Page 42 of Medium
I couldn’t make out the words on the other end of the call, but I could hear the shouting. Damn. His boss might be more of an asshole than mine. I walked over to Ellis, with Manny trailing behind me. “Where’s Pia?” I whispered.
He pointed toward the guest room. “Taking a bath. Ms. Jackson is guarding the door for her.”
I glanced at Manny. “Do we need to stop and get her some new clothes?”
He shrugged. “She says no. Shane found her a couple more of his granny’s outfits, and she seemed to get a kick out of them.”
“Smart girl,” observed Dimi from near my left elbow. I stifled the impulse to jump and curse. “Unlike my grandson,” she sniffed. “He should’ve quit that job years ago. Do you know he barely makes more than people who work in fast food?”
What? I’d thought Shane was a landscape architect. I shot him a worried look. The amount of grief his manager was giving him was more than he should’ve had to deal with, especially for that little money.
Dimi crossed her arms and pursed her lips as she regarded her grandson. I wanted to go over and... help him somehow. Provide comfort, maybe? I looked at Ellis. Why wasn’t he sitting on the couch next to his partner?
Shane clenched his fist. “I don’t know what to tell you, Ricky. If you have to fire me, you have to fire me. I gotta go.”
He hung up and tossed his phone onto the coffee table. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
Ellis took a hesitant step forward, his arms going up and out, but he stopped as if unsure of his welcome.
Pia and Ms. Jackson came into the living room. Pia had left her hair in the sparkly braid crown Manny had fixed for her earlier, but she’d changed into calf-length pants my own grandmother used to call “pedal pushers”. They were lime green and she’d topped them with a bright orange t-shirt that had a sequined cat on the front. On her feet were white sneakers, and she was holding a gold metallic tote bagdotted with fake jewels and with “Las Vegas” stenciled across it.
Manny said, “Pia, that is one fab outfit. Did you pick it out yourself?”
She grinned and nodded, petting Ms. Jackson, who still sported the tiara.
Shane put on a fake smile and said, “I guess we’re ready to get on the road.”
The potted plants on the front porch came with us. We set Pia up in the third row of seats with Ms. Jackson next to her in their stuffed tiger form and the potted plants on the floorboards by her feet. Ellis produced an iPad and offered it to Pia with the comment, “Just don’t open the Kindle app, please.”
Pia had wrinkled her nose and fervently agreed.
We’d loaded everyone’s overnight bags in the back, and then I’d gotten in the driver’s seat. But Ellis and Shane had performed an awkward shuffle next to the car, neither willing to commit to where they wanted to sit. After watching this for almost a full minute, Manny had thrown up his hands and pushed Shane at the front passenger seat and Ellis at the second row of seats. Manny got in next to Ellis and informed me we were ready to go.
Manny, Pia, and I were the only ones who spoke the first hour of the trip. Eventually Ellis started participating, telling me and Manny all about Elves and magic carriers, but Shane stared out the window and didn’t look at the rest of us. He also didn’t look at his phone, which kept beeping every so often with text messages.
Pflugerville, where we were meeting Greg and Cal, was near Austin, about two and a half hours from Houston. We stopped for lunch in Brenham, which was roughly halfway. Manny tried to get Pia to join him in checking out the Blue Bell Ice Cream factory, but Ms. Jackson was the only one interested, and none of us wanted to deal withthat,so Manny didn’t go on his excursion. Shane perked up a little after he ate, and he even engaged Ellis in a little conversation.
Seeing them interact with each other, even such a small amount, made me warm inside. I didn’t want to be the cause of tension between the two of them. And, to be completely honest, if Shane had seemed open to having me join them, I’d have done it in a heartbeat, even if it was only for a night.
Because Iwasattracted to them. To both of them. I hadn’t spent any time with either man one-on-one, but just being near Ellis made me smile. He was so calm and positive, never demanding anything for himself, but there to help everyone else. But who helped Ellis other than Shane? Who took care of him?
Shane, he was a tougher nut to crack. He was gorgeous, no doubt about it. And at first, when he’d been so focused on helping Pia, he’d come across as this take-charge guy—the kind who usually made my dick stand up. But when he was dealing with his boss, he seemed smaller, less confident. It made me want to hug him and tell him everything would be okay.
But that wasn’t in the cards today. Or any other day, apparently.
Ms. Jackson had had to stay in the car when the rest of us had gone into the restaurant. We’d gotten their lunch to go, and they scarfed down the grilled cheese sandwich and fries before we’d even left the parking lot. Then they decided they were tired of being a stuffed tiger and hadbecome a live tiger again, lying down across the seats with their head in Pia’s lap and watching her play a game on the iPad.
It was about 1:30pm when the signs told us we were almost to Pflugerville. Everyone had been quiet for the past several minutes, so I tapped Shane on the leg. “Where am I going from here?”
He jumped in his seat. “Uh, sorry. It’s a cemetery. Let me check.” He opened his phone and winced. Then he schooled his expression and scrolled. “Here we go. Forest Rest Memorial Park. I’ll pull up the directions.”
The guy had died in a cemetery? Ouch.
In a moment the navigation app announced we should take the next exit, and our destination was twelve minutes away.
Ellis called from the back seat, “I texted Greg and Cal to let them know we’re almost there.”
“Thanks.” There was something I’d wanted to ask Cal, or maybe tell him, but it was escaping me. Oh, well. I’d remember eventually.
