Loose Ends

by Kristen Ashley

  A hissing whisper of a reply, “I cannot believe my son is saying these things to me.”

  Diesel didn’t have a reply to that.

  At the pause, Maddox tugged on his shirt, bringing him closer.

  D lifted a hand again, squeezed the side of his neck, left his hand there, and nodded to share he was good.

  Mad didn’t move away.

  His mother broke the silence.

  “Well, you can rest assured that man will not be invited or welcome at your father’s and my table.”

  “Yeah,” Diesel muttered, “I figured that.”

  Her voice was rising, hysteria sliding in. “You’ve just destroyed your mother. You’ve just destroyed me! And all you can say is, ‘Yeah, I figured that’?”

  “Ma, how does this destroy you?” he asked quietly. “I’m still me. Molly’s still Molly. And Maddox is—”

  “Don’t say that man’s name to me!” she shouted.

  Oh hell no.

  Diesel broke away from Mad, turning. “Then we’re done.”

  “We’re not done!” she shrieked, the sound so piercing he had to take the phone from his ear. “You’re my son!”

  “Think on that, Ma,” he replied softly. “Think on those words. Please.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

  “Think on it. Calm down. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Your father is going to lose his mind, Diesel. He’s going to come undone. I knew it. I knew we should have never let you be friends with that Tommy Barnes. He stained you. He polluted you.”

  Oh hell no.

  “Stop. Fucking. Talking,” Diesel snarled.

  His mother shut up and the silence was deafening.

  Diesel didn’t give a shit.

  “Think on this. Calm down. And when you’re calm, I’ll talk to you. But I’m not listening to any more of this. I love you. I hate this is hurting you. But you don’t understand why I hate it. And the why of that kills me and has for years. Think on that too, Ma. I’ll talk to you later.”

  He said that and then he disconnected.

  He also turned off his ringer and tossed his phone on the counter.

  He then dropped his head to look at his feet.

  He barely got in that position before Maddox’s hand curled warm on the back of his neck.

  He said nothing, didn’t force D to look at him, just held on.

  But Diesel sensed him moving and he’d know how when he heard Maddox say, “Mol? Yeah, baby, you on your way home?” Pause. “Okay, D’s mom called and it went as expected.” Pause. “Quiet night. Just giving you a heads up. We gotta look after D.”

  Diesel lifted his head to look at Mad, but Maddox’s hand at his neck didn’t go anywhere.

  “See you soon. Love you too,” he finished and then he disconnected. “You wanna talk about it?” Maddox asked.

  “Absolutely not,” D answered.

  “You wanna get drunk?” Mad asked.

  “Absolutely,” D answered.

  Maddox let him go, muttering, “I’ll get the bourbon.”

  D watched him head to the cupboard where they kept their liquor.

  “Mad?” he called.

  Hand to the handle on the cabinet, Maddox twisted around to look at him.

  “I don’t want you to feel what you’re feeling,” Diesel told him.

  Mad dropped his hand from the handle and turned fully to Diesel.

  “What am I feeling, bud?” he asked quietly.

  “Pissed. Upset. Worried about me. Concerned you’re the reason I’m losing my family.”

  Maddox nodded. “Yeah, I’m feelin’ all that.”

  D clenched his teeth, his fists, and looked away.

  “D,” Maddox called.

  Diesel looked back.

  “It’ll pass.”

  “I’m the reason I’m losing my family, Maddox,” he pointed out. “I fell in love with you because you’re you. You didn’t make me fall in love with you, outside of the fact you were just you and that shit happened. But I’m the man I am so it could happen.”

  “Brother, your family is the reason you’re losing your family. It has dick to do with you. Or me. Or anyone, but them. Honest to Christ, there could be no me, just Mol, and Molly could be Catholic, or a Jew, and your mother would behave like that. That’s who she is. That’s how she thinks. I just thank fuck she made you and you turned out different.”

  His phone vibrated on the counter, both men looked to it, and D read his father was calling.

