Making Promises (43 page)

“And he’s family now?” There was a wealth of skepticism in her voice, and Shane didn’t blame her.

“I’m sort of hoping to get him hooked on us,” he told her. “We’ll be sort of the opposite of drugs—you know, a family high.” Benny scowled some more and concentrated fiercely on her doctoring. “Why do you do this, anyway?” she asked irritably. “I mean, the damned cats take a chunk of you every time.”

“Well, yeah—but I’ll live. If I didn’t suck it up and take care of them, the odds are good they won’t.”

“But you never get mad. You do this once a month, and you never get mad. How can you never get mad?” Benny looked up at him, her eyes swimming, and they weren’t just talking about Maura Tierney and the six-inch slice down his wrist.

Shane bent down—way down, because Benny’s dad hadn’t been as tall as Crick’s, and she was pretty damned short—and kissed her forehead.

“They don’t mean it,” he said quietly. “I can get mad all I want, but they don’t mean it. They love me. Sometimes, some creatures, when they get cornered, they forget who loves them and think everybody’s the enemy.

You don’t just leave them alone, cold and afraid, because their instinct takes over and it’s wrong. You don’t if you give a shit, you know?” Benny wrapped her arms around his middle in a stealth and attack hug—she was good at them—and he put an arm around her, grateful for it.

“So, you and Andrew will visit tonight, right?” She laughed a little against his shirt. “We’ve got a schedule worked out—you said every night for about two weeks, right?” Making Promises

“Sundays off, of course.” Shane nodded, satisfied with the plan.

“And you’ve got the little… you know, whatnots?” Benny pulled back and shook her head. “Now that’s the part I don’t understand. Why do you want us to do that?”

Shane looked away and sighed. “I can’t really tell you, sweetheart.

It’s sort of a secret I’m not supposed to know.” Benny stepped back and started packing up the first aid kit. He took it from her, and she rinsed out her water glass and put it in the rack to dry.

“Well, I’ve got shit to do if we’re going to be there in time to give him a ride. Do you really think he’ll go back to work so soon?” Shane gave a grim nod. “Honey, he doesn’t have any other place to go.”

The consequences that I’ve rendered. I’ve gone and fucked things up again.

“It’s Been A While”—Staind

THE children were a relief and a blessing. Anna was concerned that he returned so early to the job, but once she saw him, smiling gravely at the children as he always did, she let him be. She had been at the funeral—in fact, she’d been the one Russian soul at the service who had approved—

but she wanted to know about the people who had joined the service late.

“They looked like wonderful people. Hell—they were the only ones there that I could maybe stand. Pfaw—not a sense of humor in the rest of them. You would have thought somebody had died.” That managed to get a small smile from Mikhail, but only a small one. “They are wonderful people. But I don’t think they’ll be seeing me again. Ever.” This was right before his last class of the day, and he’d managed not to discuss “the big strapping man with the stereo” or his

“American friends,” and he was hoping he could put her off with that and that alone.

And then Benny had walked in with Parry Angel in tow, and Anna had welcomed them with open arms, and his plan had gone to shit. It seemed that Parry’s dance instructor in Levee Oaks was one of Anna’s employees—a thing Mikhail had not known.

“Yes, Bayul—I have my finger in many pies—why so surprised?” Anna smiled so smugly, Mikhail had to wonder if Benny had called her in advance. “And you said you wouldn’t see these people again!” Making Promises

Benny had smiled sweetly at Mikhail, and Parry waved delightedly.

“We were just hoping Parry could come and have class here this week with her favorite dancer. She adores Mikhail. Is that all right, Anna?” Anna caught the undertow of tension, but she grinned toothily at Mikhail and refused to be sucked in.

“That is wonderful, little one. Mikhail will be happy to teach her—

yes, I know
mal’chik
—this is not the same age group as you have here. I have seen her dance—she will listen and do her best. That is all you ever ask of them, so worry not.”

And with that, Anna took off, and Mikhail was left there, teaching his class with Parry Angel on his hip, giving instructions with him and begging to be let down to whirl with the big girls.

She was charming, and for a moment Mikhail let himself forget what she meant to him and taught class. When it was over, Benny and Andrew lingered—since Andrew had driven, he had come in to watch—and offered Mikhail a ride home.

Mikhail had tried to refuse, but Benny thrust Parry into his arms again, and Parry had leaned her head on his chest and snuggled, and that had been the end. They used the same tactic to walk him up to his apartment, and when he got there, Benny asked to use the bathroom, so he had to let them in.

Benny made him dinner from something in the freezer, sat Parry down in front of cartoons, and Andrew asked him if he needed help taking apart the bed and furniture in Ylena’s room so it would be easier to put in storage. Before he knew it, they had spent two hours there, and he had not yet brought himself to say, “I broke up with Shane. You have no business in my home or in my life.”

He couldn’t. Mikhail would carry the burden of his hideous behavior toward Shane for the rest of his days—he absolutely couldn’t make that worse by being a pissy, whiny, horrible bitch to the people Shane loved too.

This would be the end, he told himself, swallowing a lump in his throat. This would be his final goodbye to the man he loved and was too worthless to hold on to. It would be a fitting goodbye—it would show him all of the things that he could have had but did not deserve.

Watching them go was almost (but never could ever be quite) as bad as when Shane had left the day before. When they were gone, he wandered the empty, echoing apartment disconsolately until he found the little barrette, complete with a blue flower and ribbon on it, left over from Parry Angel’s hair. With a hard swallow he palmed the barrette carefully and put it in his big cedar box, then lay down in his bed and listened to his iPod playing Shane’s songs over and over again until he fell asleep.

