Promise Rock 03 - Living Promises (MM) (4 page)

“Yeah, well, I guess if you're twice the woman, you need twice the help,” she muttered, and he hugged her tighter before he let her go.
“I'll make your appointment for two weeks from now. I expect miracles, Margie—don't disappoint me!”
Margie grimaced. “You
are
a miracle, my darling boy. Let's just hope I don't have some bizarrely shaped, anti-band stomach or that my fat hasn't developed intelligence and a will to take over the world.”
Jeff laughed some more, because he couldn't help it. “If it does take over the world, could it make it so diet dessert doesn't taste like shit? I'm
dying
for chocolate mousse something, and it is not my week to indulge!”
Now it was Margie's turn to look at him softly. “Well, you let me know when it's your week, and I'll have a bite of that, right?”
A flush stole over Jeff's features. Margie was smart—he'd seen her eyeing the double-glove layer he used when treating patients, and she knew him well enough to inquire after his health when his “vitamin” doses got too hard to hold down. He may not have told her his big HIV secret, but she had probably guessed.
“It's a deal,” he said quietly, and she smiled warmly back. She left then, in a flurry of receipts and pens and lotion samplers from her gigantic purse, but their conversation seemed to echo in Jeff's head for the rest of the workday.
He was just finishing his charting when the phone in his little office rang, and his words to Margie about needing help practically exploded in his head.
“Is this Jeff Beachum?”
Jeff recognized the voice, even if the name was unfamiliar—he pronounced it “Bow-shaam,” and this guy pronounced it “Beech-ump.” Jeff had only heard one other person call him that, in that same hesitant, crisp, military way, and that had been on pretty much the worst day of his life.
“Lieutenant Lucas Blaine,” Jeff said, his mouth drying up, turning to sand, and then exhaling powder. “I remember you.”
“Yeah, uhm….” There was a pause, and Jeff imagined some jarhead fidgeting with a cell phone, wearing fatigues and a grimly bashful look. Lucas had called Jeff to tell him about Kevin, and even then, Jeff couldn't have picked him out of a crowd. They hadn't spoken since.
“See, the thing is,” Lucas continued after about a quarter of a century, “Kevin sent you a letter. You know… a „coming home' letter? The kind we're supposed to have sent home if we're coming home in a box?”
Jeff actually felt his head
swim
—like the backstroke and everything. He'd hoped for a letter, after Lucas's call, but he hadn't expected one. Kevin had made it more than clear that his parents would rather he died a Marine than live a faggot.
Jeff had told him at the time that he'd rather have him live, period, and Kevin had laughed like it was a given.
“I didn't know that,” Jeff said now, from way under the water in the crazy pool where Lucas had just dumped him. “What happened to it?”
Lucas sighed. “It got sent home in a packet with his letter to his parents—I was supposed to get to it, but I forgot about it that day. I was….” He sounded impatient with himself. “I'm sorry, Mr. Beech-ump, but I was wounded that day too.”
Twenty-five-year-old Jeff might not have given a fuck. Thirty-oneyear-old Jeff found that he did. “I'm sorry about that, Lucas. I didn't know.”
“It's my fault,” Lucas muttered again. “I'm sorry. It's my goddamned fault. I didn't mean to let Kevin down. And….” His sigh was so gusty that it actually echoed in the earpiece. “Kevin trusted me. He trusted me with who he was, and he trusted me with you, and I really let him down, and I didn't mean to, and now shit is just way fucked up….”
This big, tough jarhead sounded like he was going to fall apart, and after five years as PA Jeff Beachum, Jeff found he couldn't let that happen. “Now come on, babydoll—it can't be that bad. You and me, we're still breathing, so nothing's happened that we can't take back, has it?”
“That's what I'm trying to tell you. Something
has
happened, and it's awful, and I can't fix it.”
Jeff tried to pull his head out of the crazy end of the what-the-fuck pool and ask a question that would help him figure out what was going on. “Lucas, what in the fuck are you talking about?”
Another one of those feedback-inducing sighs. “Kevin's got a little brother——”
“The youngest one? Martin? He's, what? Fifteen now?”
“Fourteen. And curious. And he wanted to see his brother's letter, because I guess it freaked his parents the fuck out. So he goes searching for Mom's scrapbook, which she shoved up in the attic, and he found not one letter, but two. And the other had your address on the inside. I don't know if you still live there, Mr. Beech-ump, but he grabbed all his lawnmowing money and hopped on a fucking bus. He's on his way to see you.”
Little black dots started swimming in front of Jeff's eyes.
“Mr. Beech-ump? Mr. Beech-ump?”
Jeff sucked in a great lungful of air, and the spots swam faster. Spots swimming in the crazy pool, right? Swimming crazy spots, doing the backstroke in what-the-fuck-inated water….
“Mr. Beech-ump? Mr. Beech-ump? Are you there?”
Another lungful of air, and the crazy spots stopped doing the backstroke and started to fade from his vision.
“Honey doll,” he said, wondering how strong his voice could actually be, “all things considered, I think it's best that you call me Jeff.”

