by Rhys Ford
Six
“REALLY?” BEAR looked up from behind the kitchen peninsula, twisted the cap off a second beer bottle, and handed it over to Mace. “He offered to kill your father? Did he mean it?”
“How can you tell?” Mace took a sip of the chocolate stout his brother had picked up from Finnegan’s Pub. “This is Luke we’re talking about. I’m never sure if he’s serious or being… I don’t know, flippant?”
“Me neither.” His brother scratched at the thick scruff he’d grown over his jaw. “He’s good for looking at everyone’s problems but his own. That’s something he’s going to have to face someday, and soon.”
“I’ll let you tell him that,” he said and gave Bear a mock salute with his stout. “Any time I bring it up, he loops it back to me. It’s his superpower—obfuscation and deflection.”
“Good words.” Bear leaned on the counter, nodded at Mace, and then took a long draw off his bottle. Mace followed Bear into the living room, and they each settled into their respective spots on the enormous sectional Mace usually fell asleep on when he came to visit. Bear let a moment of silence pass between them and then reached for the stereo remote before Mace could. He turned it to a classic rock station and dropped the volume down until it became a murmur in the room. “Speaking of deflection, what are you going to do about your father?”
If it was any other person, Mace would have sidestepped the question, but Bear had raised four headstrong teens to adulthood, and he knew more tricks than Luke could ever dream up. There would be no avoiding his older brother, at least not without dropping off the face of the earth or becoming a Tibetan monk under a vow of silence. Even then, Bear could hunt him down.
He avoided Bear’s gaze under the guise of collecting his thoughts.
The old Craftsman existed in a constant state of noise. It sang and chirped, warming its bones in the afternoon sun and shrinking back in on itself when the night air cooled it. The house’s constant murmurs were what Mace missed the most after moving out. There were many nights at his place when even throwing all the windows open to let in the street noise didn’t help, but after a half-hour drive over to Ashbury, he found the sounds he needed to lull him to sleep—cradled in the odd song of the house he used to call home.
It was never silent in the brothers’ home. Even in the dead of night, the house whispered to him and reminded him he was alive.
As thankful as Mace was for the bedroom his brothers made for him, the family room was still his favorite space in the house.
In the beginning of their renovating adventures, they tried to set up a formal parlor, but it soon proved to be a room no one spent any time in. Everything they knew about creating a home was knitted together from a variety of television shows that featured smiling parents and mischievous but well-meaning offspring. There’d always been a sacred adult space, a parlor where people visited and where there was no sign of television or children.
It didn’t take the brothers long to realize that wasn’t going to be their life. They needed space, not just to live in but also from each other—safe havens from the storm of forging relationships between problematic personalities and quiet places to nurse deep-seated traumas. Bear, who normally asked for opinions about what to do with the house, made an executive decision and carved individual spaces out for each of them.
The front parlor became Luke’s bedroom, and they knocked down a couple of walls and expanded the family area into a giant space to fit the five of them.
In no way was the family area magazine-pretty. None of the house was, but it felt comfortable around Mace. When he walked through the back door, he didn’t feel as though he were intruding into a place he didn’t belong—not like every single time he’d come into a foster home and slunk off into the room they put him in so he would create as small a ripple in their lives as possible.
Ripples meant being kicked out. Conflict of any kind meant taking another trip escorted by a hard-faced social worker and losing half of his things in the process.
The space was a patchwork of electronics, a humongous pit that held the sectional, and bookshelves lining the wall that separated the area from Luke’s bedroom. The opposite wall had windows overlooking the tiered backyard—another endless project of patio-building and landscaping with a few vigorous attempts at vegetable-growing, something they finally mastered once Luke figured out where things should be planted and what drainage meant. Heavy blackout curtains hung from sturdy wrought iron rods and were easily pulled shut for the days when Mace or one of the others fell asleep on the U-shaped couch and wanted to keep the day at bay.
It was in the family room where they argued and made decisions, sometimes screaming themselves hoarse to be heard over the chaos. But it was also where they forged the bonds of their patchwork clan.
