by Amy Lane
“What happened to change it around?” Aaron ached for him. Sure, it was a long time ago. But a long time ago, Aaron had met a pretty woman and fallen in love. He still missed her, even though he’d lived almost as long without her as he had with her.
“Two things, actually,” Larx said promptly. “One was that my sister went into remission in my junior year, and once she felt better, she began to kick my ass.”
“Did it stick?” Aaron asked, hoping.
“No.” Larx looked out the window as the highway sped by, the shadows weaving together under a clear sky. “She passed during my first year of college. And we knew it might happen. So I just spent those two years not being an asshole so all the time I had with her—that would be good time.”
“I’m sorry.”
Larx looked at him, and his teeth flashed whitely in the dark. “You didn’t invent cancer.”
“What was the second thing?”
“My high school principal. Johnny Erickson. Great guy. Must have saved my ass from expulsion a dozen times. He’d bring me into his office and talk to me—just talk to me. Like a human. And he started to promise that if I stayed out of trouble, I could be an office TA and we could spend more time talking and less time with him chewing my ass.”
“Good guy,” Aaron said.
“The best.”
“So why’d you fight so hard not to be principal?”
“What?”
Aaron caught the double take from the corner of his eye and grinned. “You obviously admired the guy—why didn’t you want to be just like him?”
“’Cause I couldn’t,” Larx said, like it was that simple. “Erickson, he was the best. I couldn’t measure up. I mean… just, no way. And every administrator I ever had, I fought tooth and nail. You know the drill—they’re all ‘test scores, numbers, rules!’ I was all ‘feed the kids, teach the kids, and the rules can go fuck!’”
“How’d that work out for you?” Aaron asked, voice soft.
“I’d rather not talk about that right now.”
Aaron’s stomach went cold, and every instinct as a law enforcement officer started to whisper that here—here was where the real story was.
But they were close. Their conversation in the car—this was one of the most intimate things Aaron had experienced in ten years.
“So what about you?” Larx asked into the quiet. “Law and order all your life?”
“Not that it did me much good,” Aaron acknowledged. “Out of school, into the military, folks were so proud. Got a wife, had kids, folks passed away, wife died in a car wreck—and following the rules got me three kids who are probably worse for having me as a father.”
“No!” Larx protested, and some of the passion was back in his voice. “That’s not true. Kirby adores you. I know Maureen thought the world of you. Don’t give up on your oldest. She’s just… you know. Like me. Angry. She’s going to regret every bad thing she says. And you need to keep stretching out the olive branch, because you never know when she’ll take it.”
“I sent her like twelve kitten videos,” Aaron said. “Nothin’.”
“Well, you know. Maybe try puppies. Or alpacas. Or bunnies. Or, you know, anime.”
“What-i-may?”
“You know—Japanese animation. Christiana is nuts about it. I’ll get her to send me some pictures you can forward.”
Aaron had to laugh. “You know, not that your help isn’t appreciated—”
“I’m not giving up,” Larx said, eyes gleaming in the darkness. “Seriously. We can’t have our steadfast Deputy George feeling defeated! Where would the town get its hope?”
“From its dedicated principal, of course,” Aaron said gallantly, and Larx’s belly laugh was his reward.
“So you’ll keep trying?”
Of course he would. “As long as you keep running with me in the mornings,” Aaron said, because hey, he was a shameless opportunist.
“Deal. Tomorrow too?”
Aaron groaned. “God, don’t you ever sleep in?”
“Well, I’ll be honest. If I don’t run tomorrow, I’m pulling up my summer garden, so it’s probably more responsible to let you get some shut-eye.”
“I work late shift tomorrow night anyway,” Aaron admitted. “We all sort of spread out during the weekends so nobody sacrifices all of the family reunions and such.”
“And you probably go to church on Sunday.” Larx sounded dispirited.
“Nope. Do you?”
“God no!” He giggled then, probably getting the irony of the blasphemy after he said it. “No. No church for the Larkin family. I’m surprised about you, though.”