D
EACON
and Crick listened to the whole story that night, while Jeff practically sat in their laps and poured it out.

He was supposed to be going over to knit with Crick and Amy, (one of Deacon's closest friends from high school) watch some television, and play with Parry Angel, who was missing her mama now that Benny had gone away to school and needed her fairy-Jeff-father to make up the slack. That last was a guess on Jeff's part, but since Crick's family at The Pulpit had managed to replace the Beachums and Beauforts and Masons and Porters and what-all that Jeff hadn't had since his dad had kicked him out of the family, Jeff was going to take his every chance to be a fairy-Jeff-father. God, he missed playing with kids—they were the world's best source of laughter, and Parry Angel would sit and giggle at the faces he made at her until his chest filled and he felt like he ruled the world.

Anyway, Jeff was supposed to go over for a quiet evening with friends, but he'd taken one look at Deacon, Crick's husband, and found that his chin started to quiver and his face started to crumple, and the next thing he knew, he was coming unglued in Deacon's rock-steady arms. Suddenly Amy had Parry and her own daughter, Lila, in Crick and Deacon's bedroom, watching a Disney movie on their television, and Jeff was doing a reprise from his time on the couch with Mr. Doc Herbert five years ago.

Except this time, he had Deacon (who looked just as befuddled as Doc Herbert to have a grown man falling apart on him) on one side, and Crick on the other, patting his back awkwardly with all the heart in the world.

He did not cry all night. In fact, when he looked at the clock, he'd hardly cried for ten minutes, and yes, he did linger for a moment on Deacon's hard chest.

