Sidecar (7 page)

But no. The first day, Casey was on the roof, throwing broken pieces of plastic down on the ground, and Joe called up to him to stay on the beams so he didn’t fall through the plastic. But that didn’t make sense, because Casey wasn’t tall, and he was certainly not fat, and if he just took a step there—

He scrambled back and barely made it to the nearest beam before the plastic crumbled beneath his feet.

“Goddammit, Casey! Do what you’re goddamned told!”

Casey had actually needed to brace himself against the roof of the house for a moment, because the snapped order made his heart pound like he was a criminal caught in the act. His father used to yell a lot.
Goddammit, kid, could you keep the fucking ball out of the house? Jesus, Casey, do you ever fucking think? Maybe if you stopped fucking up in class, I’d give a shit about your fucking ball games. I mean, it’s not like you’re first string or anything. God, the way you run? I’m surprised they let you on the fucking team!

And for a minute, Casey had flashed back to that and had felt a totally familiar urge to hop off the roof and run into the forest, maybe take his chances on Rufus’s property, now that the dumbass dog was wandering around in a doggy cast, hitting Joe up for food.

Then Casey looked down and saw Joe’s bad-tempered expression and realized that in the middle of all that pissed off was a whole lot of concern.

“Yeah, Joe. Sorry ’bout that!”

“Jesus, kid. Don’t scare me like that.”

And Casey did his best not to. He did sometimes: banged his thumb with the hammer, accidentally bumped Joe’s sore shoulder, yelled at the dog when the dog started whining for food. Mostly Joe was patient and mild, but that temper? Casey started to cherish it.

Joe went back to work after the five days, like he’d promised. Casey spent the first day knocking around the property, exploring the nooks and crannies. It was mostly forest land, lots of places to walk, although there were some areas that would have made good places for outbuildings, if Joe ever wanted to build one. When Joe got back, though, he made it clear that he expected Casey to spend his time better.

“What’s this?” Casey looked curiously at the bakery box on the table.

“A birthday cake. We can have some after dinner.”

Casey blinked at him, absurdly moved. “It’s almost Thanksgiving.”

“Well, like I said. You’re not officially sixteen ’til you have a party.”

“That’s awesome. Thanks, Joe.”

“I got you boring grown-up presents. Don’t thank me yet.”

Casey brightened, some of the hotness behind his eyes easing. “What’d you get me?”

“Clothes you won’t look at with disdain, for one.”

Casey
really
brightened. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Sorry about the clothes—I threw some money at you, told you to stock up. You did real good, but I’m thinkin’ you’d like something shinier.”

Casey couldn’t contain his grin. Even if the clothes turned out to be not his thing, it was nice to be thought of. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, but you’ll get it after dinner. It’s grown-up shit. Don’t get excited.”

But “grown-up shit” turned out to be the most exciting thing of all. “Grown-up shit” turned out to be an enrollment packet from the local continuation school, plus some books to read, some packets from the English class for him to fill out, and an algebra two workbook. Casey looked at the stuff with dawning comprehension and pushed his hair back from his face. (It was long and in his eyes now—it had been short and spiky in the front when he’d left home.)

“Hey…,” he said, grinning up at Joe, the little birthday cake with the blown-out candles completely forgotten. “Does this mean I’m here to stay?”

Joe grimaced. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, kid. We still have to fill that shit out, and you still have to get your transcripts. If we run into a social worker, this whole thing could be moot.” He crossed his arms in front of him as he said this and stretched moodily at the muscles in his sore arm. Casey noticed he did that a lot, like he was struggling against limitations.

Casey turned anxious eyes toward him. “You want me to stay, right? I’ve been a good kid this week, right?”

Joe frowned at him. “You’re a great kid. Never doubt it. Whether or not you stay here, that has nothing to do with what kind of kid you are. I’m a single man, Casey—not exactly father material.”

“Ew. You are
not
my father. That’s
not
why I want to stay.”

Joe’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not your boyfriend,” he warned, and Casey nodded like he believed it.

“So, acid-wash jeans? And the jacket over them? Joe… that’s amazing. Thank you!” He turned a shining smile to Joe, who gave a cautious one back, and Casey could have cursed himself, because it looked like Joe wasn’t fooled for a minute.