Aaron thought about it carefully. Religions made or broke relationships sometimes. “It’s not that I don’t believe,” he said after a few moments. They came to Frosties and Fries, and he pulled in to park, making sure they had a good half hour before closing time so he could at least finish the conversation. “I mean, there’s a higher power. There must be. I saw it in my wife’s eyes, you know? In our children. But I get tired. I get tired of people using their symbol—and I don’t give a rat’s ass which one—like a get-out-of-asshole-free card. That thing around your neck does not give you a free pass to judge while you go around and kick kittens and smack orphans, you know?”
“I do know,” Larx said. “But wow.”
“Wow what?” Aaron looked at him, hoping not to see censure or criticism.
Larx’s smile reassured him. “I was just going to say my family was Methodist when I was a kid, and they didn’t have a church up here, so I didn’t feel comfy to go.”
Aaron laughed. “Well, that too, except Unitarian.”
“Oooh—even your church was fancy.”
Aaron sighed and decided for a little more honesty. “Besides. Once my wife died, I… I was angry too. Not so much anymore, but like you said. Not feeling it.”
“Well, good to know. Want to come help me with my garden if I’m not done?”
“What’s my reward?”
Larx appeared to think about it. “Well, I’ve got the last of the squash, and some tomatoes, and I think there’s some tubers I haven’t mined yet. And you say your chickens are still laying, and I traded some canned tomatoes to that little artisan dairy that serves at the B and B’s—”
“Bessie’s?”
“That’s the one. Anyway. I’ve got fresh cheese and hamburger that remembers when it was a real cow. I don’t know what all that will become, but between me and Christiana, it should be something that doesn’t suck.”
“So no spaghilli?” Aaron asked, getting out of his car while Larx howled in outrage.
“Who told!”
CONVERSATION—WITHOUT the running, without the children. It was just as good in the Frostie as it was in the car. Aaron ate a couple of spoonfuls of Larx’s ice cream, just to humor him, and evaded talking about his days in the military with Desert Storm.
“Bad?” asked Larx seriously.
Aaron shrugged. “I learned how to use a gun,” he said.
“Sorry.”
Aaron raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
“Because. I don’t think you’re a violent man. That must have been a… a difficult transition.”
Aaron closed his eyes. “My wife never got that,” he confessed. “She kept saying what a hero I was. I didn’t have the words to tell her. You don’t feel heroic. You just feel….”
“Afraid?” Larx asked.
Aaron opened his eyes and saw Larx leaning forward, arms crossed on the table in front of him, brown eyes open and compassionate.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry you were afraid, Deputy,” he said softly. Then he grabbed the spoon and fed Aaron another bite of soft-serve across the table. “It’s the only remedy I got.”
Aaron washed down the ice cream with a mouthful of coffee and looked around. The place had definitely cleared out—their little red booth was the only one with people still in it. JoAnna, the owner, and her two high-school-aged
helpers were wiping down all the other tables and sweeping the white-tile floor. He’d gotten a text from Kirby a half an hour ago that said his son was safe at home. Larx had gotten a similar text about ten minutes later, and he’d raised his eyebrows meaningfully. “So, nobody planning to make us accidental grandparents, for which I’m grateful.”
They’d laughed then, but Aaron was suddenly acutely aware of his duty to eventually drive Larx home and deliver him safely to his daughter.
“We should get going,” he said now.
Larx sighed and scraped out one last bite of caramel-covered ice cream. “Yeah. Time and gardening wait for no man.”
“Hey, you need to garden so I can come over Sunday.”
Larx’s smile had gold on the edges, it was that brilliant. “Deal.”
But the conversation that had flowed so easily on the way to get ice cream and in the little red booth sort of died on the way to Larx’s house, and Larx kept looking at him, strained.
“What?” Aaron said as he pulled into Larx’s driveway.
“Nothing,” Larx said, sounding defensive. But he made no move to get out of the car as Aaron came to a stop.