Scattered around the room were definite signs that Chris had joined the family. There was a basket of toys, and Mace couldn’t identify whether they belonged to Earl or the kid. Then he recalled how his nephew interacted with the family mutt and realized there wasn’t much difference. They shared and gnawed on the ears of their stuffed animals indiscriminately. A short plastic basketball hoop sat in the corner where a fake plant once took up residence, and it took Mace a moment to realize the silk dieffenbachia now resided in the library his brothers had created for him. At some point they were going to have to teach Chris about boundaries and private areas, but for the life of him, Mace didn’t know how to bring it up. None of them had had the luxury of being an only child with two handfuls of adults raising them.
He almost asked Bear how they were going to teach Chris things like sharing and privacy, but the sharp look he got told him his older brother wasn’t going to be diverted.
“Mace, dial it back in,” Bear scolded softly. “How do you want to deal with him?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do about him, because I don’t have a clue about where he is or anything else.” The stout turned sour in his mouth, but Mace swallowed anyway and welcomed the numbness on his tongue. “He’s got a probation officer he has to check in with, but you know how that goes. Luke thinks I should get a restraining order, but I don’t have anything to put behind it. What am I going to say to the judge? ‘Yes, I am a firefighter, and I can lift people up over my shoulder to cart them downstairs, but I’m afraid of an old man who hurt me when I was a kid, so can you please give me a piece of paper to tell him to stay away from me?’ How do you think that’s going to go?”
Mace could almost feel the exasperation pouring out when Bear sighed.
“They might not give you a restraining order, but you never know.” Bear grunted when Earl joined him on the couch and the dog’s massive paws dimpled the cushions between them. Bear waited for him to settle down and then scratched at a spot between Earl’s shoulder blades. “At the very least, we can have Luke make a few discreet inquiries and find out where he is.”
Mace made a face at Bear. “Do you really want Luke to know where he lives? Even if what he said was off the cuff, do you really want to chance it?”
“I am ninety-nine percent sure he says that kind of shit just to keep a sense of humor about it,” Bear replied. Then he sipped his stout and mumbled around the glass rim, “It’s a sick sense of humor and kind of dark, but that’s Luke.”
“Let’s just say the one percent isn’t small enough to comfort me where Luke is concerned.” Mace moved his hand so Earl could rest his head on his thigh. The dog shuddered and then seemed to ooze as every muscle in his gangly body relaxed. It was time for Mace to face the truths he’d been ignoring. The man who’d spent most of Mace’s teen and adult years locked up behind bars was now out, and Mace had no idea what he could do about it.
“Fair enough,” his brother replied softly. “I’m not asking you to make any decisions about him. Whatever you want to do, we’ll support you. I just need to know where your head’s at right now.”
“I know I don’t want to see him. And it’s not like my mother….” He c
ouldn’t bring himself to talk about the woman who’d…. Mace couldn’t even think about her, not without losing what little grip he had on his emotions. “I don’t want him anywhere near the family. And I sure as hell don’t want him ever to get close to Chris. I’m going to be honest and say I wish to fuck that one percent of Luke was one hundred percent, because that way he’d… never hurt me again.”
“He can’t hurt you anymore,” Bear assured him as he reached across the space and squeezed Mace’s thigh. “We’ll do everything we can to protect you. And yeah, you aren’t that little kid anymore on the outside, but there’s still a lot of him left in you—enough for your father to terrorize just by being around you. You don’t have to take that from him. You don’t have to let him in. And if we’re on the honesty train, I don’t want you to let him in. What he did to you was… fucked-up, and you’ve worked hard to get through a lot of it. I love you, brother. And if I have to help that one percent in Luke to protect you, I’ll do that. We all would.”
“I appreciate it, but I’d rather not spend my lifetime trying to get you guys out of prison when I spent most my life trying to keep him in one. How about if we just agree to see where things go. He’s not welcome in my life, and if he tries to force his way in, we’ll deal with it.” Mace glanced toward the kitchen as the back door opened and its telltale creak echoed through the house. Frowning at Bear, he asked, “Is that Gus? I thought he and Rey were going to spend the night down in Chinatown.”
