Out of the Blues (10 page)

Chapter Fourteen

In which Mason is just one of the guys.

Helping Kilby Adams be fitted for a suit damned near killed me. I knew that I could look at men’s fashion and think
nice
. Maybe I had subconsciously been looking at the men in the fashion.

I was confused.

But Kilby looked fabulous in the charcoal grey suit I picked for him. The dark purple shirt did something insane to his eyes. The deep turquoise silk tie did something insane to my knees.

He was a big man in a suit. The sleeves and legs would have to be hemmed and that was it. That was all it needed. He looked at the price tag and winced. I made sure he didn’t see it again. I made sure that the salesman said it was free. He didn’t need to know that I’d paid for everything. Hunter had been pissed enough when he found out he wasn’t getting the money back for the tux he’d bought for Kilby. I just wanted it all chilled. Besides it wasn’t the tailor’s fault they’d bought a no refund suit.

The brothers both looked as if they’d been put through hell from a couple of hours in a clothing store so I asked if they’d like to get lunch. Hunter tried to decline, but remembered that he’d given his keys to his future father-in-law.

“Anywhere but fish,” Kilby said as he pulled the back door open and climbed in on top of Cody’s guitar. “Oh hey, fuck.” He climbed back out and handed me the guitar and put it in the trunk.

“Sorry,” I said as he went back into the car and sprawled in the middle, with one foot in each floor board. My knees went wobbly again when he looked up at me before reaching for the door handle. I’d been busted staring. Maybe with a bit too much of a stunned stupid look on my face. “Yeah, sorry,” I said again; because my brain was all like yeah, what? Not a clue.

I settled uncomfortably in my rental car beside the man who would marry my sister in two days. He didn’t seem to know what to say to me and I sure as fuck didn’t know what to say to him. And what was even more uncomfortable, I could see Kilby in the rear view mirror.

I wasn’t nervous in the slightest as I drove around town.

“Burgers okay?” I asked when I pulled up outside a place I remembered from back in the day. It wasn’t a chain just a mom and pop that had been here for forever, and they were still open.

“Oh, god, I love this place,” Hunter said on a long mournful moan. “Don’t tell Harper.”

“Why the fuck not? She used to eat her weight here,” I said, seriously confused now.

“It’s that she’s on a healthy gourmet eating kick. We came here the first time we visited, and that was the last time she’s been back,” Hunter said, hanging his head when Kilby made the whipped sound from the backseat.

“I know. Shut-up. I hate salmon on toast.” Hunter almost smiled. I heard a deep chuckle from the backseat.

“At least it wasn’t burnt,” Kilby said.

“Only because she hired cooks,” I said because I knew that, like me, my sister was not going to be caught dead preparing food.

“Yeah, she can’t cook,” Hunter confirmed as we all climbed out of the car and went to stand at the take-out window.

This place was seriously old school. It used to be a drive-in back in the 60s. They’d stopped the car-hop service long before I came along. The building was the same. Sort of mid-century mod meets shack. The main covered parking lot from back in the drive-in days was now a covered outdoor dining area with concrete tables.

I ordered a double cheeseburger loaded, with fries and a milkshake. Hunter went for the same. Kilby opted out of the dairy products, ordering a soda instead. When we had our food we walked over to one of the seats that still had some sun and went back to being awkward.

I’d just swallowed a fry when Kilby looked up from his plate. “So, the guitar?”

I shrugged. Not like it was a secret, he’d know soon enough anyway.

“One of Cody’s. I went to get that and some of his music for Saturday.” I slurped my milkshake.

“I never saw a guitar at the old house,” Hunter said. He looked at me almost as if he was challenging me for some weird reason.

“Because I don’t have anything left at the house. I put all my shit in storage, the house is Harper’s now. But seriously, it looks like shit. She was supposed to keep it up.” Maybe I sounded defensive, or angry, maybe pointing at him with a fry was my way of giving him the back-off-the-personal-questions finger.