Aaron started to fidget. He put the car in Park and turned toward Larx, surprised when he saw Larx had twisted and was in the process of taking off his seat belt.
They were suddenly face-to-face in the frosty darkness.
“What?” Aaron croaked, mouth dry, heart thundering abruptly in his ears. Larx was right there.
“Why?” Larx asked, his own voice coming none too steadily.
“Why what? Why are we sitting here in the dark? Why did I eat that ice cream? Why—”
Larx’s finger on his lips was mesmerizing. He shut up immediately and concentrated on the feel of that rough skin of Larx’s finger pushing into the soft skin of his mouth.
“Why did you ask me to run?” Larx asked. The pressure against Aaron’s mouth lessened, but the finger was still there. It took a few moments, a few even breaths, to realize it was stroking the curve of his lips.
Everything—nipples, ears, chest, all forgotten points south—tingled.
For a moment, Aaron was going to tell the “I was afraid for your life” lie again. But Larx was… oh God. Right there.
“Your chest,” he confessed in a rush. “You took off your shirt, and your back and your chest were all sweaty and—”
Larx’s mouth on his tasted of the sweetest heaven.
Lord, how long? How long since someone had kissed him like this? Like a seeking tongue could find the intimacies of the soul. Aaron opened his mouth and let Larx in, welcoming him, the curious sweep of his tongue, the way he invaded Aaron’s mouth.
Aaron groaned, sliding his fingers back along Larx’s scalp, tangling them into Larx’s long hair. Hold still, dammit. Yes. Just right there.
Larx tilted his head back in compliance with Aaron’s hand in his hair.
And he moaned.
Aaron plundered that moan. Took it from Larx’s lips, made it his own. All of this—this kiss, this press of their hot bodies in the confines of the car—this was glorious, intimate, sinful, in ways Aaron hadn’t had since his wife died, the quickies during tourist season notwithstanding.
Ah—ah ah…. Larx pulled away, cupping Aaron’s neck so he could have some leverage.
“Deputy, that was… unexpected,” Larx panted.
“The kiss?” Aaron asked, befuddled. “I’ve been wanting that for a while.”
“How much I wanted more,” Larx breathed, resting his forehead against Aaron’s. “God. You couldn’t have waited until our kids were out of school to make that move?”
“You’re the one who took off his shirt for a month!”
Larx laughed helplessly. In front of them, the porch light came on at the bottom story of the house, and they both pulled back with alacrity.
“You’ve got to—”
“I’ve got to—”
Larx stopped, his hand on the door handle, and reached out to brush Aaron’s hand where it rested on the seat. “We’ve got to see where this goes,” he said, nodding. “See you Sunday, Aaron.”
“See you Sunday, Larx. Wait—”
But Larx had already slammed the door. He stopped at the porch and turned and waved, leaving Aaron to lean his head helplessly against the steering wheel.
“Dammit, Larx,” he complained to himself. “What in the hell is your first name?”
Last Taste of Summer
“SURE YOU don’t want to stay?” Larx asked Christiana. “There’s heat, there’s dirt, there’s bugs—all the finer things in life.” He’d spent the day before in the garden, but it hadn’t been enough. If he worked hard, he could get it all done this weekend, and then the burn pile would be seasoned for the next.
His daughter rolled her eyes at him, but she laughed, and that was his intention. “Let’s see… help you in your garden, or go spend the last warm day of the year at Jessica’s pool. Hm… decisions, decisions….”
“Fine,” Larx said meanly. “Just remember, snakes love pools this time of the year.”
Christi’s eyes went flat. “You suck, Dad. You’re totally the worst. I’m giving you no grandchildren—not even a cat.”
Larx looked at the porch, where Olivia’s one cat and Christi’s three cats tried to be ultracasual in the sun. The fact was, they were watching to see if any mice were going to run out from the pile of paper feed bags Larx was setting in the burn circle—a game Larx and the girls had played with great enthusiasm over the last seven years.
“Sure,” he said now, mouth twitching. “You’re going to go out in the big world and live without a cat. I see that happening like I see the sun turning green.”