T
HE
work party was fun. Joe worked with fun people—orderlies, other nurses, supply people, clerks. At first Casey expected a lot of male doctors and female nurses, with people necking in every corner, but he quickly learned that was just in the television shows. Bitching about doctors was everybody’s favorite hobby, and Casey learned to hate them too, just by proxy.

Joe introduced Casey as simply a friend who was staying, and no one seemed to think that was odd in the least, and everyone seemed comfortable with Casey being part of the “leadership team” when it came to building the carport. Casey, for his part, had become vested in the project. He’d spent a week on it already!

People started arriving at eight in the morning. By sunset, it was done: a sturdy three-sided building with a roof that sloped from the roof of the house, and enough space to fit three cars—more than enough to fit the motorcycle and the truck. The fifteen or so people—they were all between twenty-five and forty—who had come to help had gone inside to get warm and were eating Joe’s pizza, drinking his beer, and, if Casey wasn’t mistaken, toking a little weed. He’d seen Joe’s stash box in the drawer under his pajama bottoms that first day when he’d been looking for sweatshirts. It had been a little dusty, but it didn’t surprise Casey that some of Joe’s friends were the type to get high. His own parents had a nice little collection of rolled-up dollar bills with white powder on one end, brought out once a month. That was just what people did.

Joe was sweeping up the last of the stuff on the concrete foundation and putting it in the big dustbin. (Casey had been appalled to find out that there was no trash pickup out here—Joe had to cart it all to a dump site in Roseville once a month, which explained why he was really big on reusing everything, from cardboard boxes to the little tie things on the ends of bread loaves.) He looked up and saw Casey admiring their handiwork, and grinned.

“Not a bad way to spend a Saturday, is it?”

Casey smiled at him, liking the way his eyes crinkled and the way the sun caught the red highlights in his otherwise dark-brown hair. It was pulled back in a ponytail today and trimmed evenly on the ends, and Casey had started to fantasize about what it would feel like if he touched it.

“It was great,” he said after a pause that went on too long, and he could have kicked himself when Joe’s smile turned to a grimace and his eyes went sad.

“Go inside, kid. Have some pizza. But do me a favor and just pass the joint if someone hands it to you, okay?”

“I get high!” Didn’t everybody?
Just say no?
Seriously?

“Yeah, but not anymore. If I’m going to keep you, I gotta give it up. I gotta give it up, you gotta give it up, okay?”

Casey blinked. Were adults ever that honest? Well, he hadn’t really been that excited about inhaling the nasty stuff anyway. It had made Dillon smile at him pretty, and that had been fun, but otherwise? Their aborted make-out session had been
way
better.

“Yeah. Fine. Whatever”—and he had to laugh when Joe wrinkled his nose.

“God, cursing used to be honest, you know? When did ‘whatever’ come to mean ‘fuck you’?”

“You know, for a guy with a ponytail and a soul patch, you sound an awful lot like my grandmother.”

“You know, for a kid who weighs ninety-eight pounds soaking wet, you sure got a mouth on you.”

“Yeah, wanna know what I can do with it?”

Joe grimaced again. “Kid? You know what? I’m going in there, and I’m going to eat pizza and congratulate all my friends on a job well done. I’m going to have a beer, and I’m going to hope that maybe Sharon Rosenthal, the pretty girl with the long, blonde hair—”

“The one with the sweater that could fit me?”

“You should be so well-endowed. Yeah, her. I’m going to go make out with her. She might even spend the night. If that happens, you’re going to sleep in my guest bedroom, do your English packet in the morning, and make plans to become a truly outstanding human being—in two or so years, okay?”

Casey shook his head, at a loss. “You know, I don’t think I’ve met another human being so opposed to a blowjob before.”

Joe rolled his eyes. “That’s because you haven’t offered one to the male half of the people in that room. And you’re not going to. You go to school, find the other sixteen-year-old boys, and score all the tail you can manage. But you hit on me too hard and I’m going to knock you into the nearest foster home, you hear me? I don’t do that. And as far as I remember, you must have said sixty thousand times that you didn’t want to do that either!”

With that unexpected flare of temper, Joe slammed down the broom and went stalking into the house, and Casey watched him through the living room window as he slid his arm around Sharon Rosenthal’s slender waist and took a piece of pizza from her. He was looking at her like she held the answer to his prayers, and she leaned her head on his shoulder like he was everything she’d ever wanted.

Casey nursed a sudden ache in his heart.

“That’s because I didn’t know you yet,” he said quietly, even though Joe was in his living room and well on the way to getting laid. “I was stupid. If I’d known you, I would have
made
you love me first.”

