Page 95 of Catcher's Lock
He pops a whole pancake in his mouth, arching a skeptical brow.
“Your mom gets home tomorrow,” I blurt. “I wasn’t sure…I thought you might—”
“Need a babysitter?”
“Want some company.”
“I always wantyourcompany. So you’re playing hooky for me today?”
“Something like that. I should really be setting up the sound booth. I told Hals it’d be done by the time he got back, and I haven’t even started, but maybe you could help me later, and then it won’t take as long.”
“If you haven’t started, that means all the gear is in the box truck and the cables are still wrapped?”
“Exactly. And Cheyenne was in charge of tearing it all down after the Christmas party because I was in Bakersfield with my mom, which means they’re tangled as shit. Hals never makes her do it right.”
“Poor Josha. You know you don’t have to do everything yourself, right?” Shoveling another pancake in his mouth, he fishes his phone off the nightstand and starts typing.
“Only if I want it done right,” I mutter. “Who are you texting?”Surely not Hals or Cheyenne.
“Ellis. He and your hula hoop chick can haul everything into the tent and unfuck the cables. Then we can go run them laterand hook everything up.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about you and Ellis being on texting terms after he took you to buy a butt plug, but it’s hot watching you be all bossy.” I lean in to steal a huckleberry-flavored kiss. “Who’s the prodigal son now?”
The blush that spills over his cheeks takes my breath away.
“There,” he says, tossing the phone onto the bed. “I’ve bought us a few hours. What should we do with them?” He pops his barbell at me with a smirk that’s pure sin. Ignoring the heat that flushes up my neck, I snag a piece of bacon from the plate.
“I took a look at your bike and started that list. There are a couple of things we can grab at O’Reilly’s, so I thought we could run into town. Maybe hit up Mendo Market for a late lunch.”
His face brightens at the mention of his bike, and his knee bounces, forcing me to grab the sheet tray so it doesn’t slide off his lap.
“God, I can’t wait till she’s roadworthy again. I’m gonna take you down the coast with your boner digging into my ass the whole way and then pull over and get you off a hundred feet above the ocean.”
Umm…yes, please?
Until now, the Bonneville has occupied the part of my brain that catalogs problems to fix, connected to Gem only by the vague sense of gratitude that he survived its hazards. With those words, a new, verydistractingassociation bursts into being—Gem in those tight black jeans, straddling the leather seat, with power thrumming between his muscled thighs, inked fingers wrapped around the throttle. I canfeelhis abs under my hands and the vibration of his ass snugged against my crotch.
Will it always be like this—him able to strike me dumb with the slightest innuendo, ready to abandon all sense to follow thisraging desire? I’m suddenly grateful wedidn’thook up in high school. I never would have graduated. At this point, only years of practiced self-denial are keeping me operating as a functional adult in his presence.
What the fuck was I about to say?
Oh, right—I was about to ruin the mood.
“So…I have an idea. It’s not nearly as fun as yours, but there’s an AA meeting at the Mendo Comm Center today at noon and an Al-Anon meeting at the same time that I was thinking of trying. Maybe it would help? With tomorrow, I mean. If you could say you’d been.”
I’m fucking this up. He’s silent for way too long, picking at the bacon while I try not to beg. I need him to want this for himself, and not only so he can face Shilo having taken this step.
I need his promises to be more than words.
“You’d do that for me?” he finally asks, and the tremulous skepticism in his voice unravels all my budding uncertainty.
“I’d do it forus.”
The meeting isn’t what I’m expecting.
The room in the community center is familiar from when I used to pick Jeremy up at the after-school program here, and too large for the small circle of chairs set up by the floor-to-ceiling windows. There are only seven of us, including one girl of about sixteen, whose fierce posture and exhausted eyes trigger a wave of sore sympathy. The others are all middle-aged or older, and everyone is friendly and welcoming without prying.
I knew the experience would be personal, but I thought there’d be a lot more talking about the addicts in our lives. Thatmaybe the wiser among us would offer helpful advice. Instead, it’s a mundane sharing of daily struggles and small triumphs. Only two of their stories reveal the relationship that brought the speaker to the meeting—one woman’s son is about to come home from treatment, and another woman talks about a phone call with a cousin in recovery. The rest are self-reflective musings or anecdotes, like the man who’s having trouble with a coworker and whether or not the teen girl’s parents will let her foster a shelter dog.