But Christi was no longer even listening to him. “Sh!” she commanded, waving her hand. “Watch. Do you see it, Trigger?” she said to her ginger tom. “Do you see it? It’s in there… it’s in there… it’s a-comin’….”
Both of them stopped and focused on the feed bags rustling in the gold light of the late-September sun.
Larx and Christi exchanged gleeful looks. It was coming. The varmints were getting ready… it was all happening….
Trigger’s ginormous ears perked up, and his green eyes shot open from somnolent rest. Every muscle in his body went on high alert, and like the vicious predator he was, he lowered into a crouch, the better to slink across the yard to the den of his quarry.
“Ooh… not gonna let him beat ya, are you, Toby? Not gonna let Trigger get all the mice!”
Toby, the long-haired tortoiseshell, took Trigger’s left flank, and Trixie, the delicate black calico, took his right. The only cat uninterested in the carnage about to go down was Delilah, the old, deaf, half-blind Siamese cross Olivia had dragged home their first year in Colton. Larx, desperate to give his daughters some of the normalcy that had been stolen from their lives, had taken that cat in and promptly spent all of the little family’s extra money making sure she lived as long as possible. Seven years ago the vet had given her a year. Larx figured she was entitled to sleep through the games of the youngsters and have herself a good laugh at the vet’s expense.
But the younger three—Christiana’s “oh, Dad, it just followed me home!” kittens—they were on their game.
Asses wiggling, whiskers twitching, they moved with the precision of a crackerjack squad of assassins.
Trigger went first, darting to the pile and leaping in the air, landing on top of the bags and flushing their prey into the open.
Toby and Trixie were in position, paws flying as they caught, broke, chomped, and killed mouse after mouse. Trigger leaped off the pile of bags and pounced into the melee, claws flashing as he disemboweled furry bodies and snapped little necks with bloodthirsty glee!
Oh, the carnage!
Oh, the mouse-anity!
“Oh, you incompetent little shits!” Larx cried. “You let one get away!”
Sure enough, one of the mice—one of the bigger ones, but apparently wily—had slipped b
etween Toby and Trixie’s barrier of death and was making a break for it. There he went, straight toward the house.
Christi, who was closer to the porch, ran straight on an intercept vector, then turned and crouched in wait like the warrior princess she was.
The warrior princess who leaped into the air and squealed like a guinea pig when the critter ran over her sandal-clad foot.
“Aw, Christi!”
“Eww! Little feet little feet little feet—Dad-eeeeee! Little gross feet on my bare skin!”
“Christi, the mouse!”
“Oh! Crap!” The young recovered quickly, and Christi spun on her heel and went tearing to the porch…
Where Delilah opened one eye at the nearly victorious mouse and took it down with a casual paw.
“Oh!” Christi screeched to a halt. “Delilah, way to go!”
Delilah yawned and lifted her paw just as the mouse was getting away and smacked it again. She raised amused eyes to Christi, then repeated the process—and probably would continue to repeat the process until the furry little prison-breaker stopped moving forevermore.
“Oh,” Christi said again. “Delilah, you sadistic pussy. I’m impressed.” She reached into the back pocket of her cutoffs and snapped a picture, then fiddled with the screen.
Stacking grain bags—one of the mice was nice enough to sacrifice himself to your aging goddess.
Larx’s phone buzzed in his back pocket, and he knew he’d gotten that text too—along with any of the follow-up conversation. He was smiling when Christi turned back toward him, flushed and happy and having forgotten any threat to deprive him of grandchildren.
“Well, now that the entertainment’s over with,” she laughed, “I’ve got some rays to catch.” She headed toward her bike, one of three that lived on the porch, and started to put on her helmet. She’d left a towel and a water bottle on the picnic table, and she tucked those into the basket behind the seat.
“You’ll be back by dinner, right?” Larx said apprehensively. Once the sun went down, the roads went from squirrely to downright unsafe. Everybody’s bike had reflectors and headlights, just in case, but it was his job to worry.
