by V. L. Locey
Langley’s brown eyes – what you could see of them beneath the curly black hair dangling in his face – were as wide and round as Frisbees.
“What do you care what I do?” he fired at me. I leaned closer. His shoulder blades dug into the back of the sofa. Soon he would be swallowed up.
“I don’t, on the whole, but what you do impacts your mother, and I do care about her. I care about her a whole lot, and I’ll be damned if a little shit like you is going to make her cry. So, for now, this little nighttime excursion of yours stays between you and me.” I reached out to tap his chest then mine.
He winced in expectation, and when a blow didn’t come, his face returned to cocky indifference. His eyes told a different story, though. He was close to soiling his britches.
“And tomorrow, when we go down to offer your services free of charge to clean up the mess you made, you will go along and you will act like a regular little gentleman. If I hear one word come out of you that is not painted rosy pink with love and gratitude for your mother and Mr. Smith at the shoe store, I will take you out back to the nearest alley and I will whip your ass fourteen ways to Sunday. Do you get me, Langley?”
“Yeah, fine, whatever,” he coughed with his back flat to my sofa.
“Good. Now go back to bed and do not come out of that bedroom until your mother calls you for breakfast.”
I straightened up, and the kid shot to his feet as if he’d been fired from a circus cannon. Arms crossed over my bare chest, I watched him jog to the guest room and slam the door in my face. Then I looked skyward.
“Sweet Mary Madonna, I know I’m being a pushy bastard asking for your assistance not twelve hours after leaving your shrine, but by all that is holy and good, please do not let me kick that kid’s ass. I’m thinking his mother would kick mine if I did.”
I quickly made the sign of the cross and ambled off to my bed, wondering what the morning would bring.
By nine the following morning, Michelangelo and I had been at the shoe store for an hour. Langley stood out in the chilly breeze with a razor blade and a spray bottle of water, spritzing then gently scraping all the bright-pink bullshit off old man Smith’s front window. The kid looked miserable. His mouth was in a permanent frown and his nose kept running. Every so often, a nice cold wind lifted that long hair from his neck and face, and his scowl deepened. When I saw that happen, I lifted my cup of coffee, courtesy of Mr. Smith, at the lad, smiled, and settled even deeper into my comfortable chair.
“Are you sure I can’t bring you a couple pairs of boots to try on, Mr. McGarrity?” Mr. Smith asked for the twentieth time.
I sipped the strong brew as my sight left Langley spraying the glass to avoid scratching it with his razor blade and looked at my beat-up Red Wings.
“I give all the Cougars a nice discount.”
“Sure,” I relented, and the scrawny old man lit up like a Coleman lantern. “But I insist on paying full price.”
Old Man Smith and I argued back and forth while he measured my feet. While I knew he was generous with the team, and especially Kalinski’s son and baby momma, I didn’t need that kind of handout. I had a nice fat bank account. When you only buy what you need to survive, you tend to squirrel the funds away at a good rate.
The door opened as I was cramming my feet into a sharp black pair of work boots. I glanced up at Langley.
“I’m freezing,” the kid said. His lips did look a little blue.
“Let me get you some hot cocoa,” Mr. Smith said, and leaped to his feet.
Langley was holding the door open, and a gust blew into the store, bringing dead leaves with it. I feared the old man might be blown off his feet. He weighed maybe a hundred pounds if he filled his pockets with rocks. Before I could tell the storeowner that Langley didn’t deserve hot cocoa, the tiny old man was already back in the storage room.
“Shut the door and have a seat. You get a ten-minute break and then it’s back at it.” I stood up, lifted my kilt over my knees, and studied the shiny ebony boots laced around my ankles. They looked good.
“I really hate you,” Langley growled, then pushed the door closed.
I shrugged a shoulder. “I’m not real fond of you right now either.”
Langley stalked past a wall of women’s shoes and threw his lean ass into a chair by the register. His hair slid over his eyes and he closed himself off from the store, the world, and me. Was that normal teenager behavior? While I recalled being a handful at his age, I didn’t remember being so antisocial.
