“On a scale of one to ten, how important is this?” I queried.
“Me doin’ my bit so I don’t feel like you’re keepin’ me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Eighty-five.”
I took in a deep breath and let it out suggesting, “How about you pay for the groceries when we go to the store?”
His brows snapped together in a way that I’d never seen from him before.
It was a way that was a little scary.
“Are you shittin’ me?” he bit out.
“Uh…” I trailed off, thinking the answer to that was yes, even when it was no.
“When I take another job, after it’s done, am I comin’ back here?” he demanded to know.
“I hope so,” I replied.
“And when I take a job after that, where do you want me to be when I’m done?”
His point was dawning on me.
“Here,” I answered.
“Here in cabin eleven, me payin’ to be there, or here in this house with you?”
My tone softened. “Obviously here in this house, honey.”
“Now, do you see where I’m comin’ from?” he pushed.
“How about we go halfsies?” I suggested.
Deacon looked to the ceiling.
I took that as a no.
“It was just a suggestion,” I muttered.
He looked back to me. “You want diamonds and pearls, you got it. You want to fly to Paris, I’ll have to swing a passport, but I’ll do it and you got that too. You want anything and I got it in me to give it to you, I’ll give it to you. But that is not this. This is day-to-day, give and take, me takin’ care of you, you takin’ care of me. I get you got it in you to take care of yourself. You showed me that for six years. What you gotta get is that, if we want this to work, you gotta budge on that and give me my shot at doin’ it ’cause I’m the type of man who’s got that in me in a way there is no other way I can be.”
His words made me feel warm and squishy, but this conversation was too important to leave it at that.
“I can do that,” I allowed. “But there has to be compromise.”
“Yeah, I suck at cooking mostly ’cause I hate that shit. You’re fuckin’ great at it. You take that on, after years of fast food, I’ll be eternally grateful and put up new gutters on every fuckin’ cabin at Glacier Lily.”
“It seems I get more out of that than you do.”
“Obviously you haven’t eaten garbage for ten years.”
This was again intriguing.
And again, Deacon didn’t give more.
I didn’t push it.