He woke up the next morning with gritty eyes and an achy head and refused to admit where he would get such discomforts. He also awoke with the conviction that he would never see Shane or his family ever again.

Mikhail did not count on Jeff being there after work to take him to a Kings’ game.

He said no at first, but Jeff rolled his eyes and accused him of being a “fairy princess” and then shoved the ticket in his jacket pocket. He said that Mikhail could either jump in the car and go see the world’s worst basketball team lose to the Phoenix Suns, or he could watch that ticket become a useless piece of paper in about an hour, and Mikhail felt as though he had no choice.

He’d never been to a basketball game. Really, what could it hurt?

Later, he would admit that it hurt in a thousand small ways. Jeff told him that Shane had gotten scratched by a cat and that he started work the next day. He said that Shane looked tired and unhappy, and that he wasn’t eating or sleeping much. He also said that Mikhail was a dumbass and that he could fix everything if he would just pull his head out of his dumb ass and admit that he gave a shit about the big doofus, and would he please just give him a call?

He said this right before he dropped Mikhail off at his apartment.

Mikhail nodded mutely in the face of Jeff’s sarcasm, and then took the ticket stub into his room and put it in his cedar box, bemused and wondering exactly who was going to show up the next night.

As it turned out, it was Jon, who commandeered his television to watch another basketball game. The Kings lost again. Jon left some soda in the fridge and urged Mikhail to eat the rest of the chips and pretzels. He also left a game schedule for the next couple months that ended up in Mikhail’s treasure box as well.

The next night, it was Crick, wanting to know if Mikhail would go shopping with him to find a frame for a picture he had drawn and was going to present to Deacon in a couple of months. He showed Mikhail his sketchbook, including one of Shane that he left on the coffee table before he left. Mikhail had debated folding it up and putting it in his box or pinning it to his wall. He’d finally decided on his box, because he didn’t deserve even that much of Shane, and seeing it on his wall would only remind him of what he’d lost.

Deacon showed up the next day with the pickup truck to take Ylena’s furniture into storage for him, since Crick said it wasn’t gone yet, and it finally,
finally
dawned on Mikhail that Shane was trying to tell him that he very possibly hadn’t lost anything at all.

“Will I see somebody tomorrow night?” he’d asked after they’d dropped the furniture off at a little storage unit near Levee Oaks, and he was terribly confused when Deacon shook his head negatively.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday, Mikhail. Family dinner night—you’re welcome to come if you like.” Deacon slanted a look at him, and Mikhail flushed horribly.

“That would not be a good idea,” he murmured, sure that Deacon would get the hint.

“Why, because you’d take one look at him and forget that you’re trying to be an island unto yourself?” Deacon asked with a small smile, and Mikhail’s blush got even worse.

“I said such horrible things to him, Deacon,” he confessed in a small voice. Wasn’t that who you were supposed to confess your sins to? The family patriarch? Wasn’t this where he was smote down for being a dumb fucker who could not hold on to someone and drove him away deliberately instead?

“You were in pain,” Deacon told him softly. He turned the truck into a drive-thru and asked Mikhail if he wanted anything. Mikhail took a soda, and Deacon ordered him a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and then got himself a chicken sandwich, no mayo. And two Happy Meal toys for Parry.

“Why do I get the big sandwich and you get the chicken with no mayonnaise?” Mikhail asked, bemused.

Deacon shrugged. “Because my daddy died of a heart attack before he was fifty, and Crick has requested that I not do the same if I can at all help it. I eat steak when I can, but I only eat cheese in my salads now, and mayo is a big-bad.”

Mikhail went very still. “How old were you?”

Deacon looked at him. “Twenty-two.”

“And your mother?”

“She died when I was five.”

Mikhail swallowed. “How is it you can stand this? How do you live with all of it?”

Deacon dealt with the girl behind the drive-thru window, who gave him goo-goo eyes which he ignored, then handed Mikhail his burger and soda, taking his own for himself. Mikhail thought he’d forgotten about the question until they got on the road again toward his apartment.

“I had Crick for a couple of years, and then he pushed me away like a dumbshit, and I thought I had no one, and I didn’t. I didn’t handle it. I spent three months trying to drink myself to death.” Mikhail sucked in a breath. This man? This man had been that fragile? That weak?

“What made you stop?”

Deacon took a bite of his sandwich and steered the enormous vehicle down Elkhorn with one hand. “Two things,” he said after he’d swallowed.

“The first was that Crick wasn’t dead, he was in Iraq, and he begged me to take care of myself, and I just had to. The second was that Benny was here, and she was in trouble, and she needed me not drunk and not a basket case, and you just don’t shut that down, you know?” His family had needed him. “I see,” said Mikhail, taking a bite of his own sandwich. It tasted surprisingly good—he had not been eating well lately. They came to a light, and Deacon looked at him sideways as they sat there.

“Crick and I spent a long time trying to apologize. Him for leaving me, me for being weak. You eventually forgive shit like that, if it’s worth it. If you’re family.”

Mikhail made a noise—an involuntary one. It was sort of like a whimper, actually, and he was glad the sound of the engine and the radio covered it up a little.

They didn’t say much after that. Deacon seemed to be comfortable in the silence, and Mikhail would look at him as they drove, his lush mouth compressed in a little smile. He really was beautiful—small nose, high cheekbones, pretty green eyes, and that appealing mouth. But he was also, Mikhail was starting to see, very shy. His cheeks had waxed red, even in the darkness, when he’d been talking about himself, about his past, about the things he’d done wrong. He’d opened himself up to Mikhail, a stranger, and it had hurt, but he’d done it because he thought it was important. Because (and here was the “a-ha!” moment he had been putting off all week) his family had asked him to.