“Here we go.” Mr. Smith hustled out of the back room, his bifocals on the edge of his nose, a steaming mug in his age-speckled hands. “Now you drink that slow, son. It’s very hot. Oh, those look quite good with your tartan, Mr. McGarrity.”
“Thanks, yeah, they are pretty sharp.” I dropped my kilt and flopped down in my seat. “I’ll take them.”
Mr. Smith literally clapped his hands in excitement. Langley slurped his drink as the shopkeeper hurried to box my boots, then attend to a woman with two kids who had just come in. I jerked my head at the window. Langley held up his cup of hot chocolate as if that was a defense.
“Ten minutes are up,” I explained, and tossed my head in the direction of the window yet again. “No one wants to see that crap when they come in to shop. Take the cocoa with you.” Thankfully, the graffiti was nothing crude or disgusting, but the angular designs were an eyesore.
The kid rolled his lip. I chuckled. That pissed him off, and he slammed from his chair out into the early October weather, his hot chocolate getting flung out into the street in a fine fit of childish behavior.
The little show made me laugh softly. I wasn’t sure how Lila would feel about me bulling in and taking over her son’s punishment. Probably she would get a little mad, but sometimes a young man needed someone to step in who didn’t mind wallowing in the bullshit. And since I’d just purchased new shit-kickers, it looked like I was properly outfitted.
The day just kept getting better and better. After spending the morning watching Langley work off his punishment I was now sitting in my dingy kitchen, surrounded by some of my friends, while my woman made primavera. Life was good. Laughter and horseshit filled the tiny room, as did the rich smell of tomatoes and fresh garlic. It made me yearn for home.
Better call mama tomorrow, Mario.
“No, that’s not how it went down at all,” Dan Arou was informing Lila and me. He slid a tiny spoon filled with orange mush into the open mouth of Jack, Victor’s son with perky little Heather.
The kid was a holy mess. Pureed yams dripped off his chin onto the bib shaped like a hockey puck. Vic sat to Dan’s left, chuckling at his husband’s story.
“We got in line to see the Stanley Cup, then asshat over here,” Dan jerked his head at his spouse, “decided to mouth off to one of the security guards. Next thing you know, we’re outside looking in.”
“Man, was he pissed,” Vic chortled.
Dan threw him a dark look, then spooned up more yams from a small jar he was holding. Jack slapped his hands on the tray of his highchair. Yam droplets flew everywhere.
“I had to let him drag me through some castle with gardens in order to even get laid on my own honeymoon.”
“Your mouth gets you into all sorts of predicaments, Victor,” Lila chimed from the stove.
She looked like a million bucks tonight. She’d twisted her hair up into some kind of fancy knot that revealed her sexy neck. Her dress was silver and sparkly, but she had a sheer purple shawl tied around her wide shoulders. Silver hose covered her long legs and she wore purple flats with silver threads on them. I wanted to get my hands into that upswept hairdo of hers in the worst way.
“You need any help there, baby?” I called over the chatter.
“No I do not. The last time you helped me cook, you put too much garlic in the sauce,” she teased, her smile bright as she peeked over her shoulder. “You just keep your guests happy.”
“There’s no such thing as too muc
h garlic,” I informed her. She shook her spoon at me, but her brown eyes twinkled. “May the Virgin strike me down. Vic, what say you?”
“I say I stay away from anything that will make me smell like you, McGarrity.” He cracked open a new can of Coke. The baby squealed to hurry Dan up.
A brisk thumping on my front door sent me from the kitchen. Langley had hidden himself away in his room after we’d returned from the shoe store and hadn’t been seen since. I’d fed Lila some song and dance about the two of us bonding over community service. That had made her all sorts of happy and had gotten me a hot kiss of gratitude from my girl.
I tugged the door open. Mike Buttonwood and his wife, Yvonne, smiled at me.
“Lila said we were having Italian, so I brought some red wine,” Mike informed me, then shoved a bottle at my chest.