“Can’t be Ivo.” Bear glanced at the clock and then stood and set his beer down on the coffee table in front of him. “Shop’s not supposed to close for another hour.”
“Is there food?” Their youngest brother’s voice rang through the house. “Oh, never mind. Found some. Can I eat the Chinese?”
“Definitely Ivo and his stomach,” Bear muttered. “Think I should tell him we’re in here?”
“Pretty sure he could find us.” Mace finished his beer and shouted toward the kitchen, “Bring us the wontons and a couple of beers.”
“I’m not your fucking maid… oh. Who picked up Finnegan’s?” Ivo yelled back. “I’m taking the last of the shrimp.”
Bear creased his brow. “Was there a lot of shrimp left?”
“No, but at least he told us he was taking the rest of it.” When Ivo walked into the room, Mace reached up for one of the bottles he had tucked under his arm. “Did you throw away the empty Styrofoam containers? Or did you leave them on the counter?”
“I’ll throw them away later.” Ivo scowled at him, baring his teeth. “Right now I’m hungry, and just so you know, I fired Dave. I tried to grab In-N-Out with Rob, but some old bearded guy cornered us by the parking structure and told me to give Mason a message for him.”
The food in Mace’s stomach threatened to come up, and he swallowed hard against the sour at the back of his tongue. Trying to keep his voice steady, he croaked, “What did he say?”
“Dave?” Ivo let out a terse snort and picked a shrimp out of the scoop of fried rice he’d heaped onto his plate. “He—”
“No, you idiot,” Bear growled, “the guy down by parking.”
“I didn’t give him a chance to say anything. I knew who that fucker was,” Ivo said around a mouthful of noodles as he simultaneously lifted his elbow to drop a second bottle of beer in Bear’s lap and stepped over their legs to get to his spot on the couch. “If you wanted that asshole in your life, you wouldn’t have gone to all of those damned hearings to keep him locked up. So, we can either talk about Dave or about how we get Mace’s dad to understand that if he comes anywhere near us, he’s going to wish he was back in prison.”
HAVING A kid in their lives changed things. The day off from the fire station was sometimes stolen and the hours given to the shop because one thing or another cropped up. An early-morning phone call from Gus brought the news that Jules, Chris’s mother, had woken up with a bad case of the flu and needed Gus to step in and take care of his son for a few days. His response was swift, but it meant putting aside plans—everyone’s plans. If there was one thing the brothers agreed on without hesitation, it was that Chris’s care and well-being came first. They’d each grown up without that, and to a man, they refused to let Chris have a moment where he didn’t feel loved and protected.
So for Mace, that meant driving down to the shop to pick up the opening shift and cover reception until Ivo got out of his classes for the day, hopefully by late afternoon. Bear would be in at six to pick up the evening shift. The workload was projected to be slim, with only a few appointments scattered about the schedule, and while Mace couldn’t tattoo to save his life, he could handle the walk-in traffic, help set up the stalls for the artists, and handle the money.
“Times like this, I wish I could at least ink flash, but you all wear the only piece of art I will ever do.” Mace tapped at the 415 Ink logo silkscreened on a clean shop T-shirt he’d pulled from the laundry.
The points of the nautical star between the numbers and the letters had been divided up and drawn by each of the brothers. There was no mistaking the lack of talent on two of the points—specifically the contributions by Mace and Luke. Somehow, even using a ruler and the same pens, their sides of the star were wonky. The other three insisted it lent character to the logo, but Gus visibly winced when it was suggested they all wear the star on their bodies. Still, he’d gamely agreed to put it on his wrist, and Mace tucked it into the knight inked on his upper arm.
The star represented not just the shop but the family itself—slightly fucked-up, made up of five pieces, and something they all would die fighting for if they needed to.
Chris was now a part of that star, so the storage room in Mace’s garage was going to have to wait, and Gus would spend the day riding herd on a three-year-old little boy with an endless amount of questions and a mischievous streak as long as the Golden Gate Bridge.