  “I forget, is the iPhone waterproof yet? ’Cause for tonight, that piece of shit needs to be at the bottom of the pool,” Diesel grumbled.

  “Baby,” Maddox called, sounding amused.

  D turned again to him.

  “We will get through this,” he stated firmly, no longer sounding amused.

  Diesel looked him in the eye for a beat, two, then three.

  “Yeah,” he said, but the word was drowned out with the back door being thrown open loudly, racing feet heard on wood floors and Molly appeared in the room, hair flying.

  She skidded to a stop, looked to D, Mad, D, Mad and back to D.

  “You okay, baby?” she asked on a rush, breathless.

  “I am now, you bein’ all cute and everything,” he replied.

  She stared hard at him and looked to Maddox. “Is he okay?”

  “He said he was, darlin’,” Maddox answered, back to sounding amused.

  “You called me, like, five minutes ago saying we had to look after D,” she reminded him.

  “Well, we’re dudes. We talked shit out. It’s all cool now,” Maddox told her.

  “That’s impossible,” she returned. “It was five minutes ago.”

  “You want me to be all busted up my ma’s messed up in the head?” Diesel asked.

  Molly shifted her attention to him, her face softening. “No, honey, of course not.”

  D grinned at her. “Come here, sweetheart. I’m teasing you. I’m all torn up. I need some Molly love.”

  She tossed her purse on the kitchen table and moved to him.

  He wrapped his arms around her.

  She wrapped hers around him.

  “There, all better,” he murmured to the top of her head.

  “You’re a jerk, D,” she mumbled into his chest.

  “Yup, an awesome jerk,” he agreed.

  Her arms gave him a squeeze.

  Diesel looked over her head to Maddox.

  “You were getting bourbon?” he prompted.

  “On it,” Maddox muttered.

  D watched him then dropped his face back into Molly’s hair, closed his eyes and breathed deep.

  “You sure you’re okay?” she asked his chest.

  No.

  But he was sure he would be.

  “Just keep holding on, Molly, and I will be.”

  She kept holding on.

  It didn’t take long for him to be proved right.

  Molly love, a shot of Jack from Maddox, and it was all good.

  Mostly.

  “Hey. This is a surprise.”

  “Hey, yeah. Sorry, is it too late?”

  “Nope, the princesses from hell are asleep and I’m out on the back deck with a Jack and Coke so it’s all good. What’s up?” Tommy asked.

  D sat in Mad’s slider, staring at the light glowing up from their pool, shining on the big pots around it, the squat stand of short palms off to the side, up into the night sky.

  They’d rocked that pool.

  “Just callin’ to give you a heads up, Maddox and I are buying Molly a ring. We’ll probably have our ceremony sometime next year. That’s up to Molly and whatever planning she’s gotta do. But I’d dig it if you and Harvey and the kids would think about making the trek. It’d be cool, you were here for that.”

  “You . . . whoa . . . so you . . . wow. Uh. You guys are making it official?”

  “The only ring that we think works for Molly cost thirteen K so as soon as we can swin
g that fucker, yeah.”

  “Your folks know?”

  “Told Mom today.”

  “Ah. Right,” he whispered.

  “So, think about comin’ out, yeah? I want you to meet them,” Diesel said.

  “Diesel,” Tommy replied low.

  Hearing his tone, Diesel bent over, closing his eyes, lifting his hand and rubbing the back of his head.

  But he didn’t say anything.

  “Let me guess, words with your mother didn’t go well,” Tommy surmised.

  “Ma called Maddox ‘that man,’ and that was far from the worst of it,” D shared.

  “Yeah, Harvey got a lot of ‘that mans’ from my mom too after she semi-let me back into her life, but before the kids started coming. Now I’m trying to break her of asking him about every fucking handbag she wants to try to convince Dad she can buy, like every gay on the planet knows how a woman should accessorize. She can’t wrap her mind around the fact that he wouldn’t know Louis Vuitton from a Kmart special even though she’d never ask me that shit and I do know LV from Kmart because LV is life.”

  D lifted his head, dropped his hand, looked at the pool and grinned.