Then he sat up abruptly and frowned. “You've lost weight again, haven't you?”
Deacon sat back and glowered—and then, characteristically, blushed. “I swear to Christ, Jeff, if you had that whole fucking meltdown just to feel me up, I'll beat the shit out of you.”
Jeff sniffled and wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. “As if!” Behind him, he could almost feel Deacon and Crick exchange some disgruntled glances, and then Deacon stretched out his arm and Jeff leaned on his hard—and too lean—chest again.
“I've never seen you come unglued,” Deacon mused, and Jeff gave a little purr.
“We're even,” he said, and then corrected himself. “Okay. You're up one. Now, you have officially seen me come unglued.”
“It wasn't pretty.”
Jeff sniffed with a little bit of disdain. “I hate you, you know.”
“If you
really
hated him, you'd stop
groping
him!” Crick had clearly had enough, but Jeff wasn't frightened off. For one thing, as far as Deacon was concerned, Jeff had as much sexuality as Benny. For another, well… he hadn't snuggled into another man's chest for a
long
time. Even if it was completely platonic (and nothing was stirring all points south, so Jeff was reassured), it was really, really wonderful.
“What are you going to do?” Deacon asked, and Jeff snuck a peek at him from under dark lashes. God, Crick's man was gorgeous. Oval face, square hairline, small nose, firm, not-quite-pointed chin, and the most amazing green eyes—if it weren't for the fact that Deacon couldn't even see the sun when Crick smiled, Jeff liked to think he might have stood a chance.
But then Jeff couldn't have leaned on the two of them when his world was falling apart. He'd learned a long time ago that lovers were the first to go.
“I have no idea,” Jeff mumbled now, soaking in the comfort. “As far as I know, Lucas Blaine is coming out to meet the kid. They know each other—Lucas was Kevin's best friend growing up. Then I told Lucas to call me and we'd meet somewhere.” Jeff shuddered, feeling that horrible, oily nausea that came from knowing someone who should love him was going to rip up his insides like Con liked to rip up couch pillows.
“Do you want to meet here?” Deacon asked, and Amy's voice popped over the couch, along with a
beee-yooo-tiful
eighteen-month-old baby.
“That would be a horrible idea. Uncle Jeff, give Lila a hug and a kiss, because she's going down in the porta-crib right now before she makes us all batshit, okay?”
Jeff swung the baby over his head and into his lap, and Deacon used that opportunity to disentangle himself. The move was none-toosoon: as soon as he was done, two and a half years of sturdy toddler tumbled into Deacon's lap and started making demands.
“Sing!” Parry Angel demanded. Amy had done her hair after her bath, and it perched in a curly brown ponytail that bobbed when she shook her head. “Sing!”
Deacon bounced her on his knee, making her giggle, and tried to be stern. “C'mon, Angel, you know you've got to ask nice for that!”
Two big blue eyes with a fringe of lashes almost as thick and dark as Jeff's own batted up at Deacon, and they all had to laugh. “Pweeeeaaazzzee?” she asked winsomely, and Deacon Parish Winters was, as always, helpless before his namesake.
“Yeah, Angel. C'mon.” He pulled the little girl up to his waist, and then Lila gave Jeff a sloppy kiss on the mouth and scrambled up after her favorite playmate, not to be left behind. Deacon laughingly scooped them both up, blowing bubbles on their necks and negotiating the narrow hallway easily as he took them to Parry's room, the better to lay them down and sing them to sleep. Jeff sort of wished he could go in there and listen himself—Deacon's singing voice was wonderful, but unless he was putting Parry Angel down, no one got to hear it.
Amy, tiny, vital Amy, had, in the meantime, scrambled over the couch and practically into Jeff's lap.
“Hey!” Jeff protested, but Amy just giggled, wiggled her little bottom between him and Crick and said, with much the same imperiousness as her daughter, if truth be known, “Hug. Need hug now!”
So Jeff got to hold her, and something shuddered out of his body that he hadn't been able to let go of when he'd been sobbing on Deacon, and he thought that Deacon's ex-girlfriend (and best friend's wife) was a very, very wise woman.
“Hello, Precious,” Jeff muttered. God, he missed Benny. Parry Angel's equally tiny mother would have done this for him too—and probably sooner, because she had
no
sense of propriety either.
“Hello, Jeffy. You gonna live?”
Jeff whimpered. He wasn't proud. “Reluctantly.”
Amy didn't laugh. Instead, she went straight to the heart of the matter, her voice coming from between the hollow of Jeff's arms and chest. “You change that to „with enthusiasm' immediately, you understand?” She pulled back and glared at him and met eyes with Crick. Jeff's own expression was amused, but to his surprise, Crick's was not.
Crick's brown eyes, his best feature in what was really an angular, barely pretty face, were intent on Jeff, and Jeff shifted uncomfortably. “Oh, sugar—I do
everything
enthusiastically, right? Even fall apart like a big gay baby!”
He tried a giggle on the two of them, and they didn't seem to be buying it.
“This is gonna suck worse than a vacuum cleaner to the balls,” Crick said, his customary tact, diplomacy, and word-smithing fully apparent. “Amy's right—it shouldn't be here. If this kid's family is as freaked out about the gay thing as you say they are, this will be like, enemy camp to him or something. Meet him somewhere close, because the family is going to want to be close by, but make it public. Make him feel safe, okay?”
At that moment Andrew came in, looking at the couch with longsuffering eyes. Andrew was Deacon's hired man and another member of the family. Crick had saved his life, if not his leg, when they'd been overseas, and Andrew had found himself on Deacon's door after his discharge. At this point, the family wouldn't let him go if he tried to leave.
“I'm sleeping on the Barcalounger again tonight, aren't I?” he asked, trying to seem put-upon, and Jeff grinned at him tiredly.
“Well, since I can't convert you, big guy, and you're not big on the group snuggle, I'm thinking you should at least settle there for the short term.”
Andrew's big, dark hand came out and ruffled Jeff's hair, in spite of the careful layering of hair-care products that Jeff used to keep it from cowlicking like a herd of heifers with dry-mouth. “Okay, but since the girls are in bed, can we watch something grown-up?”
Jeff perked up. “How about
Sense and Sensibility
?”
“Yes!” Amy crowed, practically bouncing in his lap with excitement. She picked up the remote on the coffee table and started scrolling through the Netflix queue on the television screen. “Jon hates it, I could never convert Benny to Jane Austen, and I'm
dying
to see it again.”
Crick stood up so fast the couch almost tilted. “I'm going to go listen to Deacon sing,” he muttered.
“For two hours?” Jeff managed to twinkle at him, and Crick rolled his eyes.
“At least until the hot guy courting Kate Winslet shows up,” Crick replied dryly, and Amy tittered.
“I take it you've tried to convert Crick,” Jeff said dryly, and Amy snuggled back in his arms. Her husband, Jon, was planning to pick her and the baby up in about an hour, but Jeff supposed that one of the plusses of having a gay ex-boyfriend—and a whole lot of gay friends period—was that a girl was never short a snuggle buddy. Jeff could live with that tonight, even if it meant no knitting was going to get done, period, the end.