“Very nice,” I said as I inspected the bottle of Carignane from a local winery. “Come in out of the wind. Smells like rain on the air.”
The couple handed me their coats, and I tossed them over the back of my couch. Then I led them to the kitchen. Dan and Vic shouted greetings. Lila smiled warmly at the new arrivals while she fussed with her sauce. Victor slowly left his chair so Yvonne could have a seat. Mrs. Buttonwood fussed over Jack while I searched for glasses in the cupboards.
“Seamus, look in front of you.” Lila waved at the cupboard beside the sink with her saucy spoon. “You’ll have to drink wine from jelly jars, as my man does not own a wine glass.”
“Lila, how do you stand associating with such an ill-bred buffoon?” Vic asked, then slid his arms around my girl’s waist. “Come live with me and Dan. We actually wash our glasses.” He hugged her tightly.
Lila giggled like a schoolgirl when Vic nuzzled playfully at her neck.
“I’m sorry, what’s with this we shit? You got a mouse in your pocket?” Dan asked his husband as he scraped out the jar of baby food with that itty-bitty spoon.
I knocked Kalinski away from my woman with my hip. The lanky Pole slapped my shoulder, then shook his head at the offer of some wine.
“No, he’s just glad to see you, Dan,” Mike interjected about thirty seconds after the joke might have been funny.
We all stared at Mike.
“Get it? Instead of a gun in his pocket it was a mouse?”
“That was terrible, honey.” Yvonne, a cute little brunette, giggled and tickled one of Jack’s chubby chins.
“What? That was a good one, right?” Mike asked the room.
We all shook our heads in unison.
Mike slumped back into his seat and pouted until Dan assured him it had been a good one and perfectly timed.
“Where did I go wrong?”
“See, the joke about the gun is good because it’s long and hard, unlike a mouse. And the fact that you compare my incredible girth to a measly little rodent cuts me to the quick,” Victor threw out as I handed out wine to the assembled.
Dan shook his head when I held out a jelly jar to him.
“Have some, sweets, you know you love wine,” Victor said from his new perch by the stove.
Lila swatted at him for stealing pepper chunks from the sauce.
“No, I’m good. I don’t like wine so much anyway,” Dan assured us.
I caught the long look Vic gave him but didn’t say anything.
I was about to make a toast when another guest knocked. I jogged to the door and yanked it open, happy as hell for some reason, to see August standing there. He looked like a drowned cat.
“Did you walk here?” I asked the soaking wet goalie.
“I don’t have a car,” he explained, then sneezed.
I hustled him in out of the cold fall rain.
“Stand here,” I told him, and placed him on an old rug Lila had put down earlier for muddy shoes.
There he stood, dripping on the throw rug, resembling that beagle puppy from my youth right down to the mournful gaze.
“You could have called me, Augie – I would’ve come pick you up,” I told the goofy kid.
He sort of smiled and sniffled.
“Get that coat off and we’ll get you into the kitchen.”
“Okay, thanks.”
The kid’s coat was too wet to toss over the sofa, so I hung it over the doorknob, then took August by the arm and led him toward the gang. He walked stiffly, like a reluctant dog, so I just kept applying pressure to his elbow until he stopped balking.
“Augie’s here,” I announced, then shoved the backward kid into the boisterous room.
I watched his brown eyes widen when he saw Vic standing next to Lila. If Kalinski knew how much he intimidated Augie, he would ride the poor kid mercilessly, which was why I decided to keep that, as well as Augie’s other secret, to myself.
“Tuck that into your sporran, Mario Seamus,” I could hear my father whisper in my memory. He always said that when he confided something to me. Damn, but I missed that man from Aberdeen dearly. Dropping dead from a stroke in his butcher shop at the age of forty-two was not the way Angus James McGarrity should have died.
“Seamus, are you okay, darling?” Lila asked, her warm concern pushing away the dark shadow of a boy of ten still missing his dad.