“Oh,” he said, looking chagrined. “She doesn’t talk much about Cody. She doesn’t talk much about her life before college if you get right down to it. It’s almost like she’s ashamed of something.” He sounded sad and I was an asshole.

“I don’t think she’s ashamed of anything, but…” I had to stop to think about how to say what I was thinking. I knew it would sound like poor little rich kids had it made, boo hoo. “We had a great life, you know. We met people. We had access to a world that most people only dream about. But…I don’t know, it wasn’t real. Money, famous parents, the whole bit. We were homeless for years, moving from hotel to hotel. Arden would get married and we’d have a house for a while. Or we…I don’t know, I can’t explain it. We were vagabonds, I guess. Gypsy children dragged around by our crazy mother and her whims. Cody was about the only normal we knew and he was the biggest rock star on the planet for most of the time he was our stepfather. That house has his memory all over it. It’s tough to go there.”

“I guess I can see that,” he said, looking up at Kilby. “I have a hard time going home, after Dad died. I just sometimes feel so homesick I hurt from it but the thought of going back and seeing where I found him. Remembering watching him die…” Hunter stopped and looked away, he took a long drink, his eyes were glassy in the bright sunlight.

Kilby looked down at his wrapper and crumbled it up. “Yeah,” was all he said, but I could tell he was remembering things that had him almost as misty eyed.

“I have to go to the john,” Hunter never did finish what he was saying. I wasn’t going to push it. I mean, I didn’t like having my life pried into, I sure as hell didn’t pry into other people’s lives if I could help it.

When he was gone Kilby looked at me and I had the strangest feeling that I was staring down the end of a loaded M-16. “What?” I asked because I knew it was coming.

“You were crying before you came to the tailors,” he said, and I felt the punch of awareness clean to my toes. No one ever saw me. How in the hell did he know?

I opened my mouth to deny it, because I was raised that boys don’t cry. I wilted under his gaze, my façade crumbling. “Maybe.”

“No, maybe about it, so what’s going on?” He looked over his shoulder at Hunter waiting by the men’s room door for his turn.

“Too many ghosts live in that storage unit,” I said shrugging as if it didn’t matter. “And maybe I read a few of the last songs Cody wrote. He knew he was dying. He poured it all out in his music. I think I’m pissed that I didn’t see it. That I was so wrapped up in my fucking life that I didn’t see that he was sick.”

Kilby sat quietly while the breeze picked up and rustled the burger wrappers on the table. We both reached for one that started to get away and ended up locking fingers for longer than we should have.

I pulled back, crumpling the wrapper and tucking it into the bag.

“My last boyfriend committed suicide,” he said so suddenly and softly that I thought it was a fragment of conversation from a neighboring table. We were alone on this end of the lot. He looked at me with haunted blue eyes. “I didn’t see it coming. I thought everything was fine. We couldn’t live openly. I don’t think he ever would have been able to live openly. So I guess I get it, I didn’t see what was right under my own nose, that Jon was depressed and ashamed of his homosexuality. I was twenty-eight, Mason, and I didn’t see it. Stop beating yourself up because you were a kid. Cody made a selfish choice. You didn’t do anything to feel guilty about. You loved him. He’s gone but he left you a legacy to be proud of and that’s what you should focus on this weekend. Not what you lost. Your sister needs that I think. She needs family, and from what I see you are it for her.”

I hadn’t heard him string that many words together in the whole twenty-four hours I’d known him. Pardon me for looking at him with my jaw hanging open. His hand was still on the table. I dropped my gaze because of the challenge in his eyes. I focused on his bared wrist, with the tattoo, and the watch with the black fabric band and white face. Old fashioned looking watch. The tattoo was just swirls of black with some color but I found myself tracing the watch band and maybe one of the swirls around his wrist bone when Hunter came back. He cleared his throat and I jumped, dragging my wandering hands into my lap.

“So what are we talking about that’s got you both jumpy?” Hunter picked up his melting milkshake and swirled the straw in it.

“Nothing,” I said almost guiltily.

“Harper,” Kilby said right after. “And the wedding and the music Mason is going to play.”