But Joe didn’t hear him, and eventually Casey had to go inside. He stayed in the living room for a while and talked to the people he’d worked with all day. They were decent people—hardworking, hard-drinking people, but not all obsessed with their tax portfolios like his parents’ friends. They told raunchy jokes and talked about cars and going to motorcycle races and rock concerts, and Casey liked them. But Joe’s arm never left Sharon’s waist, and she didn’t waste any opportunities to kiss his cheek or lean on his shoulder. She’d been kind to Casey as they were working, asking his opinion on what to do with things and generally acknowledging that Casey had been there on the project when she had not, and Casey had started out liking her very much.

She looked up at him from Joe’s shoulder, smiling, and then looked surprised at something, and that was when he realized that he was glaring at a perfectly nice woman who hadn’t done anything to Casey but… but….

But horn in on a man he wasn’t old enough for.

That was when Casey cut out to his own room. The party was winding down anyway, dwindling to a few people who liked to play card games around the table, and normally, Casey would have been all over that (he’d loved doing it at his mom’s parents’ house, when they’d still been alive), but not tonight. Tonight, he was going to his room and reading
The Great Gatsby
and answering all sorts of questions about it so he could get a start on getting credits in eleventh grade English. Tonight, he was going to pretend this whole thing didn’t rip his heart out, because in his head, he knew Joe was right and that he couldn’t possibly trust the guy if Joe took him up on his crush. Tonight, he was going to remember what it was like to be a kid and sit at the kids’ table, oh yes he was. He could do it. He’d survived two months on the streets, dammit, and this wasn’t any different.

He fell asleep on his bed, thinking that Tom Buchanan was a royal douche bag and Daisy Buchanan wasn’t much better, and woke up to a quiet house. Two people were passing his bedroom door from Joe’s room.

“You sure you’ve got to go?” Joe was asking plaintively, and the low, sexy laugh on the other side of Casey’s door was obviously Sharon.

“It was wonderful, sweetheart.” Her murmur was a lot like Daisy Buchanan’s, and Casey was too tired to kick himself for being an ass. “I want to do it again soon. But I don’t think Casey will be too happy if I’m here in the morning.”

“Casey?”

“Yeah—he just got you in his life, baby. Now’s not the time to spring someone else on him. Give it some time. If we last at all, we can do sleepovers then, okay?”

There was a quiet, muffled sound, and Casey wanted to kick something. Damn her.
Damn
her, for being kind and reasonable. Because Joe wouldn’t
be
with someone else, would he? Damn, damn, damn, damn…. Finally, the kiss broke off, and Sharon’s next words were breathless.

“I gotta go, okay? I need to catch some sleep before my next shift.” And with that, Joe walked her to the door. Casey heard him go back to his own room, and lay there in the dark, tormenting himself with horrible images of the two of them together. Had she gone down on him? Did she get to see him naked? Did she get to touch his skin? God…. Casey had done enough with girls—and just enough with Dillon—to have had a taste of that. He’d had enough done to
him
to know where that taste had been leading, if he’d been allowed to taste. Well, he
wanted
to taste, and now he wanted to taste Joe. He
needed
to taste Joe. It was
imperative
.

And that was what drove him out of his bed that night. Joe never locked his side of the bathroom door—why should he? Casey’s worry in the last two weeks had all been about Joe coming over to see
him
. But now that Casey knew what he wanted, he figured all he had to do was reach for it. That was what people had done to him, wasn’t it?
C’mere, boy, let me have you. C’mere, boy, suck my cock. C’mere, bend over. I want your ass.
Wasn’t that the way it worked? Well, now maybe Casey could have him some of that.

Joe’s room was almost as spartan as Casey’s. It had a dresser with a mirror on it, and a small bookshelf, and a couple of framed prints by some guy named Steve Hanks that Casey thought were damned sentimental, but other than that, its main feature was the king-size bed in the center, with the big man sprawled out toward the middle. Joe didn’t move when Casey padded into his room. He just lay there on his side, his head pillowed on his arms and his hair spread out around his shoulders like some sort of bloodsucking wild animal. (Casey loved Joe’s hair, he was just always surprised by the sheer volume.) Casey, being a dumbass, didn’t even bother to strip off his pants. He just slid under the sheets on his side of the bed, ignoring the smell of sex and the damp spots.