  “If they don’t get there,” Tommy said quietly, “fuck ’em. But they might get there, Diesel. When it all came out, my father told me the sight of me made him sick. And now he golfs with Harvey and his two granddaughters are the light of his life.”

  “Harvey golfs?” D asked.

  “Took it up for something to do with Dad, likes it. What can I say? Tell him all the time golf is total pussy. He gets in my face about calling shit ‘pussy’ and how I gotta watch that or we’ll unconsciously share with our daughters that ‘pussy’ is weak and I’m being a chauvinist. Serves me right for marrying an east coast liberal. He won’t even let me have guns. It’s a nightmare.”

  “Feel bad for you, bro,” D said through a chuckle.

  “Don’t feel too bad. He might be an east coast liberal but he fucks like a redneck and is built like a pro wrestler so I might not have a handgun in the house to protect my family and defend my property but there are tradeoffs where I’m not complaining.”

  “That puts an end to that pity party,” D joked, but drew in breath and got serious. “I hated what you went through.”

  “I know you did,” Tommy replied.

  “I wish that I’d—”

  “Man, there was nothin’ for you to do. That wasn’t your deal. It was mine. And you stood beside me the only way you could. It meant a lot to me, Diesel. You could have turned your back. And coming from you, that would have been worse than all the other assholes who turned their backs, because you were you and you were who you were to me.”

  “Yeah,” Diesel muttered.

  “Also,” Tommy continued, “seein’ as it would be you gettin’ where I was at, walking right into the closet and shutting the door, shutting me out. You might not have shouted from the rooftops we were fucking each other stupid any chance we got, but I don’t give a shit you didn’t. What purpose would it have served? It wasn’t your time and now I know how you felt back then because I hear the shit comin’ at me from whatever you took from your mom and I wish I could do something about it. But I can’t. Except to let you know that love always wins, Diesel. In the end, and it took time, and it wasn’t without pain, my parents pulled their heads out of their asses and it wasn’t because they wanted to be a part of their granddaughters’ lives. It was because they missed their son. And your folks might get there. I don’t know. The only thing I do know is, if they don’t, there’s no love in that, so there’s no love lost, so you really haven’t lost anything but shit that weighs down your mind and heart and your soul. Just let that weight go. Live the light. It’s not easy to get to that point, but when you do, it’s all good.”

  Halfway through this, the back door opened and Mad came through.

  He was on his phone, speaking quietly, but walking Diesel’s way.

  “Now that you’ve laid the wisdom on me, and no fuckin’ with you, Tommy, I heard you and I appreciate it, but are you gonna answer my question?” D asked as Maddox sat in the slider D usually used.

  “What question?”

  “You haulin’ ass out here for our commitment ceremony?”

  “Oh. Right. Yeah. I’d be down with that. You could meet Harvey and the girls. Harvey could golf. I could have a variety of opportunities to give him shit about golfing. Total win. But do me a favor, have it when it’s not a million degrees. It gets cold as fuck in Boston in the winter. It’d sweeten the deal we could vacation in the desert when everyone here is freezing their tits off.”

  “I’ll put that to Molly,” D replied, holding Maddox’s gaze. “But Mad came out and I think something’s up. Sorry, but gotta let you go.”

  “No worries. Glad you called. See you for your Valentine’s Day or Halloween or Thanksgiving commitment ceremony next year.”

  “Fuck off, and yeah, I hope you do. Later, brother.”

  “Later, Diesel.”

  They disconnected and Diesel raised his brows when he heard Maddox say, “Yeah, okay . . . but D’s off the phone. Yeah?”

  He listened for a second then held his phone out to Diesel.

  Diesel saw on the screen it said Mom.

  He looked straight at Mad but took the phone and put it to his ear.

  “Hey, Erin, everything cool?”

  “You are loved,” she stated clearly, forcefully and more than a little pissed off.

  “Erin,” he said quietly.

  “And they’re jackasses,” she snapped.

  “Honey,” he murmured.