I reached for her, and she slipped into my arms, her body a perfect fit against mine.
“I’m fine, baby.” I dropped a smooch right under the round silver earring clamped onto her lobe.
She purred like a contented cat.
“Never been better,” I added, and gave her a wet kiss.
“Hey, come on, get a room…then let us watch,” Kalinski shouted.
Gruff chuckles and a few feminine titters erupted. I let go of the cook and turned to enjoy the guests. August had sat down next to our captain. His hair was soaking wet but his brown eyes were as round as silver dollars. Maybe the goalie who was a little gay had never witnessed so many diverse couples in one place enjoying each other’s company. I hoped he’d make a few friends, because I felt he was one lonely and confused little hound dog.
Leaning against the counter while Lila added a sprinkle of salt then a single bay leaf to her creation, I let the moment settle around me. A feeling of contentment warmed my chest. Now this was what life was all about. The woman you adored cooking pasta and giving you loving looks, your friends laughing and sharing wine, and your home being alive for the first time in fucking forever. It came to me that if I did ask for a trade, I’d be leaving this behind. That realization hit me hard. I guess I’d known it but hadn’t really understood just how much I’d be losing if I did go to a new team. But Lila was in Scranton and had already said she didn’t want to live in Cayuga.
“That’s why I told you to think on things, Seamus,” Lila whispered, then reached out to cup my scruffy face.
Our eyes met. How did she know what I was thinking? Was I that easy to read? I pressed my lips into her palm. Her lips were smiling but her eyes were sad.
“Would you like to put the pasta into the pot? It’s boiling.”
“Anything for you, baby,” I said as her hand drifted from my face.
I turned from my friends, old and new, and dumped two boxes of thin spaghetti into the pot, my thoughts a million miles from the meal we were about to enjoy. Thankfully, serving the meal helped get me focused a bit.
“I’m going to take this one to the kid,” I told Lila after our dinner guests had their food.
She added a bit more sauce to the pasta heaped on the plate in my hand, then slid a fork into the steaming mound.
“Thank you, Seamus,” she said, brown eyes glowing with affection. Watching her leave tomorrow was going to gut me.
I slipped out of the packed kitchen. After a sharp knock on the door, I walked into my guest room. Langley, stretched out on the slim twin bed, glanced up from whatever he’d been watching on his phone.
“I thought you might be hungry.” I placed the primavera on the bed, then gave his phone a fast peek. “What’s that?”
“It’s Gamer Gary. He’s plays video gam
es.” Langley sat up, folded his skinny legs into a lotus, then picked up his meal. “Thanks,” he grunted, then started shoveling food in.
“So you watch some other guy playing video games?” I asked, and Langley nodded, his wild hair bouncing with the head bob. “Why don’t you just play the game yourself? Seems watching someone play something would be boring.”
“It’s not. People watch you play hockey,” he said around a mouthful.
He had me there. “Okay, true enough. If you want more, you know where the kitchen is.”
And I left him to his seclusion and went back to enjoying the night. If life went as I was now hoping it would, this might be one of the few times I’d have with these people. I’d better make every moment count.
Watching Lila leave the next morning was one of the toughest damn things I’d ever endured. I so wanted her there. Coming home to her, hearing her laughter bounce off my bare walls, smelling her perfume on the air…hell, even seeing her fake eyelashes lying on my bathroom counter looking like alien spiders had been great. Now she was heading back home to get Langley registered for school and I was there alone, without even hockey to keep my mind busy. The suspension meant I was not to participate in any team activities. So what the shit was I supposed to do with myself?
My cell vibrated on the table, the sound horribly grating for some reason. Picking it up, I saw that it was Augie, which made me smile a little.
“Hey kid, what’s the news?” I asked as I shuffled back into the kitchen to pour another mug of Lila’s delicious coffee into my cup.
“I just wanted to thank you for dinner last night,” August replied. “My mom says that you should always get in touch the day after an invitation and thank your host again if you wish to be invited back. Not that I’m hoping to come over or anything.”