And as much as he loved the kid, Mace was glad to leave the chaos and mayhem behind for the relative sanity of a tattoo shop that faced the San Francisco piers—that is, until he parked his car and looked out at the deluge pouring down on the city. It was as though the sky had ripped open its belly and was bleeding out, its death throes punctuated by rolls of thunder and metallic clashes of lightning. He was trying to ignore the persistent whispers of his father’s presence creeping over his life, but he still hurried past the corner where Ivo said he’d seen the man.
“Last thing I need is to see him,” Mace muttered to himself as he hurried across the street, surrendering any hope of dryness when the wind picked up and slashed the rain sideways. It wasn’t far, but the downpour was intense, and the sky was dark with its fury. “Bad enough I’ve got to deal with Rob for a few hours.”
He’d agreed to take over the shift before he knew Rob was the artist on duty that day. There was no backpedaling, not once a brother made a promise. Mace wanted to, but he couldn’t, not without drawing suspicion. He’d already sensed Bear’s eyes on him when Ivo read off the schedule for the day and Rob’s name sent a shiver through Mace’s spine.
The lock on the front door was difficult, as usual, and by the time Mace got it open, the rain was coming down hard enough that he wondered if he would have to go back out and get sandbags to keep the front door clear of rising water. The sidewalk dipped at the corner, and the champagne lounge next door always seemed to have a plumbing backup during a storm.
“I’ll cover the shop,” Mace grumbled as he finally got the key into the lock. “But I’m not going to spend the day shoveling through somebody else’s shit, especially since Ivo fired our apprentice.”
Firing Dave had been necessary. Mace understood that. He was still leery about the time-honored tradition of taking on a young tattoo artist and making them do all of the shit work in the shop. He’d seen Bear work through his time as an unpaid apprentice just to learn the ropes while he held down two side jobs, and then he watched Gus and Ivo take their turns to earn dirt wages as they struggled to master skillsets and machines.
It was hard, grueling work with a lot of emotional turmoil. When Bear opened the doors to 415 Ink, he swore that any apprentice working under him would earn a living wage and be treated with respect. All they had to do was follow the shop’s rules.
“Fucking Dave. I really didn’t want to spend the morning getting ink all over myself, but fuck, I’d probably be down here anyway with the sandbags.” The front door was stuck, swollen by the rain, and Mace put his shoulder to it and pushed it open. The glass insert and the blinds rattled, mimicking a pissed-off snake. He took two steps into the shop and had just reached for the switch on the wall when the lights flared to life. Mace shoved his keys between his fingers, made a fist, and then called out, “That better be Rob or Missy, because I swear to God, if it’s you, Dave, I am in no mood.”
He recognized the silhouette of the man at the end of the hall, and another flick of the light switch illuminated Rob’s sweet face. Holding up a set of keys, Rob called out, “It’s me. Dave never had keys, and Missy’s in San Jose today visiting her mom, but she’s working later. What are you doing here?”
“Gus had to call out,” Mace replied, raising his voice so he could be heard over the rain.
Staring through the shop at Rob, Mace asked himself the same thing—what the hell was he doing there? If he’d been smart, he would have conned Luke into taking the day off to cover the shop. Hell, he would’ve recruited somebody from the firehouse or even pulled in somebody off the street to avoid working that morning, because the image of Rob in a rain-drenched thin white T-shirt plastered to his trim chest and flat belly would forever be burned into his memory.
Rob might as well be shirtless… or maybe not. There was something subliminally erotic and beautiful about a man secure in his own body and unconsciously displayed behind a veil of transparent fabric. There was no artifice to Rob’s stalk toward the open shelf of supplies near the back door or the brusque grace of his shoulders rolling in as he ducked his head to dry his hair off with one of the shop towels. His jeans were splattered with dark splotches from the rain that had soaked through the blue denim fabric, and he got a good peek at Rob’s muscular thighs through the various tears in his pant legs. And when Rob bent over, Mace bit the inside of his cheek and cut off his involuntary moan at the sight of Rob’s tight ass filling out the seat of his jeans.