  “So . . . so . . . so . . .” she stammered, “fuck them,” she bit out.

  D pressed his lips together so he wouldn’t burst out laughing.

  Erin wasn’t immune to a swear word but he didn’t think he’d ever heard her drop the f-bomb.

  “I’d adopt you but that might get a bit weird, me adopting you when you’re going to be my son’s husband,” she declared.

  “Yeah, that might get a bit weird,” he agreed.

  “But whatever, you’re my son anyway.”

  Diesel shut his eyes tight and dropped his head again.

  Shit, that felt good.

  “You hear that, Diesel?” she asked irately.

  “I heard it, Erin.”

  “Love you, boy. Bob sends his love too, I’m sure, but right now he’s building a ship in a bottle or putting together some model airplane or I don’t know what the heck he’s doing in his man cave. I’m worried he’s addicted to sniffing glue. Everything he does is all about the glue. But at least it frees me from having to fight to watch my programs so I let him. Tell Molly I send her my love and Maddox too. I’ll make my Mexican lasagna for you soon. Love you. Bye.”

  And with that, as was Erin’s way when she was done saying what she had to say, she was gone.

  He opened his eyes, watched the screen blank out, lifted his head and handed the phone to Maddox.

  “Mexican lasagna soon, brother,” he told him.

  “Excellent,” Maddox replied, then immediately asked, “Who’d you call?”

  “Tommy.”

  Maddox nodded like he totally understood, and D had a feeling he did.

  “He good?” Mad queried.

  Diesel nodded. “Yeah. And thinking about bringing his brood out here for our ceremony, if we have it when it’s cold in Boston.”

  “We totally have to have it in the summer. No one will show but locals. Less people we gotta feed, more money for the honeymoon.”

  Diesel grinned at him but felt the grin fade.

  “Your mom rocks, bud,” he told Mad something he definitely knew.

  “Yeah,” Mad agreed.

  The door opened, Molly came out with a look on her face that D wasn’t sure how to read and she came right to him, collapsing in his lap in another way he wasn’t sure how to read.

  He still wrapped his arms around her.

  She didn’t keep him guessing
.

  She grabbed his face on either side and said, “Right, okay, she’s mad and I don’t know your mother’s number, so I couldn’t give it to her when she demanded it, but Mom wants her number and she’s pretty ticked. In other words, if your mom is listed, shit might happen, and I’ll apologize in advance for Mom calling her and telling her to go fuck herself.”

  Diesel stared down at her pretty face.

  But whatever, you’re my son anyway.

  I’ll apologize in advance for Mom calling her and telling her to go fuck herself.

  He burst out laughing.

  Molly was smiling tentatively at him when he quit.

  He gathered her closer and she let his face go and snuggled in when he did.

  “So, babe, this commitment ceremony we’re doing, is it gonna be a summer thing or a winter thing?” Diesel asked.

  “Totally winter. That way everyone will want to come to escape the snow and it’ll be a huge party,” Molly answered.

  D looked to Mad.

  Mad sat back, shaking his head but smiling.

  D sat back, holding Molly close and smiling.

  And yeah.

  What happened with his mother happened.

  And now it was just this.

  Their three, knowing what they had was right.

  Getting why.

  And having it all.

  Freedom, Love and Family of the Heart

  Maddox

  B&J JUMPED AT me as DM. Start at the Bolt weekend after Rebel leaves. Get the money. Get the ring. We’ll give it to her this weekend while Reb’s here. Reb’ll get off on that.

  D’s bossy-as-fuck text came while Maddox was leaving the gym to head home the day after the shit hit with D’s mom.

  He beeped the locks on his truck, opened it up, tossed his workout bag across to the passenger seat, and before he hauled himself up, he leaned a shoulder against the side of the cab and texted back, Not asking Mol while Reb’s here.

  He pulled himself into the cab and had the truck on, AC cranking, when he got back, Why not?

  Celebration, D, as in no holds barred. Not hours. DAYS, Mad replied.

  He’d put the truck into gear and was about to pull out of his parking spot when he got, Gotcha.