do you ride a horse without a head?”
“The Headless Horseman was a ghost, a myth, and instead of a head, he carried with him a carved pumpkin.” Iggy caught a stern look from Melissa that suggested this wasn’t appropriate for the brunch table.
“But the hero of the story is a man named Ichabod Crane. The story of my naming, as I have been told, is that my parents couldn’t decide what to name me, so my mother picked up a book that happened to be a collection of stories by Washington Irving.
She opened it and pointed, and I was Ichabod. ”
“Well, it could have been worse,” Melissa quipped. “You could have been named Rip Van Winkle.”
“I don’t know, I think Rip is kind of sexy,” Malcolm said softly, mostly to Iggy. Iggy nudged him with his elbow.
“Anyway.” Iggy cleared his throat and spoke directly to Sofia. “Iggy is short for Ichabod. But my best friend Abigail didn’t like it. She thought it sounded too much like Icky, so she decided to call me Body.”
Malcolm had stiffened, and only Iggy seemed to notice, because only Iggy realized what he’d said.
Once upon a time, Malcolm had been Iggy’s best friend.
He’d mentioned Abigail to Malcolm as Darren’s sister, but hadn’t expanded on their friendship, or the ways they’d held each other together after Darren’s death.
He hadn’t really had the chance between all the kissing and dick sucking.
His chest flushed with the memories, and he mentally shoved them away. Not the time or place, not at a table full of kids under fourteen.
“Body’s a funny nickname, too,” Tommy said. “Why’s it gotta end in a Y?”
“Says you, Tommy,” Sofia retorted.
“Tommy’s better than Junior.”
“We could call you June, instead.”
“No! Mom!”
“Guys, stop with the name teasing,” Melissa said. “We have a guest.”
Iggy caught Sofia mouthing the word “June” at Tommy, and he hid his smile behind his coffee mug.
He envied these siblings their obvious bond and camaraderie, squabbles and all.
Not all families had that, blood or not.
Iggy had been in enough foster homes in his early life to know he preferred being an only child.
Solitude was safer.
Safer as a helpless child. Not so much as a very lonely adult.
Well…he glanced at Malcolm.
Not so lonely right now.
“Tell me more about Abigail?”