“Oh,” Hunter said, looking quizzically at me. Kilby had given me a lie to cling to like a life preserver.

“Yeah, and you’re not supposed to know, so stop being nosy,” I said, even though my heart wasn’t into the lie. I actually hadn’t thought that much about what I would play for her day. The one song Cody had written for us when we were about eight. But what else? And how much was I supposed to sing? One song? Two? Ten? “I should see what she wants, and then make the final decision so I can get some practice time in. Last night was the first time I’ve even touched a guitar in years.”

“Wouldn’t have guessed it,” Kilby said as he drained his drink and crumpled up his trash. “Sounded good to me. Much better than the headliner.”

“Ugh, they were terrible,” I said, happy for the change of subject. I was starting to like that about Kilby. He never let things stay maudlin for long. He was like some shaved headed sage with sad eyes. I looked at him closely and could see that he seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was older than Hunter, and they looked nothing alike. Hunter was untouched by what wore Kilby down and I wondered if it was because one brother had a military background, or if genetics played a part.

“Yeah, they were, poor kids stood over there mostly pissed that a bunch of old people showed them up,” Hunter said, winking at me so that I knew he was joking. “But seriously, you guys were really good. Harper never told me she was part of a band before. That was as a surprise to me.”

“We weren’t really a band,” I rushed to explain. “Not like those other guys. We never performed. Kenny and Tyler hung out at the house and Cody put us behind the instruments. He’d sing some. Harper would sing when she was there. It was like a garage jam session, hard to explain. Cody was teaching them how to play by making them play. They thought it was cool that they were helping Cody write what we all thought would be his next hit record.” I felt my lips tilt up with what threatened to be a smile. “We mostly just sat around smoking Cody’s weed and talking shit about it being us out there one day.”

The memory didn’t hurt like I thought it would. Those years that I blocked everything out because I couldn’t separate the good from the bad seemed like a distant past. A far distant past.

“Sounds like a pretty decent dream,” Hunter said, surprising me. Especially because I admitted to smoking pot when I was a kid. “I wanted to be in a boy band. Turns out I can’t dance, or sing.”

Kilby laughed, loud and hard. His eyes fairly gleamed, his face lit up, and I had to force myself to breathe in and out through my nose, because I was either going to become a mouth breather and drooler if he kept that up…or suffocate because…
fuck me!

“Oh, fuck me.” I did not say that out loud. I was too stunned to know who did say it, but that certainly wasn’t me. I might have thought it. My dick was definitely thinking it. But I was biting my tongue at the time so I knew it wasn’t me. “Is that the time?”

Hunter, it was Hunter. I think I wanted to melt into a puddle of relief. Kilby looked at his watch. “What’s wrong, Hunter, got a hot date?”

He was joking, but Hunter went three shades of white. “Yeah, I was supposed to meet Harper ten minutes ago at the jewelers to…well, I have to go.” He looked around and damned near flapped his hands in frustration because he’d forgotten he’d given his car to Doug.

“Calm down, lover boy, I’ll get you there,” I said as I gathered up my trash and headed for the car. “Just call her and tell her we got lost somewhere. Lie. Whatever. Went for beers and hookers.”

Hunter shoved my shoulder. Hard. I turned to look at him, I hoped I had murder in my eyes because that shove hurt. I must have looked comical because he was grinning at me. “You sound like Harper. She says shit like that all the time. I think the two of you share a brain.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” I shrugged, wondering how to respond. “We were supposed to be triplets. We ate the third one in the womb. I distinctly remember fighting over his brain, because you know there was only room for one specimen of masculinity such as myself in this family.”

“Really?” Hunter cocked his head and squinted his eyes at me. “I wasn’t aware there was any masculinity in your family. I mean, besides your dad.”

Kilby laughed again, his face lighting up like…like something gorgeous and sunny. That’s the only reason I didn’t kill him right then. I pretended I wasn’t stunned stupid and pointed my keys at my brother-in-law and said, “…well, yeah, and…I’m so gonna make you late and Harper will be pissed as hell and then where are you going to be? Huh, Mister Smartass?”