Page 6 of Torch Songs

“You don’t need more yarn, do you?” he quipped, trying to make his parting easier.

She gave him a droll look, the kind that used to make him smile when they were kids. “Always,” she said, picking up the project in her lap. “This won’t last me a month.”

He chuckled, although she was probably right. She’d made a blanket for every one of her housemates—different styles, different colors. He’d even bought her stitch bibles.

“You say that, but I don’t have that new one yet,” he joked. His had been the first one she’d made as she was learning.

Her eyes changed. “You don’t need another one, Tadpole,” she said soberly. “Blankets are for comfort. You’re very self-sufficient.”

He swallowed, not sure which way to go with this. Should he go with the patented big brother “Of course I’m self-sufficient—I’ve got this!” schtick, or should he go with honesty?

“You can’t crochet me a boyfriend, anyway,” he said, winking. There. The joke, the wink… and the truth. God, he was lonely. His last boyfriend had been a closeted fireman. Jesse, the fucking two-timing jerk.

“I could,” April said in mock earnestness. “But I don’t think it would do the same things for you that a real one would.”

He chuckled, so grateful for the joke he could have cried. She’d been in the halfway house for six months—had been in rehab for the six months before that—and so much of that time she’d been pale and withdrawn and afraid. Their mother had died two years ago, and April had gone from the occasional party use to a full-blown addict in less than six months. Tad felt like he’d been missing his little sister as long as he’d been missing their mom.

“Hell, I don’t even know what I’d do with a real one,” he said. “Except for, you know. The regular things.”

She laughed gently, but her eyes went sad. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You… you spend a lot of time with me. I know that can’t be easy on your life.”

He swallowed. “Just… just keep feeling better, April. Don’t worry about me. I mean, I’m a cop. I’m supposed to have a crappy love life. I think it’s in the bylaws.”

She flashed a little tiny smile, but her expression was still sober. “I can’t make that any easier either.”

“I’m lucky,” he said, meaning it. “My partner—”

“Chris,” she said, because he talked about work to her all the time. She seemed to like his stories: the bust he and Chris had made the day before, getting the DA to issue a warrant to search on Friday morning so they could bring the suspect in for questioning before lunch had been a roller-coaster ride from first to last. Getting the confession before quitting time had felt like winning the lottery, and he and Chris had joked about which one of them needed to sacrifice a virgin on the roof of the department building in order to get another bust like that.

“Yeah, he’s a good family man. He works hard for us to have a really productive workweek, so if we do catch a case over the weekend, it’s important.” Of course, that didn’t always work, but Chris was good enough at letting Tad have enough weekendsoff to come visit April that the weekends he missed weren’t overwhelming for her.

“Tell him I’m grateful,” she murmured. Her smile flashed for another moment. “I might even make him a blanket.”

Tad laughed a little, but before he could needle her again abouthisblanket, she added, “But I still take up your free time, Tad. I know it. Just… you know. You… I’m not supposed to be getting better at your expense. You know that, right?”

“It’s not my expense,” he said.

“It is,” she argued, her eyebrows drawing in, her thin-lipped mouth pulling together mutinously. In the last two years, her face had sharpened, become pointed and hard, and what had seemed like a playful pout when she’d been in high school or college appeared dangerous and real now. “I’m serious, Tad. You… you would make me happy if you called one weekend and said, ‘Can’t come today, honey—gotta get laid.’”

Tad laughed shortly. “Sorry to break this to you, ‘honey,’ but even when I have relationships, they don’t work like that.” No, Jesse notwithstanding, Tad usually had relationships with overearnest closet cases, or guys who were looking for the poster boy for Young Professional Gay. “Yes, we’ve had the requisite three-point-two dates, the point two being coffee and/or flirtation over something innocuous, so we may now proceed to sex with the understanding that if the sex was satisfactory, we will move in within three-to-six months because neither of us can do better.”

“That yuppie lawyer really scarred you for life, didn’t he?” she asked, and he tried not to be surprised that she remembered Sam. That had been about a year before their mother had passed suddenly from a stroke, and she’d been in college then. Most college students were pretty self-centered, and April had been struggling with her own mental health as well. Tad and Momhad been clueless—until Mom had died and suddenly April’s emotions were uncontrollable, and Tad was at a loss.

“Ugh,” he said, with feeling. “I gotta tell you, all I felt when he left was relief!”

She eyed him curiously. “What made him leave?”

Oh, this was awkward. He was never sure what would wreck her, and he’d been eyeing the clock, thinking he had to leave soon.

“Was it me or Mom?” she asked astutely. Well, she wasn’t stupid—just oversensitive to absolutely all emotional nuance and balanced on a razor’s edge of recovery strategy and antipsychotics.

“Little bit of both,” he said, shaking his head. “I was wrecked—you and me both, actually. He saw us crying on each other at the funeral, and it probably ended right then, but he didn’t tell me until….”

Until Tad had gotten back from helping April get in rehab. He didn’t tell her that; the sequence of events wasn’t important, but the wording of Sam’s goodbye letterwas, and he gave the abbreviated version now. “Sorry, Tad, but you seem too emotionally codependent on your family, and I need an adult.” He blew out a breath, and April said what he’d been thinking.

“He needed anautomaton,” she snapped. “Good God, what a jerk! What happened to the last guy you were dating? The fireman?”

He shook his head and told her the Jesse story as he’d heard it. “And the worst part?” he said.

---